Cryptoendolithic microbial communities and epilithic lichens have been considered as appropriate candidates for the scenario of lithopanspermia, which proposes a natural interplanetary exchange of organisms by means of rocks that have been impact ejected from their planet of origin. So far, the hardiness of these terrestrial organisms in the severe and hostile conditions of space has not been tested over extended periods of time. A first long-term (1.5 years) exposure experiment in space was performed with a variety of rock-colonizing eukaryotic organisms at the International Space Station on board the European EXPOSE-E facility. Organisms were selected that are especially adapted to cope with the environmental extremes of their natural habitats. It was found that some—but not all—of those most robust microbial communities from extremely hostile regions on Earth are also partially resistant to the even more hostile environment of outer space, including high vacuum, temperature fluctuation, the fu...

Survival of rock-colonizing organisms after 1.5 years in outer space.

BIOMEX (BIOlogy and Mars EXperiment) is an ESA/Roscosmos space exposure experiment housed within the exposure facility EXPOSE-R2 outside the Zvezda module on the International Space Station (ISS). ...

/pdf/limits-of-life-and-the-habitability-of-mars-the-esa-space-4fu5rgtg4b.pdf

Limits of Life and the Habitability of Mars : The ESA Space Experiment BIOMEX on the ISS

The current shock classification scheme of meteorites assigns shock levels of S1 (unshocked) to S6 (very strongly shocked) using shock effects in rock-forming minerals such as olivine and plagioclase. The S6 stage (55–90 GPa; 850–1750 °C) relies solely on localized effects in or near melt zones, the recrystallization of olivine, or the presence of mafic high-pressure phases such as ringwoodite. However, high whole rock temperatures and the presence of high-pressure phases that are unstable at those temperatures and pressures of zero GPa (e.g., ringwoodite) are two criteria that exclude each other. Each type of high-pressure phase provides a minimum shock pressure during elevated pressure conditions to allow the formation of this phase, and a maximum temperature of the whole rock after decompression to allow the preservation of this phase. Rocks classified as S6 are characterized not by the presence but by the absence of those thermally unstable high-pressure phases. High-pressure phases in or attached to shock melt zones form mainly during shock pressure decline. This is because shocked rocks (<60 GPa) experience a shock wave with a broad isobaric pressure plateau only during low velocity (<4.5 km s−1) impacts, which rarely occur on small planetary bodies; e.g., the Moon and asteroids. The mineralogy of shock melt zones provides information on the shape and temporal duration of the shock wave but no information on the general maximum shock pressure in the whole rock.

/pdf/revising-the-shock-classification-of-meteorites-3oxpfgl4uq.pdf

Revising the shock classification of meteorites

The Northwest Africa (NWA) 7475 meteorite is one of the several stones of paired regolith breccias from Mars based on petrography, oxygen isotope, mineral compositions, and bulk rock compositions. Its inventory of lithic clasts is dominated by vitrophyre impact melts that were emplaced while they were still molten. Other clast types include crystallized impact melt rocks, evolved plutonic rocks, possible basalts, contact metamorphosed rocks, and siltstones. Impact spherules and vitrophyre shards record airborne transport, and accreted dust rims were sintered on most clasts, presumably during residence in an ejecta plume. The clast assemblage records at least three impact events, one that formed an impact melt sheet on Mars ≤4.4 Ga ago, a second that assembled NWA 7475 from impactites associated with the impact melt sheet at 1.7–1.4 Ga, and a third that launched NWA 7475 from Mars ~5 Ma ago. Mildly shocked pyroxene and plagioclase constrain shock metamorphic conditions during launch to >5 and <15 GPa. The mild postshock-heating that resulted from these shock pressures would have been insufficient to sterilize this water-bearing lithology during launch. Magnetite, maghemite, and pyrite are likely products of secondary alteration on Mars. Textural relationships suggest that calcium-carbonate and goethite are probably of terrestrial origin, yet trace element chemistry indicates relatively low terrestrial alteration. Comparison of Mars Odyssey gamma-ray spectrometer data with the Fe and Th abundances of NWA 7475 points to a provenance in the ancient southern highlands of Mars. Gratteri crater, with an age of ~5 Ma and an apparent diameter of 6.9 km, marks one possible launch site of NWA 7475.

Petrography and composition of Martian regolith breccia meteorite Northwest Africa 7475

Lichens as survivors in space and on Mars

Shock recovery experiments were performed with an explosive set-up in which
three types of microorganisms embedded in various types of host rocks were exposed to
strong shock waves with pressure pulse lengths of lower than 0.5 μs: spores of the
bacterium Bacillus subtilis, Xanthoria elegans lichens, and cells of the cyanobacterium
Chroococcidiopsis sp. 029. In these experiments, three fundamental parameters were
systematically varied (1) shock pressures ranging from 5 to 50 GPa, (2) preshock ambient
temperature of 293, 233 and 193 K, and (3) the type of host rock, including nonporous
igneous rocks (gabbro and dunite as analogs for the Martian shergottites and chassignites,
respectively), porous sandstone, rock salt (halite), and a clay-rich mineral mixture as
porous analogs for dry and water-saturated Martian regolith. The results show that the
three parameters have a strong influence on the survival rates of the microorganisms.
The most favorable conditions for the impact ejection from Mars for microorganisms
would be (1) low porosity host rocks, (2) pressures <10–20 GPa, and (3) low ambient
temperature of target rocks during impact. All tested microorganisms were capable of
surviving to a certain extent impact ejection in different geological materials under distinct
conditions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1945-5100.2011.01184.x

Shock experiments in support of the Lithopanspermia theory: The influence of host rock composition, temperature, and shock pressure on the survival rate of endolithic and epilithic microorganisms

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Shock experiments in support of the Lithopanspermia theory: The influence of host rock composition, temperature, and shock pressure on the survival rate of endolithic and epilithic microorganisms