A research experiment from a team of students at the Community College of Allegheny County blasted off into space last night aboard a SpaceX rocket. The experiment will test how microgravity affects the ability of a certain kind of fungus to break down polyester-polyurethane — a common plastic.
People create more than 400 million tons of plastic waste each year, according to the United Nations Environment Program. It’s more than the total weight of all humans on Earth. What doesn’t get reused or recycled, doesn’t degrade but breaks down into microplastics, which can be found in the rain, at the bottom of the ocean, in tap water, in the air and in human lungs all over the world.
Recent research has shown that more than 400 microbes, such as bacteria or fungi, might be capable of degrading plastic into smaller, more recyclable compounds. These fungi could help speed up plastic degradation and help reduce plastic pollution. The CCAC team is studying one called Penicillium chrysogenum, which can also be used to create the antibiotic penicillin.
“We know that this fungus can degrade polyurethane,” said Maya Burns, part of the CCAC team and now a sophomore molecular biology major at the University of Pittsburgh. “We're wondering how microgravity on the International Space Station would affect its growth and how quickly it degrades. So the hope is that it's possible that it would degrade polyurethane quicker.”
The team got their experiment a spot onboard after winning an International Student Spaceflights Experiments competition in 2023, sponsored by the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education.
The SpaceX rocket will travel to the International Space Station where the experiment will take place in the microgravity conditions onboard. Back on Earth, Burns and fellow team members Faith Dunn and Connor McDonagh will run a control experiment at the same time. After the space experiment returns to Earth, they’ll run analyses to compare the plastic degradation.
The research could be used to help figure out how to deal with plastic waste and create new models of reusing and recycling on Earth and in space, according to Burns.
“For there to be a sustainable, repeatable way of dealing with that, that is organic, that is natural would be fantastic.”
