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[RedKing]

There's got to be some way of field-sterilizing the gear. Long exposure to UV? Curiosity zapping itself with dat laser? SOAP?

C'mon NASA....you mean you sent this thing 36 million miles and forgot to have it go to the bathroom first??

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The thing is that they have no way to tell if any attempt at sterilization has succeeded or not. It would be a guessing game.

[kaijyuu]

They can still get to a point where it would be ludicrously improbable that any bacteria survived. If they're not there already, what with the decompression, vacuum of space, massive temperature variations, inhospitableness (inhospitability? I dunno) of Mar's environment, etc.

[10ebbor10]

They can still get to a point where it would be ludicrously improbable that any bacteria survived. If they're not there already, what with the decompression, vacuum of space, massive temperature variations, inhospitableness (inhospitability? I dunno) of Mar's environment, etc.

I doubt it. One of the later Apollo mission brought back a part from the lander of one of the earlier ones. It had been lieing there for 2 years, in hard vacuum, had whitstood multiple solar flares(there was heavy solar activity which resulted in a gap during the missions), had high and low temperatures, and nearly no nutrients and they still found Earthen, living bacteria.

It's quite hard to kill some of these buggers.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, if the bacteria in question eats silica it would have quite a lot of nutrients on the Moon.

[rarborman]

I read an article that that particular discovery of life on the moon could very well have been faulty, mostly due to poor handling by the scientists that examined the damn lens thing off that rover or whatever it was.

It still stands that a trip through space is going to kill 99.99% of anything alive, and the .01 percent are probably viruses inside parts sealed from space.

So, you could probably coat bacteria on an entire rover, and it will probably be sterile by the time it gets to mars... if not earth orbit.

[Levi]

It still stands that a trip through space is going to kill 99.99% of anything alive, and the .01 percent are probably viruses inside parts sealed from space.

He is the adorable one percent:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[10ebbor10]

I read an article that that particular discovery of life on the moon could very well have been faulty, mostly due to poor handling by the scientists that examined the damn lens thing off that rover or whatever it was.

It still stands that a trip through space is going to kill 99.99% of anything alive, and the .01 percent are probably viruses inside parts sealed from space.

So, you could probably coat bacteria on an entire rover, and it will probably be sterile by the time it gets to mars... if not earth orbit.

-I dunno, could be

-Viri are not alive. And it has been shown in test on Earth that several types of spores and bacteria can easily survive the harsh conditions in space. Vacuum is not a problem for the spores or the bacteria, nor is the radiation. The spores don't reproduce(They are in statis till they get water), decreasing the chance of genetic faults. The temperatures are well within acceptable limits. Surviving all these at once is quite hard, but still perfectly possible.

-Earth orbit is pretty manageable actually. Radiation is less thanks to Earth's magnetic field, as well as other things.

It still stands that a trip through space is going to kill 99.99% of anything alive, and the .01 percent are probably viruses inside parts sealed from space.

He is the adorable one percent:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

TARDIS

I almost forgot about these little buggers. FYI, these are multicellular, and therefore quite complex. Bacteria have it even easier.

[Loud Whispers]

It still stands that a trip through space is going to kill 99.99% of anything alive, and the .01 percent are probably viruses inside parts sealed from space.

He is the adorable one percent:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Little water bear."

Cute little microbe.

[10ebbor10]

It's no microbe. It's an animal. It's multicellular.

They are quite cool actually. They can survive more than a decade without water, have been frozen to near Zero kelvin, were baked, irradiated, and thrown into space.

[palsch]

The current international approach to contamination of Mars is close to zero tolerance. The details are interesting in and of themselves.

After receiving the mission category a certain level of biological burden is allowed for the mission. In general this is expressed as a 'probability of contamination', but in the case of Mars this has been translated into a metric for the number of Bacillus spores per surface area and present in total on or within the spacecraft: 300 spores per m² free surface, but not more than 3E5 [300,000] spores in total (category IVa). The amount should be ten thousand times less if area of special protection should be visited.

My understanding here is that they had wanted to send Curiosity to such an area of special protection - one where the likelihood of water and/or ice being found was high. This was changed after the drill bit was known to be potentially contaminated, as it would very likely put them above the minimum thresholds for such an area.

And yeah, in this case it makes an entire area of study invalid. Any detection of bacterial life could easily be put down to earth-born contamination.

[10ebbor10]

The current international approach to contamination of Mars is close to zero tolerance. The details are interesting in and of themselves.

After receiving the mission category a certain level of biological burden is allowed for the mission. In general this is expressed as a 'probability of contamination', but in the case of Mars this has been translated into a metric for the number of Bacillus spores per surface area and present in total on or within the spacecraft: 300 spores per m² free surface, but not more than 3E5 [300,000] spores in total (category IVa). The amount should be ten thousand times less if area of special protection should be visited.

My understanding here is that they had wanted to send Curiosity to such an area of special protection - one where the likelihood of water and/or ice being found was high. This was changed after the drill bit was known to be potentially contaminated, as it would very likely put them above the minimum thresholds for such an area.

And yeah, in this case it makes an entire area of study invalid. Any detection of bacterial life could easily be put down to earth-born contamination.

I'm pretty sure the Gale crater was chosen from start. Recalibrating that extremely complicated landing computer mid flight doesn't seem like a good idea.

[palsch]

I'm pretty sure the Gale crater was chosen from start. Recalibrating that extremely complicated landing computer mid flight doesn't seem like a good idea.

It wasn't mid flight. It was months ahead of launch. But yeah, I was slightly wrong. They didn't actually change the site but instead changed the category of what the mission could do;

Curiosity was first proposed in 2004 under a mission category that would have allowed it to explore a region with ice and water. That category called for sterilizing portions of the spacecraft that would contact the surface of Mars to avoid contamination of moist areas where microbes — from Earth or from Mars — have the best chances of survival.

On Nov. 1, after learning that the drill bit box had been opened, Conley said she had the mission reclassified to one in which Curiosity could touch the surface of Mars "as long as there is no ice or water."

That's from the original LA Times article. Looking at the mission timeline they did chose the Gale Crater before the contamination, which is what lead the engineers to not give a crap about the contamination. The change in mission categorisation means that if they find an area of special protection (and given this is a more detailed survey of the surface that possible you would give higher odds of anywhere Curiosity looks at to get special protection than any comparable site on Mars) then they have to clear out.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yeah, the odds of finding water in or around Gale Crater or Mount Sharp are very low.

[rarborman]

Fuck that, I quit. I just do. Extremeophiles always take all the cakes.
If that little fuck can find a way to make it to mars and surive, it fucking deserves to.

I know they sent the rover to find life on mars, but unless it wants to trade the universes secret recipe of life for the souls of our ancestors... I really dont think anyone but a dozen or so scientists are going to be any more then excited.

Say they do find actual martian life, even ancient life or fossilized evidence of lifeforms or even living thriving lifeforms, its not going to change anything... not a damn thing, if you look at it as an achievement and say "we did that", well "we" didnt do shit some scientists did that shit, we just watched them do it or just simple were told it was done.