Water bears in space

BBC : Tardigrades, also known as water bears, joined the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour on Monday as part of Project Biokis, sponsored by the Italian Space Agency. The project will investigate the impact of short-duration spaceflight on several different microscopic organisms; Tardkiss, a subset of the project, will expose tardigrade colonies to different levels of ionizing radiation at different points during the spaceflight. The data will be used to help determine how radiation dosage affects the way cells work. Less than one millimeter long and ubiquitous on Earth, water bears became the first animals to survive exposure to space during the European Space Agency’s 2007 Foton-M3 mission. In inhospitable conditions, they enter a state of dormancy called cryptobiosis—an ametabolic state that allows them to resist physical and chemical extremes, including solar winds, high pressure, and the vacuum of space. The Tardkiss study may facilitate the development of techniques to protect other organisms, including humans, from the extreme stresses encountered during space exploration.