NCM 2023 Houston: 2043: a MinION space odyssey

The year is 2043. Following the first human landing on Mars in 2040, NASA has just embarked on the first sustained crewed mission. On the Martian surface, a prefabricated habitat with advanced and sustainable life support systems, shelf-stable food, power and communication infrastructure, and a suite of scientific hardware welcomes the crew. Within the science suite is the MinION Mk1X, which will prove invaluable for crew health monitoring, plant cultivation and agriculture, microbial surveillance within the environmental control and life support systems, and, possibly, the most transformative moment in history — the discovery of life beyond Earth. A question that has been left unanswered by previous sample return and robotic missions. On the brink of potentially redefining our understanding of life, a reflection on the scientific advancements that led us here is key. 2016 brought the dawn of the molecular space age with the success of DNA sequencing onboard the International Space Station. In the years that followed, pivotal experiments reduced Earth-dependence for complex sample analysis. Space-based genomics moved at a rapid pace throughout the early 2020s, validating off-Earth microbial identifications, full genome analysis, transcriptomics, epigenomics, targeted biomarker tracking, and data analytics. The MinION-based Microbial Monitoring System used onboard Gateway was expanded for planetary protection to create microbiome baselines as an alert for forward and backward contamination. The lunar surface provided the paving ground to define suit and vehicle leak rates, decontamination strategies, and microbial dispersion and transport. The culmination of these breakthroughs resulted in the MinION’s path to Mars.