The Space Shuttle releases the European Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), a laboratory that will remain in orbit for 6 years and which hosts experiments of various kinds, including Bacillus Subtilus spores subjected to various conditions of space radiation. Incredibly, 80% of the spores protected only by a thin sheet of aluminum foil survive; and even in colonies directly exposed to radiation, 1 spore in 10,000 survives after 6 years of radiation.
