Astronauts recently had their gloves swabbed in an early
effort to develop planetary protection measures that prevent humans from
accidentally contaminating the moon or Mars on future missions.
The crew of space shuttle Discovery and the International
Space Station used a new laboratory device to examine biological material on
the gloves of astronauts servicing the space station. Such tests could help
NASA understand and plan around how to prevent the spread
of Earth life to other planets.
"This simple approach, designed to monitor the spread
of biological material in space, takes very little crew time to perform and
could prove to be a useful step in planning future human missions to the moon
and Mars," said Jake Maule, a geophysicist with BAE Systems.
The space station's Lab-on-a-Chip Portable Test System, or
LOCAD-PTS, can rapidly detect and identify a variety of biological materials
relating to bacteria and fungi, and has been on the space station since March
2007.
A recent spacewalk on March 19 provided the opportunity for
astronaut Sandy Magnus to swab the spacesuit gloves of STS-119 mission
specialists Steve Swanson and Richard Arnold, both before they exited the space
station airlock and after they returned.
The spacewalkers installed a solar array truss segment (S6),
which had been sampled and analyzed with LOCAD-PTS prior to launch with
Discovery on March 15. NASA clean room procedures ensured that most surfaces of
the hardware remained clean, but the lab device did detect small levels of
fungi — especially in the fabric gap spanners, or safety elements that connect
handrails and allow astronauts to move safely around the outside of the space
station as they work.
Dead or live bacteria or fungi that remained on the S6
segment would have likely ended up on the spacewalker gloves. An analysis by
LOCARD-PTS will likely turn up results after the space shuttle undocks for the
journey home.
"These guys were the first guys to put their hands on
it since it's been in space, so we were swabbing their gloves and so we'll know
what's just out there in space versus when we go looking for life on other
places," said Tony Antonelli, shuttle pilot for Discovery.
Any life that survives in space may also evolve in
unexpected ways. Studies from two recent space shuttle missions showed that Salmonella
bacteria, which cause food poisoning on Earth, became
more virulent in the space station's microgravity environment. Tiny
creatures called water bears have also demonstrated the ability to survive
exposure in the harsh vacuum of space.
LOCAD-PTS should help develop procedures and tools to keep
an eye on biological contaminants that might creep aboard expeditions to the
moon or Mars, said Mike Effinger, a LOCAD project manager at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
"Because spaceflight currently is limited to low Earth
orbit, requirements don't exist yet in regard to biological contamination of
other planetary surfaces by human missions," Effinger said. "This
study seeks to begin development of test procedures that can be further
developed on the moon in preparation for the human
exploration of Mars."
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