Scientists have discovered 26 previously unknown bacterial species living in NASA’s spacecraft assembly cleanrooms, environments long thought to be nearly sterile, revealing that life can adapt to extreme cleaning protocols and resist standard sterilization measures; this finding suggests that planetary protection strategies will need to be revised because microbes capable of withstanding rigorous cleanroom conditions might also survive transfer to other planets, raising important questions for future missions to Mars and icy moons, and blurring the line between contamination and resilience in astrobiology research.
Source: Live Science
Link: https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/microbiology/stop-and-re-check-everything-scientists-discover-26-new-bacterial-species-in-nasas-cleanrooms
Scientists Discover Living Fossils That Thrive in Cleanrooms, Challenging Assumptions About Sterility
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