In 2022, a species of moss survived for nine months outside the International Space Station (ISS), enduring the harsh conditions of space. The study, published Thursday (November 20) in the journal iScience, explored whether moss, an early land plant known for its resilience, could withstand long-term exposure to the vacuum of space.

Researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan, led by Professor Tomomichi Fujita , attached moss spores to the ISS exterior. They found that over 80% of the spores survived and were capable of reproducing upon their return to Earth. Fujita explained that this experiment shows how life on Earth has developed intrinsic mechanisms to endure space conditions. Mosses, which descended from ancestral plants that colonized dry land around 450 million years ago,

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