Bacterial Monitoring in the International Space Station – “Kibo”

Abstract

Since 2009, we have been continuously performing bacterial monitoring in Kibo, the Japanese Experiment Module of the International Space Station (ISS), in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The objective of this research is to monitor microbes and analyze their dynamics in Kibo from environmental microbiological viewpoints. In this review, we summarize our research related to bacterial monitoring in Kibo.