Moss Can Survive the Harsh Conditions of Space

In 2005, scientists announced that moss could grow inside of spaceships. The little plants the scientists sent up on NASA Space Shuttle missions grew in a breathtakingly weird shape, a sort of fuzzy spiral, an apparent reaction to the low-gravity environment.

Since that space moss took its journey, many research teams have sent seeds and spores to the International Space Station (ISS) and arranged for plants to be grown there. Now, following in the steps of those researchers, a team publishing Nov. 20 in the journal iScience demonstrates that more than 80% of moss spores left on the outside of the ISS for nine months and brought back to Earth germinated normally. The findings confirm that moss spores, already known to be hardy, handily survive the stresses of near-Earth orbit.