26 Unidentified Bacterial Species Detected in NASA Cleanroom

In space travel, it can often be the tiniest things that ruin a big mission. That’s why attention to detail is key, particularly inside a cleanroom where spacecraft are put together and prepped for their rigorous journey through the cosmos. But even those meticulously regulated rooms can’t keep some microorganisms out. In fact, some bacteria thrive in the stringent environment. A group of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as other institutes in India and Saudi Arabia, discovered 26 previously unknown bacterial species in the cleanroom used to assemble the Phoenix spacecraft ahead of its launch in August 2007. The discovery, recently published in the journal Microbiome, highlights the potential risk posed by highly resilient microorganisms that could contaminate space missions or the planets they visit. For the study, the team of scientists sequenced 215 bacterial strains. Some of these were present before the Phoenix spacecraft arrived at its cleanroom on April ... Read full article.