The Threat From Life on Mars

sweetshot97 writes "According to the UK site, Times Online; future trips to Mars that will have probes return with samples of the martian surface may contain deadly microbes of course, foreign to our world. The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for. What's funny is that we may have even infected Mars with our own bacteria when we sent several probes there. "

Comments

Odds Are Against It

[kaellinn18]

Odds are that any lifeform that is adapted to live on Mars will pretty much die immediately on earth, unless contained in an area that has a Mars-like climate. I wouldn't be too worried.

I have often wondered why it is...

[The Spanish Ninja]

In Orson Wells' War Of the Worlds, why do the Martian invaders die of our everyday diseases, but humans don't die of theirs?

Re:I have often wondered why it is...

[Fractal Dice]

According to the 1898 H.G. Wells original story (of which the infamous radio play was just a dramatization, not the original source material), the Martians were eating earth foodstuffs and water and it was basically food poisoning that did them in.

To wit:

But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow.

And from the epilog:

At any rate, in all the bodies of the Martians that were examined after the war, no bacteria except those already known as terrestrial species were found.

( I would like to thank The Literature Network and google for their assistance in the preparation of this post. No martians were harmed in the research. )

( oh, and I wouldn't lose much sleep over Martian bugs - there are plenty of diseases in strange corners of our own world against which we have no defenses - I's rate this whole article "-1 : FUD" )

Viking Landers were "boiled", Pathfinder was not

[goombah99]

The first Mars landers were autoclaved to prevent contamination from mars. This made for some rather remarkable compromises in the lander design in order for it to survive baking.

For example, because there were no heat resistant, space worthy (radiation resistant) memories back then an advance form of magnetic core memory memory was used. So this thing had VERY little memory. All data had to be stored on board for later transmission. The storage was done on magnetic tape. But of course the "modern" plastic magnetic tape could not be autoclaved. So they went back to the original magnetic tape: a steel band.

The atmosphere on mars has orders of magnitude lower pressure than ours. SO one cannot use a conventional pressure gauge. And an ultra sensitive baritron (capicitively measured diaphram gauge) would never have survived baking. (modern ones are become more robust). So insted they implemented a new kind of pressure guage never used before. It consisted of three temrerature sensors on stalks at right angle and some heat sources on stalks. By measuring the time history of the temperature reading they were able to use a mathematical heat transport model to back out the wind direction, velocity and pressure.

This device turned out to be amazingly robust and kept its calibration over years of service. No lander since then can claim the accuracy of this original weather station.

Later probes were not as thourgouly baked in part because they were so much more complicated their components could not withstand it.

As for bacteria living on mars. There are already earthly bacteria that could survive. For example take Radio-durans whose preferred environment is the high radiation environemnt underneath the hanford waste tanks. It can withsand having its DNA sliced in to tiny bits and still recover. It evolved on earth to live in extreme oxidizing conditions, turned out radiation damage, complete desication, and other stresses were a freebie. Things like antrhax spores can live decades, maybe much more, in a non-vegitative form.

Re:Martian meteors

[Gudlyf]

Going out on a limb here, but what about organisms that travel one way, then come back again (i.e., bacteria from Earth goes to Mars, mutates from the differing radiation levels/climate/etc., then that bacteria is brought back to Earth on a returning ship)?

Amazing discovery from Apollo 12

[earthforce_1]

One of the most amazing discoveries from apollo 12 was that when they removed the camera from the surveyor robotic misson that landed a two years earlier, and returned it to earth for analysis , they found human throat bacteria on it, even though it was returned in a sealed, sterile container.

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apollo12/A12_Exp er iments_III.html

One of the astronauts on the mission later remarked that he considered it the most incredible discovery of the entire Apollo program.