Slashdot Mirror
Future Astronauts Must Deal With Toxic Chemicals In Martian Soil
Thorfinn.au sends this quote from Space.com:
"The pervading carpet of perchlorate chemicals found on Mars may boost the chances that microbial life exists on the Red Planet — but perchlorates are also perilous to the health of future crews destined to explore that way-off world. Perchlorates are reactive chemicals first detected in arctic Martian soil by NASA's Phoenix lander that plopped down on Mars over five years ago in May 2008. It is likely both of NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 measured signatures of perchlorates, in the form of chlorinated hydrocarbons. Other U.S. Mars robots — the Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity — detected elemental chlorine. Moreover, orbital measurements taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft show that chlorine is globally distributed. [Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith] said microbes on Earth use perchlorate for an energy source. They actually live off highly oxidized chlorine, and in reducing the chlorine down to chloride, they use the energy in that transaction to power themselves. In fact, when there's too much perchlorate in drinking water, microbes are used to clean it up, he said. Furthermore, seasonal flow features seen on Mars may be caused by high concentrations of the brines of perchlorate, which has a strong attraction to water and can drastically lower its freezing point, Smith told SPACE.com. The high levels of perchlorate found on Mars would be toxic to humans, Smith said."
Can we just pick some bacteria and launch them up there? It's going to happen eventually, anyway. Might as well get it over with.
"But...but we must keep it pure! Must research!"
Ya ya, I agree. However, may I redirect you to "It's going to happen eventually, anyway."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's an energy and useful material source:
...perchlorate is used within the pyrotechnics industry, and ammonium perchlorate is also a component of solid rocket fuel....
researchers propose a biochemical approach for the removal of perchlorate from Martian soil that would not only be energetically cheap and environmentally friendly, but could also be used to obtain oxygen both for human consumption and to fuel surface operations.
It lowers water freezing point:
Furthermore, seasonal flow features seen on Mars may be caused by high concentrations of the brines of perchlorate, which has a strong attraction to water and can drastically lower its freezing point, Smith told SPACE.com
and it's a poison for humans:
"It's bad for astronauts because it is toxic for humans, as it interferes with the thyroid," he said.
So read these signs, Mars is even more difficult for human exploration than previously understood, but it provides potential energy source for machines to fuel themselves.
This only means that if we are going to do something in the near future, it's going to be more robots powered by perchlorate chemical reactions.
You can't handle the truth.
When was the last time an astronaut would survive exposure to anything outside Earth's atmosphere. Keep those helmets on kids, regulations and all that.
It's not like we don't have these chemicals on earth, it's not like we don't know how to handle them, not to mention, anyone landing on Mars will be wearing full EV space suits you know the ones that can handle major negative pressure differentials and have their own self contained air supply. What are they planning to do, jump out of the space capsule nude and throw themselves into the Martian dust?
If there is an energy source in the soil itself, why there isn't an abundant amount of bacteria taking advantage of this. I guess I've come to believe that life will evolve to meet just about any condition, and an energy source seems to be about all it needs. Yet there has been no serious evidence of any type of life currently on mars.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
We're not going back to the moon it doesn't make sense, we've been there already, duh! ...
Mars fucking pwns, let's send everyone there! Even though it's makes the Sahara look like Disneyland
We're gonna mine asteroids! Cos you know, the economy is fucked and there's loads of rocks in space!
We ain't going to send people to mars now, it's dangerous!
Mining rocks in space is a stupid idea, there's rocks here!
We're going back to the moon !!!!!!!!!!!
Cut the crap please
It's not too hard to imagine a total extinction event. To my mind the interesting point here is that there is that Martian soil contains a known energy source. That's... spectecular. We already know there's plenty of oxygen tied up in the iron oxide in the soil, and now we know there's also energy for microbes. That's one step closer to terraforming. And hey, in the process they'll get rid of this pesky toxic stuff too, at least on the surface layers.
Oh man! look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
...
Is there life on Mars?
Yeah! Let's get those microbes up there! preferably some that convert it to Oxygen for dual use.
Radiation will probably kill them before they get there.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Whats the problem with a "super human" eating microbes? even those infected with a virus?
Poor sucker has a cold... :)
How convenient. At least we know there's one back out of the gravity well on Mars, we'll just have to bring the ammonium salts ;)
*insert pithy sig here*
As far as I know, perchlorates are continuously formed in arid conditions by the UV radiation, which Martian surface has plenty. They are present on Earth in most arid places, like Atacama desert and deserts of Antarctica, which are reasonably similar to Mars. Then, could it be that Mars has a shadow biosphere of bacteria living under ground, feeding of the perchlorate? Could it be, that this bacteria are responsible for the occasional methane emissions on Mars?
I think that to answer this question we need to send to Mars a rover with a good microscope, or possibly multiple rovers, one excavating, one analyzing material from other rovers.
Perchlorate at 1% concentrations?
Perchlorates are very easy to turn into rocket fuel or oxygen. Two things potentially of much use on mars. I expect the processing would need too much bulky equipment, time and manual labor to be practical on a plant-flag-and-leave mission, but a long-term sustainable base could certainly put it to good use.
that there is no life there. If there were life there, the perchlorates would have been consumed already.
The problem with terraforming is that you need LOTS of nitrogen. Remember, our own athmosphere only has at best 21% oxygen, most of the rest is nitrogen - 78% (the remainder is a mix of hydrogen, helium, krypton and methane).
Arent perchlorates an easily accessible source of oxygen?
Martians will come here before we go to Mars.
I doubt anyone alive today will ever see humans walking around on Mars.
You are welcome on my lawn.
i guess applying 'uncle bert's all natural organic martian skin juice' to my face for the past 50 years was a bad idea?
intergalctic submicroscopic battle fleets.
there was a big dust up a few years ago when it turned out perchlorate was winding up in lettuce.
the problem was that the perchlorate facility, which is around the BMI complex in nevada, is a massively polluted pile of EPA superfund-ish nightmare.
on top of that, the private companies responsible for the pollution were able to shed themselves pf the environmental cleanup costs by shaving off subsidaries and then declaring bankruptcy. Carl Icahn is a master at this type of thing. so the government is the only one left to clean up this stuff and it cant get the money.
(of course the govt can pay a trillion dollars to invade iraq and spy on your google searches...)
Today, German news agency dpa reports that fruits and vegetables currently sold in Germany are contaminated by perchlorates. This piece of news will add fuel to the fire for those who wonder where their food really comes from.
With all the other challenges of putting a viable human colony on Mars, it seems like perchlorates in the soil are small beans indeed.
Mars is so far out of reach, that this is absolutely no issue. Lets visit this question in 200-1000 years again, when we can actually get there. If we can.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Except the perchlorates are continually produced, and life likely doesn't exist ON the surface, but only UNDER it, probably fairly deep. Sort of like the opposite of our problem with oil.
without the rocket fuel business from nasa, air force, etc, the company probably would never have existed.
.. I would build robotic avatars and have them controlled from this end of the world. even if you had to make an outpost on the moon and when the 'lines' of sights were most favorable, have the robots be controlled by humans and start the building that way. get more samples, etc.. basically the first real mars exploration should be robotic as much as possible. so, we basically need to improve our automation technology at this end and not worry too much about the rest, until the return flight from mars with our robots and all the samples they could collect from every aspect could be analysed. And when I mean robots, I mean human like robots, or something with manual dexterity.
Ammonium Perchlorate is a very powerful oxidizer - and has been extensively used to make solid rocket propellant
Since Mars has so much perchlorates around why don't we turn Mars into planet-wide base for building solid rocket fuel ??
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
perchlorates don't get generated on the martian surface - no oxygen, so they can't get continually produced.
On earth, yes, they do get generated - but we have a large enough (and dense enough) atmosphere to allow the reactions to take place.
Perchlorate is a reactive and unstable anion that can easily be washed out of regolith, thermally decomposed by baking in an oven, or removed using chemical or microbial treatments. Similar treatments are likely going to be required anyway if you're going to be growing plants in it.
It's also not actually all that toxic. The thyroid absorbs it in place of iodine, reducing the amount of iodine absorbed...it has no other effects, and the iodine uptake interference stops when exposure to perchlorate stops...chronic ingestion is required to make it a problem, an acute exposure will only have a brief effect.
Basically: don't make a habit of eating untreated dirt, and monitor drinking water contaminants. Nothing they shouldn't already be doing. Iodine supplements might be a good idea in case drinking water becomes contaminated and it takes some time to correct.
Âporque?
When this planet is so polluted millions of people die (who matter) then we will create ways to clean it AND we will step up our efforts to reboot life on Mars (the popular appeal of going there.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
KS Robinsons' 'Mars' series uses the 'purity/necessity' debate as a main source of conflict all the way through.
The novels discuss it from practically every imaginable angle. The point is, just because the following statement is true:
Does not indicate that any one single biological intrusion is justified. Each intrusion must be evaluated as best as possible against the whole system. Sure we can't know every effect but inevitibility is no excuse to go off half-cocked shooting microbes everywhere.
We have alot of mapping to do...IMHO we'll have Mars mapped and analyzed as well or better than earth before we go...in a sense anyway.
To the topic, the challenge is part of the fun! Very interesting to consider Prions and the border where a chemical compound becomes 'life'
Fear the Mars Prions!
Thank you Dave Raggett
see, this is what I'm saying...
sure, your post represents one possible counterpoint but the greater concept is that nature (no matter which world) is herself a *system* with infinite cause/effects
when we go to Mars we initiate relationships that we cannot fathom now because of complexity...it's awesome and it's a real challenge and it needs to happen yesterday
Thank you Dave Raggett
... they have the attention span of fleas, and only a slightly better understanding of what's going on.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Is there actually a critical atmospheric density for perchlorate-producing reactions? I would expect that the reaction rate would simply scale fairly linearly with pressure.
As for oxygen - chemically speaking the Martian atmosphere is roughly 2/3 oxygen, the question is simply is there a mechanism for C02 to reacte to form perchlorates. Not to mention the surface is covered in iron oxides, which are potentially more reactive.
Given Mars's low geologic activity it seems like the options are
* perchlorates formed as a side-effect of spontaneous reactions between higher-energy minerals that formed when Mars was geologically active (seems a little unlikely, being rocket fuel and all)
* perchlorates were themselves formed in the distant past and migrated to the surface
* perchlorates are formed on the surface where sunlight provides energy, but not by the same process we attribute them to on Earth.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
That's not toxic chemicals, that's black oil.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Due to the abundance of perchlorates, Mars will be an excellent planet to open a dry cleaning service on. It might be called the red planet, but the soil will make your whites whiter than ever. Due to this discovery, China is now expected to be the first nation to colonize Mars.
At least astronauts won't have ring around the collar.
Table-ized A.I.