> Tardigrades have survived exposure to outer space. We don’t have to leave this hanging as if tardigrades can survive anything; they’re robust but not immorta

> Tardigrades have survived exposure to outer space. We don’t have to leave this hanging as if tardigrades can survive anything; they’re robust but not immortal. The very same article discusses what that sentence about space really means. In the most direct experiment done so far, after 10 days of exposure to the vacuum of space but not solar radiation, a third weren’t able to reanimate, and after that “subsequent mortality was high”. For tardigrades that were exposed to the vacuum and solar radiation “had significantly reduced survival, with only three subjects of Milnesium tardigradum surviving.” Of the Israeli Lunar Lander, Wikipedia says “in May 2021 it was reported that they were unlikely to have survived the impact.” It might be reasonable to speculate and extrapolate based on the 10 day experiment that even if any did survive impact they probably haven’t by now with three and a half years of vacuum, even if they did land in the shadows, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Survival_after_exposure_to_outer_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade#Survival_after_expo...