This NASA Scientist Helps Prevent Mars from Contamination
How do you keep Earth microbes from contaminating Mars?
By Ari Daniel
The spacecraft has to be extremely clean. The entire spacecraft—that includes the rover, the heat shield, the descent stage, and back shell—must contain less than 500,000 bacterial endospores, or spores. Just to give you an idea, a teaspoon of seawater has ten times more bacteria.
