Living bacteria have been found on the outside of the International Space Station, a Russian cosmonaut told the state news agency TASS this week.

In his interview with TASS, Shkaplerov says the bacteria "have come from outer space and settled along the external surface"—a claim that sparked some media outlets to issue frenzied reports about aliens colonizing the space station.

For now, though, details about the swabbing experiment are thin on the ground. Shkaplerov did not note whether the study has been vetted by a peer-reviewed journal, which means it's unclear exactly when and how the full experiment was conducted, or how the team avoided any contamination from much more mundane bacteria on the cosmonauts or in the Earth-bound