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Until now astronauts have had to send mysterious microbes and organisms back to earth to figure out what they are.
But for the first time, NASA astronauts have successfully sequenced DNA and identified the organism in space.
This development is an important step for a number of reasons - astronauts illnesses can be diagnosed away from Earth and, at some point, discovering life on other planets.
Space writer Sarah Lewin explains to Simon Morton how they did it.
