How do we know? Scientists actually did it - and, believe it or not, it's for a good cause. They wanted to know if tardigrade-like organisms could sur

Scientists Fired Tardigrades Out of a Gun to See if They Can Survive Space Impacts

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2021-05-24 12:30:06

How do we know? Scientists actually did it - and, believe it or not, it's for a good cause. They wanted to know if tardigrade-like organisms could survive certain conditions in space, in order to place constraints on where and how we might be able to find extraterrestrial life in the Solar System - and how we might avoid contaminating it.

Tardigrades, microscopic invertebrates also known as water bears and moss piglets, are globally ubiquitous, found both in terrestrial and water ecosystems pretty much everywhere. That's hardly a surprise, really: the tiny creatures are able to survive some insane conditions.

When conditions get nasty, they can dry out, reconfigure their bodies and enter suspended animation - called desiccation - for years. You can throw virtually anything at them: frozen temperatures, zero oxygen, high pressures, the vacuum of space, cosmic radiation, and even being boiled.

These so-called "indestructible" beasties made global headlines in 2019, when a spacecraft carrying some crash-landed on the Moon, prompting speculation about the tardigrades' survival on our satellite.