Abstract: Understanding the species and characteristics of airborne moulds in spacecraft AIT center is of great importance for developing techniques to prevent mould contamination during the assembly and testing process of spacecraft. In this paper, the air samples were collected in three AIT centers located in different areas, and 53 purified strains of mould were acquired using traditional culturebased method. ITS sequencing result shows that these strains belong to eight mould genera. Then the characteristics of these mould strains were studied further. The growth rates measurement shows that different strains of Penicillium and Aspergillus differ greatly in their growth rates. In addition, it is found that the sensitivity of different mould strains to disinfectant PHMB is quite different. It implies that the diversity of both growth rate and disinfectant sensitivity will bring difficulties to the prevention and control of microbial contamination.

Key words: AIT center, airborne microbes, radial growth, disinfectant, airborne moulds