Survey of the Microbial Contamination Knowledge on Board Manned Russian Space Vehicles. Microbial monitoring of spacecraft and space stations is crucial to maintain the health of the crew members as well as the proper functioning of the hardware.

Air, surfaces and water systems must be carefully monitored to detect the presence of potentially pathogenic organisms as well as to detect the development of harmful micro-organisms.

During their 13 years of experience within the MIR Station activities, and previous manned missions (i.e. Salyut), our Russian colleagues have valuable information on this subject.

It was the aim of this study to perform a general survey of the existing knowledge.

Survey of the Microbial Contamination Knowledge on Board Manned Russian Space Vehicles