Transcript

NARRATOR:

Space travel can be a bit of a challenge, not just because of what you might miss, but because space vessels can become heavily contaminated with staphylococcus, which might sound like a dinosaur, but is actually a type of bacteria. But sadly, in space, getting things clean isn't very easy. In fact, the first astronauts were worried that in microgravity environments, bacteria would become more powerful and resistant to antibiotics.

So because of all the effort and cost of working in a space environment, scientists recreate the effects of microgravity on Earth and experiment on bacteria in a very clever rotating chamber where the bacteria can breed and multiply, but don't know up from down. At a first glance, the bacteria appear to live and die very similarly to their Earth-born siblings. But it turns out that in microgravity, bacteria are likely to be less virulent than on Earth, which is not only good news for astronauts, but also good news for research into bacterial resistance and helping to keep things clean.