Samples taken from the space-returned piece of asteroid Ryugu were collected and prepared under strict anti-contamination controls. Inside the cleanest of clean rooms, a tiny particle was collected from the returned sample with sterilized tools in a nitrogen atmosphere and stored in airtight containers before being embedded in an epoxy block for scanning electron microscopy.
It’s hard to imagine what more one could do, but despite all the precautions taken, the samples were rapidly colonized by terrestrial microorganisms. Only the upper few microns of the sample surface, but it happened. That’s what the images above show.
Obtaining a sample from asteroid Ryugu was a triumph. Could this organic matter have come from the asteroid itself? In a word, no. Researchers have concluded the microorganisms are almost certainly terrestrial bacteria that contaminated the sample during collection, despite the precautions taken.
You can read the study to get all the details, but it seems that microorganisms — our world’s greatest colonizers — can circumvent contamination controls. No surprise, in a way. Every corner of our world is absolutely awash in microbial life. Opening samples on Earth comes with challenges.
As for off-Earth, robots may be doing the exploration but despite NASA assembling landers in clean room environments we may have already inadvertently exported terrestrial microbes to the Moon, and Mars. The search for life to which we are not related is one of science and humanity’s greatest quests, but it seems life found on a space-returned samples will end up looking awfully familiar until we step up our game.
Reminds me of early research on cancer. A lot of cancer research had to be dumped because a particular strain of cancer cells (HeLa) would act like a weed in the lab, contaminating other samples, crowding out the original cells.
“can circumvent contamination controls”
Can circumvent apparently inadequate controls.
And about massive and FOR CERTAIN contamination of other bodies in the solar system, like Mars, just wait until humans or a few, huge, unmanned Starships land there.
Colonizing Mars means contaminating Mars – and never knowing for sure if it had its own native life – November 6, 2018
Excerpt:
Given that the exploration of Mars has so far been limited to [sterilized] unmanned vehicles, the planet likely remains free from terrestrial contamination.
But when Earth sends astronauts to Mars, they’ll travel with life support and energy supply systems, habitats, 3D printers, food and tools. None of these materials can be sterilized in the same ways systems associated with robotic spacecraft can. Human colonists will produce waste, try to grow food and use machines to extract water from the ground and atmosphere. Simply by living on Mars, human colonists will contaminate Mars.
Astrobiology Vol. 17, No. 10
Searching for Life on Mars Before It Is Too Late
1 Oct 2017
Abstract excerpt:
Planetary Protection policies as we conceive them today will no longer be valid as human arrival will inevitably increase the introduction of terrestrial and organic contaminants and that could jeopardize the identification of indigenous Martian life.
“Can circumvent apparently inadequate controls.”
Or by someone who screwed up and doesn’t want to admit it or someone who screwed up and didn’t know they did. All kinds of optimum growth mediums for life and similar mass produced items need to be and are successfully protected from contamination and kept sterile. The fact that this wasn’t is incredible.
Let’s not forget the real possibility of microbes blown off Earth’s upper atmosphere by the Solar Wind, and later landing on any surface beyond Earth’s orbit.
‘Life, uh, finds a way’ – Dr. Ian Malcolm, 1993.
Without looking at how they actually “sterilize” things, when you blast something in, say, an autoclave, or just even boil something on your stove at home, you are certainly sterilizing it in the sense that it is killing the microorganisms- but their corpses so to speak aren’t actually being removed or going anywhere. So unless they are washing every single component of a spacecraft in like high strength acid or something, there will still be bacteria and certainly viruses stuck to everything. Not viable (hopefully, and another can of worms about if viruses are “alive” at all) but they will still be sitting there.
Even boiling won’t kill everything. The work in the cited paper suggests that there was active growth of the microbes on the samples, so it isn’t just cell debris being observed.