{"id":1045006,"date":"2026-06-23T12:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1045006\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T12:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T12:54:16","slug":"biologists-want-nasa-to-build-a-quarantine-lab-for-alien-germs-on-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1045006\/","title":{"rendered":"Biologists Want NASA to Build a Quarantine Lab for Alien Germs on the Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

International concerns over Earth possibly contaminating distant worlds with microbes\u2014or our spacecraft potentially bringing a deadly alien pathogen back home\u2014predate<\/a> the founding of NASA by nearly two years. The fear was real and grounded in enough science that Apollo 11\u2019s first men on the Moon spent 21 days after splashdown locked up in quarantine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, with a new space race pitting multiple nations and private companies against one another, one former Pentagon strategist has partnered with an invasive species biologist to push NASA for the construction of a \u201cbiocontainment facility\u201d on the Moon. No current or prospective facility on Earth, these scientists contend, could ensure humanity\u2019s safety in the face of a dangerous, infectious alien life form at Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4), the highest risk level for pathogens as defined<\/a> by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).<\/p>\n

\u201cHumanity is entering a new era of space exploration, but our planetary protection strategies have not kept pace with the risks associated with returning extraterrestrial samples to Earth,\u201d microbiologist Frederick Moxley, a former senior advisor to the Pentagon, said<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposed facility would essentially act as a firewall between Earth and any potentially hazardous live organisms that could accompany returning future space missions,\u201d Moxley said.<\/p>\n

Hard to kill <\/p>\n

Moxley and his coauthor Anthony Ricciardi, who specializes<\/a> in invasive species and aquatic ecosystems at McGill University in Montreal, highlighted an unusual episode from the recent history of the International Space Station to help make their case. As first reported<\/a> in the journal BMC Microbiology in 2018, Enterobacter bugandensis\u2014a species of bacteria known to cause septic<\/a> shock<\/a> in infants\u2014mutated into several \u201cmulti-drug resistant\u201d strains while onboard the space station.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the time speculated<\/a> that the new orbital strains of this already highly pathogenic organism had been aided in its evolution by the fact that bacteria\u2019s \u201cability to acquire foreign genetic material increases in microgravity.\u201d The lesson, Moxley and Ricciardi argue, is that it\u2019s not just the hypothetical (and allegedly unlikely) extraterrestrial bacteria that we need to watch out for. Astronauts traveling to Mars or elsewhere in our solar system could easily bring back new and potent extremophile versions of once terrestrial diseases that had previously been a lot easier to kill.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cBy gaining new traits, these altered organisms could pose a novel invasion threat to Earth, if introduced through the transfer and insecure containment of contaminated samples,\u201d Moxley and Ricciardi wrote in their new paper, published<\/a> this May in the journal Ambio.<\/p>\n

Out of reach <\/p>\n

Both researchers appreciate that the dangers they are sounding the alarm over might seem improbable. But the true statistical likelihood of such a devastating extraterrestrial pandemic, they warn, is \u201clargely unknowable,\u201d justifying strict monitoring efforts for the \u201cprevention of interplanetary biological exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n

The duo primarily advocates for the construction of self-contained \u201cbiosafety laboratories for eXtremophile (BSL-X) units,\u201d adding a new tier to the CDC system. These units, Moxley and Ricciardi said, should be fully automated to avoid any risk of human exposure, with specimens handled, processed, and sterilized robotically as needed. (\u201cOnly when microbial inactivity and complete sterilization has been confirmed would material of any kind be considered for transfer elsewhere,\u201d they wrote.)<\/p>\n

Moxley\u2019s past government work<\/a> involved military data networks before pivoting to biodefense. But Ricciardi, the director of the Bieler School of Environment at McGill, has been a long-time advocate for greater biosecurity protocols around space exploration<\/a> based on his career-long expertise in biological invasions.<\/p>\n

\u201cDecades of research on invasive species have demonstrated how an organism introduced to the wrong place at the wrong time can spread uncontrollably with potentially devastating and irreversible long-term impacts on ecosystems,\u201d Ricciardi said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis research justifies a strong precautionary approach against introductions of extraterrestrial origin,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If NASA was willing to lock Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong up for three weeks, the agency should at least be willing to consider this too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"International concerns over Earth possibly contaminating distant worlds with microbes\u2014or our spacecraft potentially bringing a deadly alien pathogen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1045007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3844],"tags":[178541,51292,6552,874,70,413,16,15],"class_list":["post-1045006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-alien-life","tag-extremophiles","tag-infectious-diseases","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116799528550023297","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1045007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}