Employing a Grinding Technology to Assess the Microbial Density for Encapsulated Organisms

Projects that utilize large volumes of nonmetallic materials of planetary protection concern pose a challenge to their bioburden budget, as the most conservative value of 30 spores/cubic cm is typically used. The standard laboratory procedures do not provide any direction into the methodologies to understand the embedded bioburden within such nonmetallic components such as adhesives, insulation, or paint. A tailored, novel, destructive hardware technology employing a household box grater was developed to assess the embedded bioburden within the adhesives, insulation, and paint for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) project.