• Question: Are there any microorganisms in Space?

    Asked by igloo23 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 14 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      My answer to this question is that we don’t know yet! There have been several experiments to find out if microorganisms from Earth can survive in space and some can. Microorganisms are amazing because they have adapted to survive in pretty much every environment on Earth, including deep under the ocean and there are even some microorganisms that can live in nuclear power stations. I was part of an experiment to see if we could find microorganisms at the edge of space using a stratospheric balloon. It’s really hard to look for them though because we have millions of microbes on our hands so how can we be sure that the one microbe we find on the edge of space isn’t contamination from someone touching the experiment.

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Not that we’ve found any convincing evidence for.

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Only ones we have put there.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Not that we know of, but we do know that some Earth organisms can survive in space. A good example are tardigrades, or “water bears”, which can live in space without any protection for at least a few days. Perhaps there are alien bugs out there then?

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      We think that if there is alien life out in the solar system, it is likely to be a kind of microorganism because we would have detected anything more advanced by now. But so far we haven’t found any alien microbes, though we are still looking really hard!

      There could be some microbes from earth up there though, that we accidentally sent up on some of the first spaceships. But now there are rules to make sure new spaceships that go up are as clean of bacteria as possible.

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