International Space Station too clean, say scientists
Space agencies have strict sterilisation protocols, with equipment and modules built in sealed-off clean rooms and astronauts forced to isolate before venturing into orbit.
However, a new study by the University of California suggests that such extreme disinfection may be doing more harm than good.
Astronauts often experience immune dysfunction, skin rashes, and other inflammatory conditions while travelling in space, which has largely been put down to the impact of microgravity.
But researchers suspected it could also be due to a dearth of helpful microbes.
To find out, they asked ISS astronauts to swab 803 different surfaces aboard the Space Station and bring the bacterial specimens back to be studied on Earth.
Compared with most of the Earth samples, the ISS surfaces had far fewer microbes, and were particularly lacking in environmental bugs usually found in soil and water.
Researchers say that intentionally incorporating more microbes into the ISS could improve astronaut health without sacrificing hygiene, similar to how gardening can boost the immune system.
Prof Rob Knight, director of the Centre for Microbiome Innovation at the University of California, San Diego, said: 'There's a big difference between exposure to healthy soil from gardening versus stewing in our own filth, which is kind of what happens if we're in a strictly enclosed environment with no ongoing input of those healthy sources of microbes from the outside.'
Many clinicians and scientists now believe that modern cleanliness damages the immune system, and is driving the increase in allergies, a theory dubbed the hygiene hypothesis.
But space travel is even more scrupulously clean, with agencies keen not to transport bugs into space where there are no medical teams on hand to help sick astronauts.
Although the ISS is due for decommission by the end of the decade, new orbiting modules, including the Lunar Gateway, are expected to be built in the coming years.
With Nasa's Artemis programme, astronauts will also be returning to the Moon to live on the lunar surface for extended periods.
'Future built environments, including space stations, could benefit from intentionally fostering diverse microbial communities that better mimic the natural microbial exposures experienced on Earth, rather than relying on highly sanitised spaces,' said Dr Rodolfo Salido, of the Knight Lab, at UC San Diego.
'If we really want life to thrive outside Earth, we can't just take a small branch of the tree of life and launch it into space and hope that it will work out.
'We need to start thinking about what other beneficial companions we should be sending with these astronauts to help them develop ecosystems that will be sustainable and beneficial for all.'
The team found that overall, human skin was the main source of microbes throughout the ISS.
They also found that different modules or rooms within the ISS hosted different microbial communities and chemical signatures, and these differences were determined by the module's use.
For example, dining and food preparation areas contained more food-associated microbes, whereas the space toilet contained more urine- and faecal-associated microbes and metabolites.
'We noticed that the abundance of disinfectant on the surface of the International Space Station is highly correlated with the microbiome diversity at different locations on the space station,' said co-first author Dr Nina Zhao, of UC San Diego.
In the future, the researchers hope to be able to detect potentially dangerous microbes and signals of human health from environmental samples.
The research was published in the journal Cell.
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