BEEOLOGY SUPERHERO
A resume of life in outer space
During one of the missions on the ISS, a container called "Expose-E" was attached to the hull of the ship, in the outer area. Inside they placed a set of biological samples of different origins, from simple organic chemical compounds to living beings. The organisms used for the experiment were different species of bacteria, algae, seeds and lichens. The container did not have any protection measures. It was not only exposed to radiation, which, especially ultraviolet, are responsible for a large number of mutations in our DNA. It was also subject to extreme temperature changes, although slightly protected by the ship's hull. During one orbit, the container could go from -12ºC to +40ºC approximately 200 times.
Lichens. The best adapted?
Animals in space
The first spacecraft that transported biological material was Sputnik 2. It was the second spacecraft put into orbit around the Earth on November 3, 1957, which, in a sealed cabin, housed the dog Laika, whose original name was "Kudryavka". The mission ended with Laika's death five hours after launch. While Laika may have been a pioneering animal in Earth orbit, animals had been used in the name of space exploration for more than a decade. Russian and American scientists have long used animals to test the limits of their ability to send living organisms into space and return them unharmed. The first living beings sent into outer space were fruit flies, which flew to a height of about 100 kilometers inside a Nazi rocket, the V2, in 1947.