"It isn't every day you get a call from an Interplanetary Protection Officer asking you to help"
Contract services laboratory RSSL Pharma is playing a crucial role in reducing the risk of the accidental transfer of life from Earth to Mars.
RSSL Pharma's microbiologists are working in conjunction with a project team from the Open University to provide independent monitoring of the Aseptic Assembly Facility (clean-room) that will be used to assemble Beagle 2.
Beagle 2 is the lander of the European Space Agency Mars Express mission, which will land on Mars at the end of December 2003 in a bid to search for the chemical residues that would be evidence of life on the planet.
It's an important job.
Most satellites are constructed in class 100,000 clean-rooms, which constrain particulate matter in the air.
The same principle applies in the case of microbiological clean-rooms - but the constraint specification is much tighter.
To meet internationally accepted planetary protection requirements and the even more stringent needs imposed by the scientific goals of Beagle 2, the clean-room must meet the ISO Class 1 target.
It's important to limit the chance of bacteria, moulds, yeasts, and particularly resistant spores being carried from Earth to Mars.
This is not only to prevent contamination of the planet itself, but to ensure the cleanliness of the sensitive instrumentation that will be used to detect residues of organic matter on the surface of the planet.
RSSL Pharma's microbiologists are more used to analysing for spoilage organisms in pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical clean-rooms, but this was a job they couldn't resist.
"It isn't every day you get a call from an Interplanetary Protection Officer asking you to help," explains Graham Pettipher of RSSL.
As well as making their routine inspection of the clean-rooms, RSSL has also trained members of the Beagle 2 project in the sampling techniques that will enable them to send samples to RSSL for more regular analysis.
The final assembly, integration, and verification of Beagle 2 is due for completion by the end of this year, and the launch is scheduled for May 2003.
