Recovery Rate is an Improved Metric for Monitoring Bioburden in Cleanrooms

The Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office maintains seven cleanrooms for curating extraterrestrial samples from a variety of sample return missions. These cleanrooms are monitored for inorganic and particulate contamination and are maintained at ISO 7 to ISO 4 equivalent standards as dictated by collection requirements. As part of the advanced curation effort and to prepare for future sample collections from carbonaceous asteroids and eventually Mars we have begun monitoring the microbiology of these cleanrooms. Insights gained from monitoring these labs can be applied to improving planetary protection efforts.