Microbiology

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Microbiology Laboratory at JSC NASA.

Microorganisms and Spaceflight

Spaceflight poses a risk of adverse health effects due to the interactions between microorganisms, their hosts, and their environment. The JSC Microbiology team addresses the benefits and risks related to microorganisms, including infectious disease, allergens, environmental and food contamination, and the impacts of changes in environmental and human microbial ecology aboard spacecraft. The team includes certified medical technologists, environmental microbiologists, mycologists, and biosafety professionals.

The JSC Microbiology laboratory is a critical component of the Human Health and Performance Directorate and is responsible for addressing crew health and environmental issues related to microbial infection, allergens, and contamination. This responsibility is achieved by operational monitoring and investigative research using classical microbiological, advanced molecular, and immunohistochemical techniques. This research has resulted in a significant number of presentations and peer-reviewed publications contributing to the field of Microbiology with articles in journals such as Infection and Immunity, Journal of Infectious Disease and Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Nature Reviews Microbiology, and Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Fun Fact: Microorganisms display unexpected responses when grown in the spaceflight environment compared to otherwise identically grown microbes on Earth.

NASA

Christian Castro is streaking bacteria to be characterized using a variety of culture media. Photo Date: May 29, 2018. Location: Building 21 – Microbiology Lab. NASA

Keeping Crew-members Safe

As a functional part of the Crew Health Care System and in support of Environmental Control and Life Support Systems engineers, the Microbiology Laboratory team defines requirements, coordinates and analyzes microbial sampling, and analysis of air, surface, and water samples. These environmental samples, including preflight and in-flight samples, re-analyzed to ensure that microorganisms do not adversely affect crew health or system performance.

Microbiologists also serve as team members when anomalous events occur that might affect crew health or life support systems operations. Spaceflight food samples also are evaluated preflight to decrease the risk of infectious disease to the crew.

A crewmember identifies unknown environmental microbes aboard the ISS through DNA sequencing.NASA

Technology and Hardware

ABI DNA sequencer

Illumina MiSeq desktop sequencer

Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION DNA / RNA sequencers

Agilent Bioanalyzer

VITEK 2 Microbial Identification

​Space analogue bioreactors

An example of in-flight Surface Sampler Kit results with growth of fungal cultures after 5 daysNASA

Points of Contact

Sarah Wallace, PhDHang Nguyen, PhD

Human Health and Performance Capabilities

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Last Updated

Dec 30, 2025

EditorRobert E. LewisLocationJohnson Space Center

Related TermsHuman Health and Performance

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