Lichens Survive In Space On Esa Mission, Biopan Foton |
Lichens Survive In Space On Esa Mission, Biopan Foton |
Nov 13 2005, 12:22 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Lichens survive in space aboard ESA's Foton M-2 mission launched into low-Earth orbit by a Russian Soyuz rocket, 31 May. After reaching orbit, the Biopan facility containing the lichens opened to expose them to the vacuum, radiation and wide temperature fluctuations of space for 14.6 days. It closed again for reentry and landing by parachute. The samples were examined at the ESA research facility in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.
The survival rate exceeded 90%, and photosynthesis was not impaired, according to the scientist in charge of the experiment, Leopoldo García Sancho of the Complutense University of Madrid. The results "would support the theory of panspermia," he said. This links to images from the Biopan 4 and 5 missions: http://www.astrobiology.nl/pictures/index.php -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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