A NASA scientist in California says he has developed a technology that can rapidly determine if there is any microbial life on a spacecraft.

The microscope-based technology, developed by Adrian Ponce, deputy manager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., might also help military test for disease-causing bacteria and could also be useful in medical, pharmaceutical and other fields, officials said.

"NASA adheres to international protocols by striving to ensure that spacecraft don't harbor life from Earth that could contaminate other planets or moons and skew science research," Ponce said. "Microbes known as bacterial endospores can withstand extreme temperatures, ultraviolet rays and chemical treatments, and have been known to survive in space for six years. This resilience makes them important indicators for cleanliness and biodefense."

He said bacterial endospores are the toughest form of life on Earth, "Therefore, if one can show that all spores are killed, then less-resistant, disease-causing organisms will also be dead."

Ponce co-authored a paper on the new technology, called Germinable Endospore Biodosimetry, with Pun To Young, a post-doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology. The paper appeared in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, as well as in Microbe, a magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.