Say we get to Mars. Then what?
Is cyanobacteria the answer to long-term life sustainability beyond Earth?
If man is to become a space-faring civilization — not just for a handful of space agencies and companies, but for everyone — we will need a way to create resources once we get there.
That was the vision behind TeamIndus Foundation’s Lab2Moon competition, in which students from around the world were asked to imagine experiments that would contribute to sustainable solutions for life outside Earth. And Team Killalab’s solution involves cyanobacteria — the microbes being widely studied for possible applications in space. Their idea? To expose it to the intense radiation on the moon and see how it changes.
The team of scientists from Peru includes Ruth (25), Sofia (24), Romulo (27) and Marco (25) — the founding members of Team KillaLab. Ruth and Sofia studied biology and microbiology respectively, while Romulo is a post-graduate student of chemistry and Marco is a graduate in mechanical engineering. The four are members of the Scientific Society of Astrobiology of Peru and have participated in various initiatives, internships and astrobiology projects.
The team came together when the Lab2Moon competition was announced in July 2016. By August they hit the drawing board. Months of work and experiments resulted in their first prototype in February 2017. By then, they had been shortlisted from among 3,000 teams to move on to the next stage of the competition.
In March, after reworking the electronics, they traveled from Peru to Bangalore to appear before a jury consisting of Dr K. Kasturirangan, former chairman of ISRO; Dr Alain Bensoussan, former head of the French and European Space Agencies; and Dr Priyamvada Natarajan, professor of physics and astronomy, Yale University. They were among the chosen few that will fly aboard the TeamIndus spacecraft, with the data and learnings from all our experimental payloads to be put into the public domain for the benefit of researchers everywhere.
Now the team has grown to 10 members, and they have constantly impressed with their creative and resourceful approach to problems. For instance, when they needed cyanobacteria, they went out and collected it from the Pastoruri Glacier in the Andes mountains in northern Peru.
‘It is an exciting experience as we are participating in a space mission and also making history for our country. In all Latin America, Peru would be the first country to send something to the Moon. It is also something we are grateful for.’ the team writes from Peru.
Mission objectives
‘As many scientists have proved, cyanobacteria can produce almost anything,’ says Ruth. “The food industry, pharmaceuticals and biomaterial production that can be used to fabricate spacesuits” are all possible uses for cyanobacteria in space, explains Merino Nohelia, one of the core members of Killalab.
There are several components to the experiment, including:
- Gamma radiation test
- UV radiation test
- Protective pigments degradation test
- Test of the temperature effect
- Photographic record of the morphological changes
Once operationalized on the lunar surface, all the data from these tests will be sent back to earth via the On Board Computer of the TeamIndus lander.
Experiment design
At this point, the team is working in association with their mentors in Peru and remotely with engineers at TeamIndus in Bangalore. “We are currently in the theoretical analysis phase to obtain data on the effect of vibration and temperature in the space to proceed with the fabrication.”
Killalab, like all the Lab2Moon student teams, have refined their idea in the process of creating space-worthy models. “At the beginning, we performed a simple experiment that sensed ultraviolet radiation and gave us the range of absorption of biofilms by means of curves of incident and transmitted radiation. Our design evolved by incorporating new instruments such as the nanospectrometer and an ionizing radiation sensor that will help us understand the effect of biofilm degradation. With the new acquisition of spectrometers, the original tin-shaped design changed to a horizontal rectangular design.”
Designing for space presents unique challenges which they are covering as they come up. ‘There are several concepts related to space exploration that team members did not know and step by step we are discovering them. Designing something for space is definitely a challenge in every way you see it.’
