In May 2023, Chinese astronauts swabbed several surfaces of their space station Tiangong (Mandarin for "Heavenly Place"), then sent the samples back to Earth for analysis.
The results are now in: the sample contained one bacterium never before seen, according to a report in the International Journal of Systemic and Evolutionary Microbiology.
The samples were taken, according to the paper, to help keep astronauts healthy in subsequent missions. “Understanding the characteristics of microbes during long-term space missions is essential for safeguarding the health of astronauts and maintaining the functionality of spacecraft,” according to the paper.
There are multiple plausible explanations for both the bacteria’s presence and novelty. It could have hitch-hiked with the astronauts and remained more or less the same (although thousands have been identified, there are potentially billions of unknown bacterium on our planet). It could have taken that same route, but mutated and evolved. Or it could ...
