On Jan. 11, 2016 , National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research scientist David J. Smith reported finding that air samples collected atop a research station at the Mount Bachelor Observatory at an elevation of 9,000 feet contained living organisms.

More than 27 percent of the bacterial samples and more than 47 percent of the fungal samples were still alive. Ultimately, the team detected about 2,100 species of microbes, including a type of Archea that had only previously been isolated off the coast of Japan.