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NRC Recommends NASA Galileo Crash
Autonomous Crowhard writes: "An article on SpaceRef relays information that a National Research Council committee is suggesting that NASA crash Galileo at the end of its mission. The reason for this is to avoid potentially contaminating Europa or Io with a crash there. (As I understand it, Galileo didn't undergo the same stringent decontamination procedures that landers normally have to go through.) Two questions: 1) Would humans constitute too much of a risk of contamination, and 2) Wouldn't you like to be able to put "Planetary Protection Officer" on your resume?"
They'll de-orbit the Galeleio into Jupiter more than likely. They could drop in into the dayside so we can check it's spectra as it enters. We may or may not see the chemical makeup of the upper cloud deck.
Galeleio, Galeleio, Galeleio, Figaro, Magnifico!
No, no, no, No, no, no, No, no, no, absolutely not!
The party's over
http://slashdot.org/articles/00 /03/02/1236258.shtml
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
But Europa may already have life on it. The chances are slim perhaps; but Europa's microbes, if they exist, have more rights to Europa than Earth's microbes do.
Does this
The Anti-Satellite weapon:
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum
The target:
http://asca.gsfc.nasa
While not strictly part of the SDI program (as development of the ASAT weapon started during the Carter administration), development and successful testing of this anti-satellite weapon losely fell under the "Star Wars" banner of programs that was funded by the Reagan administration.
Yes, we have been testing weapons in space. So have the Soviets, who have conducted similar tests. And while our ASAT program which produced the F-15 based ASAT weapon was canceled in 1987, we are still conducting on-going ASAT weapons tests today, with both ground-based kenetic ASAT weapons (basically missles which are launched into space from the ground and hit satellites in orbit), and space-based and airplane based laser ASAT weapons.
Yep, there is.
We don't want to send a probe to Europa to try to discover life, only to find out that we contaminated the place a dozen years back with strep, and so have no idea if there was life there or not.
OTOH, unless you both don't eat, don't breath and don't take a dump, you don't have room to talk: after all, everytime you eat, you take advantage of the death of animals and plants around you. When you breath, you mindlessly kill millions of organisms as they enter your lungs. And the fecal matter you excrete is part of one of the largest sources of environmental contaminants that man, in his presence on this earth, creates.
All this talk about possible life on Jupiter reminds me of an old sci-fi short story I once read, but I don't remember who wrote it. Basically, it was told from the perspective of 3 robots, sent to Jupiter from Earth. Seems that several years ago, Earth had begun communicating with aliens on Jupiter, and the conversation did not go well. There was some concern that if the people of Jupiter ever developed space travel (no small feat considering Jupiters immense gravity), they would come and conquor the Earth. So, scientists on Earth decided they'd better send up these robotic probes, to get an idea of the intentions/military strength of the Jupitarians(?).
Anyway, these 3 incredibly powerful (built to survive Jupiter's environment) robots show up on Jupiter, perform a bunch of feats of strength and endurance that the Jupiterians see as incredible, and at the end reveal they are capable of surviving the absolute zero of space travel. The Jupitarians, mistaking these 3 robots for the common Earth man, immediately disgard their planned invasion of Earth, and request peace.
One of my first introductions to the realms of sci-fi literature; it was an entertaining, albiet highly improbable, story. Can anyone hook me up with a title/author?
All of Nasa's Crafts crash anyway(remember Mars) so why not just say we are crashing it deliberately.
**Life is too short to be serious**
On behalf of the great federation of social insects and all the ants and bees of the Universe I strongly object to your potrayal of Cockraches as the only race superior to man hence implying that man is superior to us.You shall be hearing from our lawyers unless we see an appology in this space
**Life is too short to be serious**
Unfortunately the fuel required to escape from Jupiter is just not there on Galileo.
The only option is to crash it into the giant planet! Jupiter just underwent a large alteration when that comet bombarded it a few years back so it should be ok.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Humor aside, I think that NASA is overreacting. Either Europa has life or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we should hope that it is 'contaminated'. If it does, I would put my money on a planetful of life specially evolved for that planet's conditions over a couple dozen carpet-bagging bacteria from a warm and comfy inner-system world like Earth.
I don't know. I think I might wager a few quid on a hardy band of microscopic badasses that could survive a decade in space and the radiation of Jupiter's magnetosphere.
Does this
Sure, it would be great if NASA could fund every mission indefinitely! But heck, it would be nice if people would pay us humble grad students a million bucks a year, too. That's just not going to happen. In the real world of science, with limited funding, you have to balance the potential return of spending $X on some experiment with the potential return of $X on a -different- experiment. Sometimes it makes sense to extend the lifetime of the first experiment - Witness the fact that the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft are all still returning valuable data today, witness the DS1 extended mission, witness the fact that Galileo is still working today several years after the "end" of its mission. NASA *does* extend missions, when it makes scientific sense to do so But sometimes you really have gotten as much as you can from a mission, or sometimes you have new projects you want to start that need the money. Then in that case it *does* make sense to terminate older missions and start new ones. Do realize that the decision to extend Mission Y for another two years usually means postponing or even cancelling Mission Y+1. It's not nearly as simple or as one-sided as you seem to think it is.
Most of the posters here seem to be under the impression that NASA wants to avoid Europa and Io do to some kind of twisted environmentalist ethic. That's not it at all, although the reasoning might be a little distorted by the time it's filtered for public consumption.
As the article says, NASA wants to "safeguard the scientific integrity of future studies of Europa's biological potential." Good scientists are naturally skeptical, and as any science knows, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." In order to prove the "extraordinary claim" that native life exists on Europa, scientists would have to eliminate any more mundane possibilities. The claim that said life is not native to Europa, but was carried there by Galileo, would be almost impossible to dispute.
Let me put this another way: Let's say NASA let Galileo crash into Europa. Now it's 2040, and our first Europa lander finds the moon teeming with life. Any good scientist would say, "So what? It was probably left there by Galileo." And they'd be right. On the other hand, if NASA keeps Europa uncontaminated, any life on Europa would indisputably be extraterrestrial.
Got it?
MSK
Io does actually have a bit of an atmosphere, mostly sulpher gases and other things you don't really want to breath, but you're correct that it wouldn't be enough to burn up the space craft; it would impact the surface and eventually get buried in one of the frequent lava flows. This is considered acceptable because the conditions on Io are harsh enough that we're pretty damn sure (a) there's no native life there (b) even if some bacteria stowed away on Galileo, they couldn't live there either. Both of these hold true for Jupiter, too. And even if you leave them both aside, the impact velocity with Jupiter will be vastly higher (it's next to impossible to hit Jupiter at anything *less* than 70,000 kph due to our old friend Mr. Humongous Gravity Well.) so the impact heating will be that much greater, moving us into the realm of serious overkill sterilization by heating. Which is, of course, precisely what we want.
...instead of destroying it, wash it with some form of anti-bacterial soap. I know that's what I do, all the time, to make sure that my hands are clean. In fact, I've washed my hands 12 times this morning. You can't be too careful with bacteria! But wait -- there are STILL bacteria there! Dammit, get off my hands, you damn bacteria! I know you've survived the vacuum of space, ultra-low and ultra-high temperatures, steam, solvents, and everything else, just GET OFF MY FILTHY STINKING HANDS! WASH OFF, DAMN YOU! I AM CONTAMINATED! GET AWAY FROM ME - SAVE YOURSELVES! AAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
--
Recent data, including that from the Gallileo entry probe suggests that Jupiters atmosphere is highly convective. Anything drifting in the atmoshphere would be regularly sucked down to extreme depths, and thereby VERY thoroughly pressure-cooked, before being pushed back up to the surface again. Anything that could manage to live there (except, perhaps in some small, and unexpectedly stably non-convective corner somewhere) would have to be either very active (to deliberately stay at the top of the convective cycle) or much tougher than any molecule that we can think up. In either case, a few bacteria are unlikely to cause much trouble,
Stop the ignorance. Start with yourself!
The puny amount of radiation onboard the Galileo spacecraft pales in comparison to the natural radiation around Jupiter.
If you were getting sad thinking that you'd need to have a protective suite to survive on Europa with all that plutonium from Galileo there, then I've got some news for you!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The article and this whole discussion are about how we need to not contaminate Europa, and you go and suggest that we contaminate Earth. I would feel a lot better if the water sample stopped over at a space station for preliminary examination. If those astronauts didn't die or have alien fetuses grow inside them, then we could do further tests down here.
-B
Toss the jar in a containment facility and let bunny suits who bathe in acid poke at the ice cube and I don't see the problem.
Eh...
Galileo has been exposed to huge amounts of radiation from Jupiter. Here's a few hundred articles Google(galileo+radiation). Who has better decontamination equipment, nasa or jupiter?
Ryan
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Where to start?
/. crowd.
Litter:OK, the probe is comprised of molecules of metal. To say, as many seem to, that these molecules are "unnatural" because they have been re-shaped by man is ridiculous. Look at your premises=Whatever happens (i.e.:meteor strike) NOT as the result of Mans' volition is good. Whatever happens by our actions is "unnatural".
WTF is the justification of this? I think this is an example of contamination of peoples thought processes. What happens naturally, whether it is the inexorable result of a clockwork universe or the Will of GOD, should not be elevated to a "morally" superior position in our considerations. (Morality itself being an "unnatural" and somewhat arbitrary product of evil polluting humans.) If you think it should be, MAKE THE F*ING ARGUMENT-otherwise STFU!!
Biological contamination:To say that because some microbes may have survived the gentle moon landing that some MAY survive the fiery holocaust of a desent into Jovian atmosphere is ridiculous.
And even IF...
IF there are life forms adapted to the wildly different conditions of Jupiter, they will not be threatened by microbes not adapted to those conditions. We don't exactly need a St. George to drive the snakes out of Antarctica, do we?
Time scale: SO WHAT? If you want to consider this probe "pollution" (as opposed to good, "natural" extraplanetary incursions like meteors), what will its' effect be in...2 million years? Because that's the time frame we ought to consider.
Extrasolar trajectory: Again, SO WHAT? Your advanced "math" shows that "eventually" the probe will run into something if we shoot it out of the Solar System? When? Again, millions of years, and I don't think we've done even a million-year study of microbal survival. Also, of all the places the probe might eventually impact (suns, black holes, dense gas clouds, atmosphereless rocks), what percent do you think have ANY chance of supporting ANY type of life? I'm too lazy to do that math, but I'm guessing...pretty close to zero.
"But Mr. Science, we can't be SURE can we?"
"No...not perfectly, exactly, 100% sure, Bobby. "
"Then why can't we bring back that nasty contaminated old probe and put it in a garbage sack and throw it away?"
"You're off the show, Bobby."
I would've expected better than Oprah-level posts from the
Brad
"The enemy of science is not religion, but ignorance."- some famous dead guy.
"To be fair, I was left completely unsupervised." ~Anon
Consider if Galileo is placed on a trajectory to exit our solar system. Eventially, someday, in some way our little Galileo will impact something in the inuverse and contaminate it. We're just as much a part of the galaxy as everything else in it and we will "contaminate" no matter how carefull.
Not likely. Perhaps you forget how empty space really is. Consider that two spiral galaxies such as ours can pass *THROUGH* each other, and very few, if any, collisions between stars occur. Now a couple hundred thousand stars in such close proximity never collide, the chances of a single spacecraft running into something, and even further something capable of sustaining life in any degree, I don't think there's much to worry about.
72656B636148206C72655020726568746F6E41207473754A
I think people fail to realize that NASA has been fairly responsible in their space endeavors. For example, NASA only uses decaying radioactive materials in spacecraft that do not orbit Earth, and only when the power requirements of the craft deem it absolutely necessary (i.e. it is impossible to power it with solar panels due to solar distance and weight). NASA even went as so far as to worry about the tiny ammount of radioactives on the Lunar Module of Apollo 13, as to plot a much more risky (to the crew) return trajectory (with additional corrections) so as to not have the LIM crash into anything but a remote and deep watery grave (see "From the Earth to the Moon: Episode 8" to hear more on "the Nuke Problem" as the media called it).
This is in stark contrast to numerous Russian Earth orbitals, including even purely scientific ones! Take note of a Russian scientific satellite that contaminated hundreds of square miles (600 mi^2 I believe) of Canadian national forest when its return trajectory was not accomodated correctly. And I need not mention that it is still up in the air whether or not the Russian military, let alone our own, uses radioactives in Earth orbiting platforms.
Give NASA a break guys!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
No way - that's not until 2010.
Seriously, since the environment of Jupiter is much less earthlike than the environments of Europa or Io, it's probably safer to drop Galileo into Jupiter. None of our bugs will be able to hurt anything that has evolved under those conditions, and the space probe will just be another meteorite out of many in the Jovian system.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Thay just don't want the Jupiterian to get his hands on our technology.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
See this link to read how microbes survived on the moon after a lunar missions.
Jeff
stty erase ^H
It is a well-documented fact that the only organism capable of surviving the extreme conditions (low temperature, radiation, lack of oxygen and water) that Galileo has experienced are cockroaches. The real reason that NASA want to crash land Galileo is to kill off any cockroaches that had stowed away on Galileo, because they are afraid that the cockroaches will colonize Io and Europa. If the cockroaches were allowed to colonize these moons freely, there is a significant danger that they could develop spacecraft and weapons of mass destruction, and then come back to conquer Earth. The US Government realises the superiority of cockroaches and is so scared about the threat of a Space Cockroach invasion that they are willing to resort to these drastic measures. Remeber, cockroaches are everywhere... they're constantly plotting to overthrow mankind and take control of Earth. Be scared.
--
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Donald "Don Juan" Kerr
They are certainly right to be the most concerned about Europa, since the probabilty that life is significantly higher than most places. Think about how cool a mission to Europa would be too.
A specially designed space probe lands on the surface of ice covering the ocean and drills (or slams through the ice, much more dramatic). Water is extracted into a sterile vessel, and shot back up and sent to earth for examination.
How cool would a manned mission to space, into another planet, into an artic region, and then underwater be?
Eh...
The article mentions that Galileo wont be destroyed until it takes part in joint observations with Cassini at the end of the year.
;)
Two Questions
1> Is it wise to risk Cassini a craft which has not yet started on its main mission alongside a decrepit old craft like Galileo long past its lifetime. What if Galileo collides with Cassini or causes some interference or the like.
Obviously these craft were not degigned keeping in mind a joint mission and may have interfering control frequencies and like
2>On a lighter note if NASA can mix up feet and meters what if they mix them up and crash Cassini and send Galileo to Saturn
**Life is too short to be serious**
Precisely. Use the word "contamination" and suddenly every Jovian microbe-hugger in the world crawls out and says "Bravo!" Use the word "colonization" or "terraforming", well now that's another story isn't it? I'd imagine every nanotech and biotech nut on Slashdot would have an opinion on how to do it best, wouldn't they? (That's a much better thread too, if you ask me). Really - lets think about this. Yes - I guess we DO want to study extra-terrestial lifeforms if we can. But is it REALLY at all likely that our Terran microbes could live to supplant a Europan ecosystem (if there is one) before we get there to look at it **before** we wipe it out on purpose? No. Not likely and it is not even remotely a real possibility. If it was - then by definition, such lifeform wasn't that different an organism from our native life anyways - and therefore arguably, not so terribly interesting (other than for the critical fact that it IS so similar). So what if there is life there? What if we go there *cough* (which is what this is really all about) *cough* and find out that we could terraform the planet, or at least, seed it for Terran DNA colonization? Don't we mean to do just that? Do you think for ONE MINUTE that our "Official Plan" is REALLY to look for barren rocks to colonize and leave all possible life bearing planets to their native dumn-luck-chances? No. That is NOT the plan and we need to get that clear right NOW. We respect sentient life. But if its Euopropan microbes vs. Terran Algae - the Algae wins every single god-damned time. Same goes for even one Strep Bacillus. Are we clear on this point? Moreover, we only contaminate the planet in some meaningful way if our life-forms supplant native ones. Frankly, the thought that we could get an earthbased microbe to flourish on Europa is the kind of thing that we could justify spending a few generations of our best and brightest minds on together with significant portions of GDP for that VERY EXPRESS PURPOSE. Admittedly - I am not a fan of wiping out a life-form before we can get a chance to study it. But -for the record NASA - Eupropa is NOT for the Europans. That moon is OURS. We clear on that? If you don't agree - find work elsewhere. My honest opinion on this though - it has nothing to do with pollution control, this is SPIN Control. This is about budgets and Congress. Congress won't fund a mission to Mars (or Europa) to go look for rocks. Rocks aren't worth a trillion dollars - not even pretty red ones from Mars. A search for life IS worth that money. Ever since NASA opined that life may be/once was on Mars from some VERY equivocal pictures of a supposed microbial fossil on an old meteorite, NASA has suddenly found itself BACK in the manned space mission game. So. This isn't about saving Europan microbes from a Terran DNA holocaust - its about making people think that NASA reasonably believes there might actually BE microbes there in the first place. And therefore, we all should too. "I WANT TO BELIVE". Nothing more, nothing less. Once people start talking seriously about "saving Europan microbes", its a short hop to persuading them to pay for NASA to go look at them. That's what this whole water/life on Mars slant has been about folks. It's the only hook that NASA knows will get them funding. More power to em. But save Europan microbes from Terran DNA? Puhleeze... .Robert
.Robert
Consider if Galileo is placed on a trajectory to exit our solar system. Eventially, someday, in some way our little Galileo will impact something in the inuverse and contaminate it. We're just as much a part of the galaxy as everything else in it and we will "contaminate" no matter how carefull.
In a way this reminds me of animal right activist trying to save only the really cute animals. Cute little io?! noo! ! noo!! ! don't club that little baby seal . .but big nasty mean ol jupiter?? let the hammer fall! !
___
Wouldn't they be just a little pissed off about us crashing a probe onto their planet.
:)
Anyway i'd reckon nasa probably need a bigger target to aim at
The idea that keeps bothering me is how exactly we're going to terraform Mars when the time comes. We could start trying to produce a strain of plants that can live in that environment. If we found ice caps though, I was thinking that maybe using a nuke or two on them to melt the ice in to water and get some of the green house gases going to make the place a little bit more hospitable.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
OK, maybe I am missing something here, but isn't our highest duty to the Schizmatrix to bring another world up to the next Prigogenic Level of Complexity?
Humor aside, I think that NASA is overreacting. Either Europa has life or it doesn't. If it doesn't, we should hope that it is 'contaminated'. If it does, I would put my money on a planetful of life specially evolved for that planet's conditions over a couple dozen carpet-bagging bacteria from a warm and comfy inner-system world like Earth.
It is pathetic that the government's retreat from space is so complete that we are now trying to eradicating any evidence that we were even there.
When I get my asteroid-mining operation off the ground, I'm throwing all the profits into expansion and terraforming research. ;)
My Mother wishes to point out that we mitochondria are proof that not all life forms which invade another creature are harmful. Thank you.
Here we go again...crashing spacecraft, but on purpose for a change. In this case, Europa is surely a concern, but NASA and others have crashed plenty of spacecraft just to clear the slate and start on another project. Its about money, just check out this quote from the linked report: "The Io plus Amalthea option is not consistent with Galileo's current budget plan." There are many other examples. NASA allowed a functioning solar observing satellite to be destroyed in a Star Wars test even tho the satellite was observing a whole new category of sun-grazing comets it had discovered. The Magellan Venus orbiter was sent in an "aerobrake test" that burned it up - but what if it had detected changes on the surface of Venus on a second mapping run, which would have meant the HUGE discovery of active volcanism there. The recent Lunar Polar Orbiter was crashed on the day its money ran out, and while sending up a plume of steam after hitting an icepack (it didn't) would have been a spectacular home run, a better plan would have been to fund it long enough to drop the orbit and skim the supposed ice crater at close range as many times as possible. Motorola is ready to let the Iridium system become a $3 billion fireworks display. Back in the 80s NASA seriously considered shutting down Voyager 2 before it got to Uranus and Neptune as a cost cutting measure - the primary mission was only Jupiter and Saturn. Somehow an effort needs to be organized where functioning spacecraft get turned over to interested third parties when the Big Boys get tired of playing with them...
If they don't want to contaminate Io/Europa, why are they happy to contaminate Jupiter? I'm not sure I see the difference. Granted, from current evidence life is far more likely to occur on Jupiters moons that on the planet itself, but until we can prove that I don't see why we should think about contaminating anything.
NASA are of course doing a fine thing by showing their concern, so hats off to them. It would be a shame to destroy any potential life without even having discovered it first.
Having said that, it seems a but hypocritical that we as humans, show so much concern about the potential life on a planet so far away (especially when the likelyhood there is life is so small), when we do not give a damn about our own planet. Our waste kills millions of organisms every day, and God knows how many microorganisms (which is what we will find on these planets, if we find anything) are made extinct every day and we don't even know it.
Are alien organisms more important? To they have a greater right to live than earth organisms?
But, do not allow this act of "space hygiene" to cloud your vision. NASA and all the other space agencies in the world have been leaving tonnes of shit floating round our planet for the past 40 years.
Why this sudden change of heart?
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
What is this non-sense? Galileo is already dead, and the Earth is flat. NASA should just get over it, and accept that...
Disclaimer: I'm not an astronomer, thou I do have a bit of a background in physics, thou not a great memory.
:) Same logic applies to the other moons/natural sats around Jupiter. But Jupiter, say what you will about it, but it's got atmosphere. Virtually guarenteed to destroy any contaminates coming in, along with the craft before it hits anything solid, IMHO.
If my memory serves, IO doesn't have enough of an atmosphere to make sure it burn itself to a crisp. Europa may, I don't live there so I can't say for sure.
bash: ispell: command not found
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I think the theory is that both IO and Eurpoa have environments that are similar to ones on earth where we have found life.
Jupiter is a better bet as we can pretty much guarentee that Galileo with be totally burn up if dropped on Jupiter. Also the extreme pressures mean that there are no environments that are similar to those on earth.
But for those who have read 2001/2010/2061 stories, I can say I am worried we will splat some of those gase sac creature things!
"This marks a complete reversal of policy for NASA", he stated, "Currently we crash our spacecraft at the start of the mission".
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