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September 4, 2025<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
This Sneaky Spacecraft Bacteria Can Play Dead to Survive<\/p>\n
A type of bacteria found in clean rooms has an unexpected method of survival, with implications for planetary protection<\/p>\n
By Stephanie Pappas edited by Clara Moskowitz<\/span><\/p>\n NASA’s Curiosity rover is prepared for launch in the clean room at the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.<\/p>\n A bacterial species found in spacecraft clean rooms can survives intensive antimicrobial cleaning in spacecraft clean rooms by going dormant, new research finds. That\u2019s important because other clean-room survivors had been known to live through disinfection by forming spores, which are thick-walled structures that protect bacteria from high temperatures or toxins such as ethanol. The actinobacterium Tersicoccus phoenicis can\u2019t form these spores, but a new study published in the journal Microbiology Spectrum shows that it can go into a state similar to hibernation. In this state, it has no growth and almost no metabolism but has the ability to \u201cwake up\u201d when conditions improve.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the cleanest places we build\u2014spacecraft, pharma plants, food facilities\u2014some microbes aren\u2019t dead: they\u2019re dormant,\u201d says Alberto G. Fair\u00e9n, an astrobiologist at Cornell University who wasn\u2019t involved in the research.<\/p>\n While in this dormant state, T. phoenicis can\u2019t be detected by the usual method of swabbing surfaces and checking which bacteria grow in culture from the swabs. That means it could theoretically sneak aboard spacecraft that are supposed to be free of Earth contaminants. If such a bug hitched a ride to another planet, it could wake up upon arrival and potentially disrupt existing extraterrestrial life. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge planetary protection concern,\u201d says Madhan Tirumalai, a biologist and biochemist at the University of Houston and lead author of the new study.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n T. phoenicis was first discovered in a clean room at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the Mars lander Phoenix was being prepared for launch. Two years later it popped up in a European Space Agency clean room in South America. In 2013 scientists discovered that this mystery survivor was not only a new species but a new genus of bacteria.<\/p>\n This species is part of a larger group of bacteria, known as actinomycetota or actinobacteria, that are able to go dormant when conditions aren\u2019t conducive to growth. (One famous member of this group is Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, which can go dormant and persist in the lungs over a lifetime.) To learn whether T. phoenicis was capable of dormancy, Tirumalai and his colleagues deprived cells of nutrients and extracted all water from them (a process called desiccation). The cells stopped growing, and the number of viable cells plummeted within days.<\/p>\n To show that these nonviable cells were dormant, not dead, the researchers added a protein called a resuscitation-promoting factor (Rpf), which is known to \u201cwake up\u201d other species of dormant actinobacteria. The Rpf revived the cells, \u201cproving they were alive but silent,\u201d Tirumalai says.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a concern for human travel to a place such as Mars, which could offer a new, nutrient-rich environment to the hibernating microbes. Astronauts trying to survive on the red planet would need to grow food, and the sugars and nutrients involved could revive the bacteria, says study co-author William Widger, a University of Houston biologist. \u201cThat would be in the environmental safe quarters of astronauts, probably where you\u2019d not want them.\u201d<\/p>\n The microbe likely couldn\u2019t survive on the Martian surface, however, Fair\u00e9n says. \u201cThe high UV flux, extreme cold and desiccation, low atmospheric pressure, and cosmic radiation on Mars are overwhelmingly hostile\u2014even to spore-formers. Dormant nonspore, nonprotected cells would almost certainly not endure long on exposed surfaces on Mars\u2014minutes or less.\u201d<\/p>\n That makes contamination from a robotic mission an unlikely concern, Fair\u00e9n says, although human missions to the planet will almost certainly contaminate it. The paper does highlight the need for better detection and targeting of non-spore-forming bacteria in clean rooms, he says.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not yet clear how to effectively clean up dormant microbes. Tirumalai and his colleagues are now looking to test other clean-room survivors for their dormancy potential, which would make a case for upending current cleaning procedures.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we can show that a significant number of these organisms that have been isolated from clean rooms can go into dormancy,\u201d Tirumalai says, \u201cbingo\u2014we have a much bigger story.\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. 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I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" September 4, 2025 3 min read This Sneaky Spacecraft Bacteria Can Play Dead to Survive A type of bacteria found in clean rooms has an unexpected method of survival, with implications for planetary protection By Stephanie Pappas edited by Clara Moskowitz NASA’s Curiosity rover is prepared for launch in the clean room at the Spacecraft<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1788,1289,376,11662,11663,11661,1885],"class_list":{"0":"post-19054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-bacteria","9":"tag-clean","10":"tag-death","11":"tag-dormant","12":"tag-evading","13":"tag-rooms","14":"tag-spacecraft"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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