Moss survived outside of the International Space Station for 9 months | Hacker News Reader

Moss survived outside of the International Space Station for 9 months

livescience.com

71 pointsgeox19 comments

I have survived outside of the International Space Station my whole life

If you’ve done so as moss, I salute your ability to use human technology to post!

Moss spores survived outside. The difference is significant, it's like saying "Banana trees survived in space" when it was just banana seeds...

Banana seeds can’t drive health conditions.

Moss _spores_, not living moss. Big difference! 80% viable upon return, no mention of quarantine or mutations

True. I got visions of patches of moss growing on the outside of the ISS

Haha, It reminds me some old movie called Andromeda I think... Space human probe crashlanded on earth and contained some greenish patches of stuff on it. It was space dwelling orgamism that direcly used energy to matter conversion for growth. It was pretty decent movie actually :)

Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton's first big success.

Great movie, but even better book.

When interviewed, Moss stated: "The ambient emvironment is indeed challenging. But when I think about the toxic political discourse, collapsing rules-based global order and of course, the inevitable temperature increase past 1.5 or even 2 degC above pre-industrial state, I really don't regret my move"

Moss' psychiatrist had this to say: "Vell, Moss is just zis guy, you know?"

Moss has been invited to touch grass.

It lived in a vacuum, in high radiation conditions and with huge temperature fluctuations?

They put spores, that are more resistant to vacuum, lack of humidity, temperature fluctuation. I'm no sure about the radiation level, perhaps the containers were partially hidden by the structure.

If Moss survived outside of the International Space Station for 9 months, then perhaps Moss might be a good candidate to take to the surface of Mars on a future Mars mission...

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46011978 2 days ago, 69 comments.

panspermia anyone

Someone stick a bag of moss spores on the next Voyager please.

I know they're doing everything to keep those craft sterile, I think we should go the other way: spread life across the universe while we can.

What can’t Randy do?!

Now we need to selectively breed moss until we have astrophage

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