Am I the only one thinking this is pointless, as far as the proposed reasoning for this experiment is concerned? My guess is that this is an experiment just to see what happens (like most other science experiments), but it was sold to the higher-ups responsible for funding this project (and possibly the general public) with easy-to-understand, but completely pointless premise. It's pointless for at least two reasons:
1) Mutations are *random*. There is no predetermined path that evolution will take place. Otherwise every isolated continent would have had the exact same set of animals/birds/insects/etc., as they all started from the same primordial slime. It's like looking at the previous lottery numbers to decide what to play in the next lottery. Completely pointless, but doesn't stop people from developing "strategies". The only thing you can predict is that the evolved bacteria will be different and will be better/fitter at surviving. How different and for what reason better/fitter -- there is no predicting that as there are literally billions upon billions of ways it can go.
2) Conditions in space will be quite different from down here. It's called "survival of the fittest". "Fittest" for the specific conditions we have down here. MRSA bacteria lives and survives in and around people. Moreover, it lives and survives in and around people treated with various antibiotics. Whatever will survive up there in space will be "fittest" for those conditions, and will likely be nothing like what we'll see in real hospitals. I mean, they might as well get a petri dish and take an X-ray of it every 10 minutes and see what happens, to get fast mutations. No need to send anything into space. Not for that reason.
Again, I'm not poopooing the experiment, I'm just saying I hope whoever is running it is not delusional. Or at least smarter than me. Or is it I? As you see, the bar is pretty low, so I'm hopeful. :)