MOSS has survived nine months exposed to outer space, giving hope it can help develop ecosystems for human life on Mars.
The plant even made it back to Earth after the experiment and was still capable of reproducing.
Researchers calculated it could have lasted for up to 15 years in conditions in which most living organisms cannot survive even briefly.
Its durability was confirmed during tests on the International Space Station.
Spores from a plant called spreading earthmoss were transported to the vessel in 2022.
There it was attached to the outside for 283 days before being returned to Earth in January 2023, with more than 80 per cent of the sample surviving.
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They predicted that the encased spores could have survived for up to 5,600 days under space conditions.
But the team emphasised that this number is just a rough estimate, and that much more data is needed to make more realistic predictions.
They hope that their work helps advance research on the potential of extraterrestrial soils for facilitating plant growth.
Researcher Prof Tomomichi Fujita struck on the idea of testing the moss in space after seeing it survive in some of the harshest environments on Earth — but still expected none to last.
“But the result was the opposite,” he said. “We were genuinely astonished.”
He wrote in journal iScience: “We hope this work opens a new frontier toward constructing ecosystems in extraterrestrial environments such as the Moon and Mars.”
