Microscopic species offer chance for space exploration

US professors say sending tardigrades to space comes with possible ethical implications

Researchers believe they can leverage the sturdiness of tardigrades or ‘water bears’ by sending the microscopic organisms travelling through interstellar systems for the sake of space exploration.

Professors Philip Lubin and Joel Rothman at University of California in Santa Barbara, US said in a university press release this week that microscopic organisms like tardigrades or roundworms offer an opportunity to fulfill the human “destiny to keep exploring”. Rothman said that humans tend to explore at miniscule, “subatomic” levels all the way to grand scales of exploration, a drive that defines the essence of the human species.

Even though tardigrades possess characteristics like the ability to cease metabolic activity in extreme temperatures and can survive the vacuum in space, shooting them on tiny spacecrafts to foreign environments comes with ethical considerations.

Lubin in the release said that the possibility raises questions whether humans have the right to introduce life in space. Referencing the concept of panspermia, the idea that life on earth came through foreign objects, Lubin said that external propagation of life on another planetary system could have ethical implications.

While the professors focused on the scientific concerns and ethical implications, the life of a tardigrade is also worth pondering over, as noted by media outlet Futurism. Tardigrades are often referred to as the smallest animals that appear like insects under a microscopic lens and while they possess near indestructible qualities, they are not entirely invincible.