Date of discovery: January 15, 1998
Location of discovery: MIR space station
News source: http://www.space.com/3832-unwanted-life-forms-abound-sick-spacecraft.html
Life is everywhere in our universe, so says mathematics (Drake Equation), and you can't argue with the math. Mir found loads of microscopic life growing without them even knowing, similar to what NAS found on the International Space Station a few years ago, when they found giant plankton (ocean) growing outside the space station on the solar panels! Inside or outside, one thing is clear...life exists everywhere in this universe. It doesn't depend on your belief in its existence...apparently nature believes in itself.
Scott C. Waring
www.ufosightingsdaily.com
News states:
Spacecraft start out clean - as close to germ-free as humans can make them. But after years of use, unused spaces within the walls can become home to unwanted life forms. When NASA joined the Russian space program in its evaluation of the microbial activity aboard the Mir spacecraft, they made some interesting discoveries. NASA's plan was to obtain information that would be useful during long-duration missions. Mir had suffered several power outages during its fifteen years in low earth orbit; temperature and humidity had gone well beyond normal levels. In 1998, NASA astronauts were collecting samples from air and surfaces. Imagine their surprise when they opened an obscure service panel in Mir's Kvant-2 Module and discovered a free-floating mass of water.
"According to the astronauts' eyewitness reports, the globule was nearly the size of a basketball," C. Mark Ott, health scientist at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, said. Following a thorough search, several more globules were discovered.
The water wasn't clean, either; two of the blobs were brown and the other was milky white. Samples taken back to Earth for analysis contained several dozen species of bacteria and fungi, plus some protozoa, dust mites (see photo), and possibly spirochetes. The temperature behind the panels was a toasty 82 degrees Fahrenheit - perfect for microorganisms. Colonies of unwanted organisms were also found growing on rubber gaskets around windows, on space suit components, cable insulations and tubing, on the insulation of copper wires, and on communications devices.
