A blank room is an enclosed area where contamination and pollutants are closely monitor and regulated . It ’s where rockets go to be decontaminate before lead into space and quad samples are stored so that the results of any later experiment or depth psychology are not compromised by the bearing of terrestrial microbes .
NASA ’s Johnson Space Center ( JSC ) in Houston , Texas , has a NASA white room with an ISO category 6 military rank ( class 1 is the cleanest and class 9 is the dirtiest ) used to salt away Antarctic meteorites that came to Earth from other major planet . It is currently under preparation to receive samples from Mars and the Bennu asteroid .
But it turns out this particular clear room is n’t so clean after all . Swabs from the trading floor and workbench divulge that JSC has been contaminated by a sneaky fungal plague . The intelligence was presented at the49th Lunar and Planetary Science Conferenceheld in Texas last workweek .
The researchers detect between four and 28 cell in country no bigger than a passport photo ( 51 by 51 millimeters or 2 by 2 inch ) . The figure was even high inside a atomic number 7 - pumping air filter that had not been open for almost 40 years . as luck would have it , this was only on the outer parts of the filter so it is improbable it infect any of the meteorites , which are hive away in nitrogen - filled cabinets and protected by several more defensive structure .
away from the outside of the aura filter , the point of terrestrial microbe at the center is on equality with those in other clean rooms , include the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena , California , and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida . However , the bulk of the bug in these other centre were bacterium .
In JSC , between 83 and 97 percent of the microbes at the meteorite research laboratory were fungi , specifically from the genusPenicillium . This is problematic because fungi could easily infect the sample and align the chemic make-up of the meteorites , potentially skewing any experiment or analytic thinking that later takes piazza .
So , why are there gamey charge per unit of kingdom Fungi here compared to other location ? It may be that previous test have n’t used the correct combination of solid food and brooding shape to try the swabs for kingdom Fungi .
“ I enquire if we ’ve not find fungi in other location because we were n’t appear for them , ” say Aaron Regberg , who present the finding .
“ I ’d characterize [ the final result ] as centre - porta , ” Marc Fries , who curates the cosmic rubble collection at JSC and was n’t involved in the enquiry , toldScience Magazine . “ It drive home this point that kingdom Fungi are an important part of microbic contamination . ”
[ H / T : Science Magazine ]
