Employing a Grinding Technology to Assess the Microbial Density for Encapsulated Organisms

Projects that utilize large volumes of nonmetallic materials of planetary protection concern pose a challenge to their bioburden budget, as the most conservative value of 30 spores/cm3 is typically used. The standard laboratory procedures do not provide any direction into the methodologies to understand the embedded bioburden within such nonmetallic components such as adhesives, insulation, or paint. A project can elect to conduct a destructive hardware study to experimentally derive a sourcespecific encapsulated microbial density, and the experimental value can be utilized for a project.