We spoke to Stephen Lantin, who is part of a team funded by NASA that have drawn up plans to send these \u2018water-bears\u2019 to distant stars<\/a>.<\/p>\n First and foremost, we decided the organisms needed to be very small. The smaller they are, the more we can pack a bunch of them in. And if a couple of them die, at least we might have some that survive.<\/p>\n Also, the more mass you have, the more energy you need to impart on the spacecraft in order to get it moving.<\/p>\n So that narrowed it down to things like tardigrades, certain forms of bacteria, single cells, and also a worm called C. elegans.<\/em> This worm is the model organism chosen for a lot of studies in science.<\/p>\n They\u2019re pretty simple organisms. They\u2019re known as water bears, because if you look microscopically, they look like eight-legged bears. But what\u2019s really cool about them is their radiation tolerance. They have the ability to withstand very extreme environments. People tend to throw around the word \u2018extremophiles\u2019, but tardigrades are more \u2018extremo-tolerant\u2019 organisms.<\/p>\n You know, if you go outside and find some mossy rocks, take a sample and put it under a microscope: you\u2019ll probably find tardigrades.<\/p>\n Read more about \u2018water-bears\u2019:<\/strong><\/p>\n As part of our selection process we asked, can these organisms survive the space environment? Experiments on the International Space Station have explored this idea, and there are quite a few organisms that can actually survive the radiation environment in space without a lot of shielding. Radiation from the Sun, which we refer to as solar cosmic radiation, and the farther you get out, there\u2019s also galactic cosmic radiation, that comes from elsewhere.<\/p>\n So the organisms we picked, such as tardigrades, have mechanisms that can repair their DNA if it\u2019s damaged by radiation. There\u2019s also this really interesting thing called cryptobiosis, a method where these organisms can undergo a sort of hibernation, but on a more intense scale. Their metabolic activity just completely drops. It\u2019s almost like they\u2019re dead, but they\u2019re not, because once conditions are right, sort of like a seed, they can revive themselves. It\u2019s really fascinating.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the point, so we\u2019d have different sensors on board along with these organisms, so we can sort of study their behaviour over time. Ideally, we would send them out in there in their dehydrated, cryptobiotic form<\/a>, and then we would remotely wake them up, with some water or something. We would monitor how many of these tardigrades actually revive in space. Then we can look at how their cells change, is there a genetic response? By looking at the different cells of these tardigrades, we can almost understand what\u2019s going on even if we\u2019re really, really far away.<\/p>\n Yeah, absolutely. This, more than anything, would be testing how life responds to radiation environments that we ourselves haven\u2019t experienced. Testing these sorts of things will mean we can better characterise the response not just for small organisms, but for bigger ones as well.<\/p>\n Right now, we definitely don\u2019t envision them returning. They get accelerated to very high speeds [on take off], and in order to get them back, we would need to somehow accelerate them in the other direction.<\/p>\n That is definitely where we get the most flack from people outside of [our research group]. What about all the potential ecosystems that have that might have life on them? Are we ruining them by shooting out life into them?<\/p>\n The short answer is if the spacecrafts are being launched with very high speeds, there\u2019s virtually no chance of them surviving an actual impact to the planet.<\/p>\n Anything that is launched that fast and hits any sort of target gets vaporised instantly. There\u2019s not really a way at this point to get them to colonise other planets.<\/p>\n We also consider how and what targets we choose when we\u2019re shooting these off into space. There\u2019s an ethical component to this research, which is why we brought on board our philosopher, Michael Latimer. He is very familiar with the ethics of doing these sorts of things. We had some very interesting conversations.<\/p>\n Robots, of course, are good to use \u2013 we can use robotics to study exoplanets closer to the source and learn lots of really good information. But, it\u2019s not really an either\/or. You can probably do both.<\/p>\n In terms of sending biology, this is something that we really have no experience with. We\u2019ve never really done this before, in terms of sending biologicals that that far into space. The only stuff we\u2019ve tested is in low-Earth orbit and the Moon. There are some plans to do research outside of low-Earth orbit. There\u2019s a biosensing programme at NASA\u2019s Ames<\/a> Air Base in California. But largely, this space is untapped.<\/p>\n We thought it would be a good opportunity to push this out into the world, and see what people thought.<\/p>\nHow did the team choose which organisms to send into space?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Out of the organisms you chose, it was the tardigrades that seemed to get the most attention. Can you tell me what they actually are?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Can tardigrades survive space?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
How would you have contact with them while they\u2019re in space? <\/strong><\/h4>\n
And would that tell us about what would happen to humans if we were in their situation? <\/strong><\/h4>\n
Would they return? <\/strong><\/h4>\n
So doesn\u2019t that risk them contaminating other ecosystems?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\""Tardigrades\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/4\/2022\/01\/GettyImages-1227513359-973d4d0.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C540"\" "\\"\"Tardigrades\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Why shouldn\u2019t we just send robots? What is the benefit to sending organisms?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
When could tardigrades be sent into space?<\/strong><\/h4>\n