Moved: From Opportunity Etched Terrain Options

[Bill Harris]

what are the chances that earth bacteria made it to Mars and is there now?

Bacteria/viruses are one thing, but what about terrestrial organic compounds like plastics and lubricants. Or DNA. Example: the heatshield uses a cork compound as the ablative material. What about the cork DNA introduced into the Martian environment?

I don't know if this is a technical issue, but it is a philosphical one.

--Bill

[cIclops]

Yes parts of Surveyor 3 was brought back and microbes were cultured from the camera. But the results are indispute. In fact it looks like it was a false positive.

scott

p.s. Here is a link.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/lunar-04zza.html

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately the Spacedaily story doesn't quote any source for the strong claim that "The Apollo 12 results were later dismissed as laboratory error, owing to a single non-sterile handling event" other than some posts on a Usenet newsgroup.

Google found this NASA article from September 1, 1998 which clearly states "In November, 1969, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft's microorganisms were recovered from inside its camera that was brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew."

Note that portions of the NASA text have been used in the article without any reference to the original. Is this yet another case of bad journalism and a false positive news story?

[deglr6328]

arrgh, frustrating! I remember reading a nasa JSC report somewhere which detailed the reason for suspecting that the single bacteria test that came back positive was due to contamination. But now I can't find it anywhere!! I do remember being convinced that it was in fact contamination (a swab or an agar plate touched a benchtop or something) that caused the result. Here is a link to the original paper. "SURVIVAL OF MICRO-ORGANISMS ON THE MOON".

[cIclops]

  arrgh, frustrating! I remember reading a nasa JSC report somewhere which detailed the reason for suspecting that the single bacteria test that came back positive was due to contamination. But now I can't find it anywhere!! I do remember being convinced that it was in fact contamination (a swab or an agar plate touched a benchtop or something) that caused the result. Here is a link to the original paper. "SURVIVAL OF MICRO-ORGANISMS ON THE MOON".

Thanks for the link. That (undated) paper in turn references other papers that seem to be unavailable on the net. It is not clear what connection the author had with the testing laboratory or the authors of the paper "F. J. Mitchell and W. L. Ellis, 'Surveyor III: Bacterium isolated from lunar-retrieved TV camera', Proc. 2nd Lunar Sci. Conf., Vol. 3, 2721-2733 (1971), M.I.T.Press" which appears to be the source of the claim.

The mystery lives on :>

PS perhaps the subject of astrobiology deserves its own forum, Doug?

[nasaman58]

Speaking of contamination - I've read that our lander spacecraft were sterilized to prevent this.  But didn't at least one of the Surveyor landers on the Moon have some terrestrial bacteria that survived?  I have to wonder what's become of the bacteria.  And out of all the US and Russian lander missions to Mars, what are the chances that earth bacteria made it to Mars and is there now?

Bubbinski

That's a very good point, Bubbinski. If and when microbial life is discovered on Mars, the hardest part, I think (not being a biologist) will be making sure it didn't get there from Earth, whether on spacecraft or meteors from the early days of the solar system.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

(1) At the 2004 Astrobiology Conference at Ames, John Hummel gave quite a fairly detailed talk on the Surveyor 3 question, and I believe there was also a short piece on it a couple of years back in "The Planetary Report". The short answer is that it seems highly probable that the camera was indeed accidentally contaminated during post-return inspection. However, it should also be kept in mind that repeated deliberate tests using experiment packages on Earth satellites have shown that some species of spore-forming bacteria survive very nicely for lengthy periods in space if they're shielded from solar UV -- such as inside spacecraft.

(2) The Mossbauers on both MER rovers ran into trouble with their moving parts during cruise -- and in both cases the problem totally corrected itself after landing, leading the instrument's designers to conclude that the problem had something to do with weightlessness, since it hadn't shown up in ground tests either. In both cases, however, work-arounds had already been identified that would have allowed the Mossbauers to obtain all their science data even if the problems HADN'T corrected themselves. (In the case of MER-A, it was a problem with the motion rate of the radiation source's vibrational drive, which the team found a way to compensate for by modifying the commanded frequency of vibrational motion. In the case of MER-B, it was a problem with the motion drive whenever they tried to carry out onboard calibration -- which could have been made up for by using the backup calibration target on the hull of the rover itself, consisting of a wafer of iron oxide compound.)

[Guest_Edward Schmitz_*]

Agreed!  Steve Squyres is the best thing that ever happened to the Mars exploration program, as far as NASA PR is concerned.

On the other hand: Matt Golombeck aka "the giggling geek" is a total disaster

Lay off the geek! Matt is awsome. I can't even believe you said that. He's different, for sure. But I have been very inspired by him. It's my feeling that NASA would do better to bring all of the different personallities forward. I have really enjoyed getting to know the various team members. As weird as some of them are, I don't think that any of them drive people away.

[DEChengst]

Lay off the geek!  Matt is awsome.  I can't even believe you said that.  He's different, for sure.  But I have been very inspired by him.

As I already explained there's nothing wrong with geekiness. In fact it's a great thing A geek is a nerd with social skills. The only problem I have with Matt is his nervous laughter which makes listening to him not so pleasant for me.

[mike]

Technically speaking, a geek is someone who does something disgusting at a circus, like bite the head off a live chicken. A nerd is someone who is smart but socially inept. I'd much rather be a nerd.

[deglr6328]

I think one of the best assets NASA has as far as PR goes is probably Carolyn Porco of the cassini ISS team. She's super eloquent and has an uncanny ability to evoke wonder when speaking about space exploration that is almost Saganesque in nature. Read some of her updates here and I think you'll see what I mean. When she was speaking to CNN during the first image downlink session for Huygens she almost had me in tears......but I would never admit that in public!!

[JRehling]

Steve Squyres is the man for spearheading this fantastic mission, but I read about a month ago he made some comment to the effect he thought humans would never live on Mars permanently.  It was at the end of a long Space.com article and I'm too lazy to dig it up but he said the environment is just too harsh.

I disagree.  There will be people who choose to go and they will ultimately build a community there.

It's hard to see how Mars tops North Dakota as a desirable place to live, and people are leaving North Dakota, not going there.
In the short run, Mars sounds exciting, but so did North Dakota once. Eventually, it's just a place that lacks amenities relative to the alternatives.

Any human habitation of Mars is going to be limited in scale and riotously expensive up front, with no return on the investment ever, save science returns that could come more cheaply. It'll be late and limited in coming, if ever/at all.

[mike]

No return on investment ever? How do you know something won't be found on Mars that can't be found on Earth, something incredibly useful?

[JRehling]

No return on investment ever?  How do you know something won't be found on Mars that can't be found on Earth, something incredibly useful?

There are lots of reasons why finding something there would never provide financial validation for human presence. Not gold, platinum, diamond, etc., is so valuable. Mars is not made of different isotopes than Earth. If any such thing were discovered, it would be an intolerable cost to have to move human labor to it on the surface of Mars as opposed to removing it robotically.

Grasping at straws, there may be a vanishing probability of such a thing, but that's a few orders of magnitude past Occam's Razor.

[dvandorn]

No return on investment ever?  How do you know something won't be found on Mars that can't be found on Earth, something incredibly useful?

There are lots of reasons why finding something there would never provide financial validation for human presence. Not gold, platinum, diamond, etc., is so valuable. Mars is not made of different isotopes than Earth. If any such thing were discovered, it would be an intolerable cost to have to move human labor to it on the surface of Mars as opposed to removing it robotically.

Grasping at straws, there may be a vanishing probability of such a thing, but that's a few orders of magnitude past Occam's Razor.

Well, of course, you're right -- there's likely no really good economic reason for settling off-planet. Except, of course, for ensuring the survival of the human race in the case of an extinction event on Earth. But, of course, if that happened, none of the people who put up the money for off-planet settlements would be around to worry about economic gains or losses, and since all that's apparently important in the universe is for rich people to keep amassing as much wealth as possible, then, of course, your argument is unassailable...

...*sigh*...

I have an idea -- let's let all the people for whom bean-counting and the amassing of wealth and power define the purpose of human existence stay here and play with their funny colored slips of paper. The rest of us can go to the stars...

-the other Doug

[mike]

No return on investment ever?  How do you know something won't be found on Mars that can't be found on Earth, something incredibly useful?

There are lots of reasons why finding something there would never provide financial validation for human presence. Not gold, platinum, diamond, etc., is so valuable. Mars is not made of different isotopes than Earth. If any such thing were discovered, it would be an intolerable cost to have to move human labor to it on the surface of Mars as opposed to removing it robotically.

Grasping at straws, there may be a vanishing probability of such a thing, but that's a few orders of magnitude past Occam's Razor.

I find your lack of faith.. disturbing.