I am reading that different microbes are flourishing on the International Space Station and how different efforts are made to scrub the environment. I wondered about this when Mir was falling back to earth and read that in fact yes, the ship was riddled with numerous microbes that thrived in space turning the ship into very pungent environment.

I know the US and NASA has signed treaties with other space programs to send crafts into space free of microbial life. What concerns me is that despite best efforts to keep labs and construction areas clean, microbial life is hitching rides into space and potentially onto Mars, Titan and the Moon.

Microbial Stowaways to Mars Identified
http://www.nature.com/news/microbial-stowaways-to-mars-identified-1.15249

Some articles go into a discussion of the ultraviolet radiation will likely kill off simple microbial life that hitches a ride, but do people on here think that is oversimplification of something we do not understand well? Could tardigrades, lichens, bacterias and fungi have already begun terraforming these environments as a result of our exploration efforts?

thoughts?

-PEM

Hi Peter :) That's a very interesting post! Thank you :) I will be defintely be back after giving it some thought...

Right. I am just thinking about the probability of accidents in these super complicated situations. What about way back in the 1970s? Were efforts as stringent as they are today? Despite best efforts to sanitize equipment, I think it is completely possible to have the scoop on the Viking Lander or whatever the scoop retreats into, possibly contaminated. It would be cool to fire up a camera on the Viking Lander and see if anything is living on the exterior of the lander or in the biology processor that held the martian sediments placed in it from the scoop.



Maybe what we can anticipate is an extemophile like a tardigrade that hitched a ride from earth waving back to us from Mars?

I think it is highly possible that microbes from earth have hitched a ride on every lander that has been sent to Mars, Titan and the moon. Whether they survived and are now growing is another matter,

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Tersicoccus phoenicis.

This population of berry-shaped bacteria is so different from any other known bacteria, it has been classified as not only a new species, but also a new genus, the next level of classifying the diversity of life. Its discoverers named it Tersicoccus phoenicis. Tersi is from Latin for clean, like the room. Coccus, from Greek for berry, describes the bacterium's shape. The phoenicis part is for NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, the spacecraft being prepared for launch in 2007 when the bacterium was first collected by test-swabbing the floor in the Florida clean room.

---

Member of the People Encouraging Niceness In Society club.

Here's a good one...

Bacteria survive nearly three years on the moon.

Perhaps, someday, at least, we should be prepared for microscopic life/organic
matter, coating space vehicles -- manned, and unmanned. It could come from
space dust, and not directly from Earth.

Read: "The Secret Life of Dust", by Hanna Holmes.

Jim,

I agree.

Here's another thought...

It seems widely accepted the earth has been bombarded with thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of meteors for many millions, likely billions of years. What is the likelihood a meteor at some point did not vaporize everything on impact. What if it tossed up some soil or lichen into space that had tardigrades on it? Is it far-fetched to imagine these tardigrades might have 'seeded' other planets and moons with life?

Thoughts?

Peter

What about the meteors that are credited with being from Mars. They are thought to have originated from a period when Mars had water and a more substantial atmosphere. Based on that scenario I can see where the earth, when life was much simpler, may have sent rocks containing microscopic life out into the rest of the solar system. Now whether said life could have survived the journey is another matter and is highly debateable.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

What about the meteors that are credited with being from Mars. They are thought to have originated from a period when Mars had water and a more substantial atmosphere. Based on that scenario I can see where the earth, when life was much simpler, may have sent rocks containing microscopic life out into the rest of the solar system. Now whether said life could have survived the journey is another matter and is highly debateable.

I'd say it would be the other way around, comets smashing into Earth that started things going.

---

Member of the People Encouraging Niceness In Society club.

What about the meteors that are credited with being from Mars. They are thought to have originated from a period when Mars had water and a more substantial atmosphere. Based on that scenario I can see where the earth, when life was much simpler, may have sent rocks containing microscopic life out into the rest of the solar system. Now whether said life could have survived the journey is another matter and is highly debateable.

I'd say it would be the other way around, comets smashing into Earth that started things going.

To quote the old bridal rhyme...

Something old,
something new,
something borrowed,
something blue,
and a silver sixpence in her shoe.

I would venture a guess the planets and moons have traded sediments via collisions over the millennia. We are the product of a bouillabaisse of rocks, metals and sediments from elsewhere in the universe.