The Shock Response of Space Bears: The Ability of Life to Survive Some of the Most Extreme Environments Known to Man

There have been many recent discoveries of life forms living in environments previously thought to be completely uninhabitable. One particularly interesting discovery of this na- ture is the space bear or tardigrade. The name space bear is a colloquialism applied to the tardigrades because of a recent investigation which saw them being exposed to the vacuum of space and intense solar radiation, and surviving. Tardigrades have the ability to dehy- drate themselves, entering a state called cryptobiosis. This state enables them to survive in the vacuum of space. A single stage gas gun has been employed to uniaxially shock load and subsequently recover tardigrades in both regular and cryptobiotic states. Loading histories were calculated via hydrocode modelling. Survival data is presented comparing shocked and control samples for tardigrades both in normal and cryptobiotic states.