Are you a busy astronaut with precious little time to clean your orbiting home? Do you find it hard to reach those awkward spots behind spacecraft control panels where bacteria love to lurk? Then you need GermRover: the must-have, labour-saving, sterilisation device for the modern space traveller.
Astronauts currently spend several hours a week wiping down the inside of the International Space Station (ISS) to get rid of the microbes that previous residents have left behind. It is a laborious and unpopular task. Now, a US firm says it has the solution: an autonomous drone fitted with sterilising UV lamps that can fly around and sanitise the modules of the ISS while astronauts sleep.
鈥淯V disinfection has been shown to decrease hospital infection rates, so we expect to replicate those results in space,鈥� says Elliot Kreitenberg, who developed the drone with his father Arthur, a surgeon and former astronaut programme finalist.
Advertisement
The ageing space station crawls with bacteria and mould and arriving crew members say it smells like the inside of a sock. As well as being unpleasant, the contamination can make astronauts ill. Many report colds and blocked noses within days. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 simply open a window,鈥� says Kreitenberg.
The company that makes GermRover, ,聽is in talks with NASA about trialling the technology, and will unveil a prototype at the Aerospace Medicine Association conference in Las Vegas next month.
Smaller than a shoebox, the drone weighs about 1 kilogram and uses tiny propellers and sensors to move itself. Unlike Earth-bound devices that use most of their battery charge just to stay aloft, the zero-gravity environment means the drone can power its UV bulbs for several hours at a time. Astronauts could program its routine, or simply allow it to fly and clean at random, similar to household robot vacuum cleaners.
