A Montana State University lab is working with NASA to make a trip to Mars possible.
Dr. Paul Sturman the Industrial Coordinator and Research Professor at the MSU Biofilm lab explains how.
“NASA actually contacted us back in 2019 and said that they had what they thought was a biofilm problem in the wastewater treatment system aboard the international space station. They were concerned about this because they planned to use a really similar system when they eventually build a vehicle to go to Mars. So, the concern is if you went to Mars, you would essentially have a year in transit to get there, a year where the space craft just orbits Mars and the astronauts go down to the surface, and then a year on the return voyage to the earth. So what they were concerned about is that if everybody leaves the space craft in order to go down to the surface of Mars for that year then what’s going to happen to the systems on the space craft that have microorganisms in them and that have to be restarted after that yearlong dormancy, and they were really concerned about the waste water system and whether it would become fouled or inoperable in some way due to microorganisms growing unchecked over that year long period. So, what we have done is to basically test different scenarios of different types of microbial control measures to try to ensure that the system will restart again after that period of dormancy, so we’re in the middle of it now.” -Dr. Paul Sturman
