November 7, 2013

Image Caption: A microbiologist collects a swab sample from the floor of a spacecraft assembly clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Samples such as this are taken frequently during the assembly of a spacecraft and analyzed for a census of the types and numbers of microbes present in the clean room. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Fewer microbes live in a spacecraft clean room than in almost any other environment on Earth. Surveys of what might be living in these clean rooms are important for understanding what could be hitching a ride into space.

With that said, NASA has announced that scientists recently discovered a rare microbe in two spacecraft clean rooms one in Florida and another in South America.

If scientists were ever to discover extraterrestrial life then it would be readily checked against the census of a few hundred types of microbes detected in spacecraft clean rooms in order to determine whether it is actually a discovery or just contamination.

NASA said microbes that are found inside these clean rooms are able to withstand stressors like drying, chemical cleaning, ultraviolet treatment and lack of nutrients. They are also able to withstand spacecraft sterilization methodologies like heating and peroxide treatment.

We want to have a better understanding of these bugs, because the capabilities that adapt them for surviving in clean rooms might also let them survive on a spacecraft, stated microbiologist Parag Vaishampayan, of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. This particular bug survives with almost no nutrients.

The space agency said that this new microbe, known as Tersicoccus phoenicis, is different from any other known bacteria. The berry-shaped bacterium has been classified as both a new species and a new genus.

Other microbes have also been discovered in a spacecraft clean room and found nowhere else on Earth. However, none of these other microbes have been discovered in two different clean rooms and nowhere else. The Tersicoccus phoenicis microbes were found 2,500 miles apart in a NASA facility at Kennedy Space Center and a European Space Agency facility in Kourou, French Guiana.

Read more from the original source:

NASA, ESA Spacecraft Clean Rooms Infested With Rare Bacterium