via Cosmic Tusk Lemme make this simple for tweeters. In 2018, on January 23, Russia was first to announce the discovery of space based life obtained by appropriate technical means in a collaborative international scientific effort. Based on genes swiped with a tampon from the OUTSIDE window of the International Space Station, three respected Russian national laboratories, and twelve credentialed scientists, published a peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating that seven kinds of dessicated, hibernated and freeze dried microbial life forms were plastered to the exterior of the spacecraft. But even Russia was coy. The authors appropriately hedged their conclusions in the announcement. They proposed that the biological material collected 400 kilometers above the earth's surface could have come from below — or above — the space station. The presence of the wild land and marine bacteria DNA on the ISS suggests their possible transfer from the stratosphere into the ionosphere with the