iss050e057206 (3/14/2017) --- European Space Agency (ESA) Thomas Pesquet used the Microbial Monitoring System (MMS) portion of the Water Monitoring Suite (WMS) experiment to perform the Aquapad demonstration and sampling. The Water Monitoring Suite is a set of hardware that monitors microbes, silica and organic material in the water supply on the International Space Station. The hardware ensures crew members can test and monitor the safety of their water supplies on future space missions, especially on long-duration missions to Mars, asteroids or other destinations where Earth-based testing would be difficult or impossible.
Photographer Thomas Pesquet
Date March 14, 2017