The book is framed as a report from a secret government project, which the scientists are part of, and includes text-based computer imagery illustrating the results of various tests on the organism.
The duty officer of the base tasked with retrieving the satellite suspects it returned with an extraterrestrial contaminant and recommends activating "Wildfire", a protocol for a government-sponsored team of scientists intended to contain threats of this nature.
Jackson, Ritter, and the satellite are taken to the secret underground Wildfire laboratory, a secure facility equipped with every known capacity for protection against microorganisms escaping into the environment.
Wildfire is hidden in a remote area near Flatrock, Nevada, sixty miles (100 km) from Las Vegas, concealed in the sub-basements of a legitimate Department of Agriculture research station.
Dr. Mark Hall is the only scientist authorized to disarm the automatic self-destruct mechanism; he is an unmarried, childless male and thus presumed to make the most dispassionate decisions during a crisis.
The scientists learn that the current form of Andromeda grows only in a narrow pH range; in a too-acidic or too alkaline growth medium, the organism will not divide.
The novel's epilogue reveals that a crewed spacecraft, Andros V, was incinerated during atmospheric re-entry, presumably because Andromeda had eaten its tungsten/plastic laminate heat shield and caused it to burn up.
Crichton says he was "terrifically impressed" by the book—"a lot of Andromeda is traceable to Ipcress in terms of trying to create an imaginary world using recogniseable techniques and real people.
In the novel, the odd-man explanation is a page in a Hudson Institute report of the results of test series wherein different people were to make command decisions in nuclear and biological wars and chemical crises.
In 2008, The Andromeda Strain was the basis for an eponymous miniseries executive-produced by Ridley and Tony Scott and Frank Darabont, and featuring Benjamin Bratt as Stone.
Reviews for The Andromeda Strain were overwhelmingly positive, and the novel was an American bestseller, establishing Michael Crichton as a respected novelist and science-fiction writer.