Why NASA Is Blasting Water Bears And Bobtail Squid Into Space

NASA is sending water bears and bobtail squid to the International Space Station, "as NASA researchers attempt to learn more about how the conditions of spaceflight can affect biological organisms and, by extension, future astronauts," writes Joe Hernandez via NPR. From the report: Tardigrades are microscopic organisms better known as "water bears" because of their shape and the fact that they commonly live in the water. (They have also been called, endearingly, "moss piglets.") Water bears can survive in conditions that would prove fatal for most other animals, such as exposure to extreme temperatures, pressure, and radiation. The fact that they are basically indestructible, according to NASA, makes them the perfect test subjects for an experiment about the effects of spaceflight on biological survival.

Thousands of microbes live inside the human body and work to keep us healthy. But scientists don't have a clear picture of how microgravity -- which allows the kind of floating weightlessness experienced by astronauts when they travel into space -- affects those microbes. That is the subject of an ongoing NASA research program called the Understanding of Microgravity on Animal-Microbe Interactions, or UMAMI. Scientists will study whether microgravity has an impact on the relationship between newly hatched bobtail squid, or Euprymna scolopes, and their symbiotic bacterium, Vibrio fischeri. The goal is to use what they learn about the relationship between squid and the microbes to help better prepare astronauts for lengthy space missions and preserve their health while they're out there.

Interesting to thrive in space humans

[oldgraybeard]

will need to take care of our microbial selves.

Re:

[Narcocide]

What you're doing is akin to wandering into a crack den and blaming the crackheads for making crack illegal.

It's a long way to Alpha Centauri...

[berchca]

We're gonna want calamari along the way.

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[Anonymous Coward]

It's a favourite in Mediterranean cuisine. Go to Spain, Italy, Greece and some nice grilled or fried calamari is a classic dish for seafood restaurants. I love it, although a good octopus is even better!

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[burtosis]

We're gonna want calamari along the way.

What, you hoping to find a ring world there?

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[ctrl-alt-canc]

It's a long way to Alpha Centaury
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Alpha Centaury
To the closest star I know!
Good bye, Solar System
Farewell Kuipier belt.
It's a long way to Alpha Centaury
But my rocket aims there!


ducks...

Why tardigrades and squid?

[DrMrLordX]

Human bodies play host to neither squid nor tardigrades. Er, normally. Shouldn't they be taking samples of common flora that reside in the human body and testing them directly to see how well they survive in 0g conditions?

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[geekmux]

Human bodies play host to neither squid nor tardigrades. Er, normally. Shouldn't they be taking samples of common flora that reside in the human body and testing them directly to see how well they survive in 0g conditions?

You're thinking way too logically. We're probably still three or four "create jobs" flights away before we get to that boring phase where we're actually justifying budgets with valid studies.

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[DrMrLordX]

. . . yeah, figures. Also I should have said "fauna" but at this point, who cares? NASA doesn't.

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[Gilgaron]

No, 'flora' was right when referring to bacterial symbiote populations living in a host. And no, the experimental design is better than scraping some E. coli out of a human and directly culturing it outside of the human for some reason and expecting that to tell you anything interesting about host/microbe interactions in microgravity.

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[DrMrLordX]

Hmm. Really? Well I'm not going to argue the flora vs. fauna thing.

I was rather thinking of, instead of monitoring a culture of e.coli (or other bacteria), trying to simulate a host environment for them and see how they fare versus in a similar contraption on Earth over the same time period. Something like a Human Gastric Simulator (HGS). Though you'd need to simulate the intestines as well.

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[Gilgaron]

Yeah I believe it is a rather archaic term, since obviously we now know that the more directly transliterated 'flora' and 'fauna' are really fairly close together evolutionarily compared to the bactera and archaea! I'm not familiar with the HGS I'll have to look it up! I will say that a good animal model will offer more 'surprise insights' when you're not quite sure what to expect.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure the scientists designing these experiments did not think them through that much.

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[DrMrLordX]

Either that, or they're working on human/tardigrade hybrids.

Re:Why tardigrades and squid?

[Gilgaron]

Tardigrades are small enough that they are eutelic, having only a specific number of cells. This makes them an ideal, simplified model for host/bacteria interaction. Similarly with the squid, the goal is to have a simple model. Otherwise we'd just study the flora straight out of our astronauts, but you'll have too many variables there e.g. who likes spicy food, who has been on what antibiotics in the past year... on and on.

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[jbengt]

Human bodies play host to neither squid nor tardigrades. . . Shouldn't they be taking samples of common flora that reside in the human body . . .

Even TFS explains that. The reason they are taking the water bears has nothing to do with human micro-biome. The reason they are taking the squid is to study the symbiotic flora of the squid.

This will not end well

[93 Escort Wagon]

Didn't they watch season one of Star Trek: Discovery?

We're going to need them for long distance travel

[tlhIngan]

After all, don't you need space tardigrades in order to help navigate the space mushroom mycelial network so you can travel across space really quickly? [wikipedia.org]

At least, until you figure out how to modify your DNA so you can return the space tardigrade back into space...

But we have to start somewhere. And let's make sure we don't lose the technology by sending it 1000 years into the future.

If on the ISS there is a microwave oven...

[LordHighExecutioner]

...I am afraid that squids will not last for long. I hope there is some white wine left in ISS canteen...

Cute things you can fire from a gun

[burtosis]

While dormant tardigrades are pretty much invincible. People who were really curious and wrote stuff down while screwing around [liebertpub.com] showed a 100% survival rate at impacts of 0.75 kilometers per second and some survived up to 0.9 kps. Supposedly it was to test if they could survive being naturally kinetically impact transferred to other planets, but I have my suspicions due to the number of lunchables boxes in the cafeteria recycling container.

Umami?

[redistilled]

Sounds like the squid might have a secondary mission. Mmmm.

Probably wrong

[chuckugly]

I suspect they are merely sending Tratigrades to space on purpose for the first time. I'd be a little surprised if some of the little buggers hadn't already gone up at one time or another.,

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[pi_rules]

SpaceIL (private Israeli company) already sent some to the moon.

The survival tests at high speeds were done to see if they would have survived impact. Result: probably not.

Slashdot used to be news for nerds

[whitroth]

Now, we're full of white-wing morons, all of whom are clueless idiots, and post nothing related even vaguely to the post.

More Importantly

[Zugla]

Will we ever know if tardigrades or bobtail squid can be trained to sort tiny screws in space?