The Quest to Kill the Superbug That Can Survive in Outer Space

Highbay 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is one of the most sterile cleanrooms on Earth. Not long from now, NASA’s next big Mars mission, the life-hunting Mars 2020 rover will have its parts attached here and so will the first probe sent to Europa. As long as un-crewed missions keep going to space, their Frankenstein bodies will be attached piece-by-piece in this room.

To sterilize the robots, the hardware is either baked, bathed in hydrogen peroxide steam, or wiped down with the same pure isopropyl alcohol used to clean open wounds. However, there’s one bacteria that has managed to survive in this extreme environment. SAFR-032 is a radiation-resistant bacterial spore found only in spacecraft cleanrooms. Indeed, it takes its very name from its peculiar habitat: SAFR stands for: Spacecraft Assembly Facility,( the R is for the medium in which it’s cultured.)

SAFR-032 has been found in all of NASA’s cleanrooms, from California all the way to Kennedy