Better sequencing tech may help keep planets clean

Abstract

In September 1956, more than a year before Sputnik would officially launch the space age, the International Astronautical Federation convened in Rome. Its agenda had little to do with mission logistics—attendees were actually there to discuss lunar and planetary contamination. Eleven years later, at the height of the Cold War, the international community signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, agreeing to explore space only for peaceful purposes. As part of the treaty, signees promised to avoid “harmful contamination” of the moon and other celestial bodies. Space researchers have long recognized the importance of preventing microbial stowaways. In September 2010, JPL scientists prepped the Mars rover Curiosity for its November 2011 launch. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech. Space researchers have long recognized the importance of preventing microbial stowaways. Alien microbes brought back to Earth could be dangerous. But the main worry is that Earth microbes could spoil the potential discovery of extraterrestrial life. For at least half a century, the goals of planetary protection have remained the same even as scientific knowledge has ballooned. The solar system has proved more diverse than imagined, with potentially habitable environments in subsurface oceans on icy moons, deep inside the Martian dirt, or even on Ceres in the asteroid belt. In recent years, microbiology has undergone a renaissance of sorts, as researchers are finding the microbial universe to be more complex, ubiquitous, and consequential than previously thought. Underpinning this progress is new genomic-sequencing technology that's empowering researchers to study microbes faster and better than ever before. Researchers are now exploiting these same tools to bolster planetary protection efforts. “We need to know in more detail what microbes may elude our cleaning and sterilization procedures and become a problem for tomorrow,” says Kasthuri Venkateswaran, a microbiologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). As humans plan for more …