With air filters and weekly wipe-downs and vacuuming, NASA goes to great lengths to keep the International Space Station clean so that astronauts stay healthy. But astronauts still often experience health problems like immune dysfunction, skin rashes and other inflammatory conditions. One reason may be because the ISS might be too clean, a new study suggests.
Microbes, tiny living organisms like bacteria and viruses, play an important role in human health. But samples of surfaces in the ISS reflect a striking lack of microbial diversity, Rodolfo Salido Benítez, a bioengineer at University of California, San Diego, and colleagues report February 27 in Cell.
[...] Inside and outside the body, microbes compete for resources and space, so maintaining a diverse set keeps any one of them from taking over and causing an health problems. Low microbial diversity in hospitals, for example, leads to a higher risk of infection. Even the microbes in your house can affect your health. One study found that Amish communities have a lower risk of asthma than other communities with similar lifestyles because their household dust contains microbes from farm animals.
[...] Maintaining a healthy diversity of microbes in confined spaces will be a growing concern as astronauts spend more time in space and new missions begin. Scientists will need to test new ways of adding more "good germs" to the mix, like bringing animals aboard or stocking the ISS pantry with fermented foods, says Pieter Dorrestein, a chemical biologist at UC San Diego.
"The reality is that we're going to inhabit space at some point, so this work will give us the first insight in terms of the things that we need to add and remove," Dorrestein says. "The most important message that we can pass on is how important is to not only look at what's present, but also what's absent."
Journal Reference: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.01.039
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Saturday March 08, @12:56AM (1 child)
Well, that explains why ancient gods took celestial cow with them travelling...
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday March 08, @01:06AM
Or what happened to the first cowsmonaut [youtu.be] when it travelled into the monolith.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Saturday March 08, @01:04AM
There's previously been [nih.gov] and currently is a fungus among us [science.org] in space, so sure, why not throw more microbes [youtu.be] into the mix? Maybe just keep them around in pill form and take them as probiotics instead.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08, @04:20AM
Good luck getting funding for space DEI for microbes!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Saturday March 08, @05:16AM (8 children)
When you clean things with Ammonia, Alcohol and other things that get rid of 99.9% of bacteria and viruses, the only thing left are the .1% of things that are really bad for us mammals.
It may turn out that bringing healthy soil to space helps keep more than just the plants alive.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08, @12:12PM (1 child)
> bringing healthy soil to space
Sure, but be careful...my SO re-potted a house plant in purchased "potting soil" and shortly after we had gnats (similar to fruit flies). Tried to control with fly paper (adhesive trap), but eventually had to throw out the plant and pot of infected/infested soil.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Thursday March 13, @06:47PM
Sorry to hear about your plant!
The next time this happens, try using a vinegar trap instead of the strips. We had a similar problem (our countertop compost container was breeding fruit flies) and solved it by converting a used water bottle into a trap. Cut the top off the bottle, shoved it inverted into the body of the bottle, then poured a small amount of apple cider vinegar into it. The inverted funnel of the cutoff top acts like a one-way valve, flies can't figure out how to escape and they starve/drown. Only took a few days (maybe a week?) and the fly life cycle was broken.
Teh intarwebs have better instructions [brave.com] than what I wrote above, plus pretty pictures. Good luck!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Undefined on Saturday March 08, @01:12PM (4 children)
In addition, Hydrogen peroxide, which is really very good at killing some things alcohol can't, is terrible for use on wounds (it disrupts the healing process in several ways,) requires relatively long application times, and still leaves some nasties around.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08, @02:03PM (3 children)
> Hydrogen peroxide...is terrible for use on wounds
First time I'd heard this, so I did a quick google and the first page of results sent me to this paper from 2017, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5768111/ [nih.gov]
Anecdote, ymmv--
I use a tiny amount of H2O2 (common 3% solution) on a Q-tip (swab) to "paint my throat" when I feel a sore throat (surface infection) starting. If I'm otherwise healthy (no lingering cold symptoms, etc), this is almost always successful in ending the sore throat within a day or less. I'm careful to not swallow, and rinse my mouth with plain water after 10 seconds or so.
(Score: 2) by Undefined on Saturday March 08, @07:45PM (1 child)
That's very interesting. Thank you.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08, @09:34PM
You're welcome. I should have mentioned that I heard about "throat painting" from my father (born early 1900s) and he used Mercurochrome (containing mercury) and later Iodine. Both those didn't seem like things I wanted down my throat, so I switched to H2O2. I might do this once or twice a year--very infrequently.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10, @03:43PM
When I get COVID I carefully inject BLEACH right in the eyeball. It's a well known remedy from 2020 from the President, who admittedly took the vaccine instead of eyeball bleach but his point stands.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday March 13, @09:55AM
As time goes on, I’m getting more convinced that we need to build Haloes, like in the game, ring shaped spinning space stations with trees and earth (soil, rocks). It’d solve this problem and the one with astronauts getting bone issues due to 0G.