Rakesh Mogul, Professor of biological chemistry California Polytechnic University in Pomona, was the lead author of the study published in the journal Astrobiology, where scientists explain the cause of contamination of germs sterile conditions of the spacecraft after cleaning. In clean rooms of NASA developed and implemented a variety of measures of planetary defense to minimize biological contamination of the spacecraft. This is necessary because contamination of the earth’s microorganisms can jeopardize the problem of detecting life on other planets, giving false positive results.
However, despite lengthy cleaning procedures, molecular genetic analyses show that pure rooms are still a variety of microorganisms, microflora of the spacecraft, which includes bacteria, archaea, and fungi, says Mogul. Acinetobacter, a genus of bacteria, is among the dominant members of the microflora of the spacecraft.
To understand how the microflora of the spacecraft survives in sterile areas, the researchers analyzed several strains of Acinetobacter which were initially discovered on Mars Odyssey and Phoenix.
It turned out that in conditions of limited nutrients, the majority of the tested strains grew and Biratnagar cleaning products used during spacecraft Assembly. The work has shown that these crops were growing on ethanol as the sole carbon source, demonstrating resistance to oxidative stress. This is important because oxidative stress is associated with searing and high radiation environments like those on Mars.
Test strains are also able to Birthlight isopropyl alcohol and Kleenol 30, two other cleaning products that are commonly used with these products potentially used as a source of energy for the microflora.
“We provide the community of planetary protection basic understanding of why all these microorganisms are in clean rooms,” says Mogul. “Clean room is always something falls, but the question was why germs are in those rooms, and why there is a certain set of microorganisms which most often do.”
Some of this work can be concluded? For greater planetary protection will require a more rigorous cleaning procedure, and creating new cleaning reagents that are compatible with the spacecraft in order to prevent the spread of terrestrial microbes “hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy”.
Scientists have discovered how microbes manage to survive in the sterile environment of the spacecraft
Ilya Hel