{"id":34587,"date":"2017-02-15T11:22:56","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T19:22:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/an-algae-that-survived-two-years-in-outer-space-may-hold-the-secret-to-growing-food-on-mars"},"modified":"2017-06-04T07:13:20","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T14:13:20","slug":"an-algae-that-survived-two-years-in-outer-space-may-hold-the-secret-to-growing-food-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/an-algae-that-survived-two-years-in-outer-space-may-hold-the-secret-to-growing-food-on-mars","title":{"rendered":"An algae that survived two years in outer space may hold the secret to growing food on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/an-algae-that-survived-two-years-in-outer-space-may-hold-the-secret-to-growing-food-on-mars.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Humans won\u2019t survive on Mars for very long if they don\u2019t learn to grow their own food. That\u2019s why we need to answer the question: What, if anything, can grow on the red planet?<\/p>\n<p>A two-year experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) gives us some hints. A species of green algae and photosynthesizing bacteria have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fraunhofer.de\/en\/press\/research-news\/2017\/february\/algae-survive-heat--cold-and-cosmic-radiation.html\">survived their 450-day stay in outer space<\/a>. All but one of the algae samples started growing after being returned to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>The experiment was part of the Biology and Mars Experiment (BIOMEX) to understand to what extent terrestrial life can survive in space. It involved a series of pockets where hundreds of specimens of bacteria, fungi, lichens, algae, and mosses were exposed to conditions of near vacuum, temperatures between &minus;4 \u00b0F (&minus;20 \u00b0C) and 116 \u00b0F (47 \u00b0C), and a continuous blast of ultraviolet radiation.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/qz.com\/909040\/algae-and-cyanobacteria-survived-two-years-exposed-to-outer-space-on-the-international-space-station\/\">https:\/\/qz.com\/909040\/algae-and-cyanobacteria-survived-two-y...e-station\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humans won\u2019t survive on Mars for very long if they don\u2019t learn to grow their own food. That\u2019s why we need to answer the question: What, if anything, can grow on the red planet? A two-year experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) gives us some hints. A species of green algae and photosynthesizing bacteria [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":354,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1506,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-food","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34587","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\/354"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58708,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34587\/revisions\/58708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}