Regina Barber

Bryophytes, the group of plants that includes mosses, were the first plants to move from water to land.

In ground studies before the team sent moss to space, they found that moss spores, which were enclosed in this protective coating called a sporangium, did much better with exposure to extreme heat and cold, and importantly, to UV.

Well, the paper points out that moss and other bryophytes can survive low light.

They're great at making oxygen and fixing carbon, and they could be good at transforming other planets' surfaces into fertile soil.

Yes.

Yes, Scott.

Okay, right now, in the sky, there's a moon.

Okay.

And then in the beginning, when the solar system was forming, there was a proto-Earth and no moon.

No moon.

Then something maybe the size of Mars came and smashed into proto-Earth, and that debris from that giant crash made the moon.

And the name of this, like, planet-smashing object was Theia.

Scott, the call is coming from inside the house.

Okay.

And this also gives us a clue about maybe the origins of water on Earth.

If Theia had formed in the outer solar system, so past Jupiter where it's colder, there's ice, some scientists thought that Theia could have delivered water to Earth during that collision.

But with this study, we now know that Theia came from the inner solar system, which is drier, and that means that Theia was probably not the source of water on Earth.

So I asked that to the lead author of the study.

His name is Timo Hopp, and he's from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

But sadly, technology to withstand like the harsh surfaces of Mercury and Venus and actually travel there efficiently and back, our technology is just not totally there.