My understanding of why our clothes stink is because of bacteria eating sweat and dead skin.
So why in space can’t they just “wash” (Edit: By this I mean sterilize.) things by exposing them to the vacuum of space? Wouldn’t the extreme cold and vacuum cause all of the bacteria in the fabric to die out?
I know this is some NASA level stuff but I hope someone can atleast dumb it down to ELI-15 level for me.
In: Chemistry
Because some bacteria are super resistant. And the last thing we want to do is containment space with earth bacteria as much as possible.
It we know it will burn up in the atmosphere its one thing, but just letting bacteria and earth life go in free space is risky.
Its why we do our best to keep things we put in space and on other planets as clean and devoid of earth contamination as possible, if earth life made it to say mars, it could taint the entire planet, making it impossible to determine if original life existed there before the earth life moved on it
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