Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering, Beijing, China.
School of Life Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China.
Astrobiology. 2023 Jul;23(7):746-755. doi: 10.1089/ast.2022.0129. Epub 2023 Jun 6.
There are many kinds of microorganisms that inhabit the environment of manned space stations. Wet wipes are a common tool used in space stations to clean and reduce microorganisms on surfaces. Here, we compared the performance of five types of wipes used by the Chinese Space Station (CSS) on orbit before 2021 in terms of microbial decontamination. In previous studies, we found that sp. TJ-1-1 and sp. HN-5 were the most abundant microorganisms in the assembly environment of the CSS. In this study, we used these two bacteria to build different microbial load models to represent the occurrence and non-occurrence of microbial outbreaks in the on-orbit CSS. The results show that the number of microorganisms that can be removed when wiping the surface with high microbial load by wet wipes was higher than that when wiping the surface with low microbial load. For on-orbit daily cleaning and keeping the microbial population within the regulation concentration range, it is suitable to use two pure water wipes per 100 cm. When the number of microorganisms increases to a degree where astronauts can see the colonies with their naked eyes, the best way to eliminate the problem is to wipe them thoroughly and repeatedly with at least four quaternary ammonium-based wipes every 100 cm.
太空中站环境中栖息着许多种微生物。湿巾是太空中站用于清洁和减少表面微生物的常用工具。在这里，我们比较了 2021 年前中国太空站（CSS）在轨道上使用的五种湿巾的微生物去污性能。在之前的研究中，我们发现 TJ-1-1 种和 HN-5 种是 CSS 组装环境中最丰富的微生物。在这项研究中，我们使用这两种细菌来建立不同的微生物负荷模型，以代表在轨 CSS 中微生物爆发的发生和不发生情况。结果表明，用湿巾擦拭高微生物负荷表面时可以去除的微生物数量高于擦拭低微生物负荷表面时的数量。对于轨道日常清洁和保持微生物种群在规定浓度范围内，每 100cm 使用两块纯水湿巾是合适的。当微生物数量增加到宇航员可以用肉眼看到菌落的程度时，消除问题的最佳方法是至少每 100cm 用四块季铵盐湿巾彻底擦拭并重复擦拭。
