....well we put it there first.
Its a tardigrades also knwo by the much cuter name of Water Bear. The artical floating about the web say its the toughest living thing on this planet, and now orbiting us.#
The papers abstract reads as:
Vacuum (imposing extreme dehydration) and solar/galactic cosmic radiation prevent survival of most organisms in space [1]. Only anhydrobiotic organisms, which have evolved adaptations to survive more or less complete desiccation, have a potential to survive space vacuum, and few organisms can stand the unfiltered solar radiation in space. Tardigrades, commonly known as water-bears, are among the most desiccation and radiation-tolerant animals and have been shown to survive extreme levels of ionizing radiation [2, 3, 4]. Here, we show that tardigrades are also able to survive space vacuum without loss in survival, and that some specimens even recovered after combined exposure to space vacuum and solar radiation. These results add the first animal to the exclusive and short list of organisms that have survived such exposure.For more friendly comments etc:
WiredIt's one small step for
Tardigrada, and one giant leap for the animal kingdom: The toughest creature on Earth has survived a trip into space.
Except for a few hardy strains of bacteria, any other creature would have been destroyed -- but tardigrades handled the voyage as though it were a dry spell on their local moss patch.
"They have claws and eyes. They are real animals. And this is the first time such an animal was tested in space," said Petra Rettberg, an Institute of Aerospace Medicine microbiologist.
Better known as water bears, tardigrades are eight-legged invertebrates visible to the naked eye and found throughout the world, making them a biology class favorite........
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