The Biorisk Experiment: 13-Month Exposure of Resting Forms of Organism on the Outer Side of the Russian Segment of the International Space Station: Preliminary Results

摘要

Planetary protection is one of the key problems of deep space exploration. Risks of the possible transfer of biological material across interplanetary space should be necessarily assessed during space exploration [1, 3, 4, 9, 10,15].Biorisk-MSN equipment has been developed in the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia) to perform space experiments on long-term exposure of resting stages of organisms on the outer side of the Russian Segment (RS) of the International Space Station (ISS) [2]. The Biorisk-MSN device consists of three containers with 24 plastic Petri dishes 65 mm in diameter, where organisms studied are situated (Fig. 1). Each dish contains an air-permeable filter that is impenetrable formicroorganisms. The containers are fastened on a special platform at the outer side of the Pier docking station (Fig. 1). Before fastening each container, its covering is opened. The experiment cyclogram allows for container exposure at the outer sideof the ISS RS for 6,12, or 18 months.