Tiny critters survive space travel
Who knew life could hitch a ride to the stars? Meet the ultimate space cadets
barely half a millimeter long
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- Who knew life could hitch a ride to the stars? Meet the ultimate space cadets
- In this state, tardigrades have survived temperatures of 150°C and -272°C, a degree above absolute zero.
- In 2019, an Israeli lunar lander called Beresheet crashed into the Moon carrying thousands of dehydrated tardigrades.
In 2007, a European satellite carried a colony of microscopic animals into orbit, opened the door, and exposed them directly to the vacuum of space. Most of them came back alive.
The animals were tardigrades — also called water bears or moss piglets — eight-legged invertebrates about half a millimetre long, soft and rounded, with a face that looks faintly like a vacuum cleaner nozzle. They live in every ocean, every desert, and the moss on most rooftops on Earth.
When conditions turn lethal, a tardigrade does something almost no other animal can. It expels nearly all the water from its body — dropping from 85% water to about 3% — curls into a barrel shape called a tun, and shuts down. Metabolism falls to roughly 0.01% of normal. By any practical definition, it is no longer alive. It is also no longer mortal.
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