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Florida Scientists Test Ability of Microorganisms to Survive Space

Posted on: Tuesday, 14 December 2004, 00:00 CST

Dec. 13--Think of them as micronauts.

They're tiny organisms strapped to a rocket's skin and shot into space.

The object: To learn whether life can travel or has traveled aboard meteorites between planets, including from Mars to Earth.

"Scientists within the last few years have found on Earth meteorites that come from Mars," says Wayne Nicholson, a University of Florida associate microbiology professor based at the Kennedy Space Center.

"These processes have been happening for years, but we don't know if there were life forms aboard," Nicholson said.

If there were, did they survive?

Nicholson and others are trying to begin answering that by attaching microscopic creatures to man-made granite meteorites placed on the outside of small rockets. They retrieve the rockets when they return to Earth to see what conditions the organisms can endure.

In April, UF and NASA launched organisms called Bacillus subtilis from New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range.

The microbes can form spores that survive ultraviolet radiation, cold, low pressure and lack of water for years.

Their rocket ride reached an altitude of 70 miles, just beyond NASA's threshold of space.

When the rocket was retrieved, more than 10 percent of the microscopic space travelers were still alive, despite being subjected to temperatures of nearly 300 degrees.

Next year, Nicholson hopes to send up another group of micronauts. This time, they'll be inside the meteorite, perhaps giving them a better chance at survival.

He says there's so much life on Earth it's very likely that a big asteroid hitting our planet would launch pieces of life- bearing rock into space, possibly destined for other planets.

"If a species is hardy enough, planets may interchange life, meaning we're not biologically isolated," he says.

For now, we're left to wonder.

"There is a legitimate possibility there is no other life in our solar system," says Andrew Schuerger, another UF researcher at Kennedy who has to date unsuccessfully attempted to grow microbes in a Mars simulation chamber.

"On Earth, we've found life in extreme environments and the scientific community is leaning toward [there being] life elsewhere -- not that we're thinking sci-fi.

"It's an exciting possibility."

The two scientists add that there are risks of bringing such life back to Earth, inadvertently or otherwise, as well as unintentionally sending our life into space.

"As long as we've had flights to other planets, we've tried to protect the planets" from contamination by organisms carried from Earth, Nicholson says.

During and sometimes after assembly, rocket parts are sterilized in a number of ways, including heat, gases and chemical solutions, Schuerger says.

"We need to make sure if we discover there is life on Mars, it's Martian and not something we took there," Nicholson adds.

Eventually, the experiments may help determine the beginnings of life.

"Life may not have originated on Earth," Nicholson says.

"It may have originated somewhere else and come here when Earth was favorable" to it.

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Source: Tampa Tribune

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