A meteorite chip sat in a small container, bathed in liquid, while the International Space Station floated overhead. Inside, a fungus spread thin threads across the rock. A bacterium built a slick biofilm. The question was simple to ask and harder to test: in microgravity, can microbes pull valuable metals out of asteroid-like material? A Cornell University and University of Edinburgh team says yes, at least in a proof-of-concept sense, and the fungus did the heavy lifting for one of the most sought-after metals in the sample. The experiment, called BioAsteroid and reported in npj Microgravity, compared a bacterium (Sphingomonas desiccabilis), a fungus (Penicillium simplicissimum), and a mixed “consortium” of both. Lead author Rosa Santomartino, an assistant professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell, worked with co-author Alessandro Stirpe, a research associate in microbiology. Charles Cockell, a professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh, is the senior author. “This is probably the first experiment of its kind on the International Space Station on meteorite,” Santomartino said. Michael Scott Hopkins performs a microgravity experiment …