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NASA's Microbe Tracking Tool Enhances Spacecraft Safety

9/23/2025

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Summary

Story summary

Astronauts carry microorganisms into orbit, impacting spacecraft safety and astronaut health.
Ankhi Banerjee of Rice University built a data-analysis pipeline to track ISS microbes, as part of the Genome Sleuths program with NASA's Johnson Space Center microbiology lab.
She created visualizations of bacterial distributions and an anomaly-detection tool; she aims for a Ph.D. in computational biology.

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Story summary

Astronauts carry microorganisms into orbit, impacting spacecraft safety and astronaut health.
Ankhi Banerjee of Rice University built a data-analysis pipeline to track ISS microbes, as part of the Genome Sleuths program with NASA's Johnson Space Center microbiology lab.
She created visualizations of bacterial distributions and an anomaly-detection tool; she aims for a Ph.D. in computational biology.