• Question: Are there any living things in Space other than planets?(If planets are living things!)

    Asked by Krystal to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon, Tom on 4 Oct 2015. This question was also asked by Sethu.
    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 4 Oct 2015:

      As far as we know there are no living things in space except for on Earth (and its orbit – the ISS!).

      But water was recently found on Mars so who knows what we may find in the future!

      Like space, no living things (other than our crew!) have been found to survive at Concordia. One of my experiments here is looking for bacteria which are able to survive in the extreme conditions outside. If bacteria are found to be able to survive outside here, perhaps they could also survive on other planets!

    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 4 Oct 2015:

      Sergio:
      Hi Zanita, did you know that some bacteria are amazingly resistant to adverse conditions and they manage to survive even in space? Every time we send a spacecraft into space, bacteria from Earth attach to it and sometimes manage to survive!

      As part of the Apollo 12 mission, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean brought back to Earth the camera from the Surveyor 3 probe, which had arrived on the Moon two and a half years earlier. Analyzing the camera it was found that the some bacteria were alive on the camera. The bacteria had been launched from Earth together with the probe and had survived on the Moon for two and a half years!

      Who knows, next time we go there we could find a city built by these bacteria! 😀

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