Posted on 08/22/2014 6:19:50 AM PDT by shove_it
Sea plankton has been discovered living on the outside of the International Space Station, Russian cosmonauts have claimed. Scientists on board the ISS are reported to have discovered living organisms when taking samples from windows. Head of the Russian ISS orbital mission Vladimir Solovyev said the results of the experiment “are absolutely unique”. Solovyev told the Russian Itar-Tass news agency that the tiny marine life-forms were not native to the launch site in Kazakhstan. “Plankton in these stages of development could be found on the surface of the oceans,” he said.
“This is not typical for Baikonur [in Kazakhstan]. It means that there are some uplifting air currents which reach the station and settle on its surface.” However NASA say they are in the dark about the find. “As far as we're concerned, we haven't heard any official reports from our Roscosmos colleagues that they've found sea plankton," Nasa spokesperson Dan Huot told Space.com. Although Mr Huot confirmed that Russian cosmonauts had been taking samples from the windows on their side of the ISS, he claimed they were only looking for “residues that can build up on the visually sensitive elements". “What they’re actually looking for is residues that can build up on the visually sensitive elements, like windows, as well as just the hull of the ship itself that will build up whenever they do thruster firings for things like re-boosts. “That’s what they were taking samples for.I don't know where all the sea plankton talk is coming from,” Mr Huot added...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
You stole my thunder.
Interesting. I wonder exactly what kind of plankton. Plankton are pretty diverse and can include things like tiny jellyfish, algae and shrimp like organisms.
It’s always possible that such life forms from Earth drifted to places like Mars, and that if life is found there, it originated on earth.
But that would wreck a lot of sci-fi movies...
Too bad the Russian’s won’t bring us up there to look at it.
As Forest said, “__it happens.”
“Green Slime” is a great movie. I saw it in a theater back in the 1960’s. Scared the devil out of me.
ALIEN INVADERS NOW TAKING OVER OUR EARTH SPACE STATION!!!
Oh, no, we’re all gonna die. Mercy me, whatever shall we do?
More likely its contamination from the shuttle or private supply vehicles.
My guess is that the swabs used to wipe the surface were already contaminated, or the test equipment which never was in a hard vacuum environment was contaminated. There is no control group, so the reported observation has little meaning.
Oh great. Now part of the duty for astronauts will be scraping barnacles off the hull.
No, probably not.
Yes, about 15 times. "The Green Slime," "Executive Suite," and "The Lost Flight" were the only three movies available at the Midway Island Officers' Club for most of 1971 and we spent a lot of 1971 there. Of course, after several drinks we kept finding different interpretations of the plots.
***This sounds like the beginning of a 50s science fiction / horror movie.***
THE GREEN SLIME (1968)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Slime
YOU BEAT ME TO IT! ARGH!
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