Marine plankton found in Space

The Guardian reports, 21st August 2014: “Sea planktonplankton Plankton is a generic term for a wide variety of the smallest yet most important organisms form that drift in our oceans. They can exist in larger forms of more than 20cm as the larval forms of jellyfish, squid, starfish, sea urchins, etc. and can be algae, bacterial or even viral down to as small as 0.2µm. They are nutrient and light dependent, and form the essential foodchain baseline for larger dependent aquatic lifeforms. Fish species rely on the density and distribution of zooplankton to coincide with first-feeding larvae for good survival of their larvae, which can otherwise starve. Man-made impacts such as dredging, dams on rivers, waste dumping, etc can severely affect zooplankton density and distribution, which can in turn strongly affect larval survival and thus breeding success and stock strength of fish species and the entire ecosystem. They also form the essential basis of CO2 take up in our seas ecosystem, hence Global Warming. have been found on the outside of the International Space Station, a Russian news agency reports.

Itar-Tass says scientists on the space station, whose first component was launched into orbit in 1998, found the plankton — a source of food to many sea creatures — when taking samples from the windows (or “illuminators”).

This, the agency writes, confirms “that some organisms can live on the surface of the International Space Station (ISS) for years amid factors of a space flight, such as zero gravity, temperature conditions and hard cosmic radiation. Several surveys proved that these organisms can even develop.”

“Stuff website” reported that the plankton samples “were not carried there at launch, but are thought to have been blown over by air currents on Earth”.

Head of the Russian ISS orbital mission Vladimir Solovyev said the results of the experiment “are absolutely unique”. He said the marine micro-organisms were not native to blast-off site Kazakhstan, and may have been “uplifted” to the station at an altitude of 420km. “Plankton in these stages of development could be found on the surface of the oceans,” he said. “This is not typical for Baikonur [in Kazakhstan]. It means that there are some uplifting air currents which reach the station and settle on its surface.”

Is there a better explanation for the plankton’s trip out of this world?

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