Overview
- A NASA-led paper published on Aug. 19, 2026 used Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter topography, temperature and radiation data with ray-tracing to model three candidate south-pole regions and identify spatially mapped “survivable niches” where microbes could remain viable for days.
- The fungus Aspergillus niger was the most resilient in the models, persisting for as long as about seven Earth days in some shadowed pockets, while Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Deinococcus radiodurans and Fusarium species showed shorter survival windows.
- The study measures survival as short-term viability, not growth, and emphasizes that the Moon currently lacks demonstrated conditions such as liquid water and an atmosphere that would support microbial replication.
- Researchers warn the findings complicate planetary protection for Artemis and other crewed missions because humans shed microbes that cannot be sterilized like robots, and they call for baseline microbial surveys, tighter contamination controls and careful site selection.
- Authors say next steps include higher-resolution illumination and topography modeling plus laboratory and field experiments to test survival directly, and they note meteorite transfer from Earth could mean some terrestrial microbes already reached the lunar surface.