According to Daily Mail, US experts are eager to know how traveling between stars affects extremely small animals, known for their ability to survive in harsh conditions even in space. They have proposed building small space probes to bring tardigrade (also known as water bear) into space at speeds of up to 30% of the speed of light.
The spacecraft will be powered by laser light rather than rocket fuel, from a laser network on Earth or possibly the Moon. Laser could solve one of the biggest challenges humans face traveling between stars - the huge distance between Earth and other stars.
Professor Philip Lubin at the University of California (UC) said that the spaceship could be just a handful.
With a speed of about 161 million km/h, the water bears can reach the Proxima Centauri star system in about 20 years.
The idea was detailed by researchers at the University of California in a paper published in the journal Acta Astronautica.
tardigrade was first discovered in 1773 by German veterinarian Johann August Ephraim Goeze, who gave tardigrade the adorable nickname "water bear" because of their dusty and adorable appearance.
This animal has been shown to be almost unkills even if frozen, boiled, crushed or exposed to radiation. Therefore, they are ideal candidates to launch into space with a laser, as long as they are in a suspended animation state until they reach their desired destination.
In 2019, an incident of an Israeli spacecraft accidentally left this immortal creature on the Moon. Based on their resilience to exposure to radiation and freezing temperatures, they could still survive on the surface of the Moon today.
