The first human moon landing happened more than 50 years ago. But did you know that human astronauts were not the first Earthlings to travel in space and circle the moon? That honor goes to two Russian tortoises and several smaller creatures that went along for the ride. On September 14, 1968, the Soviet space program sent two tortoises, along with some flies and worms, into space for a trip around the moon. NASA calls it the first successful circumlunar mission carried out by any nation. After a week-long trip, the tortoises landed on Earth by parachute in the Indian Ocean. They traveled back to Moscow on October 7. Both tortoises survived the trip but not the experiment. NASA records state that the animals were dissected on October 11, 1968, to see how their bodies were affected by the space travel. Dissection showed that the main structural changes in the tortoises were caused by a lack of food and not the space travel. The tortoises had lost about 10 percent of their body weight. But they had stayed active and showed no loss of appetite. When compared with a control group of tortoises on Earth, the space traveling creatures had a small amount of spaceflight-related atrophy. When parts of the body atrophy, they decrease in size or waste away. The experiment demonstrated that the animals could travel around the moon and survive.