Scientists find traces of sea plankton on ISS surface | Hacker News Reader

Scientists find traces of sea plankton on ISS surface

en.itar-tass.com

96 pointsShivetya34 comments

Apollo 12 retrieved a Surveyor 3 camera that had been on the Moon for over two years and contained Streptococcus mitis bacteria that survived in a dormant state and were recultured back on Earth. Pete Conrad, Apollo 12 commander, said, "I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole...Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said [anything] about it."

Of course, there's a They Might Be Giants song about this incident. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xulaYpsnkcg

As much as I WANT to believe, and I did for a long while, that Strep was on the moon for years, it's possible that this was a false positive. That being said, I think this is still an important event and is a good starting point for experimentation.

"One of the implements being used to scrape samples off the Surveyor parts could have been laid down on a non-sterile laboratory bench, and then was used to collect surface samples for culturing. It is, therefore, quite possible that the microorganisms were transferred to the camera after its return to Earth. Furthermore, the Surveyor 3 camera was returned from the Moon in a nylon duffel bag, and was not in the type of sealed airtight metal container used to return lunar samples in the early Apollo missions. It is therefore possible that it was contaminated by the astronauts and the environment in the Apollo 12 capsule itself. The bacterial test is now non-repeatable because the parts were subsequently taken out of quarantine and fully re-exposed to terrestrial conditions."

source: http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/experiment/exper.aspx?exp_i...

> “We are conducting special works to polish somehow and put illuminators in order. This is particularly needed during long space flights,” Solovyev added.

The whole article seems to be mangled by bad translation. It's difficult to tell what it is about.

It was probably blown up there by "uplifting air currents" according to : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2728979/Never...

We have to keep in mind that, even at that altitude, there are still air molecules. They're extremely sparse, but just enough that the drag they induce on the ISS and its large surface area of solar panels make periodic boosting necessary.

And there must be enough to keep heavier particles lifted up that high.

So they also survived an impact with the orbitting station at 9 km/s? I don't think so.

They don't have to survive for you to find traces.

The article is unclear whether these organisms are alive or not.

> Results of the scope of scientific experiments which had been conducted for a quite long time were summed up in the previous year, confirming 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.

Unlikely to be alive

So basically the Earth is a life-covered rock that spits organisms to hundreds of kilometers from its surface. This is just awesome!

Panspermia is a theory for a reason. As an explanation for life on Earth itself it has a challenge ahead of it, but due to the small amounts of life that Earth is known to be flinging about it's a known fact that Earth life has landed on the other planets. (Or at least their corpses, but it seems reasonably likely that some of it would survive the trip in some form of stasis or spore, given how resilient we know microscopic life can be.)

If life is ever found on Mars, the next question to be asked after identification is, "is it related to Earth life?" Which we'd check by checking certain of the parameters of life on Earth that do not seem to be "forced" by physics, but are universal on Earth (how DNA codes for proteins, for instance). If they all matched up, it would strongly suggest one single common origin... though that origin could conceivably be on Mars.

Interestingly, this also means that if the Solar System is still otherwise sterile despite the arrival of Earth life, that has interesting implications of its own.

If the bacteria floated up to LEO (which is very possible) the impact was likely in the meters/second range because it would have had to match the orbit closely enough. Because bacteria are so small (and the filaments they use to support the cell membrane is so strong) it would take an extreme impact to "splatter" them. Remember also that archaeic bacteria (as well as simple multicellular organisms) live on the bottom of oceans like the Mariana Trench where the pressure is over 1,000 atmospheres (enough to turn you into a miniature hockey puck).

If the bacteria floated up to LEO...

LEO is not a place.

This may well be the reason, however keep in mind that the daily mail is generally held to be less reliable a source than throwing darts at a dictionary.

Would the moon ever need a "boost"? Even though it's probably not hitting any air molecules from Earth, it's still colliding with tons of space debris a day.

The moon is actually moving away from the earth.

The moon is being continually boosted by the rotation of the earth. The moon's gravity causes tides on the earth's surface. However, the shape of the earth is slightly ahead of being directly lined up with the moon because of inertia and sloshing. That uneven earth shape exerts a slightly uneven pull on the moon which increases its angular velocity around the earth, and slows down the angular velocity of the earth's rotation.

     .--~~~--.             ^
    /   <-    \            |
   |   Earth  |            O Moon
   \    ->   /
    '--___--'

Note, the bulge of the earth is slightly exaggerated in this diagram, and the moon is further away on this scale.

In effect, the rotation of the earth is dragging the moon around faster (which causes it to move further from the earth and go slower).

That's one non-biologist's initial guess, by no means a tested theory, and certainly not backed by enough evidence yet to say "probably". Seems much more likely that it's a case of contamination - this plankton lives in the belly of shrimps and other seafood. Shrimp are one of the ISS astronauts' favorite foods. All it takes is one astronaut not washing his hands after eating and before putting on his gloves to cause contamination. If the bacteria are alive, this is definitely the basis for an interesting study re: extremophiles. But the "uplifting air currents" statement is just speculation at this point.

{Nat Turner says} This finding on the International Space Station makes it clear that the earth is surrounded by an aura of life, at least in the form of plankton. Though the particular type of plankton has not been identified, it has been established that it is not the type of plankton, which would have possibly been picked up from the delivery launch area of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan . Were the plankton picked up before launch, doubtless the extreme heat would have destroyed them. The ISS has been orbiting the earth since 1998 at an altitude of between 330 km / 205 mi and 435 km /270 mi It is clear that if they are first lifted from the sea into the atmosphere by rising air currents and winds, when those winds dissipate that the plankton carries on at their own steam as though drifting in the seas. The oceans have been here some 4,400 billion years, it must be posited that what ever means the plankton has used to make it into space onto the ISS, has been going on since that time. The unthinkable alternative is that the deeps, of space, is full of this life form, which of course will give the evolutionists new material, other than asteroids, with which to rework their theories of the seeding of life on earth.

"He noted that it was not quite clear how these microscopic particles could have appeared on the surface of the space station."

Duh! Dolphins. It's like these people never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Slime

how is that possible?

Microorganisms are probably far less affected by vacuum than larger ones, as long as they can get some nutrients from time to time. And since most engines used in space produce plain water (and engines are fired frequently around the ISS), I think the only really difficult thing about the environment is radiation... and microorganisms might also be more resistant to this.

It's almost vacuum up there, so the water from the engines is diluted and diluted and the microorganism can't get enough of it. Probably they are only not-dying there, like inside a big freezer without air, only waiting frozen. It's not clear than they are viable, and that if we put them in a good environment they will thrive. Perhaps they are only microcorpses.

Tardigrades can endure some of the most extreme conditions, including the vacuum of space and solar radiation, and can go without food or water for more than 10 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

Not the same as plankton, but still quite interesting, I think!

Panspermia?

No. The ISS isn't really that far from earth and there's a lot of exchange going on between earth and the ISS, mostly from all the various spacecraft we send up.

I think they meant it the other way, from Earth outwards.

So if you find x living microbes at 200km from Earth, given thermal dispersion, shouldn't there be some y number of molecules from Earth on the Moon? (And so on)

Even if y is a really small number, it effectively means any one planet with life would most likely "pollute" the star system it finds itself in. (Would need to do the math on this, but I believe that was the commenter's point)

> So if you find x living microbes at 200km from Earth, given thermal dispersion, shouldn't there be some y number of molecules from Earth on the Moon?

I doubt it - even if the "uplifting air currents" hypothesis were proven true, there's a massive difference between low earth orbit and the moon. Around 8 km/s of delta-V to be exact.[1] This means that, to make it to the moon, the molecule not only has to reach LEO, it has to be moving at 8 km/s (a pretty insane speed) by the time it gets there. I can't imagine any earthly air current moving that fast, in fact it's likely impossible because the speed of sound is only 0.35 km/s.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget#Earth-Moon_spac...

This reminds me of a little theory in microbiology, that is that every species exists in every place. For example, if you were to build an alkaline lake in the middle of nowhere (where no alkaline lakes exists), it wouldn't take long before specific species of bacteria would colonize that lake.

That sounds suspiciously like spontaneous generation - what is the actual theory?

Not sure I ever read about it in a textbook... more of a micro professional talked about it so I can't provide a source.

Did some research as it seems people don't like it when you don't have citations.

A Dutch researcher named Baas Becker wrote in 1934 "Everything is everywhere, but the environment selects".

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