In 2015, a team of Japanese scientists attached some dried clumps of bacteria to a panel and launched it onto the outside of the International Space Station. They left it there for three years. According to a study titled ‘DNA Damage and Survival Time Course of Deinococcal Cell Pellets During 3 Years of Exposure to Outer Space’ published in Frontiers in Microbiology, when the panel was eventually opened in 2018, the bacteria within the more compact clusters were found to be alive. The project was called Tanpopo, meaning "dandelion" in Japanese, and it was led by microbiologist Akihiko Yamagishi and his team from Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences.
The bacterial species that was selected for this research was Deinococcus radiodurans. CNN has reported that scientists have given this organism a nickname: Conan the Bacterium. In the Guinness Book of World Records, it is listed as the most radiation-resistant life form, capable of surviving doses of radiation that are about 3,000 times higher than the amount that would kill a human being. It was first discovered decades ago in a can of meat that had been irradiated to sterilize it.
