Learning more about how microorganisms operate in space has long been a critical part of avoiding contamination of all NASA experiments conducted in space and on the moon.

"NASA has a responsibility to ensure that science measurements made on Mars are not impacted by microbes brought from Earth. When humans go to Mars we will bring trillions of microbes with us, carried in our gut and on our skin," said Christopher Carr, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Aerospace Engineering.