Mosquito Survives in Outer Space

According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, a mosquito managed to live 18 months clinging to the outside of the International Space Station, without any food, being bombarded by radiation and enduring fluctuating temperatures ranging from minus 230 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We brought him back to Earth. He is alive, and his feet are moving," Anatoly Grigoryev of the Russian Academy of Sciences told RIA Novosti.

The buzzing bug was part of a larger experiment in which bacteria, barley seeds, small crustaceans and larval insects were placed in a container strapped to the exterior of the space station, which orbits in zero gravity about 200 miles above the surface of the Earth.

From the RIA Novosti report, it wasn't clear if the insect — which may in fact be a non-biting midge rather than a mosquito — was placed in the container in the larval or the adult stage.

A European Space Agency experiment last fall found that primitive animals called tardigrades, also known as water bears, survived an even harsher exposure to space, including full vacuum and direct solar ultraviolet blasts. Moreover, several of the surviving tardigrades were able to normally reproduce.

www.foxnews.com...

I don't like mosquitos but hats off to this one

Humans the superior race...HMPH!

Proved us wrong!

You should check out the discovery channel special on water bears. Those things can survive damn near anything. And we all wonder who will survive our nuclear war? This stuff..

Hell it seems these could survive even if the whole earth was pulverized.

Originally posted by SantaClaus
You should check out the discovery channel special on water bears. Those things can survive damn near anything. And we all wonder who will survive our nuclear war? This stuff..

Hell it seems these could survive even if the whole earth was pulverized.

I bet these water bears can not survive against humans.

Now this get's me thinking about how life "arrived here on an asteroid."
Life is both created and destroyed by massive meteors, news at eleven...

-ADHD

Try that with a cockroach...
and you probably wouldn't even need the container.

Just glue it to the outside of the craft for a year, microwave it for a few minutes, and it would probably run off, only to come back later for your pizza.

Great. the one species that can survive is a mosquito. why couldn't it be something like a kitten or cute like an otter. No, its a itchy blood sucking parasite.

Water bears are amazing and adorable...

I wonder how it survived with such a lack of oxygen.

I remember seeing on some discovery broadcast that a certain type of spider takes regular trips to the outer limits of our atmosphere. By wind of course.

Someone else might remember the species. If so, chime in.

Interesting how resilient some species are.

well now that we are discovering live entities in the upper atmospaire governments have to let us in at some hiden knowledge.....

Hmm, months in outer space with no oxugen, food, subfreezing temps and lack of normal pressure? Sounds like crap to me, please tell me no one on here fell for this. My little niece even pointed that out.
Pravda's early April Fool's edition perhaps?

Originally posted by lernmore
Try that with a cockroach...
and you probably wouldn't even need the container.

Just glue it to the outside of the craft for a year, microwave it for a few minutes, and it would probably run off, only to come back later for your pizza.

I actually did microwave a roach once for about 20 seconds just to see what it would do. It carried on as if nothing was going on. Then I squashed it. Wouldn't want to come back the next day and find it waiting to put me int the microwave. Thankfully it wasn't my microwave

Originally posted by secretagent woooman
Hmm, months in outer space with no oxugen, food, subfreezing temps and lack of normal pressure? Sounds like crap to me, please tell me no one on here fell for this. My little niece even pointed that out.
Pravda's early April Fool's edition perhaps?

It would have frozen instantly, thus not needing oxygen or food. Small frogs have been frozen solid and re-animated, so it's not a stretch to assume a mosquito could be, as well.

I call bogus on this one!

A male mosquito will live for a week, a female mosquito can live a month.

They don't live a year on earth, never mind in space.

Thank you!
Nice to see someone else finished fourth grade science class.

Originally posted by secretagent woooman
Nice to see someone else finished fourth grade science class.

I'm sure Anatoly Grigoryev finished fourth grade science class.

Anatoly Grigoryev, vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA Novosti that a mosquito had managed to survive in outer space. First, it appeared that Grigoryev was talking about a spider running loose aboard the International Space Station.
Incredibly, a mosquito slept for 18 months on the outer ISS surface. "We brought him back to Earth. He is alive, and his feet are moving," Grigoryev said.

The mosquito did not get any food and was subjected to extreme temperatures ranging from minus 150 degrees Celsius in the shade to plus 60 degrees in the sunlight.

Grigoryev said the insect had been taken outside the ISS on orders from the Institute's scientists working on the Biorisk experiment. "First, they studied bacteria and fungi till a Japanese scientist suggested studying mosquitoes," Grigoryev told RIA Novosti.

Since 2005, the Institute has been cooperating with two Japanese institutes under a grant and has been studying biological objects with preset properties, including barley and peas with high genetic resistance.

"Professor Takashi Okuda from the National Institute of Agro-Biological Science drew our attention to the unique, although short-lived, African mosquito (bloodworm), whose larvae develop only in a humid environment," Grigoryev said.

Rains are rare in Africa, where puddles dry up before one's eyes. However, this mosquito is well-adapted to adverse local conditions, existing in a state of suspended animation when vital bodily functions stop almost completely.

When suspended animation sets in, water molecules are replaced by tricallosa sugar, which leads to natural crystallization. The larvae were then sprayed with acetone, boiled and cooled down to minus 210 degrees Celsius, the temperature of liquid nitrogen. Amazingly, they survived all these hardships.

The Japanese also studied bloodworm DNA and found that it could be switched on and deactivated in 30 to 40 minutes. "This is facilitated by the crystallization of biological matter," Doctor of Biology Vladimir Sychev from the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems told RIA Novosti.

Dr. Sychev said scientists were interested in this mechanism, which makes it possible to assess the potential of living organisms subjected to multiple loads in outer space.

He said plant studies had made headway, but that living organisms were affected by gravitation, radiation and temperature fluctuations.

en.rian.ru...

I wonder how it was able to hang on at the speeds needed to break gravity with all that friction.
And not to mention what would happen on the way back to the earths atmosphere. The legs and wings would burn quite nicely if it was able to hang on for that long. And if its legs burn of how would it hang on. By its teeth lol.

It takes only a lighter to burn the whole thing to crispy crunch.

And how much pressure do you think you need to apply to pool its legs and wings of. Compare that pressure to the friction it will experience in flight.


[edit on 27.06.08 by spy66]

reply to post by spy66


It was part of an experement - the little fell would of gone up maybe in the shuttle, maybe the automated transport, either way safe in a container with his own atmosphere. Then the container would be placed out on the array and he was exposed to space.

On the way back down it would be the reverse of the way up - the poor fella would not of had to see the heat of re-entry - can't see anything surviving that.

reply to post by karl 12


Wonder why such a nuisance insect was created for. I've heard NWO uses mosquitoes to vaccinate people.

reply to post by ctjctjctj


To keep the population down.... Those little things have killed more people than every single war, every single accident and natural disaster put together!!!!

Just imagine what this world would be like with 3 or 4 times the human population - not very pleasent I bet.