The transport of microorganisms in space is an important issue from theoretical (origin of life on Earth) and practical (planetary protection) perspectives. The characteristics of the artificial meteorite and the living object applied in this study can serve as positive controls in further experiments on testing of different organisms and conditions of interplanetary transport. This is the first report on the survival of a lifeform within an artificial meteorite after entry from space orbit through Earth’s atmosphere at a velocity that closely approached the velocities of natural meteorites. The identity of the strain was confirmed by 16S rRNA gene sequence and physiological tests. siderophilus survived the entry viable cells were recovered from 4 of 24 wells loaded with this microorganism. The temperature during the atmospheric transit was high enough to melt the surface of basalt. After 45 days of orbital flight, the landing module of the space vehicle returned to Earth. We explored the survival of the spore-forming thermophilic anaerobic bacterium, Thermoanaerobacter siderophilus, placed within 1.4-cm thick basalt discs fixed on the exterior of a space capsule (the METEORITE experiment on the FOTON-M4 satellite). ![]() So far, all experimental proof of this possibility has been based on tests with sounding rockets which do not reach the transit velocities of natural meteorites. One of the key conditions of the lithopanspermia hypothesis is that microorganisms situated within meteorites could survive hypervelocity entry from space through the Earth’s atmosphere.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |