FTIR spectroscopy for microbial contamination detection

Abstract

Crew health and planetary protection against microbial contamination is a serious concern in planning the future missions of space exploration. Significant efforts are being devoted at both ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to both detect and help prevent contamination from microorganisms in human-crewed spaceflights. The monitoring and managing of the bioactivity is therefore a topic that deserves careful attention. Hence, a new project to develop an instrument that would quantify and qualify microbial contamination on surfaces is raised: DEMPCOS. This project aims at the development and feasibility demonstration of a rapid detection of pathogenic markers, the bacteria at the genus, species and strain level on surfaces.