To: fso301; GeronL
Thanks. So, they can survive direct exposure to cosmic radiation?
Maybe. How they'd do in direct exposure outside Earth's magnetosphere is unknown, but they're fine after 18 months of full exposure on the outside of the ISS. But give them any shielding at all (like being inside the drill bit box on a rover...) and they ought to survive a journey of years with little loss in viability.
I think the prevailing wisdom for so many years that nothing can survive in space is interesting. It was basically just an assumption. And when tested, it turned out to be unsupported. Endolithipilic lichens require next to nothing in the way of oxygen, water, and CO2 to survive, and as it turns out, are radiation resistant (thus their being able to survive and stay metabolically active in Mars conditions). Then we have extremophilic bacteria like Deinoccocus radians. D. radians can survive radiation damage that chops its DNA into hundreds of pieces with almost no loss in viability, as well as vacuum, desiccation, and extremely high acidity. I wouldn't be surprised if it handled direct exposure to cosmic radiation fairly well.
37 posted on
09/10/2012 9:26:49 AM PDT by
verum ago
(Be a bastard, and Karma'll be a bitch.)
To: verum ago
bump
very interesting
if we can train lichen as astronauts...
40 posted on
09/10/2012 9:33:23 AM PDT by
GeronL
(The Right to Life came before the Right to Pursue Happiness)
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