Tardigrades are among the toughest animals, surviving dehydration, freezing, and space radiation. Recent findings offer more promising news: their favorite habitat might also endure space travel unharmed. Experiments by Chang-hyun Maeng at Hokkaido University show mosses can endure harsh conditions outside a spacecraft.
The biologist and his team studied which parts of Physcomitrium patens—protonemata, germ cells, or spore capsules—best survived extreme conditions. Previous observations had shown that spore capsules, especially in larger numbers, were more resistant to heat, cold, freezing, and vacuum. The capsules were sent to the ISS, where they orbited unprotected for nine months, enduring extreme cold, dryness, and radiation, before being returned to Earth for cultivation.
Moss Spore Capsules Endure Extreme Space Conditions
Remarkably, 80% of the spore capsules successfully germinated and grew into living mosses. Maeng and his team had expected almost all of them to perish under such harsh conditions. This outcome demonstrates that, at least at the cellular level, some plants can survive extreme environments and possess protective mechanisms against severe cold and high radiation.
Considering their 500-million-year evolutionary history as early land colonizers, mosses’ resilience is unsurprising; in space, only chlorophyll a, essential for photosynthesis, showed a notable decrease. Mosses grown in captivity after the space mission had 20% less chlorophyll a than their counterparts that stayed on Earth. Other types of chlorophyll remained unchanged, meaning the plants’ overall ability to carry out photosynthesis was largely unaffected.
Read the original article on: Spektrum
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