Moss surviving Mars-like extreme conditions

As Mars is one of the most Earth-like terrestrial planets, numerous ambitious but challenging investigations for Mars terraforming and sustainable settlements have received plenty of attention. A newly published paper, “The extremotolerant desert moss Syntrichia caninervis is a promising pioneer plant for colonizing extraterrestrial environments” by Li and colleagues,1 reports a desert moss, Syntrichia caninervis, to be a candidate pioneer plant on Mars through investigation of its extremotolerant ability to resist several harsh conditions fatal to most known organisms. They found, for the first time, that the desert moss S. caninervis was capable of enduring 98% water loss and regenerating after being frozen at −80°C for 5 years or in liquid nitrogen at −196°C for a month and enduring high doses of gamma radiation up to 5,000 Gy. Moreover, they examined the survivability of whole plants in a simulated Martian environment and found that the moss remained regeneratable after exposure for several days. These results indicate that the desert moss S. caninervis is one of the known toughest plants on Earth. The exciting findings are of great interest for furthering the research on potential settlements on Mars in the future.