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Astrobiology

There Is Now Life On Two Worlds In Our Solar System

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 15, 2019
Filed under

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

20 responses to “There Is Now Life On Two Worlds In Our Solar System”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Yes, it’s been a very long time since Apollo 17, too long.

    • Vladislaw says:
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      True, but people should understand, they are not growing anything on the moon but AT the moon in a self contained system. Luna contains no actual soil, the medium on the moon we would need to grow in.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Exactly, which is why the comparison with Apollo is appropriate.

      • fcrary says:
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        Not necessarily or completely true. One story on the Chang’e biological experiment mentioned planetary protection, mostly to say the experiment was a sealed, self-contained system so planetary protection wasn’t an issue. But in that context, they also mentioned that the Apollo astronauts had vented or dumped a fair amount of human waste on the Moon. I really doubt that’s enough to produce a viable soil, but it’s a lot closer than the usual lunar regolith.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Actually it was all in plastic bags, so the question would be what happens if the degrade in the vacuum. But I was referring to the astronauts themselves as the life that was on the Moon.

          • fcrary says:
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            Most plastics are easily degraded by ultraviolet light. I’ve heard some CubeSats are designed using cheap nylon lines to hold their solar panels in the launch position. Even if the release mechanism fails, UV degradation of the nylon will set in and the panels will pop open in a relatively short time. So I’m going to guess anything left on the Moon 50 years ago in a plastic bag isn’t enclosed anymore.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Yes, but it’s also in a vacuum and so probably evaporated into the lunar “atmosphere” where individual molecules may have been transported into one of the cold traps in the polar region. It will be interesting to check on one of the sites to see if any bacteria is left in the regolith or if they were also transported into one of the cold traps, or just dissolved. One of the items on the NASA to do list should be to “sacrifice” one of the later Apollo landing sites to determine just what the lunar environment did to everything left as waste.

          • fcrary says:
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            Liquid waste was just vented. I assume it did end up cold-trapped at the poles, but one scientist almost made a terrible mistake over this. The PI for one of the ALSEP instruments almost held a press conference about discovering a transient, water vapor atmosphere on the Moon. Apollo did cause a sizable increase in the lunar atmosphere, but I think that was from the rockets more than the waste venting.

            In any case, inspecting the Apollo landing sites, for the reasons you mention and several others, would be a very good idea. And I don’t think it would require “sacrificing” one. Archeologists have learned quite a bit about non-invasive and minimal impact work, and planetary scientists can learn from that. I’d have to think about sample collection, but imaging can be done from a very low altitude ballistic hopper.

  2. TheBrett says:
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    Neat!

  3. EricG says:
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    Perhaps what has returned to the Moon is macroscopic life.

    Don Brownlee (co-author of Rare Earth with Peter Ward) suggested in 2002 that microscopic life has been on the moon continuously since Apollo:

    “My prediction is that the nearest alien neighbors live in feces and food scrap left on the moon by the six Apollo missions. Even though it’s been three decades, there is a good chance that hearty bacteria live and reproduce inside encapsulated small damp places and survive the monthly cycles of heat and cold as well as the effects of solar flares, ultraviolet light, and hard vacuum. “

    The context: https://www.astrobio.net/ma

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      They should be able to duplicate lunar conditions in a lab and determine what happened. It would be an interesting experiment with planetary protection implications for Mars as well.

  4. Bob Mahoney says:
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    Should the headline not be “There is Now Life On At Least Two Worlds in our Solar System”?

    • Vladislaw says:
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      That would be correct except that Luna is a satellite not an independent world.

      “There is Now Life On At Least Two orbital bodies in our Solar System”?

      • Bob Mahoney says:
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        Some consider the Earth & Moon to be a binary planetary system. Besides ‘world’ is a generic term suitable to planets or moons.

  5. Donald Barker says:
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    Not all this information is being diseminated qite correctly:

    http://www.leonarddavid.com

  6. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    Update : the plants died. Others failed to sprout at all. Grow chamber not insulated against bitter cold of lunar night or otherwise heated . Duh.

    https://www.sciencealert.co

  7. Michael Spencer says:
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    This sure is a screwy story: initial descriptions of the “experiment”, admittedly in the science-oriented but popular press, described louvers designed to direct sunlight as needed, as well as necessary heating and other necessities.

    As it’s turned out, though, the Chinese appear to have very little ability to actually design a simple experiment, which isn’t the case, obviously.

    So, which is it? More data is needed.

    I was quite interested in those plant seeds, for instance. As far as I know, there has not been an instance of bringing a flowering plant all the way through normal flowering ending with the production of seeds. This experiment would have been a small step in that direction. (Yes, I know, seed production likely has little future where tissue culture and other production techniques are generally preferred; but still it is an interesting subject).

    • fcrary says:
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      The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program isn’t known for transparency, so we’ll probably never know. But descopes aren’t uncommon on planetary science missions. Some stories may reflect the original plans for the Chang’e 4 biological experiment, and some stories may reflect what they actually ended up flying.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        OK: So far, so good; but what’s the point of any sort of bio experimentation if the viability window amounts to just a few days?