On July 9th, 1946, the United States sent the first living organisms, fruit flies, into space aboard a V-2 rocket. On February 20th, 1947, the fruit flies safely returned from a suborbital space flight, which paved the way for human exploration. Occurring years before the first mammals were sent into space, the purpose of the mission was to test the reactions of both radiation and space flight to understand the possible effects of space and a zero-gravity environment on humans. The reason that they used fruit flies was because fruit flies and humans share many genes.
