NASA study will help stop stowaways to Mars!

In this article, recent studies conducted by NASA have discovered new species of ‘extremophiles,’ ultra-hardy bacterial organisms that thrive in harsh environments such as hot-springs, deep mines and ice caves. These new findings will assist in the search for life on Mars by helping scientists improve sanitation and sterilization of equipment sent to Mars in order to prevent false identification of Martian organisms. NASA will also use this knowledge to improve the facilities where spacecraft is built to prevent microbial life and dust from contaminating the instruments and invalidate experimental data collected on missions to Mars. NASA hoped to create a catalogue of clean-room microbes to increase the probability that organisms will not be misidentified as Martian in origin.
NASA has since used a technique called ribosomal RNA gene-sequencing to discover that the total number of bacteria and the amount of species was much higher than previously believed. Clean rooms such as those used in space shuttle construction are considered to be extreme environments in which life should not thrive, though some species of microbes are adapted to this type of habitat. This finding has implications for areas such as hospital sanitation and industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, where sterility is of utmost importance.