Seeding the Biorisk hardware
21.08.2023 - 11:43
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
On 9th September 2021, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov conducted a spacewalk to connect an ethernet local network cable, two high-frequency television cables and a cable for the Kurs-P rendezvous system into the new ISS module Nauka (the MLM). They also installed three new containers in the Biorisk hardware. Biorisk is a Russian suite of hardware used to measure the impacts of the space environment on biological activity.
Previous Biorisk experiments have shown that bacterial and fungal spores and the dormant forms of some organisms can survive long-term exposure to the space environment. This suggests that such organisms could hitch a ride on spacecraft during interplanetary missions and informs future requirements for planetary protection.
This time, there are three sets of samples loaded into Biorisk-MSN containers, all prepared by specialists from the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They include:
This is the largest batch of samples sent into space for Biorisk and includes – for the first time –Archaea, the heat-resistant extremophiles that live in (e.g.) geysers.
And there’s more! Russia has also sent its first collection of terrestrial soils. There are soil samples from a forest, a desert, and underneath the permafrost, as well as black soil. Each soil type brings its own set of microorganisms, and specialists will be interested in their ability to survive in space.
Each container has a background radiation sensor, and the three containers will spend differing amounts of time in space and return to Earth after one, two or three (one report says four) years.
“This is important, since many of the plants that we are testing today may, after 2030, be found as food