Bacterium Survived on Outside of the Space Station for a Year!
A year in space is no walk in the park. Just ask Scott Kelly, the American astronaut who spent a year on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015.
His long-term stay in space changed his DNA, telomeres, and gut microbiome, he lost bone density, and he still had sore feet three months later.
But it’s a whole other thing to survive in the naked space outside the protection of the ISS, where UV radiation, vacuum, huge temperature fluctuations, and microgravity are all imminent threats.
So, it’s quite a feat that a species of bacterium first found in a can of meat, Deinococcus radiodurans, was still alive and kicking after a year spent living on a specially designed platform outside the pressurized module of the ISS.
Researchers have been investigating these mighty microbes for a while; back in 2015, an international team set up the Tanpopo mission on the outside of the Japanese Experimental Module Kibo, to put hardy bacterial species to the test.
Now, D. radiodurans has passed with flying colors.
The bacterial cells were dehydrated, shipped to the ISS, and placed in the Exposed Facility, a platform continuously exposed to the space environment; in this case, the cells were behind a glass window that blocked out UV light at wavelengths lower than 190 nanometers.
“Results presented in this study may increase awareness regarding planetary protection concerns on, for instance, the Martian atmosphere which absorbs UV radiation below 190-200 nm,” the team from Austria, Japan, and Germany wrote in their new paper.
“To mimic this condition, our experimental setup on the ISS included a silicon dioxide glass window.”
This isn’t the longest time D. radiodurans has been kept in these conditions – back in August we wrote about a sample of the bacterium being left up there for three whole years.
But the team weren’t trying for a world record, instead they were trying to uncover what makes D. radiodurans just so good at surviving in these extreme conditions.
The survival rate was a lot lower for the LEO bacteria compared to the control version, but the bacteria that did survive seemed to be doing okay, even if they had turned a little different to their Earth-bound brethren.
The team found that the LEO bacteria were covered with small bumps or vesicles on the surface, a number of repair mechanisms had been triggered, and some proteins and mRNAs had become more abundant.
The team isn’t exactly sure why the vesicles (which you can see in the picture above) formed, but they do have a couple of ideas.
“Intensified vesiculation after recovery from LEO exposure can serve as a quick stress response, which augments cell survival by withdrawing stress products,” the team wrote.
“Additionally, outer membrane vesicles may contain proteins important for nutrient acquisition, DNA transfer, transport of toxins and quorum sensing molecules, eliciting the activation of resistance mechanisms after space exposure.”
This kind of study helps us understand whether bacteria could survive other worlds, and maybe even the journey between them, which will become more and more important as we humans and the germs we bring with us begin to travel farther than our Moon into the Solar System, and one day maybe even beyond.
“These investigations help us to understand the mechanisms and processes through which life can exist beyond Earth, expanding our knowledge on how to survive and adapt in the hostile environment of outer space,” said University of Vienna biochemist Tetyana Milojevic.
“The results suggest that survival of D. radiodurans in LEO for a longer period is possible due to its efficient molecular response system and indicate that even longer, farther journeys are achievable for organisms with such capabilities.”
The research has been published in Microbiome.
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Carbon Bigfoot
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Kelly’s brain suffered as well because he’s freakin’ liberal running for Arizona Senate seat occupied by Martha McSally who is more quality and not dain bramaged—Bob Nelson parody
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Doug Marshall
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I absolutely love all the great work that you have done on many aspects of the pandemic.
It is disheartening however to see that, from time to time, you promote fake space propaganda. We never went to the moon. NASA lies. There is no Tesla on the way to Mars, and we are not landing on asteroids millions of miles from earth. To anyone who has done the research, the mountains evidence are overwhelming and the conclusions inescapable.
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Tom O
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Oh that’s right, the impenetrable dome that covers the flat world, and the 50,000 plus long ice wall that we pretend to be the Antarctic continent, that keeps the oceans from pouring off into space. Where, it would seem, time has to change to allow ships to travel from Australia to Cape Horn in the length of time that they do, and Magellan would have had to have taken at least twice as long to travel around the world. Wait, that’s probably fake to, right? I’ve seen your research, but I don’t know the drugs you use.
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Alan
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The evidence that you are wrong is a mountain the size of a Jovian planet.
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Lloyd
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And the Earth is Flat, So all the countries in the world went along with the fake radio transmissions from the Moon. Yeah, right.
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Moffin
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I agree with you Doug.
Keep taking your medication and keep everybody else safe.
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Helen
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I wonder if the LEO bacteria may have been more exposed to 5G EMF’s from the LEO 5G satelites.
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tom0mason
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So now we know of some bacteria surviving in space. So my idea, from decades ago, that bacteria and viruses could survive journeys on the wind to cross the globe look a little more likely. I’ve never said it was their primary method of travel, just that it could be a possible method.
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John Scudamore
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Save us viral bollocks from the fake iss.
No virus has ever been isolated. Viral disease is poisoning disguised as contagious. Eg Spanish flu was vaccination and aspirin poisoning
Smallpox wasn’t contagious and spread mostly by vaccination
All so called viral disease was curable 90 years ago with vit c. Polio meningitis measles etc.
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