Mushrooms In Space

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As we all learned by watching the iconic Star Wars films space can get a tad grimy. Astronauts who often spent weeks up in orbit in capsules the size of bathrooms minus showers or proper toilets will attest to that. But it is the International Space Station that just brings grime home in unexpected flower. Cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov called down to the Russian control room from the International Space Station to report something unexpected in a corner of the space station: mushrooms. These grungy fungi were not an experiment. They were in fact growing in an untended, dark, nasty corner of the station. Aleksandr Sprin with the Russian mission control said "If there’s not enough ventilation in the bathroom then, because it’s damp, the bacteria grows into a fungus. The cosmonauts were apparently hanging their wet towels in the bathroom and then they noticed that on the back wall there were fungi (or mushrooms) growing. The fungi are now being removed with some chemical cleaner."Massive eww factor going on here...