Tanpopo mission

The collection and exposure phase took place from May 2015 through February 2018 utilizing the Exposed Facility located on the exterior of Kibo, the Japanese Experimental Module of the International Space Station.

[1] The mission, designed and performed by Japan, used ultra-low density silica gel (aerogel) to collect cosmic dust by,[2] which is being analyzed for amino acid-related compounds and microorganisms following their return to Earth.

If the Tanpopo mission can detect microbes at the higher altitude of low Earth orbit (400 km), it will support the possible interplanetary migration of terrestrial life.

[7] This mission will also test if terrestrial microbes (e.g., aerosols embedding microbial colonies) may be present, even temporarily and in freeze-dried form in the low Earth orbit altitudes.

Also, by evaluating retrieved samples of exposed terrestrial microbes and astronomical organic analogs on the exposure panels, they can investigate their survival and any alterations in the duration of interplanetary transport.

These findings support the notion of panspermia, the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed in various ways, including space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, planetoids or contaminated spacecraft.