Quote:
Originally Posted by 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  |
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