Researchers now believe that these 'retroelements' are major causes of genetic mutations and are significant factors in genome evolution. Imported Genetic Software is a related CA webpage. Water not seen after planned crash of Lunar Prospector. The controlled crash of NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft into a crater near the south pole of the Moon on July 31 produced no observable signature of water, according to scientists digging through data from Earth-based observatories and spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope. There are several possible reasons for the negative result.
More microbes survive in space.
This was the third space mission in a program begun in 1994, by microbiologist Rocco Mancinelli. Additional experiments on the ground that exposed the microbes to radiation and other hazards of space confirmed their survivability. Mancinelli's experiments extend results obtained in the late 1980s, by experiments aboard NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility. Back then, Bacillus subtilis spores were shown to remain viable after six years in space, provided they were shielded from UV radiation by only a single layer of dead cells or other naturally available protectants. Mancinelli's Biopan experiments go farther because they use microbes that do not form spores.