Even in space, astronauts can’t escape from germs—but the European Space Agency wants to develop materials that can help tidy up the International Space Station.
, researchers can’t say if the trillions of species of microorganisms will behave the same way in space. Microbes that travel to space are also capable of destroying the inside of the spacecraft, and its equipment.
A petri dish contains colonies of fungi grown from a sample collected aboard the International Space Station during the first of NASA’s three Microbial Tracking-1 flights.But a potential solution to combat microbes are self-cleaning surfaces, materials coated with compounds that readily remove bacteria or dirt.
The coating works via a process called photocatalytic oxidation. When exposed to ultraviolet light, titanium oxide breaks down water vapor in the air, and oxidizes microbes, effectively dissolving bacterial membranes that come into contact with it. This creates an added benefit: The materials aren’t selective when it comes to exterminating specific microbial strains, meaning that there’s little chance of these microbes developing bacterial resistance.
So far, the team has successfully tested the coating on surfaces like glass, silicon wafer, aluminum foil, and specially-made paper tissue. But to make them even more effective, Holynska’s team wants to increase titania’s efficiency by “doping” the compound, or altering its compounds to extend its antimicrobial effects under normal light.
“Heavy metals such as silver have been shown to leak into water condensate on the ISS,” says Holynska. “For long-term exploration and, in particular, for applications under high humidity conditions or in water pipes [and] containers, this is an issue.” Because silver tends to accumulate in human tissue if ingested, it can cause damage to internal organs like the kidneys and liver, and can trigger changes in blood morphology, she says.
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