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Curiosity Rover May Have Brought Dozens of Microbes To Mars
bmahersciwriter (2955569) writes "Despite rigorous pre-flight cleaning, swabbing of the Curiosity Rover just prior to liftoff revealed some 377 strains of bacteria. 'In the lab, scientists exposed the microbes to desiccation, UV exposure, cold and pH extremes. Nearly 11% of the 377 strains survived more than one of these severe conditions. Thirty-one per cent of the resistant bacteria did not form tough, protective spore coats; the researchers suspect that they used other biochemical means of protection, such as metabolic changes.' While the risk of contaminating the red planet are unknown, knowing the types of strains that may have survived pre-flight cleaning may help rule out biological 'discoveries' if and when NASA carries out its plans to return a soil sample from Mars."
It has been speculated that life here on Earth came from space. And there has been speculation that this life may have come from Mars thanks to asteroid impacts ejecting material with enough energy to reach escape velocity, some of this material reaching the Earth in its early primordial history. Well, if this is the case, we're returning the favor.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
...we're screwed
Table-ized A.I.
First properly documented interplanetary flight sent by us, with biological specimens on board ! Pity we didnt measure the effect of zero-g or deep space radiation on these.
Next up, amoebas and molluscs to mars ! With the current pace, maybe in next couple thousand years we'll send rhesus monkeys at some point.
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Why isn't anyone proposing a experiment where we send extremophile bacteria we believe can survive on mars and find out if in fact they can survive or perhaps even thrive under the harsh martian conditions. This would have huge implications for our search for extra terrestrial life, it would mean that its very likely mars already harbors life from earth that hitchhiked on a meteorite and even more importantly it would mean that life as we know it, needs goldilocks planet conditions only for so long as it takes to develop the genetic tool-set to deal with extreme environments, from where its than able to go on an colonize planets we currently believe are inhospitable to life as we know it.
Not even living there yet but we already shat everywhere on the carpet !
JPL actually has a highly detailed document on "Policy for Planetary Protection" that details the standards to which a probe must be sanitized to before being sent on its mission. The level of cleanliness depends on the intended mission and target; orbiters have a lesser standard than landers, for example. The policy also takes into account different parts of the spacecraft; the inside of the box containing the CPU and so forth isn't cleaned to as high of a standard as the wheels, experiments and so forth that are directly exposed to the environment. In the case of the Galileo probe, it was deliberately crashed into Jupiter at the end of mission in order to ensure it would never impact Europa, as it had not been cleaned to that high of a standard. Cassini will face a parallel fate, of crashing into Saturn to prevent a collision with Enceladus and/or Titan.
The key part here is that when you are looking for life (or might be looking for life in the near future) you don't want to discover that the life is found is something that you brought from earth yourself, or was brought by another space probe.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Terraforming has begun. With some luck, there were one or two microbes that can do photosynthesis. Plenty of CO2 on Mars.
Yes, it will take a really long time, but we had to start at some point, right? Good job, NASA.
Turns out we are the Great Ancients from a million years ago that came from the cosmos to seed life. Whatever species ends up evolving there will dig into their past with wonder and trepidation to discover who we were. And then they'll find out about Honey Boo Boo. Ah, to be a fly on the wall... :)
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
So if humans ever do populate Mars, they'll face strains of bacteria which even NASA can't kill. Wouldn't this make an argument for not going to such extremes to try to rid such rovers of any and all bacteria?
www.gaiageek.com
There were some (only slightly) successful Soviet Mars landers. They were not sterilized at all.
What's he going to do, turn his back on his best customers?
It is extremely unlikely that any bugs that made the passage from Earth to Mars on the rover will survive on the surface of Mars and propagate. The perchlorates in the soil are a super oxidizer that will gobble them up. The surface of Mars may be more hostile to life than space.