A bold collective, including three universities and the Mars Society, recently announced its plans to launch a “crew” of mice into orbit. The project’s goal is to study the long-term effects of being born and living in a low-gravity environment like that on the Red Planet. Dubbed the Mars Gravity mission, the endeavor is part of the Mars Society’s Translife Initiative to develop a support structure for a martian settlement. Student researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington