APOD: Tardigrade in Moss (2013 Mar 06)

[eltodesukane]

Attack of the tardigrades by *Ramul
http://ramul.deviantart.com/art/Attack- ... -143385439

First Animal to Survive in Space
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W194GQ6fHI

[brutus inquisitor]

In pictures of the small, it would be very helpful to have a scale. Please.
A most enjoyable picture of a fascinating critter.

[Chris Peterson]

In pictures of the small, it would be very helpful to have a scale. Please.
A most enjoyable picture of a fascinating critter.

The caption says we're looking at a creature a millimeter long. I don't think we need a physical scale in the image here.

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

Evolution in progress right before our eyes. And we wonder how life began on Earth

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

...with his spacesuit on already

[StarCuriousAero]

In pictures of the small, it would be very helpful to have a scale. Please.
A most enjoyable picture of a fascinating critter.

The "pictured above" link has the magnification. (250 times when printed 10cm wide).
http://images.sciencesource.com/preview ... S8236.html


Fascinating creature!
It would be interesting to see it introduced to Mars eventually along with some moss so we can watch how it survives/evolves!

[neufer]

Can anyone explain the rationale for attempting intentionally to send tardigrades to Phobos? At first glance, this sounds to me like a very bad idea! Had it succeeded, then if/when we find extraterrestrial life how will we know from whence it came? Maybe there already are (native) tardigrades on Phobos! Maybe the ones on earth originated there! If we send some there intentionally, how will we ever know? In the past, we've always been meticulous to avoid contaminating extraterrestrial bodies we've visited, or at least so I thought. So what gives with this Russian Fobos-Grunt mission, and was it approved by any international scientific body?

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<The Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE or Phobos LIFE) was an interplanetary mission developed by the Planetary Society. It consisted of sending selected microorganisms on a three-year interplanetary round-trip in a small capsule aboard the Russian Fobos-Grunt spacecraft in 2011, which was a failed sample-return mission to the Martian moon Phobos. The Fobos-Grunt mission failed to leave Earth-orbit, and was destroyed. The goal was to test whether selected organisms can survive a few years in deep space by flying them through interplanetary space. The experiment would have tested one aspect of transpermia, the hypothesis that life could survive space travel, if protected inside rocks blasted by impact off one planet to land on another.

Barry E. DiGregorio, the director of the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return, criticised the LIFE experiment on the Fobos-Grunt mission as a violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 due to its risk of contaminating Phobos or Mars with the microbial spores and live bacteria it contains. While the mission was supposed to land and return from Phobos, a moon of Mars, the risk to Mars itself would have been from the possibility of Fobos-Grunt losing control and crash landing on the planet. It was speculated that the heat-resistant extremophile bacteria would have been particularly able to survive such a crash, on the basis that heat resistant bacteria Microbispora survived the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.>>

[FloridaMike]

Can anyone explain the rationale for attempting intentionally to send tardigrades to Phobos? At first glance, this sounds to me like a very bad idea! Had it succeeded, then if/when we find extraterrestrial life how will we know from whence it came? Maybe there already are (native) tardigrades on Phobos! Maybe the ones on earth originated there! If we send some there intentionally, how will we ever know?

In the past, we've always been meticulous to avoid contaminating extraterrestrial bodies we've visited, or at least so I thought. So what gives with this Russian Fobos-Grunt mission, and was it approved by any international scientific body?

I had the same reaction, then did some home work. The experiment involved testing the survival of the tartigrades, not depositing them on the moon. Fobos-Grunt was a sample return mission and the tartigrades were only along for the ride. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Int ... Experiment

[smitty]

Thank you for this helpful information. I continue to believe that intentionally running the risk of seeding extraterrestrial bodies with life forms from Earth is a very bad idea! I hope those in charge of future missions will reconsider.

[Gordon M. Lowe]

This is one of the strangest/coolest pictures I've ever seen on APOD. I love it!

[LocalColor]

Amazing creature! Thanks APOD for expanding our minds.

Edit: This looks like something that should be on Dr. Who!

[Anthony Barreiro]

This looks to me like a very, ahem, well crafted image, a bit early for April fool's day. Nothing could really have a mouth that looks like a plastic hose attachment, the skin around the feet looks like frayed twill, and the moss is obviously crocheted. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[bystander]

This looks to me like a very, ahem, well crafted image, a bit early for April fool's day. Nothing could really have a mouth that looks like a plastic hose attachment, the skin around the feet looks like frayed twill, and the moss is obviously crocheted. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Just do an image search on google for tardigrade.

[bystander]

Could Earth Germs Colonize Mars?
Discovery News | Markus Hammonds | 2013 Mar 06

[Chris Peterson]

This looks to me like a very, ahem, well crafted image, a bit early for April fool's day. Nothing could really have a mouth that looks like a plastic hose attachment, the skin around the feet looks like frayed twill, and the moss is obviously crocheted. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Here's a head closeup at a different angle, that makes it a little more clear what the mouth structure is like. There are lots of good images on the Internet; this page has some real nice ones.

[Chris Peterson]

If you're having trouble sleeping at night, maybe you need one of these little stuffed toys...

Click to view full size image

[houdini that]

someone at apod needs to explain the circular appendage by the mouth?
wikipedia does not show anything like that in the buccal tube area.
it looks like a computer generated image that has been photoshopped.

[owlice]

Here's a head closeup at a different angle, that makes it a little more clear what the mouth structure is like. There are lots of good images on the Internet; this page has some real nice ones.

All of those good images are copyrighted; many (maybe all) of them were taken by the photographers of today's image.

APOD works hard to ensure copyright law is followed and permissions granted and credit duly listed for the images it displays.

[Anthony Barreiro]

If you're having trouble sleeping at night, maybe you need one of these little stuffed toys...

Click to view full size image

I'll wait for this image to show up as an apod sometime in March or April 2015.

[Wadsworth]

Wow. At first glance I thought for sure this was some new man made nano-bot. I've heard of tardigrades before but never seen one like this. What a machine!
The diversity of life is simply amazing.

[DifferentStripes]

I wonder why a creature that can survive almost anywhere would choose to live in such a lush, verdant environment as moss. What selection pressure drives it to seek such a specific habitat?

[Chris Peterson]

I wonder why a creature that can survive almost anywhere would choose to live in such a lush, verdant environment as moss. What selection pressure drives it to seek such a specific habitat?

Surviving under any conditions isn't the same as thriving under those conditions. In most of the harsh situations this creature has been subjected to, it merely becomes dormant. No eating. No drinking. No locomotion. No breeding.

Most species have a narrow range in which they function well, despite a wider range of survivability.

[cwsapphire]

This photo So looks like something from the Pilobolus Dance Company!
The Tardigrades looks like a costume made of canvas and plastic, the moss like oversized carpet and the blue background a canvas on the stage.
How Very Cool looking.

[awesomeness]

Wow, That thing looks like a mutated vaccum bag!!!!

[kirk]

The London Fog Look confirms that the entity has been around here for a long time.