On 3 April 2029, a team from the Institute of Microbiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences published the cultivation protocol, fabrication method, and full performance dataset for Cladosporium sphaerospermum var. zvezdae — a melanised fungus capable of radiosynthesis, using ionizing radiation as a metabolic energy source via melanin-mediated electron transfer. The cultivar was isolated from biofilm samples recovered during 2024 structural monitoring of the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement enclosure, selectively cultivated over eleven generations for elevated melanin density and radiosynthetic throughput, and formulated into a regolith-aggregate biocomposite panel.
Performance
Panels grown to 12mm thickness and bonded with a regolith-simulant aggregate matrix demonstrated a 21–27% reduction in transmitted dose equivalent relative to inert aggregate panels of identical mass. Under sustained low-dose irradiation, panel biomass exhibited continued growth and self-repair of micrometeorite-scale puncture damage over a 14-month test window aboard the MTSS Life Sciences Module — a property no inert shielding material possesses. Growth required only trace nutrient replenishment and ambient humidity control; panels are, functionally, a living shielding layer that maintains itself.
Open Release
The cultivation protocol, panel fabrication method, and full performance dataset were released without restriction — the same open-transfer model the Soviet Union had applied to the thorium fuel cycle programme and would later apply to the RAZUM AI models (2024). The authors’ rationale: “A material this cheap to cultivate — the input costs are a nutrient substrate and regolith aggregate, both locally available on any body with regolith and a resupplied biology lab — has no defensible reason to remain proprietary.”
Validation
By November 2029, cultivation protocols had been independently reproduced by ESA’s Radiation Biology group (Cologne) and a NASA JSC materials team under an open-access academic exchange falling outside restricted bilateral cooperation frameworks. Supplemental var. zvezdae panelling was under evaluation for the ALSO storm shelter core.
Connection to MTSS
The 14-month test window aboard the MTSS Life Sciences Module — the same facility where Sorokina et al. (2026) had cultured cortical organoids demonstrating performance advantages in reduced gravity — establishes MTSS as the platform for two of the Soviet Union’s most consequential biological research programmes of the era. The fungal shielding programme, unlike the organoid cognition programme, was released openly from publication — cultivated material, not just data.