Recently there was this news about the ESA's EXPOSE-E experiments aboard the ISS. Again, we find that life is capable of surviving the rigours of space travel ... which supports panspermia hypothesis.

René explains, “These organisms go into a dormant state waiting for better conditions to arrive.”
...
Living organisms surviving in open space supports the idea of ‘panspermia’ – life spreading from one planet to another, or even between solar systems.

It seems possible that organisms could colonise planets by hitching rides on asteroids. ESA is probing this intriguing theory further on future Station missions with different samples.

Exciting, I say!


For further reading, here is a special collection of papers on the EXPOSE-E mission from Astrobiology, Volume 12, Issue 5