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I wonder if this article is confusing two different types of clean room. I can understand why a lander like Phoenix has to be biologically clean, needing bio-i

I wonder if this article is confusing two different types of clean room. I can understand why a lander like Phoenix has to be biologically clean, needing bio-isolation and alcohol-swabbed surfaces, but why is there this requirement for the Herschel space telescope? It stays in space. Surely the telescope would just require protection from dust, etc. during assembly in an environment similar to a chip fab? I'm not too surprised that bacteria could find their way into such an environment. Disclosure: Obviously I'm not a rocket scientist.

mhurron 13y ago
Wouldn't bacteria possibly pose the same issue as dust to the telescope.
avar 13y ago
I used my Internet superpowers to Google "clean room use for orbital telescopes" and came up with this: http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1897/why-was-the-hubble-space-telescope-purged-with-nitrogen-gas http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1897/why-was-the-hu...
- andyjohnson0 13y ago
  I also read that page, although my search used different terms. Seems I have the same internet superpowers that you do. There is no mention of biological isolation in the Q/A you linked to, just controlling the atmospheric environment around the vehicle.
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
It's probably a combination of general cleanliness and a desire to avoid mildew (one spore + humidity = army of spores).
- afandian 13y ago
  The humidity!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
oso2k 13y ago
I worked IT for JPL's Cleanroom Group a few years ago. Biological contaminants are only one factor. 95-99% of the cleanrooms they have are not much cleaner than something like a typical elementary classroom with a well kept air filtration system (not great). These are Class 100K rooms [1]. Less than 100K particles of 0.1 um size or bigger per m^3 of air (dust, hair, skin, anything really). Offenders of contaminating the rooms some brought in unapproved or contaminated materials, like non-cleanroom notepads or gaseous/non-cleanroom markers/pens, cardboard. The reason why the rooms were not operated cleaner is because of their size. Some were large like 40m by 40m by 40m (the main Spacecraft Assembly Facility where the Herschel instrument saw final assembly), others housed special capabilities like the 25-foot Space Simulator [2], shakers and bakers (rotation/vibration test pedestals, and space vacuum hot/cold chambers), or isolation pads (pedestals mounted on ultra heavy 40'x40'x40' blocks of concrete to reduce vibration for optics instrument testing). It was also common practice to certify a room at one level, and operate it like it was the next higher level with minimal cost and maximal benefit. Things like additional air exchanges, daily or twice daily cleanings (instead of weekly), extra HEPA filters, stricter ESD operations, stricter temperature and humidity control (ESD & Planetary Protection reasons). This was often more than sufficient to appease the Principal Investigators, Instrument Designers, and Planetary Protection. Many rooms were Class 10K capable. A few were Class 1K or Class 100 capable. But those were very small rooms, sometimes even 10'x10'x10' tents setup in a one level less capable room. Only two rooms operated were even capable of operating at Class 100, IIRC, and only did so when necessary. There were apart of chip fabrication building. To answer your question, Herschel has its base requirements similar to anything we send off into space, and then it had it optics instruments requirements. Projects have been ruined when instruments do not work or do not work as well as designed because of dust, ESD, or a hair particle. It's really hard/expensive to wipe your lens with a microfiber cloth in space; JPL once did a study to determine the cost/feasibility. It dwarfed the original project. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom#ISO_14644-1_cleanroom_standards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom#ISO_14644-1_cleanroom... [2] http://www.universetoday.com/97249/jpls-torture-chamber-for-spacecraft/ http://www.universetoday.com/97249/jpls-torture-chamber-for-...
- sneak 13y ago
  Thank you for your contribution. Your post exemplifies why I continue to personally justify spending a statistically significant portion of my productive hours each day scanning HN.
vor_ 13y ago
The article's second page answers this: Scientists go to all this trouble for the purpose of “planetary protection”—which usually means protecting other planets from contamination by microbes originating on Earth. Most spacefaring countries have agreed to follow guidelines from the International Council for Science’s Committee on Space Research to reduce the chances of their vehicles carrying Earth organisms to other planets. The clean room procedures also safeguard against scientists mistaking Earthly microbes as extraterrestrial in origin if they are discovered on another planet, having caught a ride with a man-made spacecraft. “The whole idea of collecting information about what kind of bugs we have in the spacecraft assembly facility is to have baseline information so that in the future, if you find it on Mars, you have some grounds to rule out the possibility that it came from Mars,” Vaishampayan says.
- dekhn 13y ago
  120kg of matter is exchanged between Mars and Earth per year, already. They've just reduced the possibility of contamination by their spacecraft, compared to natural events.
  - Crito 13y ago
    Being able to make the distinction between panspermia induced by human activity, and panspermia that occurred through some other mechanism is important. The possibility that life jumped the gap on meteorite strike debris does not make protecting against contamination any less important. Actually, I would say that it makes it more important. If there was no possibility for non-human related panspermia, then if we found an organism on Mars that appears closely related to an earth organism, then we could write it off as contamination and ignore it. However since non-human related panspermia could conceivably happen, it would be more difficult to pin such a discovery on contamination.
  - Groxx 13y ago
    Citation please (sounds interesting, but yeah), and does it get exchanged at the speed that this stuff does, or does it take thousands^x years to arrive? Not that I disagree. Just wondering if there are a few orders of magnitude that need to be considered.
pazimzadeh 13y ago
It's partially so that if we do in fact discover life in space, we're not "discovering" something that we actually brought up there with us.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Planetary protection protocols. It's a best effort approach to minimize the risk of "contaminating" planets with Earth life. It applies to any spacecraft in interplanetary space, not just landers, because it's impossible to predict where an object that ends up in heliocentric orbit will end up, it could end up hitting another asteroid, planet, or moon.

mhurron 13y ago

Wouldn't bacteria possibly pose the same issue as dust to the telescope.

avar 13y ago

I used my Internet superpowers to Google "clean room use for orbital telescopes" and came up with this: http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1897/why-was-the-hubble-space-telescope-purged-with-nitrogen-gas http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1897/why-was-the-hu...

andyjohnson0 13y ago
I also read that page, although my search used different terms. Seems I have the same internet superpowers that you do. There is no mention of biological isolation in the Q/A you linked to, just controlling the atmospheric environment around the vehicle.

Daniel_Newby 13y ago

It's probably a combination of general cleanliness and a desire to avoid mildew (one spore + humidity = army of spores).

afandian 13y ago
The humidity!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

oso2k 13y ago

I worked IT for JPL's Cleanroom Group a few years ago. Biological contaminants are only one factor. 95-99% of the cleanrooms they have are not much cleaner than something like a typical elementary classroom with a well kept air filtration system (not great). These are Class 100K rooms [1]. Less than 100K particles of 0.1 um size or bigger per m^3 of air (dust, hair, skin, anything really). Offenders of contaminating the rooms some brought in unapproved or contaminated materials, like non-cleanroom notepads or gaseous/non-cleanroom markers/pens, cardboard. The reason why the rooms were not operated cleaner is because of their size. Some were large like 40m by 40m by 40m (the main Spacecraft Assembly Facility where the Herschel instrument saw final assembly), others housed special capabilities like the 25-foot Space Simulator [2], shakers and bakers (rotation/vibration test pedestals, and space vacuum hot/cold chambers), or isolation pads (pedestals mounted on ultra heavy 40'x40'x40' blocks of concrete to reduce vibration for optics instrument testing). It was also common practice to certify a room at one level, and operate it like it was the next higher level with minimal cost and maximal benefit. Things like additional air exchanges, daily or twice daily cleanings (instead of weekly), extra HEPA filters, stricter ESD operations, stricter temperature and humidity control (ESD & Planetary Protection reasons). This was often more than sufficient to appease the Principal Investigators, Instrument Designers, and Planetary Protection. Many rooms were Class 10K capable. A few were Class 1K or Class 100 capable. But those were very small rooms, sometimes even 10'x10'x10' tents setup in a one level less capable room. Only two rooms operated were even capable of operating at Class 100, IIRC, and only did so when necessary. There were apart of chip fabrication building. To answer your question, Herschel has its base requirements similar to anything we send off into space, and then it had it optics instruments requirements. Projects have been ruined when instruments do not work or do not work as well as designed because of dust, ESD, or a hair particle. It's really hard/expensive to wipe your lens with a microfiber cloth in space; JPL once did a study to determine the cost/feasibility. It dwarfed the original project. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom#ISO_14644-1_cleanroom_standards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom#ISO_14644-1_cleanroom... [2] http://www.universetoday.com/97249/jpls-torture-chamber-for-spacecraft/ http://www.universetoday.com/97249/jpls-torture-chamber-for-...

sneak 13y ago
Thank you for your contribution. Your post exemplifies why I continue to personally justify spending a statistically significant portion of my productive hours each day scanning HN.

vor_ 13y ago

The article's second page answers this: Scientists go to all this trouble for the purpose of “planetary protection”—which usually means protecting other planets from contamination by microbes originating on Earth. Most spacefaring countries have agreed to follow guidelines from the International Council for Science’s Committee on Space Research to reduce the chances of their vehicles carrying Earth organisms to other planets. The clean room procedures also safeguard against scientists mistaking Earthly microbes as extraterrestrial in origin if they are discovered on another planet, having caught a ride with a man-made spacecraft. “The whole idea of collecting information about what kind of bugs we have in the spacecraft assembly facility is to have baseline information so that in the future, if you find it on Mars, you have some grounds to rule out the possibility that it came from Mars,” Vaishampayan says.

dekhn 13y ago
120kg of matter is exchanged between Mars and Earth per year, already. They've just reduced the possibility of contamination by their spacecraft, compared to natural events.
- Crito 13y ago
  Being able to make the distinction between panspermia induced by human activity, and panspermia that occurred through some other mechanism is important. The possibility that life jumped the gap on meteorite strike debris does not make protecting against contamination any less important. Actually, I would say that it makes it more important. If there was no possibility for non-human related panspermia, then if we found an organism on Mars that appears closely related to an earth organism, then we could write it off as contamination and ignore it. However since non-human related panspermia could conceivably happen, it would be more difficult to pin such a discovery on contamination.
- Groxx 13y ago
  Citation please (sounds interesting, but yeah), and does it get exchanged at the speed that this stuff does, or does it take thousands^x years to arrive? Not that I disagree. Just wondering if there are a few orders of magnitude that need to be considered.

pazimzadeh 13y ago

It's partially so that if we do in fact discover life in space, we're not "discovering" something that we actually brought up there with us.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Planetary protection protocols. It's a best effort approach to minimize the risk of "contaminating" planets with Earth life. It applies to any spacecraft in interplanetary space, not just landers, because it's impossible to predict where an object that ends up in heliocentric orbit will end up, it could end up hitting another asteroid, planet, or moon.