In the News: Microbes Survive in Space !

[CraigS]

Here we go ..
For those who want life to move into space and "explore strange new worlds":

"Microbes Survive a Year and a Half In Space"
http://www.physorg.com/news201938033.html

"(PhysOrg.com) -- Bacteria collected from rocks taken from the cliffs at the tiny English fishing village of Beer in Devon, have survived on the outside surface of the International Space Station for 553 days. The bacteria, known as OU-20, resemble cyanobacteria called Gloeocapsa."
...
"Bacterial spores have been shown to be capable of surviving for years in orbit, but this is the first time photosynthesising bacteria, the cyanobacteria, have been demonstrated to be able to survive so long in space."

I was on the right track when I suggested a good sneeze on upcoming planetary exploration probes might help humans move into space !
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=64581
Cheers

[DavidU]

VERY interesting thanks Craig.

[jjjnettie]

It's the stuff that science fiction is made of.
But deep down, didn't we all know that this was possible?
Thanks for the heads up.

[renormalised]

Very interesting article....was on the TV a few night's back.

They've also had Tardigrades (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade) in space for 10 days and they survived quite easily.

Think that was fantastic...they found some bacterial spores in a salt mine in the US a few years back that were dated to be around 250 million years old....Permian Period to be exact. They extracted the spores and stuck them in an agar solution just for the fun of it, to see what happened. The spores reanimated themselves and started to multiply!!!!. So, it just goes to show you, these little critters can last a very long time in the harshest of conditions.

[DavidU]

Cool info thanks Carl, very surprising !

[Steffen]

I suppose this means dark matter has no antibiotic properties ;)

Cheers
Steffen.

[jjjnettie]

I really am very excited by this. The implications are enormous.

[renormalised]

Sorry Steffen, no Dettol bottles floating around out there:):P

[renormalised]

That's why they assemble space probes in sterile cleanrooms. One sneeze is all it takes, or one ungloved, unsanitised hand to touch a probe, and the next minute we've got forests of super bugs growing on the surface of Mars!!!!. Or maybe we do get invaded by Martians, only they're originally refugees from Earth. Or maybe they start having kids with the locals and the resulting bugs end up really souped up, then we start hearing...."No one would've believed, that in the last years of the 21st Century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space......."!!!.

Earth bacteria would have no problems surviving on Mars or in many other places in the solar system.

[CraigS]

Here's more on clean rooms:

"NASA study will help stop stowaways to Mars"
http://www.physorg.com/news107608651.html

"Clean rooms used in the space program already undergo extensive cleaning and air filtering procedures, and the detection technology employed in this study will help NASA to develop and monitor improvements. Still, it is extremely difficult to eliminate all dust particles and microbes without damaging the electronic instruments the process is intended to protect."
...
"Clean rooms are considered extreme environments for microbes because water and nutrients are in extremely short supply. Nevertheless, some bacteria are able to survive on what little moisture the low-humidity air provides and on trace elements in the wall paint, residue of cleaning solvents, and in the spacecraft materials, themselves."

I guess the original post confirms the last paragraph.

Cheers

[renormalised]

There's little we could do to stop them, save for blasting the entire cleanroom and probes with very powerful gamma rays, but that would destroy the probes in the process apart from killing everything else in the building it was in!!!!.

Nope, I'm afraid we're way too late to be worrying about spreading Earthlings around in space. They're already there.

[CraigS]

Only the extremophile earthlings !
:):P

[renormalised]

Even many ordinary bacteria can happily live in space, so long as they have some protection. When Apollo 12 went to the Moon, they specifically went to retrieve some of the instruments from the Surveyor probe that was sent there in 1965. After sealing them in special containers, they brought the instruments home and examined them only to find that bacteria had actually hitched a ride with the probe and had been on the Moon for 5 years, inside the probe, happily going about their usual thing. The probe's shell had protected them from UV light and other radiation and they were living off the probe itself.

Adds a whole new meaning to "we've got a bug in the probe's systems", but that might literally be the case in some circumstances:)

[renormalised]

When you look at it, they've found bacteria living happily in the cores of nuclear reactors, so a little bit of high energy radiation doesn't bother many bacteria at all. Space would be a holiday for many of them...an exciting trip for all the family...."Let's go to Mars for Xmas!!":)

[DavidU]

So we have already been spreading earthly bacteria throughout the solar system for the last 35 years.
Amazing
I remember reading about the Surveyor parts that were returned to earth.

[renormalised]

Yes, even longer. But if truth be known, there's most likely been exchange of bacterial organisms between the inner planets and more than likely the outer planets as well, since the solar system was forming.

Panspermia...there's even the possibility that life here did begin out there, literally. It's not outside the realms of possibility that meteoric materials from other solar systems may have brought life to our solar system to begin with.

[DavidU]

Awesome hi res piccie here
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Apollo12ConradSurveyor.jpg

[renormalised]

Great piccie:)

Would've been amazing to be there at the time:)

[CraigS]

That one was disputed and the lab technicians were accused of not following clean-room re-animation process steps. (I suspect by the religious right and the Apollo mission non-believers in the US).

I've seen a doco on TV sometime where Pete Conrad, (Commander Apollo 12), tells the story Carl mentions above, though (ie: from the horse's mouth).

Cheers

[renormalised]

It was disputed, but the NASA technicians had assured they did follow all the necessary procedures. But then again, you can't convince everyone and if some wanted to think it was faked, then what can you say. So, they're idiots, but that's nothing new. Unfortunately, there's always a number of fools around in any society. Pity you can't breed them out of the population:).