It was just announced that the Mars Rover Facility has analyzed its its first Martian soil samples but I note a bit of caution about some of the results. Did we bring along from Earth any contaminants that might affect the results?
- LRK -
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NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples
December 03, 2012
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has used its full array of instruments to analyze Martian soil for the first time, and found a complex chemistry within the Martian soil. Water and sulfur and chlorine-containing substances, among other ingredients, showed up in samples Curiosity's arm delivered to an analytical laboratory inside the rover.
Detection of the substances during this early phase of the mission demonstrates the laboratory's capability to analyze diverse soil and rock samples over the next two years. Scientists also have been verifying the capabilities of the rover's instruments.
Curiosity is the first Mars rover able to scoop soil into analytical instruments. The specific soil sample came from a drift of windblown dust and sand called "Rocknest." The site lies in a relatively flat part of Gale Crater still miles away from the rover's main destination on the slope of a mountain called Mount Sharp. The rover's laboratory includes the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument. SAM used three methods to analyze gases given off from the dusty sand when it was heated in a tiny oven. One class of substances SAM checks for is organic compounds -- carbon-containing chemicals that can be ingredients for life.
"We have no definitive detection of Martian organics at this point, but we will keep looking in the diverse environments of Gale Crater," said SAM Principal Investigator Paul Mahaffy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
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SAM tentatively identified the oxygen and chlorine compound perchlorate. This is a reactive chemical previously found in arctic Martian soil by NASA's Phoenix Lander. Reactions with other chemicals heated in SAM formed chlorinated methane compounds -- one-carbon organics that were detected by the instrument. The chlorine is of Martian origin, but it is possible the carbon may be of Earth origin, carried by Curiosity and detected by SAM's high sensitivity design.
"We used almost every part of our science payload examining this drift," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The synergies of the instruments and richness of the data sets give us great promise for using them at the mission's main science destination on Mount Sharp."
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A lot of effort goes into making sure you don't take things from Earth that could contaminate another planet and in the case of the Apollo missions, that you didn't bring something back from the Moon that could contaminate Earth.
- LRK -
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FINAL PREPARATIONS: 1968
Problems with Back-Contamination Control
The receiving laboratory was only part of the scheme for preventing contamination of the earth by alien organisms. Between the spacecraft floating on the Pacific Ocean and the laboratory in Houston was a long chain of events that offered several chances to contaminate the environment. Early in 1968, spumed by expressions of concern by scientists outside the government, the Interagency Committee on Back Contamination (ICBC) revived the question of whether lunar contaminants could be completely prevented from escaping into the biosphere during recovery operations, particularly between the floating command module and the mobile quarantine facility aboard the recovery ship. For two years the committee had been uneasy about this problem, and at its February meeting the chairman opened the discussion once more. The committee asked MSC's landing and recovery division to provide
a detailed discussion on the return lunar mission [focusing on] containment countermeasures on the lunar surface, in the Lunar Module (LM) ascent stage, during LM-CM transfer, during CM earth return, splashdown, retrieval, operations onboard the recovery vessel, transfer into the mobile isolation unit, and delivery and transfer into the LRL.
Committee members also wanted details of MSC's contingency plans for biological containment in case the spacecraft came down outside the primary recovery zone.31
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There procedures and requirements and treaties involved concerning the potential for cross conamination by spacecraft.
- LRK -
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Office of Planetary Protection
Planetary protection is the term given to the practice of protecting solar system bodies (i.e., planets, moons, comets, and asteroids) from contamination by Earth life, and protecting Earth from possible life forms that may be returned from other solar system bodies. Planetary protection is essential for several important reasons: to preserve our ability to study other worlds as they exist in their natural states; to avoid contamination that would obscure our ability to find life elsewhere — if it exists; and to ensure that we take prudent precautions to protect Earth’s biosphere in case it does.
International Treaties and Organizations with Cognizance of Planetary Protection Activities
Internationally, technical aspects of planetary protection are developed through deliberations by the
Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), part of the International Council of Science (ICSU), which consults with the United Nations in this area. The COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection develops and makes recommendations on planetary protection policy toCOSPAR, which may adopt them as part of the official
COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy.
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To get a feel for what needs to be done, take a look at some of the methods.
- LRK -
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Methods And Implementation
NASA uses a variety of methods to measure, control and reduce spacecraft microbial contamination for planetary protection purposes. Assembly of spacecraft hardware is carefully controlled and often takes place in clean-room facilities using, aseptic techniques in order to meet planetary protection requirements. Dry heat microbial reduction techniques first used on the Viking spacecraft are still used today. Measurement techniques are cultivation-based microbial assays using well characterized biological methods.
Clean Rooms and Microbial Barriers
NASA requires that planetary protection procedures involving sterile items and sample processing must be conducted in Class 100 clean rooms, as defined by federal standard (equivalent to ISO Class 5). Such clean rooms feature laminar-air-flow systems to filter out contaminants; these systems work by keeping the air within a space moving in one direction along parallel flow lines at a uniform velocity through very fine filters. Planetary protection procedures specify the types of devices that may be used for air sampling in these environments.
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Maybe no harm to Mars if you bring a bit of dirt along.
- LRK -
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Summary
Biological Contamination of Mars: Issues and Recommendations
Task Group on Planetary Protection, Space Studies Board, National Research
Council. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C (1992).
In anticipation of planned U.S. and Russian robotic missions to Mars in the early 1990s, NASA requested Space Studies Board advice on how to update the nature of planetary protection requirements to reflect changes in the years since the Apollo and Viking missions and to incorporate new thoughts about life on Mars and the growing environmental awareness of the populace. Recommendations were requested in time for the 1992 COSPAR meeting in order to update international planetary protection policies as needed.
This task group focused on making recommendations concerning the protection of Mars from forward contamination (i.e., contamination of the martian environment by terrestrial organisms) during upcoming missions. It specifically considered then-current views about the chemical and physical properties of Mars as well as the potential survival of Earth organisms on Mars and approaches to planetary protection used by the U.S. and Russia. In its deliberations, the task group distinguished between missions whose goals included reconnaissance and measurement vs. those that specifically included experiments to detect life.
The task group viewed the problem of forward contamination as separable into two principal issues: 1) the potential for growth of terrestrial organisms on Mars (Pg), and 2) the importation of terrestrial organic contaminants, living or dead, in amounts sufficient to compromise the search for evidence of past or present life on Mars itself.
- Based on current knowledge of conditions on Earth that limit cell growth and on the best estimates of surface conditions on Mars, the task group concludes that no known terrestrial organisms could grow on the martian surface. However, this fact does not alter the case as far as contamination of a possible past or extant martian biosphere is concerned. Prudence dictates that bioload reduction on all lander missions to Mars must continue to be seriously addressed. The issue of spacecraft cleanliness is particularly crucial when life-detection experiments are included in the scientific payload.
The task group concurred unanimously that “Forward contamination, solely defined as contamination of the martian environment by growth of terrestrial organisms that have potential for growth on Mars, is not a significant hazard. However, forward contamination more broadly defined to include contamination by terrestrial organic matter associated with intact cells or cell components is a significant threat to interpretation of results of in situ experiments specifically designed to search for evidence of extant or fossil martian microorganisms.”
- Advances in techniques for assessing the existence of microorganisms will have a strong impact both on bioburden assessment procedures and on future life-detection experiments because of their increasingly greater sensitivity and specificity. The task group strongly recommends that efforts be made to explore current analytical methods for use in bioburden assessment and inventory procedures before spacecraft assembly and launch. Specific promising methods identified included epifluorescent microscopic techniques for directly counting viable cells, and the polymerase chain reaction which increases detection sensitivity by enzymatically amplifying specific biomarkers of even a single cell to detectable levels.
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In the case of Curiosity maybe an Ooops.
- LRK -
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Curiosity’s drill may contaminate Mars with microbes from Earth
Posted September 12th, 2012
Last week, I wrote about a hypothetical contamination of Mars and how NASA tries to prevent this. Now it seems this scenario actually could become reality.
There might be a problem with a drill bit. It was planned to sterilize all drill bits and keep them inside a box to be opened only after Curiosity’s touchdown on Mars. But engineers grew concerns that a rough landing could damage the drill mechanism. So they decided to open the box and mount one of them in the drill – just to make sure there’s at least one working bit ready for action.
This happened without consulting NASA’s planetary protection office, which tries to make sure that all parts of the spacecraft are properly sterilized before leaving Earth. So now NASA is facing the problem that microbes theoretically could propagate if they touch water or ice.
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Looks like the source for this is the Los Angeles Times.
- LRK -
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If the Mars rover finds water, it could be H2 ... uh oh!
If Curiosity locates H2O, a simmering NASA controversy will boil over. The rover's drill bits may be tainted with Earth microbes that could survive upon touching water.
For all the hopes NASA has pinned on the rover it deposited on Mars last month, one wish has gone unspoken: Please don't find water.
Scientists don't believe they will. They chose the cold, dry equatorial landing site in Mars' Gale Crater for its geology, not its prospects for harboring water or ice, which exist elsewhere on the planet.
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Here is to looking up, maybe near, maybe far, maybe even a star.
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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK -
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