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Microbes traveling with astronauts can survive in the shadowed areas of the Moon's south pole and contaminate the search for traces of past life there and, later on, on Mars, according to a NASA study published this Wednesday in the journal 'Science Advances'.
The organisms were subjected to tests in simulations of three regions near the lunar south pole: the rim of the Nobile crater, the Connecting Ridge, and the rim of the De Gerlache crater. These simulations used detailed environmental maps, created from elevation and temperature data.
The result is maps of "survival niches" where microbes are seen ranging from the bottom of a crater several kilometers deep to a boot print.
Researchers took five microorganisms common on human skin and inside spacecraft, including the fungus Aspergillus niger, and calculated how much heat and ultraviolet radiation each could withstand.
None are "extremophiles," which are those that resist conditions like a vacuum, but astronauts found Aspergillus niger inside the International Space Station and the experiments demonstrated that it also endures outside.
"I would have expected these microbes to have dried out," said NASA geomicrobiologist and co-author of the study, Aaron Regberg, in a statement.
The most resistant was Aspergillus niger, which survived even where some sunlight reaches, despite the fact that ultraviolet radiation is used to sterilize hospitals.
Bringing microbes with us is inevitable; even on a piece of skin the size of a pencil eraser, there are a million bacteria, and they shed from suits and habitats.
To prevent these situations, robotic spacecraft are baked at over 204 degrees Celsius to kill them, but with a crew aboard a mission that aims to stay on the Moon, that is not possible.
At the south pole, since the Moon's axis is hardly tilted, the Sun never rises above the horizon and shines at an angle, just like a flashlight resting on a table. The rims of the craters and the mountains block that grazing light and leave permanent, cold shadows that preserve water and provide protection from radiation.
Surviving on the Moon means, the authors emphasize, remaining alive for at least one Earth day, not growing or multiplying, as nothing indicates that the satellite contains what is necessary, starting with liquid water.
NASA plans to send the first crewed mission to the lunar surface in more than half a century in 2028, which will serve as a precursor to other missions to colonize the Earth's satellite. EFE
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