A recent astrobiology mission named “Tanpopo” (Dandelion in Japanese) theorizes that bacteria can spread through the cosmos like pollen.
Akihiko Yamagishi, the principal investigator of the mission from Tokya University says that microbes can survive a ‘trek’ from Mars to Earth if they clump together and form a shield from the dangers of the space.
As a part of the study published in the journal ‘Frontiers of Microbiology’, researchers have reported on how a specific type of bacteria survived harsh space elements for three years. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly had affixed densely-packed balls of Deinococcal bacteria on exposure panels outside the giant space laboratory back in 2015. Deinococcus, which can be found high up in the atmosphere, is known for its unusual ability to resist genetic damage from high doses of ultraviolet radiation and its tendency to form relatively large colonies. The pellets were looked after for three years, after which a thin layer of the bacteria was fried by UV rays. Researchers have found that all samples larger than 0.5 millimeters at least partially survived the high-altitude hike. Yamagishi and his colleagues suggest that a colony twice that thick, roughly the width of a dime could survive up to eight years in space, which is more than enough time to travel from Mars to Earth.
The Tanpopo mission is an experiment to explore the possibility of interplanetary transfer of life, terrestrial particles and organic compounds. The experiment is designed and performed by Japan.