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Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov suspects an extraterrestrial origin for bacteria found on the exterior of the ISS:
A Russian cosmonaut claims to have caught aliens. Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov says he found bacteria clinging to the external surface of the International Space Station that didn't come from the surface of Earth.
Shkaplerov told the Russian news agency that cosmonauts collected the bacteria by swabbing the outside of the space station during space walks years ago.
"And now it turns out that somehow these swabs reveal bacteria that were absent during the launch of the ISS module," Shkapkerov told TASS. "That is, they have come from outer space and settled along the external surface. They are being studied so far and it seems that they pose no danger."
A recent study suggests that interplanetary dust can transport microbes to or from Earth:
Astronomers have long believed that asteroid (or comet) impacts were the only natural way to transport life between planets. However, a new study published November 6 in Astrobiology suggests otherwise.
The study, authored by Professor Arjun Berera from the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy, suggests that life on Earth may have begun when fast-moving streams of space dust carried microscopic organisms to our planet. Berera found that these streams of interplanetary dust are not only capable of transporting particles to Earth, but also from it.
Space Dust Collisions as a Planetary Escape Mechanism (DOI: 10.1089/ast.2017.1662) (DX) (arXiv link above)
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Wednesday November 29 2017, @01:09PM (9 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Wednesday November 29 2017, @01:38PM (7 children)
I occasionally mumble that US lost the space race for exactly this reason. But US PR is better.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday November 29 2017, @01:55PM (6 children)
The U.S. actually won the space race (so far) because we won the Cold War. The space race improved STEM education in both countries. It hastened the development of spy satellites and other useful technologies. The U.S. achieved the sexier milestone of putting a man on the moon first, but didn't do anything useful with the Moon. Both countries threw some expensive space stations into orbit. The USSR collapsed, allowing the West to pillage Russia in the 90s, enabling today's dictator Putin to set back the Russian people some more. And now SpaceX and other domestic companies are making Russian launchers obsolete, while Russia's own feeble space efforts (in comparison to NASA, ESA, JAXA, ISRO, etc.) are going nowhere [slate.com] and launches are failing [siberiantimes.com].
Russia is garbage, and the space race doesn't end until many centuries from now or when there is only one participant "racing".
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:59PM (1 child)
I am not sure if the cold war allowed us to win; I think it had something to do with financial viability.
Even the US concluded it cost too much to keep chest pounding in space. After that last moon landing they shelved the rest of the plans related to it and here we are today. Still not any farther ahead in that regard (not too many moon or mars landings of people from what I can see in their plans... just spending money to look busy with that Orion capsule or something... if you call that winning, I am disappoint). Although I am impressed with the probe's visit to Pluto, and disappointed that the Cassini satellite couldn't be parked in an orbit that decayed until the plutonium decayed more than the orbit and became of limited use.
It doesnt seem reasonable that they're afraid to contaminate the moons when flying through gaps in a debris ring is considered less risky; one impact of something too small to see on camera would have blown that thing to smitheereens and sent whatever was growing in it in every direction and become part of the ring that rained down on the assorted moons nearby.
instead, it seems like they too ran out of money due to political constraints.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday November 29 2017, @04:20PM
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-nasas-cassini-probe-must-destroyed [pbs.org]
It seems to me that the "death dive" orbits into the rings had a low risk of destroying the spacecraft and a zero risk of sending the debris on a trajectory that would cause it to rain down on the moons thought to have life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saturn%27s_Rings_PIA03550.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Meanwhile, sending Cassini to its destruction in Saturn allowed NASA to collect data that would have been otherwise impossible for it to collect.
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(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday November 29 2017, @10:38PM (3 children)
I respectfully suggest that though the US won the cold war, it didn't win every battle; and the space race was a battle the US lost, despite that nice manned moon program that no one's beaten since.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:02AM (2 children)
There was a race to reach the moon with a manned landing, and the USSR failed there. The U.S. may have had a PR victory in the space race "battle", but it was earned. Since then, what we've done with unmanned probes and space telescopes has been far more interesting. Great exploration of Pluto, Ceres, Saturn, etc. And the science that has come out of Hubble [wikipedia.org] and Kepler [wikipedia.org] is just overwhelming. We pretty much dominate these types of missions, although ESA [wikipedia.org] is becoming more prominent.
Obviously, if China were to beat the U.S. to a manned Mars landing, we would be taking a huge L and the world would see it as another sign of the end of American dominance. A SpaceX manned landing would be acceptable but would be taken as a sign of increasing commercial importance of space activity. Or of Musky vanity.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:13AM (1 child)
US espionage of Soviet designs may also have been a factor. I have always been curious if the US actually copied any of the technology:
https://www.popsci.com/cias-bold-kidnapping-soviet-spacecraft [popsci.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:20AM
Slate link [slate.com] I posted has this:
Maybe that could be interpreted as NASA sucking up any Russian space station innovations that may have existed during the development of the ISS. Which we'll be applying in the future if we put stations around the Moon or Mars.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by J053 on Wednesday November 29 2017, @07:43PM
Kids these days...