Space, Planets and eclipses

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NASA spacecraft keeps on going faster and faster and faster

MASHABLE
msn.com
Story by Mark Kaufman
Oct. 28, 2023

Over the past couple years, NASA's Parker Solar Probe has continually smashed its own speed records. And in the next year, it will continue to break more records.

The agency's well-fortified spacecraft is swooping progressively closer to the sun, and during each pass, picks up more speed. In 2018, soon after its launch, the probe became the fastest human-made object ever built, and by 2024 it will reach a whopping 430,000 miles per hour.

At such a speed, one could travel from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., in 20 seconds.

The spacecraft recently reached 394,736 mph. "It's very fast," Nour Raouafi, an astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and project scientist for the mission, told Mashable.

The spacecraft, fitted with a thick heat shield, has been making passes through the sun's outer atmosphere, also known as its corona. It's the first mission to reach the corona, and the unprecedented data collected will help scientists forecast how eruptions from the sun's surface will impact Earth, and answer research quandaries about the solar wind — the stream of particles and radiation constantly emitted by the sun.

"It's like opening a new book that we've never read before," Raouafi said.

How the solar probe goes so fast

Parker's exceptional, increasing speed is an inevitable part of orbiting the sun, a sphere of hot gas 333,000 times as massive as our dense planet. For another perspective, 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the sun. Crucially, when you swing by such a massive and gravitationally powerful object, you pick up a lot of speed.

The spacecraft is now flying its 17th orbit around the sun, allowing the craft to boost its speed by over 240,000 mph since 2018. And out in space, there's nothing to stop this motion. "Once it's going, it's going," Raouafi said. (The probe strategically passes by Venus for "gravity assists" that propel it closer to the sun; these Venusian flybys minimally slow the craft, but ultimately result in it picking up even more speed as it zips nearer to the massive star.)

At such a torrid pace, the craft begins a new orbit every three months, allowing its instruments to collect a wealth of information about the solar environment. "Every three months we have a new load of new data," marveled Raouafi. "It will take years and years to study."

How the probe will unravel solar mysteries

Space weather researchers have some weighty questions. They want to know why the solar wind accelerates after it leaves the sun, reaching up to 2 million mph. They want to grasp why the corona (which reaches 2 million degrees Fahrenheit) is so much hotter than the sun's surface (it's 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). And they want to understand how extreme space weather, caused by different types of solar explosions, can behave and ultimately impact Earth.

A particularly threatening solar eruption is called a coronal mass ejection, or CME. These occur when the sun ejects a mass of super hot gas (plasma). "It's like scooping up a piece of the sun and ejecting it into space," NOAA space weather scientist Mark Miesch told Mashable earlier this year.

These events can wreak havoc on our power grids and communication networks. Infamously, a potent CME in 1989 knocked out power to millions in Québec, Canada. The CME hit Earth's magnetic field on March 12 of that year, and then, wrote NASA astronomer Sten Odenwald, "Just after 2:44 a.m. on March 13, the currents found a weakness in the electrical power grid of Quebec. In less than two minutes, the entire Quebec power grid lost power. During the 12-hour blackout that followed, millions of people suddenly found themselves in dark office buildings and underground pedestrian tunnels, and in stalled elevators."

The Parker solar probe's researchers expect the spacecraft, fitted with instruments to measure and image the solar wind, will enable us to better forecast when and where a potent CME may hit. For example, when a CME erupts from the sun's surface, it must travel over 92 million miles to reach Earth, but along the way this hot gas will "pile up" the solar wind ahead of it. "That will affect its arrival time to Earth," Raouafi said. Knowledge about these space dynamics is critical: A good space weather forecast would allow power utilities to temporarily shut off power to avoid conducting a power surge from a CME, and potentially blowing out power to millions.

On the outskirts of the corona, the spacecraft is relentlessly exposed to brutal heat and radiation, and in September 2022 it flew through "one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever recorded," NASA said. Yet the craft remains in great shape. That's largely thanks to a 4.5-inch-thick carbon heat shield that's pointed at the sun. The shield itself heats up to some 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, but just a couple of feet behind the shield, the environs are surprisingly pleasant.

"Most of the instruments are working at room temperatures," Raouafi said.

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Oldest black hole discovered dating back to 470 million years after the Big Bang

phys.org
by Marcia Dunn
Nov. 11. 2023

Scientists have discovered the oldest black hole yet, a cosmic beast formed a mere 470 million years after the Big Bang.

The findings, published Monday, confirm what until now were theories that supermassive black holes existed at the dawn of the universe. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory teamed up over the past year to make the observations.

Given the universe is 13.7 billion years old, that puts the age of this black hole at 13.2 billion years.

Even more astounding to scientists, this black hole is a whopper—10 times bigger than the black hole in our own Milky Way.

It's believed to weigh anywhere from 10% to 100% the mass of all the stars in its galaxy, said lead author Akos Bogdan of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. That is nowhere near the miniscule ratio of the black holes in our Milky Way and other nearby galaxies—an estimated 0.1%, he noted.

"It's just really early on in the universe to be such a behemoth," said Yale University's Priyamvada Natarajan, who took part in the study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. A companion article appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It's astounding how this thing actually is sitting in place already with its galaxy so early on in the universe."

The researchers believe the black hole formed from colossal clouds of gas that collapsed in a galaxy next door to one with stars. The two galaxies merged, and the black hole took over.

The fact that Chandra detected it via X-ray confirms "without a doubt that it is a black hole," according to Natarajan. With X-rays "you're actually capturing the gas that is being gravitationally pulled into the black hole, sped up and it starts glowing in the X-rays," she said.

This one is considered a quasar since it's actively growing and the gas is blindingly bright, she added.

The Webb telescope alone may have spotted a black hole that is 29 million years older, according to scientists, but it's yet to be observed in X-rays and verified. Natarajan expects more early black holes will be found—perhaps not as far out, but still quite distant.

"We are expecting a new window to open in the universe, and I think this is the first crack," she said.

The two space telescopes—Webb and Chandra—used a technique called gravitational lensing to magnify the region of space where this galaxy, UHZ1, and its black hole are located. The telescopes used the light from a much closer cluster of galaxies, a mere 3.2 billion light-years from Earth, to magnify UHZ1 and its black hole much farther in the background.

"It's a pretty faint object, and thanks to like luck, nature has magnified it for us," Natarajan said

Launched in 2021 to a point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away, Webb is the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent into space; it sees the universe in the infrared. The much older Chandra has X-ray vision; it rocketed into orbit in 1999.

"I absolutely find it amazing that Chandra can do such amazing discoveries 24 years after its launch," Bogdan said.

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Man Sending His DNA to the Moon So Aliens Can Clone Him and Put Him in a Zoo

Futurism
yahoo.com
Victor Tangermann
November 10, 2023

Texas-based space company Celestis has been shooting cremated remains into orbit for many years now.

During its first flight back in 1997, the company shot the remains of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and scientific visionary Gerard O'Neill, the physicist behind the space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder, into Earth's orbit.

Celestis' customers can have a wide variety of motivations for having their remains blasted into space. The New York Times recently profiled seven individuals who've contracted Celestis for their space memorials.

One particularly free-spirited physics professor, 86-year-old Kenneth Ohm, had an unusual reason for having his DNA — and not just his cremated ashes — delivered to the Moon's south pole during an upcoming Celestis mission.

Ohm is hoping future civilizations could eventually open an "intergalactic zoo with a Ken Ohm in a cage," per the report, or even a "swarm of thousands of reconstituted Ken Ohms spreading across the universe."

"I’m living with the uncertainty," he told the newspaper.

Of course, we should take Ohm's tongue-in-cheek suggestions — which sound like they were inspired by an episode of "Rick and Morty" — with a big grain of salt.

On a certain level, though, the idea of safekeeping DNA samples for the perusal of future civilizations, whether terrestrial or extraterrestrial, isn't as crazy as it may sound.

We've already found ways to clone animals using their DNA. Sure, we're not talking about exact replicas of a recently deceased pet — or a physics professor for that matter — but the concept of cloning humans, ethical and moral implications notwithstanding, isn't distant science fiction.

Other individuals profiled by the NYT have more romantic goals by having their ashes sent into space, like NYC fire fighter Daniel Conlisk, who told the paper he wants his remains to be sent into space alongside his wife, who's already been through years of gradually worsening cancer, or aerospace engineer Jeffrey Woytach, who grew up watching the Apollo missions on TV and wants some of his ashes to make it to the lunar surface.

But when Celestis will make it back there remains to be seen. The company's first "lunar memorial service," NASA's Lunar Prospector mission, launched in January 1998, impacting the lunar surface inside a permanently shadowed crater roughly a year and a half later. The capsule carried parts of the remains of noted planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker on board.

The space burial company's lunar follow-up, the Tranquility memorial spaceflight, is now closed for reservations but still doesn't have an official launch date.

The capsule, a partnership with Astrobotic, developer of the Peregrine lunar lander, is meant to land in the northeastern part of the Moon after being launched by the United Launch Alliance's Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is scheduled to complete its maiden test flight on this year's Christmas Eve.

"The Celestis memorial capsules carrying cremated remains and DNA will remain on the lunar surface as a permanent tribute to the intrepid souls who never stopped reaching for the stars," the company's website reads.

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NASA's $100k tool bag lost in space is now orbiting Earth and surprisingly visible to stargazers

FOX NEWS
yahoo.com
Michael Lee
November 14, 2023

http://youtu.be/fpAFSaLcnHE

A tool bag lost by NASA astronauts during a spacewalk is now orbiting Earth and is surprisingly visible to those on the ground who may want to catch a glimpse of it.

NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara were conducting a spacewalk from the International Space Station (ISS) last month when a tool bag slipped away and drifted away from the station, according to a report from Earth Sky.

The tool bag, which is valued at about $100,000, is now orbiting Earth just ahead of the space station and is so bright that stargazers can catch a glimpse of the runaway gear using just binoculars. Those hoping to catch a glimpse of the bag should locate the ISS, then scan the sky just ahead of its trajectory, the report notes.

A report in SciTechDaily noted that the spacewalkers were conducting repairs on ISS equipment when the toolbar slipped away, though the mishap luckily happened after the equipment was no longer needed for the repairs. A mission control analysis following the mishap determined that there was low risk of the tool bag recontacting the ISS and that the crew were safe to continue the mission without further action.

Earth Sky noted that the bag is expected to orbit Earth for a few months at a slow descent before rapidly descending to about 70 miles above the Earth's surface and disintegrating well before reaching the ground. Current estimates indicate the lost gear should reenter the Earth's atmosphere around March of next year.

The escaped bag isn't the first time an astronaut has lost their tools in space, coming after a 2008 incident that saw a tool bag meet the same fate during similar repairs. Like the current bag, that equipment was visible just ahead of the ISS for two months before it finally descended back into Earth's atmosphere.

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New clues emerge toward possible life on Enceladus
Saturn’s icy moon offers intriguing chemical possibilities.

astronomy.com
By John Wenz
December 14, 2023

Seemingly sleepy Enceladus — a moon of Saturn’s just a fraction of the size of our own satellite — was barely on the radar of astronomers up until the Cassini mission arrived at the system in 2004. But close flybys in 2005 revealed one of the biggest solar system surprises: plumes of water erupting from underneath the ice shell, likely powered by a subsurface ocean.

Suddenly, Enceladus transformed from an odd, slightly puzzling snowball to one of the most exciting places for astrobiologists. That’s because where there’s water on Earth, there’s life. But a few other ingredients are also needed to make life. As a new study reveals in Nature Astronomy, though, Enceladus may have them. And more.

The paper examines data from Cassini and compares data from fly-throughs of Enceladus’ plumes to 50 chemical compounds the team suspected might be present in samples analyzed by one of Cassini’s instruments, its Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS). The research team then produced models comparing the data and found evidence for detections of a variety of important organic compounds.

“Searching for compounds in the plume is a bit like putting the pieces of a puzzle back together,” says lead author Jonah Peter, “in that we look for the right combination of molecules that reproduce the observed data. Information theory allows us to determine how much detail we can extract from the data without missing important features or overfitting to statistical noise.”

Water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and methane had previously been found in analyses of INMS data, but this study found additional compounds and molecules, including acetylene, propylene, ethane, methanol, molecular oxygen, and hydrogen cyanide. These add to the various hints that Enceladus, despite its frigid perch in the outer solar system, harbors an environment conducive to life deep within its oceans.

Enceladus has a ‘key building block’

Hydrogen cyanide, despite its toxic-sounding name, may be one of the most important compounds confirmed with near certainty in the dataset. Peter calls it “a key building block for synthesizing more complex compounds related to the origin of life,” and says it could be a precursor to some of the proteins that compose DNA and RNA.

But various hydrocarbons are also exciting prospects for life, as they are often a substrate — or growth medium — for microbial life on Earth, helping to nourish really simple organisms.

Other potential detections also excite the researchers. First, there’s sulfur. The analysis found evidence for the existence of hydrogen sulfide, which you’ve certainly smelled before if you’ve ever whiffed a rotten egg. Hydrogen sulfide hints at geothermal activity within Enceladus, and geothermal vents play host to some of the most extreme life forms on Earth that happily thrive among them.

The team also potentially detected phosphorus, adding on to evidence of its presence on that moon. Both sulfur and phosphorus are important elements for life on Earth.

“Sulfur and phosphorus are two elements required for life, along with carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen,” Peter says. If the existence of sulfur is confirmed — phosphorus was detected at Enceladus earlier this year — this knowledge will help to empower the building of an Enceladus explorer. However, none of these findings yet offer a “smoking gun” for the existence of life on Enceladus, as all can be produced by non-living means.

Peter says laboratory experiments could reveal if these elements and compounds could assemble into the building blocks of life by creating a mini-Enceladus. “We know that certain amino acids and nucleobases can form from [hydrogen cyanide] under Enceladus-like conditions, but what about other biomolecules?” he says.

Beyond that, a robotic mission might be the next explorative step. Enceladus is too small and remote for even the largest telescopes to determine anything about the existence of life. The present study, even if planetary scientists need to sit tight for a few decades to find any answers, makes Enceladus an even more intriguing possible habitat for microbial life.

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'No chance of a soft landing': Company confirms Peregrine mission's human remains won't reach the moon

Live Science
msn.com
Story by Ben Turner
Jan 10, 2024

Engineers have identified the potential cause of a fuel leak on the Peregrine spacecraft that has left it, the first U.S. craft to attempt a soft landing on the moon in 50 years, with "no chance" of completing its mission.

The Peregrine spacecraft, owned by the private American company Astrobotic Technology, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Vulcan rocket at 2:18 a.m. EST on Monday (Jan. 8).

The spacecraft's goal was to become the first private craft to perform a controlled landing on the moon, and was laden with instruments to measure the conditions on the lunar surface. Controversially, it also carried the remains of multiple "Star Trek" creators and cast members and the DNA of former U.S. presidents.

But six hours into its maiden flight, engineers reported a technical "anomaly" — a propellant leak that thwarted the mission. Now, the company has an explanation for what may have happened.

"Astrobotic's current hypothesis about the Peregrine spacecraft's propulsion anomaly is that a valve between the helium pressurant and the oxidizer failed to reseal after actuation during initialization," Astrobotic representatives wrote in a statement. "This led to a rush of high pressure helium that spiked the pressure in the oxidizer tank beyond its operating limit and subsequently ruptured the tank."

The leak means there is now "no chance of a soft landing on the Moon," Astrobotic representatives wrote in another statement. "However, we do still have enough propellant to continue to operate the vehicle as a spacecraft."

To land on the moon's surface, the 1.3-ton (1.2 metric tons) spacecraft would have needed to reorient its engine and fire controlled bursts of propellant to slow its descent. The lander was set to touch down on the moon on Feb. 23, deploying five NASA payloads (which cost the space agency $108 million for their delivery) and 15 other experiments on the moon.

The instruments — which include devices to measure radiation levels, surface ice and magnetic fields — were built to collect data on the moon's resources and potential risks to human habitation.

In addition, more than 200 individuals' ashes were packed on board by the companies Celestis and Elysium Space, including those of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry; Majel Barrett, Roddenberry's wife; and Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan and DeForest Kelley, who played Nyota Uhura, Montgomery Scott and Dr. Leonard McCoy, respectively, on the classic sci-fi show.

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'We do not understand how it can exist': Astronomers baffled by 'almost invisible' dwarf galaxy that upends a dark matter theory

LIVE SCIENCE
yahoo.com
Harry Baker
January 15, 2024

Scientists have discovered an "almost invisible" dwarf galaxy that cannot be explained by our current understanding of the cosmos. The mysteriously faint object, which has evaded detection for years, is so dim that researchers haven't even been able to pin down exactly where it is.

The newfound galaxy, named Nube (or "cloud" in Spanish), was described in a study published Jan. 9 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Nube is extremely diffuse, which means that its stars are very spread out and, as a result, the galaxy emits barely any light. It is around 10 times fainter than most other known dwarf galaxies and is more than 10 times wider than it should be considering the number of stars it has.

"With our present knowledge we do not understand how a galaxy with such extreme characteristics can exist," study lead author Mireia Montes, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, said in a statement.

The researchers discovered Nube when they reanalyzed data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey — one of the largest and most detailed astronomical databases of the night sky — and spotted a small inconsistency that had gone unnoticed for years. After catching the anomaly, the team took ultra-deep multicolor images of the outlying coordinates using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Gran Telescopio Canarias in La Palma, Spain.

But even then, Nube is so faint that the team cannot accurately pin down its exact distance from our own galaxy. The researchers suspect that it is around 300 million light-years from the Milky Way, and around a third of the size across. But further observations are needed to confirm this.

The general rule of galaxy formation is that a galaxy's density is highest at the core and decreases further out. But the concentration of stars in Nube "varies very little throughout the object, which is why it is so faint," Montes said.

The researchers can't explain how the galaxy is kept together when it has so little mass at its center, which would normally exert the gravity needed to keep the rest of the stars in place.

Normally, astronomers think such gravitational anomalies are caused by dark matter — a mysterious type of matter with unknown origins that does not react with light and supposedly makes up around 27% of the universe's mass. However, based on our current understanding of dark matter, there should not be enough of it to explain Nube's unusual properties.

"One possibility which is attractive, is that the unusual properties of Nube are showing us that the particles which make up dark matter have an extremely small mass," study co-author Ignacio Trujillo, an astrophysicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands, said in the statement. If this were true, dark matter would be a "demonstration of the properties of quantum physics, but on a galactic scale," he added.

"If this hypothesis is confirmed, it would be one of the most beautiful demonstrations of nature, unifying the world of the smallest with that of the largest," Trujillo added. However, this is just one possible theory.

Whatever the cause of Nube's diffuse nature, the researchers are now on the hunt for similarly faint galaxies that could help unravel the mystery.

"It is possible that with this galaxy, and similar ones which we might find, we can find additional clues which will open a new window on the understanding of the universe," Montes said.

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Japan has finally reached the moon, but officials say its lunar module is losing power

yahoo news
Story by Dylan Stableford
Jan 19, 2024

Japan’s unmanned lunar lander has landed on the surface of the moon, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Friday, but an issue with its power supply has put the mission in jeopardy.

The unmanned module known as the “Moon Sniper” reached the moon’s surface at approximately 10:20 a.m. ET Friday (or 12:20 a.m. Saturday Japan Standard Time), officials with Japan’s space agency said.

The spacecraft touched down near the small Shioli crater just south of the Sea of Tranquility, where NASA’s Apollo 11 made its historic moon landing in 1969. (Five other successful Apollo missions — and one famously failed mission — followed.)

During a livestream broadcast, officials with the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission initially said that they were working to determine the spacecraft’s condition and that its status was unknown. They confirmed the landing at a press conference later Friday but said that the lander's solar cell is not generating electricity and that the mission may end prematurely.

Researchers were hoping to study rocks around the landing site to gain insights into the moon’s origin.

“When meteorites and other objects strike the moon, they create craters as well as rocky debris that litters the surface,” CNN explained. “These rocks intrigue scientists because studying them is effectively like peering inside the moon itself. Minerals and other aspects of the rocks’ composition can potentially shed more light on how the moon formed.”

The race to return to the moon

Since the Apollo missions, just four other countries have landed on the moon: the former Soviet Union (six times, first in 1970); China (three times, first in 2013); India, whose Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched down near the lunar south pole last August; and Japan with its landing Friday. None of those missions were manned.

There have been numerous other recent attempts by multiple space agencies at moon landing missions. And all have failed.

Last April, Japan’s Hakuto-R lunar lander crashed onto the moon during a landing attempt.

In August, Russia’s Luna-25 also crashed onto the moon during the country’s first attempt to return to the moon since the Soviet Union’s fall.

Last week, Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine spacecraft — the first U.S. lunar lander to launch since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 — had to turn back after suffering a critical fuel leak and burned up upon reentry over a remote area of the South Pacific.

As a result, NASA has pushed back its Artemis III mission to put astronauts back on the moon’s surface by at least a year, or the end of 2026.

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Pentagon’s Ex-Alien Hunter Admits a Lot of UFO Sightings Are Secret Military Crafts

Futurism
yahoo.com
Noor Al-Sibai
January 23, 2024

Friendly Skies

In a strikingly candid interview, the former head of the Pentagon's office tasked with investigating "unidentified anomalous phenomena" or UAPs has admitted that a lot of UFO sightings are likely of this Earth — and top secret, to boot.

"There [are] a lot of observations of real, advanced US programs," Sean Kirkpatrick, the now-former director of the Pentagon's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told CNN's Peter Bergen in a new podcast interview. "But none of that is extraterrestrial in nature."

As Kirkpatrick put it during his appearance on Bergen's Audible podcast "In The Room," lots of the initially unidentified crafts folks have historically spotted, from Roswell to those weird Chinese spy balloons, were the result of various secret military, intelligence, or even commercial projects.

"There are a number of advanced technologies that are being commercialized that people don't recognize," the veteran Defense Department official, who retired from government service in December, told Bergen.

Orb Answers

There's long been speculation — and some official confirmation — that there are military explanations for UFO sightings, and Kirkpatrick's recent interviews after leaving the AARO and Pentagon have all but confirmed those suspicions. In his discussion with Bergen, he even explained the dynamics of some of the stranger sightings he's aware of.

"There's a large number of people, pilots, and others, who you know, have said, 'Hey, I saw this giant sphere. It had a cube in it, I don't understand it, it must be an alien.' Well, actually, no," Kirkpatrick said. "The next generation of drones that are being built are spherical drones."

Citing research at the University of Singapore, Kirkpatrick said the strange orb-shaped objects are made by placing cubes inside roughly two-meter inflatables, "and everywhere the corner of the cube touches the sphere, they fused it, cut it out, and put, little thrusters in."

"With eight thrusters in a cube configuration, I can maneuver this drone around very accurately," Kirkpatrick said, "and they've tried these all over the place."

Like most other public revelations out of the AARO, these exit interview admissions show that the project is indeed focused much more on national security threats from Earth than those that may come from outer space — but that doesn't make what we've learned any less fascinating.

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Mutant Bacteria Discovered Aboard International Space Station

Futurism
yahoo.com
Noor Al-Sibai
April 20, 2024

It's Alive!

The International Space Station has long been known as a unique — and uniquely gross — environment. But according to a new NASA study, it has stuff growing on it that is straight-up alien, too.

In a press release, NASA said that when scientists from the Jet Propulsion Lab looked at samples of the drug-resistant Enterobacter bugandensis bacteria found on the orbital outpost, they found that the strains had mutated into something that literally doesn't exist on Earth.

"Study findings indicate that under stress, the ISS isolated strains were mutated and became genetically and functionally distinct compared to their Earth counterparts," the press release reads. "The strains were able to viably persist in the ISS over time in significant abundances."

What's even crazier: E. bugandensis was apparently able to not only coexist "with multiple other microorganisms," but was also demonstrated in some cases to "have helped those organisms survive."

Published in the journal Microbiome, a paper on the new study details how JPL researchers isolated 13 distinct strains of the gastrointestinal bacteria, which was discovered in 2018 and is associated with severe illnesses, including sepsis in newborns.

Wall Mart

According to the paper, the strains studied in the new research were "isolated from various locations within the ISS," along with all the other nasty stuff that causes its peculiar smell. Along with E. bugandensis, NASA has been studying other potentially harmful viruses, fungi, and bacteria as part of its second microbial tracking mission, which has astronauts literally scrape the ISS walls and put what they find under microscopes to see how weird they got.

"Closed human-built environments, such as the ISS, are unique areas that provide an extreme environment subject to microgravity, radiation, and elevated carbon dioxide levels," the press release explains. "Any microorganisms introduced to these areas must adapt to thrive."

And thrive it did! According to the study, E. bugandensis not only survived in the confines of the space station, but actually seemed to have become even more drug-resistant, placing it within the "ESKAPE pathogen group" comprised of several bugs that are known for "formidable resistance to antimicrobial treatments."

This study, the researchers insist, will help better contribute to the understanding of genetic evolution of pathogens and ultimately add to science's growing understanding of how to stay healthy in space.

For us on Earth, however, it's just another reminder that for all the damage we've done to our planet, we're still very lucky not to be trapped in space with mutated terrestrial germs.