As soon as later this year, NASA could begin the development of its lunar base. The early missions are expected to be uncrewed, but when humans eventually do return to the moon's South Pole, they'll bring billions of microorganisms with them.
New research indicates those microorganisms, or microbes, could survive on parts of the moon's South Pole. Apaper published this week inScience Advancesby NASA researchers, including one from Houston's Johnson Space Center, found certain "survivable niches" for those microbes on the southernmost portion of the moon.
"When we think of the Moon, we don't typically think of biology," Heather Graham, one of the paper's authors, said in a NASA release. "But the Moon is a place where a cell can survive, so our first exploration of these sites should pay extra attention to our microbial hitchhikers and work hard to characterize lunar chemistry before our visits change what we will find."
The researchers evaluated five forms of bacteria that would likely be found traveling with an astronaut crew to the moon, including ones that have previously been found on the International Space Station. Given the terrain of the South Pole, the paper assessed that microbes may have a better chance of surviving on the moon than had previously been thought.
The findings present something of a double-edged sword. It's a significant development in researching the sustainability of life, albeit microbial, on the moon. At the same time, researchers said this could make it easier to bring contamination to the moon — and make it more difficult to distinguish between the moon's natural makeup and human contamination.
Notably, the study only evaluated whether or not certain microbes can survive for a single 24-hour period, as opposed to whether or not those microbes can grow and reproduce over time.
The paper deliberately evaluates the conditions at the moon's South Pole in anticipation of the moon base's eventual construction there. By contrast, the Apollo missions landed closer to the equator of the moon.
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NASA selected the South Pole for its moon base "because of the area's unique scientific value and potential to support long-term exploration," according to the agency. From the South Pole, the sun sits low on the horizon, casting long shadows from the moon's ridges and craters. Parts of the moon in those shadows aren't hit with as much solar radiation and are very cold, creating sustainable conditions for microbes.
Carrying microorganisms from Earth to the moon is inevitable.Millions of microbesreside on human skin, and NASA noted such bacteria could travel on space suits and other objects originating from Earth.
Artemis IV, planned for early 2028, is slated to take a crew of NASA astronauts to the moon's South Pole for approximately a week, the first time Americans have been on the moon in more than half a century. The United States is in the midst of a race to return to the moon against China.
Though Artemis IV will primarily be a scientific mission, the Artemis program has the long-term goal of establishing a permanent presence on the moon, including utilizing the moon base. It's also a stepping stone, NASA says, for bringing humans to Mars for the first time.
"We need to understand what was there before us (on the moon) because when we go to Mars to search for signs of life beyond our planet, we will want to make sure it's not stuff we brought," researcher Andrew Needham said in a NASA release.
Researching microbial sustainability in those niches on the South Pole of the moon could be crucial to studying Mars' habitability, the NASA researchers' paper said.
"A survivable niche may not necessarily be a place to avoid during exploration but instead one to target for sample acquisition (potentially repeatedly) using a well-thought-out sampling strategy," the paper concluded. "Last, understanding how these survivable niches may exist, how life may be transferred to them, and how human exploration may leave its mark all will serve as a key testbed for future potential human exploration of Mars, which likely has far more habitable environments."
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