Context: NASA is preparing to send around 5,000 tardigrades, also called "water bears” and 128 glow-in-the-dark baby squid into the International Space Station for research purposes.
About

• The water animals will be launched aboard SpaceX’s 22nd cargo resupply mission to the ISS.
• They are part of experiments that could help scientists design improved protective measures for astronauts going on long-duration space travel.
• The water bears and bobtail squid will be involved in experiments aboard the floating laboratory.
• They will be arriving in a semi-frozen state before they are thawed out, revived and grown in a special bio-culture system.
• The experiments are also aimed at better understanding how beneficial microbes interact with animals, potentially leading to breakthroughs in improving human health on Earth.

Significance

• The researchers will be able to study water bears’ hardiness close up, and possibly identify the genes that allow them to become so resilient.
• It would be possible to design better techniques to keep astronauts healthy on long-duration space missions by learning how the water bears can survive in low gravity conditions.
• This will further help in understanding how microgravity conditions affect the relationship between the bobtail squid and beneficial microbes, as part of a study called UMAMI.
• Microbes play a crucial role in the normal development of animal tissues and in maintaining human health.

Tardigrades

• They are microscopic eight-legged animals that have been to outer space and would likely survive the apocalypse. They look like adorable miniature bears.
• They are considered aquatic because they require a thin layer of water around their bodies to prevent dehydration.
• They are covered in a tough cuticle, similar to the exoskeletons of grasshoppers, praying mantises, and other insects to which they are related.
• They belong to an elite category of animals known as extremophiles, or critters that can survive environments that most others can't.
• They can also live at temperatures as cold as absolute zero or above boiling, at pressures six times that of the ocean’s deepest trenches, and in the vacuum of space.
• They prefer to live in sediment at the bottom of a lake, on moist pieces of moss or in other wet environments.

International Space Station

• ISS is a habitable artificial satellite - the single largest man-made structure in low earth orbit. Its first component was launched into orbit in 1998.
• It serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields.

Note: Recently, China launched an unmanned module "Tianhe" which is one of three main components of what would be China's first self-developed space station, rivalling the only other station in service - the International Space Station (ISS).

• The ISS is backed by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. China was barred from participating by the United States.