Abstract Background The International Space Station (ISS) is an ideal test bed for studying
the effects of microbial persistence and succession on a closed system during long space …

Abstract Background The Spacecraft Assembly Facility (SAF) at the NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory is the primary cleanroom facility used in the construction of some of the planetary …

To ensure that scientific investments in space exploration are not compromised by terrestrial
contamination of celestial bodies, special care needs to be taken to preserve planetary …

Planetary protection is a guiding principle aiming to prevent microbial contamination of the
solar system by spacecraft (forward contamination) and extraterrestrial contamination of the …

Ensuring biological cleanliness while assembling and launching spacecraft is critical for
robotic exploration of the solar system. To date, when preventing forward contamination of …

NASA planetary protection (PP) requires an assessment of the biological contamination of
the potential microbial burden on spacecraft destined to explore planetary bodies that may …

Background With increasing numbers of interplanetary missions, there is a need to establish
robust protocols to ensure the protection of extraterrestrial planets being visited from …

During microbial surveillance of the Mars 2020 spacecraft assembly facility, two novel
bacterial strains, potentially capable of producing lasso peptides, were identified …

Abstract The Mars Sample Return mission architecture will utilize three spacecraft to collect,
cache, recover, launch, and return to Earth a diversity of regolith and rock samples …

There is increased interest in exploring planetary bodies that have ocean worlds, and
planetary protection (PP) practices for spacecraft are important to avoid harmful biological …