The cool half about science is that you would be able to ask questions like what occurs in the event you stick some moss spores on the surface of the Worldwide Area Station, after which get funding for answering mentioned query. This was roughly the scope of the experiment that [Chang-hyun Maeng] and colleagues ran again in 2022, with their findings reported in iScience.
Used as moss specimen was Physcomitrium patens, a quite common mannequin organism. After beforehand discovering throughout Earth-based experiments that the spores are essentially the most resilient, these had been subsequently transported to the ISS the place they discovered themselves positioned within the publicity unit of the Kibo module. Three completely different publicity situations had been tried for the spores, with all uncovered to house, however one set stored at midnight, one other protected against UV and a 3rd set uncovered to the wholesome goodness of the all-natural UV that house in LEO has to supply.
After the 9 month publicity interval, the spores had been transported again to Earth, the place the spores had been allowed to become mature P. patens moss. Right here it was discovered that solely the spores which had been uncovered to important UV radiation – together with UV-C unfiltered by the Earth’s environment – noticed a major discount in viability. But even after 9 months of basking in UV-C, these nonetheless had a germination charge of 86%, which offers fascinating follow-up questions concerning their survivability mechanisms when uncovered to UV-C in addition to a deep vacuum, freezing temperatures and so forth.
