Spore-Forming Thermophilic Bacterium within Artificial Meteorite Survives Entry into the Earth's Atmosphere on FOTON-M4 Satellite Landing Module.

ABSTRACT: One of the key conditions of the lithopanspermia hypothesis is that microorganisms situated within meteorites could survive hypervelocity entry from space through the Earth's atmosphere. So far, all experimental proof of this possibility has been based on tests with sounding rockets which do not reach the transit velocities of natural meteorites. We explored the survival of the spore-forming thermophilic anaerobic bacterium, Thermoanaerobacter siderophilus, placed within 1.4-cm thick basalt discs fixed on the exterior of a space capsule (the METEORITE experiment on the FOTON-M4 satellite). After 45 days of orbital flight, the landing module of the space vehicle returned to Earth. The temperature during the atmospheric transit was high enough to melt the surface of basalt. T. siderophilus s

SUBMITTER: Slobodkin A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4494708 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature