Katharina Buczek
Similar to scrub rooms in a hospital OR, “clean rooms” are also utilized. These rooms use air filtration to lower germ concentration.
According to Dr. Cooper, though, the NASA team can never be too safe. She and other scientists regularly swab all vessels to ensure cleanliness and decontamination.
And in terms of protecting Earth, Dr. Cooper and NASA scientists base the “potentially dangerous” contaminants that could be tracked back to Earth on the most detrimental germs to human life.
“We only know life as we know it. So, we use the worst thing we can think of on our planet as the model for Martian life,” Dr. Cooper said.
Currently, that “worst thing” is prions. According to the CDC, Prion diseases are “a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans and animals.”
The most famous disease caused by prions on Earth is mad cow disease.
By preparing for all worst-case scenarios, Dr. Cooper and the rest of her team at NASA hope to ensure public health and safety even as we investigate and discover other forms of life.
To hear more about Dr. Cooper’s compelling work, visit her Talk At Google linked here.
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