[meteorite-list] Mars life concerns

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Jul 19 12:14:59 2005
Message-ID: <200507191614.j6JGEAM14562_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

>
> Mark F. wrote:
>
> >First off, the microbes on the Surveyor camera were most likely
> >introduced by the astronauts themselves during handling.
>
> Mark, Where were you when the damage was supposedly done in Nov. 1969? You
> speak quite authoritatively, as if you were sitting there in the supervisor's
> chair watching the analysis being mucked up.

Mark's comments were regarding the possible contamination by the astronauts
due the camera not being in quarantine. Jaffe, the Surveyor project scientist,
was there in 1969, and his comments about the possible contamination breach
in the laboratory analysis aftwards on Earth are a matter of public record.

> Note: "No other life forms were found in soil samples retrieved by the
> Apollo missions or by two Soviet unmanned sampling missions, although amino acids
> - not necessarily of biological origin - were found in soil retrieved by the
> Apollo astronauts.)", So: why in the camera, inside what has been described a
> virgin insulation material on its interior??? Were hundreds of pounds of
> Moon rocks treated differently from the camera, or do we have a reasonable
> control of "sorts"? Surely other rocks and soil would have come back positive,
> or is one of the astronauts playing a dirty joke against all odds?

You bring up an excellent point. It turns out the Apollo rock samples were handled
differently than the Surveyor 3 camera. The Moon rocks were photographed and
then sealed in a plastic bag when they were collected on the lunar surface.
The plastic bags were then sealed in a special box container, which wasn't
opened until it was returned to Earth - and only then they were opened in a
vacuum chamber. The Moon rocks were never directly exposed to the astronauts
or the air in the Apollo spacecraft. The Surveyor 3 camera, on the other hand,
was simply stored in an unsealed backpack. The backpack was stowed in the
Lunar Module, and then later moved into Command Module. This did allow
exposure to potential contamination from the astronauts and the air in the
Apollo spacecraft for over 5 days. Upon return to Earth, the backpack with
the camera was sent by jet to Lunar Receiving Lab in Houston, Texas. There,
the camera was finally placed in quarantine by being removed from the
backpack and heat sealed into two Teflon bags.

Ron Baalke
Received on Tue 19 Jul 2005 12:14:09 PM PDT