[meteorite-list] Mars life concerns

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Jul 18 17:08:07 2005
Message-ID: <bb.5b98d29b.300d742f_at_aol.com>

Rob M. wrote:
 
>But I think the point here is that we don't KNOW that Mars is a dead
>planet. Given the tenacity of microbes and the possibility that life
>on earth itself may have been initially delivered by comets or meteoroids,
>is the possibility of (primitive) life on Mars all that hard to fathom?
 
Thanks for keeping things in perspective, Rob. Goran, I just saw your post
too. Rest assured, there is nothing we can do about Europe at this point,
and maybe after reading this post, you will re-evaluate all of your reasons why
microbes can't survive. The fact is that they can and have survived worse
conditions on primitive spacecraft (less protection):
 
Don't forget the Apollo mission that recovered the camera from the austere
Surveyor 3 lander,
after a tough trip and more than 2.5 year vacation on the Moon, in vacuum,
without any food or water, surviving the conditions of transit and all the
radiation thrown at them. Perhaps they didn't reproduce, but the _Streptococcus
mitas_ bacteria were sure virulent when they were cultured back on earth by
the US Center for Disease Control.
 
In Apollo 12 Commander Pete Conrad's words:
"I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the
whole...Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said
[anything] about it."
 
It is sad to say that whether there is life on both Mars and the Moon is
probably a moot question by now. The questions are, how bad the infection IS,
and whether there WAS life on either of those worlds...
 
For more information see:
_http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01sep98_1.htm_
(http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast01sep98_1.htm)
 
It really isn't in NASA's interest to publicize this too much, of course, or
some burocrats could always misuse or heavens, ask for higher standards of
protection. Panspermia in action!
 
Saludos, Doug
Received on Mon 18 Jul 2005 05:07:59 PM PDT