Have our spacecraft placed bacteria on Mars?

[Doc Intrepid]

#3 is way cool...

But I would also be curious to know how a microbe could survive in the vacuum that is space? Is that possible?

Actually she's a really cool kid, my cousin.

Whats rather odd, though, is how she got into that line of work. She had sent an experiment involving a type of worm into orbit with Challenger. The experiment was inside a cleaned can construction. When the Challenger space shuttle disintegrated and burned up upon re-entry, NASA thought the data was lost. Then when they were finding bits and pieces of the space shuttle, they found the can construction. It was sent to the lab. When it was opened, the worms were still alive. No one can explain how they survived the extreme heat, the extreme cold, the long fall to earth, etc.

The point that it made to NASA was that we do not only need to clean our probes that go to other planets to protect the other planets from what the probes might inadvertantly take with them.

We also need some way to clean probes that return, to protect OUR planet from anything those probes might inadvertantly bring back with them.

Which actually, when you think about it, is both more challenging and higher risk.......

 

[dsteding]

We also need some way to clean probes that return, to protect OUR planet from anything those probes might inadvertantly bring back with them.

Which actually, when you think about it, is both more challenging and higher risk.......

Could you imagine an infection from outer space? Zero inherent resistance, it could make the bird flu look like a minor cold.

 

[Doc Intrepid]

Precisely.

 

[drbill]

Man, I just hope those little green men (and, undoubtedly, women) from the planet Xanadu follow the same protocols each time they visit our planet. Do we need a UN Dept. of Home Planet Security?

 

[_Bella_]

Planetary Protection Officer for NASA

Best job title EVER! :22:

 

[markfm]

Did she have to build Gort?

 

[beejw]

too cool.

the most common anareobic bacteria are sulfate reducing bacteria, so unless there were sulfate ions present for them to reduce, they would die...unles they could like, go into stasus or something.

hmmmmm.

 

[D_B]

I was going to mention the bacteria on Surveyor 3, but Saint Thomas got that covered .. It's interesting to note that NASA no longer believes that those bacteria survived on the Moon, but that the camera was contaminated after it was brought back ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_moon

It costs a great deal to keep sterile, the space craft sent to other planets, and NASA takes that job very seriously .. good to know that they look at the reverse possibility too
Here's what NASA has to say in the subject ... http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/pp/about/index.htm
In 1967 the UN adopted this treaty for all signatory nations, to protect other planets ... http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/5181.htm

That's a very cool story, Doc

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

Could you imagine an infection from outer space? Zero inherent resistance, it could make the bird flu look like a minor cold.

To infect us, we would have to have something an alien microbe could use or want. In the case of viruses, they would have to recognize some cell receptor on our cells and then be able to use our genetic machinery. In the case of bacteria, they would have to use our own proteins or other macromolecules for food. This all seems unlikely. I would point out that the vast majority of microbes on THIS planet are non-pathogens because they either can't attach to our cells or because we have nothing they need.

Moreover, if an alien microbe were, by chance, to have some affinity for our proteins and the ability to use our genetic machinery, they would also be similar enough to earth microbes that some instinsic immunity would likely be present.

The chance that an earth microbe could survive on Mars, or that an alien microbe could survive on earth, seems small... unless you subscribe to the belief that life here was brought here from space on meteorites, in which case the solar system may have been seeded universally with some microbial dust. It;s then possible that earth and martian microcrobes may be similar. Even in that scenario, the billions of years of divergent evolution still makes it unlikely that cross-contamination could occur.

And humans are not the worst virus. In biology, there is no good or bad, those are human value judgements. We are a species, neither better nor worse than any other, entitled to the same role as any other species. We take from the earth and from other specieis for our benefit, but name one other species that doesn't do likewise. And don't fall back on the old "we are smarter so we should know better" argument. We have the same rights and responsibilities as any other species, no more, no less.

 

[jagfish]

Considering that there is some type of bacteria that can survive in virtually every extreme environment on earth, including the deep sea "poison" boiling sea vents and even within Jetplane fuel tanks subsisting on AL and jet fuel, I think it is a given that somewhere on the earth exists a bacteria able to survive on another planet in our system. This I believe...however, the chances of the appropriate bacteria coming in contact with the spacecraft before liftoff seems remote to me.