Elke Rabbow, Petra Rettberg, Andre Parpart, Corinna Panitz, Wolfgang Schulte, Ferdinand Molter, Esther Jaramillo, René Demets, Peter Weiß, Rainer Willnecker
On July 23, 2014, the Progress cargo spacecraft 56P was launched from Baikonur to the International Space Station (ISS), carrying EXPOSE-R2, the third ESA (European Space Agency) EXPOSE facility, the second EXPOSE on the outside platform of the Russian Zvezda module, with four international astrobiological experiments into space. More than 600 biological samples of archaea, bacteria (as biofilms and in planktonic form), lichens, fungi, plant seeds, triops eggs, mosses and 150 samples of organic compounds were exposed to the harsh space environment and to parameters similar to those on the Mars surface...
2017: Frontiers in Microbiology