The international space station can be very clean
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The strategy of maintaining the spaceship as clean and sterile can be a mistake to ensure that astronauts are not sick. Our immune system may require stimulation of some types of molecules and microbes to be healthy, researchers who have learned to study international space station (ISS).
“The general notion is to try to remain as few microbes as possible, but the question is if it is the best thing to do long-term space travel,” he says Pieter Dorrestein From the University of San Diego in California. “And it is also important for land places, such as research (stations), hospitals and submarines, where months or more.”
It is a reason to sterilize the spacecraft Contaminate planetsMars, for example, with land microbes, but the main concern is that it would be easily treatable in our plans to become an important issue in a spacecraft.
Dorrestein and his team studied more than ISS surface surfaces, and they found it, in terms of molecules and microbial diversity.
“Space station is without many molecules and microbes,” he said. “It is at the extreme end of the living”.
The group believes that this lack of exposure to the usual molecules and the usual microbial range is that this may be important changes Immunological system in space. At the space station, astronauts often achieve rash, unusual allergies, fungi or bacterial infections, as well as latent viruses such as epstein bars, as they found in one of the samples.
“We don’t have a full understanding of this,” says Dorrestein. “But the way you see that is that your immune system should be paused regularly.”
Researchers say so that we need to find ways to make environments space The station “will be more diverse in molecules and microbes, but without entering pathogens that cause infections.”
A way to do this would apply bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis To the surfaces instead of disinfectants, Dorrestein says. B. Sub It is already widely used in his antifungal activity.
Growing a range of plants can help. “We know people have reduced connections to other studies, asthma and allergies,” says Dowrestein. There is no full plant molecule at the space station.
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