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SpaceX Rocket Carries Chernobyl Fungi Into Space1 min read

by Maryann Villavert on July 28, 2016

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division Ecology Department In The Press

Cladosporium cladosporioides (source Wikimedia Commons)

Cladosporium cladosporioides (source Wikimedia Commons)

The eight species of fungi on board, which are descended from microbes collected at Chernobyl, may one day lead the way to a “sunblock” that could protect human space travelers from the harmful radiation of space. The microbes were originally collected by Tamas Torok a scientist affiliated with the Climate and Ecosystems Sciences Division.

Tamas Torok

Tamas Torok

“Some types of this fungus [Cladosporium cladosporioides] are able to resist and even thrive on high levels of radiation, thanks to their dark pigmentation. The melatonin that causes that dark coloration helps to scavenge for the free radicals that cause damage to cells,” says Torok.

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule successfully connected to the International Space Station on Wednesday (7/20) where an experiment, using the fungi selected by Clay Wang (University of Southern California) and his colleagues, is now in progress. The planned return is 9/1/16.

Press

SpaceX Rocket Carries Chernobyl Fungi Into Space – Today at Berkeley Lab, July 28, 2016
SpaceX Rocket Carries Chernobyl Fungi Into Space – Popular Science, June 21, 2016

News & Events

EGD Postdoc Fellow Receives Young Researcher Presenter Award1 min read

January 21, 2021

Pramod Bhuvankar, an EGD postdoctoral fellow working with research scientist Abdullah Cihan, received a Young Researcher Presenter Award during the 2020 Computational Methods in Water Resources conference in December. His presentation, “Pore-scale simulations of permeability decline in porous media due to fines migration,” described a pore-scale CFD study of clay mobilization in porous media due…

Berkeley Lab Partners with International Collaborators in Geothermal Energy Research1 min read

January 20, 2021

  Scientists from the Energy Geosciences Division have begun working with European partners on three new geothermal research projects through the Department of Energy’s membership in GEOTHERMICA, a transnational consortium that combines the in-country financial resources and research expertise of 15 participating countries to demonstrate and validate novel concepts in geothermal energy use. This marks the…

EESA Senior Scientist Talks Earthquake Building Resilience1 min read

Berkeley Lab senior scientist David McCallen leads a subproject called Earthquake Sim, or EQSIM, for the DOE’s Energy Exascale Computing Project. He is also professor and director of the Center for Civil Engineering Earthquake Research in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. McCallen recently spoke with Scott Gibson of…

EESA Scientist Coauthors New Comprehensive Guide on Removing CO2 from the Atmosphere2 min read

January 18, 2021

Berkeley Lab researchers are working on ways to sequester more carbon in soil, including through agricultural practices. (Credit: Berkeley Lab) Scientists say that any serious plan to address climate change should include carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies and policies, which makes the newly launched CDR Primer an especially vital resource, says Berkeley Lab scientist Margaret Torn, one…

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