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[Peggy Whitson] Obviously, living and breathing
in an environment that is enclosed all the time, it is very important
to understand what organisms might be or chemicals might be contaminating that.
And when we go to the moon and Mars, it is going to be even more important
because we won’t have the laboratories on Earth
to help us in that quick analysis and understanding.
So it is going to be important for us to develop new methods
and technologies of real-time analysis.
And we actually have some experiments on board where we are looking at just that.
Our experience base here on the International Space Station
is going to be a steppingstone to what we will need to do
to go to the moon and Mars.
I am looking forward to being part of that, as well, and hope you will be.
Since our station is orbiting the Earth, we live in the vacuum of space.
So it's very important to keep our environment inside healthy and safe for us.
I wanted to talk to you today about a few of the ways that we do keep our environment
clean and healthy and safe for us to live in for long periods of time.
Obviously, we live up here for several months at a time,
and so we care about our air quality.
One of the ways we monitor air quality is to use grab sample containers.
These little bottles are full of vacuums, which is “nothing.”
When we open them up, it takes a sample of our air.
Then we can send those back down to the ground and have them analyzed
for any constituents or components
that we might need to get better at cleaning out of our environment,
or to just ensure that we have a safe air environment.
Another little thing that we have is the formaldehyde monitors.
These samples measure formaldehyde in our air, again analyzed on the ground.
These little sample containers are relatively easy to use.
You just have to open a little handle --
well, remove the cap first, actually -- then open the handle.
And because there is no air inside, the air is sucked inside
and the sample of air is taken at any given point in time.
Obviously, I can’t open any of these up since we wouldn’t want to contaminate the sample.
On orbit we also have ways of measuring some of the components in our air,
and I am going to show you the volatile organic analyzer.
This hardware uses gas chromatography and ion mobility spectrometry
to analyze different types of components in our air that we might worry about.
It has a little air inlet valve, and it can measure these components real-time
and give us some data on board the International Space Station.
In addition to hardware that we use to monitor our air quality,
we also have some hardware that we use
to clean and filter our air quality on board the International Space Station.
Here I am next to the trace chemical contaminant system.
This system uses charcoal-based technology
and other absorbent technologies to remove harmful components out of our air.
It also has this macro filter on the outside that gets a little dusty.
So, just like on the ground, we have to clean that filter
so that the hardware will work better.
And just like on the ground, we have a vacuum cleaner up here to clean it with.
Of course, mine gets to float in the air up here,
which makes it a little easier to deal with.
But we just use the vacuum cleaner the same way you would on the ground
to suck up the contaminants off the filters, the external filters.
And then, of course, the air gets sucked through the hardware,
and the contaminants are absorbed to various different materials inside the system.
We also have a lot of air circulation
throughout each of the modules and between the modules,
and one of the ways that we ensure that
the air quality is good within the modules are these HEPA filters.
These are microscopic filters
that take out very small materials, contaminants, including bacteria.
Again, they have a large screen on the outside that gets cluttered up
with dust and fur balls that we have to suck off with the vacuum cleaner.
So part of our weekly chores is to clean the filters
to make sure that all our hardware is working appropriately.
We have hardware on board to do science experiments.
And in order to protect us and our atmosphere that we are living in,
we have this microgravity sciences glove box.
We can put an experiment inside, and it will be fully contained.
We can vent any potential contaminants overboard and keep our environment safe
and allow us to do some interesting experiments
that we might not otherwise be able to do.
Also, we care about the microbiological organisms and fungal organisms
that might be in our water, air and on our surfaces.
And here is a sample of a water sample from one of our systems.
It’s taken back to the Earth and analyzed on the ground in great detail.
We also have the capability to do some water analysis on board
looking for various different microbe counts, colony counts on board.
We can also look at microorganisms that we have grown from various samples.
For instance, this is a Petri plate that had air run across it
at a certain rate for a certain period of time, and we can count the colonies --
the number of colonies -- that grew on each Petri plate.
Some colonies grow specifically on plates that are for bacteria,
and other colonies are for fungi.
And so we can be checking either bacterial or fungal contamination in our air,
which is good to make sure that we can make that assessment on board the station.
We can also do onboard assessments of the microorganisms that grow,
or fungal organisms that grow, on surfaces.
These are little Petri plates that we touch to the surface
that we are interested in knowing the microbial count for.
And after a few days of growing these, or incubating these media plates,
then we can look and count the number of colonies that we have.
Then we send them back to the Earth for a more detailed analysis.
So that's some of the ways that we take care of our space station
and keep it clean up here on the International Space Station.
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