Plankton live on the outside of the ISS and bacteria that resist travel … – Trends 21

The last August, Russian space officials on board the International Space Station (ISS) said in comments reported by the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS have found traces of marine plankton and other living organisms on the outside of the station.

According to them, the plankton was not there at the time of the launching of the International Space Station, launched in November 1998, when the Russian Proton rocket placed in orbit the largest Russian module Zarya, the main model and designed to provide the space station and initial energy propulsion. Subsequently, new modules were added to this structure, which may have been made permanent human presence in space for the first time in history.

As microorganisms found had not been put there by humans, how arrived at the ISS? According astronauts ventured then, surely drafts from Earth.

The NASA spokesman, Dan Hout said about it, also in August that “We have not had access to any official report from our colleagues Roscosmos (the Russian space agency) about the discovery of plankton on the outside of the ISS “, picked Space.com.

Now the story returns to the media highlighting how amazing the fact that microbes can survive in the vacuum of space, despite temperatures ice cream makers, lack of oxygen and cosmic radiation prevailing there.

Findings made itself

Whether or not marine plankton dwelling on the outside of the ISS, as had been demonstrated by other means, that certain forms of life could survive a while-at least under the conditions of space.

In 2012, three experiments performed by scientists at NASA on the ISS itself, to determine whether living organisms could reach Mars in future human spacecraft revealed that some microbes themselves have this capability.

For example, spore-forming bacterium Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032 survived for 18 months in the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF), a load mounted on the outside of the International Space Station which allows to exhibit materials directly to the harsh space environment.

A second experiment with spores of the same bacteria and other spore-forming bacteria, submitted for a year and a half of space vacuum conditions and a simulated Martian atmosphere, revealed that all of them would survive a trip in a spacecraft to Mars, if they remain protected against solar radiation.

The third experiment, which consisted of placing year and a half in space rocks cellular organisms specially adapted to extreme environmental conditions of some terrestrial habitats, also found that these agencies would also resist in space.

Life Beyond the ISS?

In addition, to date, scientists have found what appear to be traces of life forms in Martian meteorites or in the stratosphere; and complex organic substances in outer space.

In this regard, the latter finding has recently produced: A team of researchers from Cornell University (USA) and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Cologne (two centers in Germany ) just made public the discovery in interstellar space in an unusual organic molecule, it has a (own of the molecules necessary for life, such as amino acids), branched structure rather than linear, as usually found in the cosmos. This discovery was made at 27,000 light years away thanks to the ALMA Observatory, the world’s most sensitive radiotelecopio.

All these findings seem to support the theory of panspermia, which argues that the essential elements for life were formed in the early stages of evolution of the universe expanding this. According to this hypothesis, life would come to Earth thanks to the impacts suffered by our planet at an early stage of their training.