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    • The International Space Station Has a Unique and Extreme Microbial and Chemical Environment Driven by Use Patterns

    Metadata Updated: August 30, 2025

    Space habitation provides unique challenges in built environments isolated from Earth. We produced a 3D map of the microbes and metabolites throughout the International Space Station (ISS), with 803 samples collected during space flight, including controls. We find that the use of each of the nine sampled modules within the ISS strongly drives the microbiology and chemistry of the habitat. Relating the microbiology to other Earth habitats, we find that, as with human microbiomes, built environment microbiomes also align naturally along an axis of industrialization, with the ISS providing an extreme example of an industrialized environment. We demonstrate the utility of culture-independent sequencing for microbial risk monitoring, especially as the location of sequencing moves to space. The resulting resource of chemistry and microbiology in the space-built environment will guide long-term efforts to maintain human health in space for longer durations.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date August 30, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date August 30, 2025
    Publisher Open Science Data Repository
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.26030/76mj-db19
    Data Last Modified 2025-08-21
    Category Biological and Physical Sciences
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id b1b22e7a-07e3-40e6-8a09-d0da413da2d8
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://osdr.nasa.gov/bio/repo/data/missions/SpaceX-21
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash bf9466eb2a67889d37fb3a6de8445a8932c2c67134cd17862796b17968910af6
    Source Schema Version 1.1

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