In a recent article in Cleanroom Technology Magazine, NASA scientists working in the astromaterials curation cleanroom were quoted in a report, NASA wrote about their experience using the Bobcat Air Sampler which uses electret filters to collect airborne biological particles. The Administration began routinely collecting air samples in seven of the nine curation cleanrooms at Johnson Space Center, which included the OSIRIS-REx ISO 5 equivalent and the Meteorite ISO 7 equivalent.
Electret is a term used to to describe a media that is electrostatically charged, and it is this characteristic that is different to conventional samplers that use liquid media or petri dish agar media.
"This dry sample collection method allows us to meet materials requirements for all the curation labs and reduces the risk of inadvertently introducing contamination as part of our monitoring effort," the report stated.
