Re: Fungal strains in space spark worry - we might have already contaminated --

a425couple <[email protected]> writes:

> from
> https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fungal-strains-space-spark-worry-112456504.html
>
> Fungal strains in space spark worry
> Tom Chivers
> Thu, May 7, 2026 at 4:24 AM PDT
> 1 min read
> Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google.
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>
> NASA found fungal strains that survive even its most stringent
> sterilization efforts, suggesting Earth microbes may already be living
> on Mars.
>
> When exploring worlds which could plausibly harbor life — Enceladus,
> Europa, Mars, Titan — space agencies employ protocols to prevent
> Earth-based microbes contaminating any biology elsewhere.
>
> The existence of near-unkillable fungi makes future Mars rover
> missions more fraught and past ones potential seeds of terrestrial
> life on the red planet. Titan may likewise be compromised: When
> visited by the Cassini-Huygens orbiter in 2004, no one realized
> Saturn’s moon had liquid oceans and was thus a promising candidate for
> life, so the probe was not fully sterilized. The little spacecraft
> “might be seeding life,” a mission scientist told Flagship’s Tom in
> 2017.

/snip

Clickbait.

NASA now fears that there are frozen microbes of fungi on our
probes. I'm going to shit myself in fear. I swear clickbait articles are
getting worse by the day.

--
Daniel
sysop  | air & wave bbs
finger | [email protected]