{"id":779616,"date":"2026-05-07T12:25:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/779616\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T12:25:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T12:25:16","slug":"fungal-strains-in-space-spark-worry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/779616\/","title":{"rendered":"Fungal strains in space spark worry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">NASA found fungal strains that survive even its most stringent sterilization efforts, suggesting Earth microbes may already be living on Mars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">When exploring worlds which could plausibly harbor life \u2014 Enceladus, Europa, Mars, Titan \u2014 space agencies employ protocols to prevent Earth-based microbes contaminating any biology elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The existence of near-unkillable fungi makes future Mars rover missions more fraught and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/could-this-fungus-live-on-mars-maybe-it-already-does\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:past ones potential seeds of terrestrial life on the red planet;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;past ones potential seeds of terrestrial life on the red planet&quot;}\" class=\"link \">past ones potential seeds of terrestrial life on the red planet<\/a>. Titan may likewise be compromised: When visited by the Cassini-Huygens orbiter in 2004, no one realized Saturn\u2019s moon had liquid oceans and was thus a promising candidate for life, so the probe was not fully sterilized. The little spacecraft \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/tomchivers\/cassini-death-spiral\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:might be seeding life;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;might be seeding life&quot;}\" class=\"link \">might be seeding life<\/a>,\u201d a mission scientist told Flagship\u2019s Tom in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/author\/tom-chivers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"elm:link;elmt:article_link;slk:Tom Chivers;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Tom Chivers&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Tom Chivers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA found fungal strains that survive even its most stringent sterilization efforts, suggesting Earth microbes may already be&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":779617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[159,783,319168,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-779616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-space-agencies","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116533285806087822","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}