Astronauts will wriggle into their spacesuits next week to swab outside the International Space Station and see if the lab orbiting 250 miles above Earth is releasing microorganisms into space.
The experiment will focus on collecting samples of bacteria and fungi near vents. NASA wants to know whether germs can survive the harsh environment and, if so, how far they travel. The specimens will be frozen and taken back to Earth for analysis.
Despite the U.S. space agency’s stringent spacecraft cleaning process, hardy microscopic lifeforms can’t be totally removed from instruments bound for space. Furthermore, people carry veritable ecosystems of life on their skin and in their bodies when they go to space. Humans can’t help but spread this stuff — a point John Grunsfeld, NASA’s former chief scientist, emphasized in 2015.
“We know there’s life on Mars already because we sent it there,” he said then.
A NASA researcher shows how to remove a swab from the sampling caddy that is used by astronauts during spacewalks.
Credit: NASA
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — yes, the same pair waiting for their ride home after their Boeing spaceship experienced problems — will conduct the spacewalk to collect the samples, among other tasks. The 6.5-hour jaunt outside the station is targeted for 8 a.m. ET on Jan. 30.
At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, scientists have discovered hundreds of these extremophiles — organisms that can live in the harshest Earth environments — while trying to clean spacecraft. The United States has signed an international treaty to avoid introducing contaminants to extraterrestrial environments.
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To comply, NASA has sought to sanitize Mars rovers at a threshold of no more than 300,000 bacterial spores on any surface. That process has revealed plenty of microbes that can survive high temperatures, low nutrients, and a lack of moisture.
Scientists have collected the specimens to keep a record of the types of so-called “dead bug bodies” that could remain. That way, if a rover shovel digs up some otherworldly dirt and finds life, they have an idea of whether they’ve discovered an alien or just a hitchhiker from Earth.
One super bacteria found in a NASA cleanroom was eventually sent to the space station on purpose, where astronauts hung it outside. When the sample came back, many of the spores were still alive, even after 18 months exposed to cosmic radiation.
An International Space Station fungal culture shown after five days.
Credit: NASA
This upcoming station research aims to better understand the potential for microbes to survive and reproduce in space. The study will determine which human-related bugs could inhabit environments on Mars or other destinations in the solar system during crewed missions. The findings could inform changes to crewed spaceships and spacesuits in the future.
Russian space agency Roscosmos has attempted a similar experiment. They have sampled surfaces and announced the discovery of non-spore-forming bacteria growing outside the station. But NASA is skeptical of whether the devices used in the Russian experiment were contaminated and seeks to produce its own data for comparison.
U.S. astronauts already conduct quarterly studies to monitor what’s living in the air, surfaces, and water within the station. They now have equipment onboard to perform some identification themselves, without sending cultures back to Earth.
NASA hopes the research could also lead to new products. It’s happened before: An extract from that bacteria once left outside the station is now being used as a sunscreen ingredient.
