The microorganisms lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on 25 July 2019, headed for the International Space Station, some 400 kilometres above. Their mission: to boldly mine basalt, in low Earth orbit, where no living organisms had mined before.
Five days after take off, astronaut Luca Parmitano unpacked microbe-laden cartridges and installed them in an incubator. The bacteria were given liquid growth media plus Icelandic basalt, from which, Earth-based experimenters hoped, they would extract valuable rare-earth elements1.
When Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut based in Houston, Texas, thinks about microbes, he mainly worries about how they might harm him, and how to prevent them from contaminating lifeless environments…
