A group of scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Center study solutions to combat the fast-growing colony of bacteria or fungi, known as biofilm, for future space missions.
The biofilm mitigation research team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center assembled its own test stand to undertake a multi-month assessment of a variety of natural and chemical compounds and strategies for eradicating biofilm accretion caused by bacteria and fungi in the wastewater tank assembly on the International Space Station.
“Bacteria shrug off many of the challenges humans deal with in space, including microgravity, pressure changes, ultraviolet light, nutrient levels, even radiation,” said Yo-Ann Velez-Justiniano, a microbiologist and environmental control systems engineer at Marshall.“The wastewater tank is ‘upstream’ from most of our built-in water purification methods.
Yo-Ann Velez-Justiniano, left, and Connor Murphy, right, both Environmental Control and Life Support Systems engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, prepare slides for study of cultured bacterial biofilm in the center’s test facilityEach bioreactor holds up to 21 unique test samples on slides, bathed continuously in a flow of real or ersatz wastewater, timed and measured by the automated system, and closely monitored by the team.
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