Clean Berry

During this adventure at JPL we had a few speakers talk about very interesting components of the visualization of space and the tools that we send there. However, we also visited the clean rooms and I was beyond fascinated. So I began researching it and found multiple articles entailing more details about the new bacteria they found in the rooms themselves.

            To being with, the rooms are highly monitored for outside contaminants and deigned to be cleaned with certain chemicals routinely. In addition, the rooms are kept extremely dry, have negative air pressure, use ultraviolet light and heat to kill bacteria, and the employees that are required to go into the room must wear special suits in order to not further contaminate anything with their mere presence. Everything seems to be working until NASA discovered a new species of berry-shaped microbes during a routine swab sample test.

Tersicoccus (Latin for clean berry) phoenicis, also classified as a new genus, has been found in a Florida branch as well as at the European Space Agency’s facility in Kourou, French Guiana. "This particular bug survives with almost no nutrients," said Parag Vaishampayan, a microbiologist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

"We want to have a better understanding of these bugs, because the capabilities that adapt them for surviving in clean rooms might also let them survive on a spacecraft.

“The same bug might be in the soil outside the clean room but we wouldn't necessarily identify it there because it would be hidden by the overwhelming numbers of other bugs." "Tersicoccus phoenicis might be found in some natural environment with extremely low nutrient levels, such as a cave or desert," said Dr Vaishampayan.

            I just think the whole thought of having a huge room where the cleanliness is taken to the most extreme is fascinating. As I was looking at the room, I thought about how the tools and technology would be used and affected. If there were supposedly no dust in that room at all, would the technology last for a very long time because there are no outside forces acting upon it besides plain use? To top off the fascination, the fact that there was a new microbe found in rooms on opposite sides of the globe practically is so unrealistically amazing! I feel like these type of discoveries are just a glimpse into the future when it comes to new findings with more intense technology as well as more in-depth analysis of other planets that we will eventually step foot on.

also cool video of a women preparing and then going into a clean room