Chapter 17 Additional Experiments

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the confinement study carried out under the Isolation Study for European Manned Space Infrastructure (ISEMSI), where a ceiling was imposed on the amount of time to be devoted to psychological and physiological experiments. This allowed filling the experiment schedule for 28 days of confinement with additional space-relevant experiments, the so-called “add-on experiments.” In microbiological experiments, the ISEMSI microbiological contamination experiments confirmed known hypotheses, such as (1) the trend towards the uniformity of skin microbial flora across a group of individuals enclosed together; (2) the rather fast colonization of the environment by microorganisms shed by human inhabitants; and (3) the heavy growth of microorganisms in poorly accessible and wet areas (toilets, air conditioning). The chapter evaluates several different prototypes of array sensors for the monitoring of trace gas contaminants in the atmosphere during ISEMSI. In the ISEMSI study, the telemedicine experiment confirmed the feasibility and importance of applying to a space station scenario many aspects of remote health care, already widely used in the maritime environment.