Dr. Bernard Quatermass is unavailable for comment on reports of unexplained space molds.
Posted on 06/28/2019 5:48:21 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Astronauts on the ISS spend hours every week cleaning the inside of the station's walls to prevent mold from becoming a health problem.
Spores of the two most common types of mold on the ISS, Aspergillus and Pennicillium, survive X-ray exposure at 200 times the dose that would kill a human, according to Marta Cortesão, a microbiologist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, who will present the new research Friday at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon 2019).
Pennicillium and Aspergillus species are not usually harmful, but inhaling their spores in large amounts can sicken people with weakened immune systems. Mold spores can withstand extreme temperatures, ultraviolet light, chemicals and dry conditions. This resiliency makes them hard to kill.
But fungi aren't all bad. Cortesão investigates fungal species' capacity to grow in the conditions of space with the aim of harnessing the microorganisms as biological factories for materials people might need on long space voyages. ...Their cells have complex inner structures, like ours, with the cellular equipment needed to build polymers, food, vitamins and other useful molecules astronauts may need on extended trips beyond Earth.
...Ionizing radiation kills cells by damaging their DNA and other essential cellular infrastructure.
The spores survived exposure to X-rays up to 1000 gray, exposure to heavy ions at 500 gray and exposure to ultraviolet light up to 3000 joules per meter squared.
Gray is a measure of absorbed dose of ionizing radiation, or joules of radiation energy per kilogram of tissue. Five gray is enough to kill a person. Half a gray is the threshold for radiation sickness.
A 180-day voyage to Mars is expected to expose spacecraft and their passengers to a cumulative dose of about 0.7 gray. Aspergillus spores would be expected to easily survive this bombardment.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Yeah, so landing on another planet with different life forms is impossible. You have to know everything down there that can harm you. And you need an immune system that can handle it. And you need to have everything you carry categorized and made non threatening. So dont worry about fighting aliens here. The outer space ones anyway.
Maybe we should start over with a new space station? I can’t see breeding super strains of mold being a good idea, nor living for any length of time in a moldy dwelling.
This begs the question of whether there is mold and fungus in outer space, or whether fungus came to the earth from there in the first place.
We have this problem on the boat. We wipe things down with cleaning vinegar occasionally and keep it under control.
The more we use it, the less of a problem it seems to be.
Tilex, folks...
Works wonders.
Dr. Bernard Quatermass is unavailable for comment on reports of unexplained space molds.
It has happened before. See this preview of a documentary of “The Green Slime”....
https://youtu.be/g79_ljVC5Wk?t=86
True story kept from us. Really.
Panspermilicious.
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