{"id":226224,"date":"2025-12-01T08:07:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/moss-spores-survive-9-months-outside-international-space-station"},"modified":"2025-12-01T08:07:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T14:07:25","slug":"moss-spores-survive-9-months-outside-international-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/moss-spores-survive-9-months-outside-international-space-station","title":{"rendered":"Moss spores survive 9 months outside International Space Station"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/moss-spores-survive-9-months-outside-international-space-station.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mosses thrive in the most extreme environments on Earth, from the peaks of the Himalayas to the sands of Death Valley, the Antarctic tundra to the lava fields of active volcanoes. Inspired by moss\u2019s resilience, researchers sent moss sporophytes\u2014reproductive structures that encase spores\u2014to the most extreme environment yet: space.<\/p>\n<p>Their results, published in the journal iScience on November 20, show that more than 80% of the spores survived nine months outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and made it back to Earth still capable of reproducing, demonstrating for the first time that an early land plant can survive long-term exposure to the elements of space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost living organisms, including humans, cannot survive even briefly in the vacuum of space,\u201d says lead author Tomomichi Fujita of Hokkaido University. \u201cHowever, the moss spores retained their vitality after nine months of direct exposure. This provides striking evidence that the life that has evolved on Earth possesses, at the cellular level, intrinsic mechanisms to endure the conditions of space.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mosses thrive in the most extreme environments on Earth, from the peaks of the Himalayas to the sands of Death Valley, the Antarctic tundra to the lava fields of active volcanoes. Inspired by moss\u2019s resilience, researchers sent moss sporophytes\u2014reproductive structures that encase spores\u2014to the most extreme environment yet: space. Their results, published in the journal [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}