Well, make way for Gutnik. A news release issued by NASA’s Ames Research Center foretells the launch into space of a satellite inhabited by a bunch of nano-mariners who, left to their own devices, would no doubt rather curl up inside a bowel.
Sometime in the next one to three years, according to the release, a so-called “nanosatellite” weighing about 30 pounds and peopled by the intestinal bug E. coli will streak into the sky, with the mission of amassing data on whether the zero-gravity environment that cloaks our planet might increase microbes’ resistance to antibiotics
