Thread by @weatherindia

.@NASA to Send 128 Glowing Baby Squids and 5,000 Water Bears to Space! Here’s Why

weather.com/en-IN/india/sp…

(📸: NASA)

Have the giant leaps made by space agencies in technological advancement gotten you dreaming of wearing a spacesuit and flying off to space? Well then get in line, as #NASA is currently preparing to launch the most unexpected of creatures to space instead!

As part of #SpaceX’s cargo resupply mission, the American space agency will be sending 5,000 tardigrades and 128 glow-in-the-dark baby squids to the International Space Station (ISS) next week.

#SpaceX is scheduled to launch its 22nd mission to the space station on June 3, 2021, wherein it will carry supplies and scientific research and technology demonstrations from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, US.

Who are these special guests and why are they going to space?

#Tardigrades, known as water bears or moss piglets due to their appearance under a microscope and common habitat in water, are tiny creatures that tolerate environments more extreme than most life forms can.

They have been found everywhere—mountaintops, deep sea, mud volcanoes, tropical rainforests, and the Antarctic—as they have the capacity to sustain themselves under extreme pressure, extreme temperatures, air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and even starvation.

This is not the first time that these resilient creatures have been invited to space, for in September 2007, Ingemar Jonsson of Sweden’s Kristianstad University and colleagues launched two species of dried-up tardigrades aboard ESA’s FOTON-M3 mission.

After 10 days of exposure to space, these specimens returned back to Earth, where 68% of them were revived within 30 minutes of being rehydrated. Many of these specimens even went on to lay eggs that successfully hatched.

Researchers have planned to investigate the process through which the squid hosts these colonies of bacteria, as it has an immune system similar to the one that humans have.

They hope to understand the symbiotic relationship between the bacteria and the squid, in order to determine how beneficial microbes interact with animal tissue in space.