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Completed TRL 5 (started at 4, targeting 5)
Replace bulky, expensive, time-consuming, NSA plates that measure bioburden with RPPs, used in food safety for twenty years; Use RPPs that incorporate dye into growth media, which speeds up detection, decreases the rate of false-positives, and improves effectiveness of automated counting.
1) Current NASA Standard Assay (NSA) plates require 72 hours of incubation before a bioburden number can be delivered to engineers; proposed Rapid Petrifilm Plates (RPPs) take only 24 hours, reducing the required time by 48 hours 2) Current methods require manual NSA counting every 24 hours; the proposed approach will use automated counting, which has the potential to save 2-3 FTE on Flagship Projects (MSL estimate) 3) Current NSA plates are hand-made, which is labor- and time-intensive; The proposed RPPs are pre-made
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