Cosmonauts have found ocean plankton from Earth on the outside of the International Space Station and, fascinatingly, it's surviving in zero gravity, low temperatures and hard cosmic radiation. The only problem is, they're not sure how it got there.
Scientists analysing samples from the outside of the International Space Station’s windows have found something surprising - sea plankton from Earth. Even more impressive, the tiny microorganisms have managed to survive in space.
A Russian news agency, ITAR-TASS, reports that the research confirms “that some organisms can live on the surface of the International Space Station (ISS) for years amid factors of a space flight, such as zero gravity, temperature conditions and hard cosmic radiation. Several surveys proved that these organisms can even develop.”
So how did tiny plankton make it all the way into space? The researchers are still trying to work this out, but they say it’s unlikely they were carried up at take off, as the marine microorganisms are not native to Kazakhstan, where this section of the ISS took off from.
Vladimir Solovyev, the head of the Russian ISS orbital mission, told Stuff that the plankton may have been “uplifted” 420 km to the ISS by air currents on Earth.
So far there’s no word from NASA on whether there’s been plankton found on the outside of the American segment of the ISS.
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