mars rover not sterilized?

This article I read mentioned that nothing NASA sent after Viking was sterilized? I imagine that is an oversimplification, but could somebody explain it?

Levin says this is especially important because Viking was sterilized to prevent contaminating Mars with hitchhiking terrestrial microorganisms. Since then, none of the many NASA and ESA Mars landers, including Curiosity, have been sterilized. Thus, any new findings of life might be questioned as to whether the life was indigenous to Mars or came from Earth.

Levin stresses, "The Viking LR life detection data are the only data that will ever be available from a pristine Mars. They are priceless, and should be thoroughly studied."

Veteran Mars Researcher Says Curiosity Spacecraft Can Confirm Viking Detected Life

LOL this is perfect for them, they find life, they can blame on illegal microorganisms and cover that up.

But anyway, i'm not sure how many organism would survive there, anaerobic and facultative anarobic maybe survive for a while, but if there is no food source, they would die in the end. Then again, we done know mars for sure to say there is no food source.

Who knows the organism that we take from here by mistake would adapt and start evolution on mars and fill the planet with life

The worry is not about contaminating Mars. The worry is about interfering with experiments.

Curiosity was constructed in clean room conditions. It meets the established recommendations for "planetary protection" and the requirements of its science mission.

Spacecraft (including orbiters) without biological experiments should be subject to at least Viking-level pre-sterilization procedures – such as clean-room assembly and cleaning of all components – for bioload reduction, but such spacecraft need not be sterilized.

planetaryprotection.nasa.gov...

mepag.jpl.nasa.gov...

It should be known that Levin has been carrying a large chip on his shoulder over his disputed claims about the findings of the Viking mission.

They probably just realized the ionizing radiation in space thoroughly kills everything.

Just as it would have killed the Apollo astronauts had they ever ventured away from low Earth orbit.

Even if Curiosity's microscope does spy a microbe scurrying across a sample, or if its scanners detect what might be biomolecules, such finds might not be conclusive evidence of life on Mars, "because we'd have to ask whether or not we brought them to Mars," Conrad said. "We have cleaned the spacecraft very carefully, but you'd have to ask whether anything we see that might be a sign of life was a contaminant, and we'd have a high burden of proof to overcome."

Yep, its gonna have to be a big old creature that looks like nothing on earth to have NASA admit "life" on Mars.

It seems NASA always makes it harder" than it needs to be"...to discover what "we" all really want to know.

WHICH IS ---LIFE ON MARS

oh, well...more rocks...carry on.


SOURCEwww.space.com...

Originally posted by Phage
The worry is not about contaminating Mars. The worry is about interfering with experiments.

Curiosity was constructed in clean room conditions. It meets the established recommendations for "planetary protection" and the requirements of its science mission.

Spacecraft (including orbiters) without biological experiments should be subject to at least Viking-level pre-sterilization procedures – such as clean-room assembly and cleaning of all components – for bioload reduction, but such spacecraft need not be sterilized.

planetaryprotection.nasa.gov...

mepag.jpl.nasa.gov...

It should be known that Levin has been carrying a large chip on his shoulder over his disputed claims about the findings of the Viking mission.

edit on 11/30/2011 by Phage because: (no reason given)

O.k. those links are helpful.

reply to post by cloudyday

oops, more edits on your part...oh well, I'll just post this.

The Viking landers were "baked" at 233ºF for 30 hours. The equipment on more recent landers and rovers would have a very hard time dealing with that kind of treatment.

It has been concluded that no known terrestrial organisms can grow on Mars. So, in order for biological contamination to occur, some unknown terrestrial organism would have to be present on the equipment and make it through the cleaning processes. This isn't considered a serious enough concern to warrant sterilization.


It's not that sterilization was considered unnecessary after the Vikings, it is the nature of the missions. The Viking missions carried experiments which were designed to specifically look for evidence of microbial life. They were sterilized in order to prevent interference with those experiments. Subsequent missions, including Curiosity, did not perform that type of experiment therefore, in keeping with the established protocols, sterilization was not necessary.

Curiosity has a nine month long trip through space reaching temperatures higher than direct sun on Mars and it is powered by heat from plutonium decay. Yes it has small solar panels to aid in the trip but they will be discarded before it attains orbit, it also has rockets and about 10 kgs of plutonium-238 so why disinfect it? It's doing it itself.

reply to post by sprtpilot


Untrue.

They probably just realized the ionizing radiation in space thoroughly kills everything.

Completely incorrect. There is ever-increasing scientific speculation that many, many forms of life can survive in the depths of space. Earth organisms can do it.....so, on the VERY good chance that life evolved just about everywhere else in the Universe, then something on Mars, even if just microbes, is very likely.

Ever hear about the Surveyor 3??:

The Deep Sleep

The Surveyor probes were the first U.S. spacecraft to land safely on the Moon. In November, 1969, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft's microorganisms were recovered from inside its camera that was brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew.

The 50-100 organisms survived launch, space vacuum, 3 years of radiation exposure, deep-freeze at an average temperature of only 20 degrees above absolute zero, and no nutrient, water or energy source. (The United States landed 5 Surveyors on the Moon; Surveyor 3 was the only one of the Surveyors visited by any of the six Apollo landings. 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.)

How this remarkable feat was accomplished only by Strep. bacteria remains speculative, but it does recall that even our present Earth does not always look as environmentally friendly as it might have 4 billion years ago when bacteria first appeared on this planet.

(edit) -- Source

SO, your beliefs are wrong.

Just as it would have killed the Apollo astronauts had they ever ventured away from low Earth orbit.

Complete lie. Utter rubbish. Only those who believe the fantasy of the "Apollo Hoax" fall for that nonsense.