On November 26, 2022, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket departed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. On board he could safely say that among the 7,700 pounds of cargo, the smallest delivery of the day was a bunch of frozen bacteria.
In an interdisciplinary collaboration, a group of scientists including NASA, the MIT Media Lab, NREL, and SeedHealth have bioengineered plastic-eating bacteria so that they can be upcycled. Mashable meets some of them to find out how bacteria work, why they were sent to space, and how they can help humanity tackle plastic pollution in space and on Earth. I was there.
