In the otherwise barren space 220 miles above Earth's surface, a capsule of life-sustaining oxygen and water orbits at 17,000 miles per hour. You might know this capsule as the International Space Station (ISS), currently home to six humansand untold billions of bacteria. Microbes have always followed us to the frontiers, but it's only now that scientists at NASA and elsewhere are seriously investigating what happens when we bring Earth's microbes into space. <\/p>\n
Most space microbes get there by hitching a ride onor inthe bodies of astronauts. But the next unmanned ISS resupply mission, due to blast off on Monday, will carry a special microbial payload on behalf of Project MERCCURI. The payload includes 48 different microbescollected from stadiums, toilets, and even pre-launch spacecraftwhose growth in space will be compared to a parallel set of microbes on Earth. A second phase of the project will sequence swabs from the ISS to determine the microbiome of the space station. <\/p>\n
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Plates of bacteria being prepared for launch. Project MERCCURI <\/p>\n
Project MERCCURI is a crowdsourced project, aimed at science outreach as much as research itself. But NASA, too, is intensely interested in studying its \"microbial observatory\"as Mark Ott, a senior microbiologist at the Johnson Space Center, called the ISS in a recent talk. The ISS is a unique lab space. \"We have a shortage of microgravity on Earth,\" sums up David Coil, a microbiology on the Project MERCCURI team, <\/p>\n
In the interest of astronaut health, NASA has sent disease-causing bacteria up into space before. (In carefully packaged plates, of course.) The stress of space-living weakens immune systems, making the possibility of disease all the worse. <\/p>\n
So how have disease-causing microbes fared in space so far? Unfortunately for us, they've fared very well. <\/p>\n
An attention-grabbing study from 2007 found that Salmonella, which you probably associate with food poisoning, becomes more virulent when grown on the ISS. The space-bred microbes were injected into mice back on Earth, and the mice promptly became sicker and succumbed more quickly. <\/p>\n
Last year, researchers found that Pseudomonas aeruginosa (below), a common bacteria that can cause infections grew faster and formed thicker aggregates of cells called biofilms. These biofilms also formed a bizarre \"column-and-canopy\" structure that it doesn't form on Earth. Other bacteria like E. coli and staph also grow better in space. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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What Happens to Bacteria in Space?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the otherwise barren space 220 miles above Earth's surface, a capsule of life-sustaining oxygen and water orbits at 17,000 miles per hour. You might know this capsule as the International Space Station (ISS), currently home to six humansand untold billions of bacteria. Microbes have always followed us to the frontiers, but it's only now that scientists at NASA and elsewhere are seriously investigating what happens when we bring Earth's microbes into space. Continue reading