It’s undoubtedly the trendiest bug around. As big as a microbe, as transparent as a spectacle lens and as ugly as an eight-legged dugong, the tardigrade is the stuff of dreams. And not just on Earth: Nasa has sent some into space.
These water bears, as they’re known to their fans, are exceptionally adaptable. They can go about their business at temperatures ranging from -272°C to +150°C, and this vague cousin of the arthropods can withstand the pressures of 4,000 meters under the sea as if nothing had happened. What’s more, in dry periods, it is able to dehydrate completely while waiting for better days. The wait can last for decades. ” No other animal is capable of doing this,” enthuses biologist Thomas Boothby (University of Wyoming).
Back in space
Fascinated, writer Didier Van Cauwelaert made it the hero of his latest novel, “Le pouvoir des animaux”. The winner of the 1994 Prix Goncourt is not the only one to have fallen under the spell of this tiny, indestructible creature. The US space agency (Nasa) has just sent a contingent of tardigrades to the International Space Station.
The aim is not to distract Thomas Pesquet from his media activities. Above all, Nasa researchers want to understand how the bug’s physiology reacts in microgravity.
Procession of radiation
Following a European mission in the 1990s, we already know that tardigrades are very resistant to the vacuum of space, with all its devastating radiation. Deciphering its repair mechanisms could, for example, enable the development of new strategies to combat certain cancers.
You are dust
Nor does NASA forget that space conquest is one of its missions. “One of the things we want to understand is how tardigrades survive and reproduce in such environments. Such information is invaluable in defining astronaut lifestyles”, continues Thomas Boothby.
Finally, the cosmonauts we send to visit faraway lands may not be traveling in the cryogenic chambers beloved of Stanley Kubrick. If the Umami experiment is successful, they may be reduced to dust. Piles that will have to be copiously watered on arrival. Motivating!
