Decontaminate! Decontaminate!

Mould problem in here would be rather a more serious
issue than in your bathroom

As if following up from yesterday's post, the fungus-related news item this week is about space.

Meet the robotic European cargo ship Albert Einstein, unmanned disposable space vehicle that has just delivered food, personal items and spare parts to the International Space Station. It docked last week, but was only opened on Tuesday, as the partner nations were discussing what to do about a potential mould infection in its cargo bay.

It's not known if the cargo actually had fungi in it. It was just that Russian side stated that decontamination procedures had been unsatisfactory, and therefore the 6 members of the crew will have to clean all of 21 bags of goods that they'd just received. Curiously, one of the packs contains some special delicacies for the Italian astronaut, Luca Parmitano. Tiramisu is mentioned, but perhaps he also asked for some "funghi porcini"? Could it all be just an error in communication?

Hope it won't come to this

Trying to find more details on fungal space infestations, I found an instructive article about Space station Mir (with a couple of unappetising photos). Also irrelevantly, but rather hilariously, I came across a game that takes the idea of evil fungi to the extreme: it features mutated flesh-eating sentient space mushrooms which you have to avoid on your way to a moon base. So keep vigilant, ISS crew - that is one fungus I definitely do not want to become a reality.

Image credits:
The inside of ATV-4 Albert Einstein, NASA TV via space.com
Lost in space fungus