SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Four years into its travels across Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover faces an unexpected challenge: wending its way safely among dozens of dark streaks that could indicate water seeping from the red planet’s hillsides.
Although scientists might love to investigate the streaks at close range, strict international rules prohibit Curiosity from touching any part of Mars that could host liquid water, to prevent contamination. But as the rover begins climbing the mountain Aeolis Mons next month, it will probably pass within a few kilometres of a dark streak that grew and shifted between February and July 2012 in ways suggestive of flowing water.
NASA officials are trying to determine whether Earth microbes aboard Curiosity could contaminate the Martian seeps from a distance. If the risk is too high, NASA could shift the rover’s course — but that would present a daunting geographical challenge. There is only one obvious path to the ancient geological formations that Curiosity scientists have been yearning to sample for years (see ‘All wet?’).
[...] The streaks — dubbed recurring slope lineae (RSLs) because they appear, fade away and reappear seasonally on steep slopes — were first reported 1 on Mars five years ago in a handful of places. The total count is now up to 452 possible RSLs. More than half of those are in the enormous equatorial canyon of Valles Marineris, but they also appear at other latitudes and longitudes. “We’re just finding them all over the place,” says David Stillman, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who leads the cataloguing.
[...] Curiosity was only partly sterilized before going to Mars, and experts at JPL and NASA headquarters in Washington DC are calculating how long the remaining microbes could survive in Mars's harsh atmosphere — as well as what weather conditions could transport them several kilometres away and possibly contaminate a water seep. "That hasn't been well quantified for any mission," says Vasavada.
http://www.nature.com/news/mars-contamination-fear-could-divert-curiosity-rover-1.20544
(Score: 2) by seeprime on Thursday September 08 2016, @04:35AM
I understand that scientists don't want to "contaminate" any water on Mars with earth germs. This, however, seems almost religious. Why not get Earth germs in Martian water? This would be a great experiment where the worst that is likely to happen is that germs we can already fight off become dominant on a planet that otherwise might hold killer germs. Germs do not have a right to life, except where they benefit living organisms. Are international scientists concerned that there might be higher forms of life on Mars? Probably not. So, let's check out the water and learn something, possible very important.
(Score: 5, Informative) by jimtheowl on Thursday September 08 2016, @04:43AM
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday September 08 2016, @06:10AM
jimtheowl is absolutely right, and I am surprised that not all Soylentils comprehend this. Are we not a science-based community? Do we not understand the value of experimental control? Is jmorris in my Global Warming underwear, again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @10:49PM
SN is composed of a lot of various types. We aren't all in the higher tiers of intelligence and/or up to date on science stuff. I imagine people complaining about this are probably more conservative leaning with a knee-jerk reaction to any conservationism (haha pun NOT intended) that they don't immediately comprehend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @10:53PM
Reminds me of an old guy I met, very republican but was a fan of preserving old growth trees. Told a friend of his to not cut down 3-5 giant redwoods on a property and the guy said "What are you, some kind of communist"? It goes with the older crowd, though the younger ones have their own issues (raping racist homophobe!)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Thursday September 08 2016, @08:11AM
OTOH, earth germs would be distinguished from Mars germs easily by genetic means (should Mars also be driven by DNA). Also it is unlikely that germs would spread quickly on Mars so that other sites should stay pristine for centuries to come. That being said, it is also a matter of scientific integrity to stick to the original plan. It is of course useful to do the calculations that are underway for other reasons too. It would inform the planning and analysis of later missions. However, I would not see it as a catastrophe if contamination would factually happen.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 08 2016, @10:50AM
That's a really good point. Unless there's some sort of subterranean, global aquifer on Mars through which contamination might spread throughout the planet. That seems unlikely. It is much more of a risk on Europa or Enceladus, so I do hope the probes we send to those places are thoroughly sterilized before they're sent.
Or maybe that's what the aliens thought when they sent their probes to early Earth and thought, 'meh, what harm could it do that we didn't sterilize the thing fully before we sent it there?...'
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:03PM
Lets be honest here as well, exactly how likely is it for "earth germs" to actually survive the trip and 18 more months on the planet surface. These are things that have evolved to have air and water to survive, of which they have had 0 for the past few years.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:47PM
You would be surprised what a simple enough organism can survive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @07:25PM
Oh, I don't know, fair to middlin' [extremetech.com] I'd say.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Thursday September 08 2016, @10:40PM
I am not a certified exobiologist, but allow me to make speculations of my own:
What if the "germs" are very similar to the ones on Earth? Could we then figure out for sure if they were introduced from Earth but then mutated? Would we then be able to find out if they were introduced by us recently, or via meteorites (with a very slow rate of mutation)?
What if life evolved independently, but has a very high probability of organizing in the same patterns? Perhaps it is a result of life originating from Mars, or even the reverse; that Mars was contaminated by Earth. Why would you assume that it would spread slowly given factors such as the wind?
What if life evolved independently, but only one of the two planets was subject to contamination? It could be that 10% of the DNA material on Earth is from Mars, but not the opposite. Without a proper data set from Mars it may be impossible to intersect the data and extract what the original Earth DNA is.
And what if they are significantly different? Could it then for sure not be attributed to mutations only?
It might be a bit naive to presume what we will be able to conclude if we only have contaminated data.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Friday September 09 2016, @12:13AM
We actually have no way of verifying it either way, as contamination has been occurring for many millions of years before we got there. We found that meteorite from Mars in Antarctica. It would be perfectly reasonable to expect that Mars has some Earth meteorites.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Monday September 12 2016, @12:01AM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by driven on Thursday September 08 2016, @02:21PM
We already know microorganisms can survive in space, thus panspermia [wikipedia.org] from Earth would be a reasonable explanation if life were found on Mars. ie. finding life on Mars does not mean it originated there.
I personally feel our sterilization efforts are a tad misplaced and we should instead seek to seed all planets with life in case we are the only planet with life on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2016, @04:47AM
Earth germs could crossbreed with Mars germs and mutate into incurable diseases and return to Earth on a Mars probe. The horror.
(Score: 1) by letssee on Thursday September 08 2016, @08:52AM
Finding alien 'germs' would be a *very* interesting discovery. Can't risk having them wiped out by accidentally brought earth germs. Also, you never know the potential uses of a completely alien life form. If it wouldn't be related to earthly life it would probably use an alien equivalent of DNA which could work completely different and might be useful to study.
Also, if we find DNA based life on mars in a later mission, it would be rather interesting to know if it had been there already (meaning the galaxy, or at least the solar system, is probably teeming with life) or if we brought it there ourselves (meaning we still don't know anything )
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday September 08 2016, @01:24PM
Rats that arrived by ship to distant islands sometimes disrupted (or even wiped out) the local fauna. That being said, i think it is well worth the risk for rovers to explore possible water sources on Mars. The planet is quite large. If we do screw up and create some new bacteria colonies on Mars then that itself would be an interesting thing to watch.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday September 08 2016, @04:14PM
So, let's check out the water and learn something, possible very important.
Except Curiosity is a geology bot designed to look for indirect evidence of surface water in the past, not some Swiss-army-knife that can be diverted to go and check out a damp patch. It might possibly do little more than confirm "yeah, its a dark patch on the sand that looks like it might be water".
The first thing that goes poking around in these features should be a purpose designed damp patch analysis bot, with experiments to look for life, life precursors and other chemical analysis of damp dust - which would include full reclusive billionaire standard sterilisation. Bacteria are pretty tenuous and there will always be a risk of contamination, so make sure that risk is worthwhile.
Why not get Earth germs in Martian water?
Because then how would you subsequently know if they were Earth germs we put there, bone-fide Martian bugs demonstrating parallel evolution, descendants of Earth bugs that went over to mars on a meteorite, ancestors of Earth bugs that came here on a meteor, etc? Especially if you don't actually find the bugs themselves but have to infer their existence from the presence of chemicals associated with bug poo. You assume that you (or, rather, the limited experiments that can be packed on a Mars rover) could tell "Earth germs" from "Genuine Martian germs" - but we have no idea what the latter might be, so there is no basis for that assumption.
(Score: 1) by jtgd on Friday September 09 2016, @06:09AM
But you're violating The Prime Directive!