The National Space Agency, NASA, has announced on Wednesday that it will be scrutinizing the microscopic stowaways collected over the course of a decade at the International Space Station.
A majority of the microbial stowaways are suspected of being unintentionally ferried across the atmosphere and into space from Earth on the bodies of over 200 astronauts that have either stopped over or were deployed at the ISS.
There are two main reasons for the undertaking. One, is to decipher how the microbes have adapted and modified their own biological make-up in order to survive and propagate in such an alien environment for the purpose of creating field guides. And the second, according to David Tomko, a space biology program scientist at the agency, is to better comprehend what needs to be done in order to contain and control the microbes' population and self cultivation in succeeding space crafts that are to be used in manned explorations in the future.
Containment of the microbial population is extremely important especially onboard the space station which is comprised of mostly small tight spaces that does not allow much head room for an individual. Plus, tiny articles can travel from one point to the next rather quickly in such spaces. So it is necessary in order to maintain the health of the crew members.
The monitoring will be continuous and will provide researchers the ability to forecast any future circumstances involving the microbial population onboard the space station. Crew members, present and future, will also obtain much needed insight into the perils that the microbes can bring upon them thus, giving them the initiatives to take preventive measures.
