islamabad – Study shows sending microbes to Earth’s stratosphere, totest their endurance to Martian conditions, can reveal their potential useand threats to space travel. Some microbes on Earth could temporarilysurvive on the surface of Mars, finds a new study by NASA and GermanAerospace Center scientists.
The researchers tested the endurance of microorganisms to Martianconditions by launching them into the Earth’s stratosphere, as it closelyrepresents key conditions on the Red Planet. Published in Frontiers inMicrobiology, this work paves the way for understanding not only the threatof microbes to space missions, but also the opportunities for resourceindependence from Earth.
“We successfully tested a new way of exposing bacteria and fungi toMars-like conditions by using a scientific balloon to fly our experimentalequipment up to Earth’s stratosphere,” reports Marta Filipa Cortesão, jointfirst author of this study from the German Aerospace Center, Cologne,Germany.
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“Some microbes, in particular spores from the black mold fungus, were ableto survive the trip, even when exposed to very high UV radiation.”Understanding the endurance of microbes to space travel is vital for thesuccess of future missions. When searching for extra-terrestrial life, weneed to be sure that anything we discover has not just traveled with usfrom Earth.
