SPACE.com -- Space Fungus: A Menace to Orbital Habitats

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Space Fungus: A Menace to Orbital Habitats

Now that the Zvezda service module has docked and the International Space Station

will soon be habitable, a growing number of cosmonauts and astronauts could soon face a new threat -- space fungus.

During a recent mission, Mir crew members noticed that the view from the station's porthole was deteriorating due to an unknown film that was spreading like some horror-movie scum.

"During 20 years of research, the IBMP scientists have discovered up to 250 species of microorganisms which live inside manned spacecraft, including fungi and bacteria."

The porthole was examined carefully after the crew returned to Earth, with the results shocking researchers and engineers. Although the porthole and other windows were made of extra-hard quartz glass and mounted on titanium covered with enamel, they were partly destroyed by a colony of fungi and bacteria visible to the naked eye.

Engineers later learned that the fungi also damaged electronic equipment on Mir, including a control block for a communications device used on the outpost from 1997 to 1998 during the 24th main mission to Mir.

The microorganisms crept under the steel cover of the block and sat on electrical contacts and polyurethane pieces. As a result, parts of copper cables located nearby also were oxidized.

Subsistence for the microorganisms was certainly not the metal, glass and plastic of those devices, said Natalia Novikova, a deputy chief of the Department at the Institute of Biomedical Problems ( IBMP ) in Moscow.

"They consume organic stuff which consists of skin epithelia, lipids and other products of human activity," Novikova said. "These products get into the station atmosphere from human breath, sweat etc.and stick to the stations surfaces."

"Bacteria and fungi eat this stuff and generate products of metabolism, particularly organic acids which can corrode ...

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