L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
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Post by L Roebuck on Sept 1, 2007 13:17:29 GMT -5
NASA Study Will Help Stop Tiny Stowaways To MarsSource: Blackwell Publishing Date: August 30, 2007 Science Daily — NASA clean rooms, where scientists and engineers assemble spacecraft, have joined hot springs, ice caves, and deep mines as unlikely places where scientists have discovered ultra-hardy organisms collectively known as ‘extremophiles’. Some species of bacteria uncovered in a recent NASA study have never been detected anywhere else. According to Dr. Kasthuri Venkateswaran, who led the study conducted at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, “These findings will advance the search for life on Mars and other worlds both by sparking improved cleaning and sterilization methods and by preventing false-positive results in future experiments to detect extraterrestrial life.” NASA builds its spacecraft in rooms designed to minimize contamination by airborne particles because dust and its microbial passengers can foul instruments and invalidate experiments. If scientists someday find microbes on Mars, they will want to be sure they aren’t just hitchhikers from Earth. Full Article
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Post by Azurerana on Sept 3, 2007 21:24:55 GMT -5
Little bit late on this one, are they not? How much decontam have the last 30 years of Mars explorers had? The concept that the vacuum of interplanetary space acted as a virtual critter killer has been long taken for granted. Now, this is not to say that something cannot survive the stew of radiation without an atmosphere, but IMHO, if this were not taken into consideration, we may have already ruined the experiment.
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L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
|
Post by L Roebuck on Sept 4, 2007 7:42:08 GMT -5
Oh maybe just a tad bit late....
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