Curiosity Rover May Have Brought Dozens of Microbes To Mars 97
bmahersciwriter (2955569) writes "Despite rigorous pre-flight cleaning, swabbing of the Curiosity Rover just prior to liftoff revealed some 377 strains of bacteria. 'In the lab, scientists exposed the microbes to desiccation, UV exposure, cold and pH extremes. Nearly 11% of the 377 strains survived more than one of these severe conditions. Thirty-one per cent of the resistant bacteria did not form tough, protective spore coats; the researchers suspect that they used other biochemical means of protection, such as metabolic changes.' While the risk of contaminating the red planet are unknown, knowing the types of strains that may have survived pre-flight cleaning may help rule out biological 'discoveries' if and when NASA carries out its plans to return a soil sample from Mars."
Re:What goes around comes around (Score:5, Insightful)
Did someone bother to send some food for the bacteria? Enough to sustain bacteria long enough for them to evolve the ability to eat non-organic material?
No need to worry, the sky is not falling and Mars is not going to be overrun with Earth critters.
Re:Experiment proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy enough to simulate martian conditions here on earth, which is a more controlled and far cheaper means of experiment. It was found that certain lichen can do quite well [liebertpub.com], although note that this was on the assumption that water would be available.
It would probably be best not to introduce earth microbes before a full terraforming plan is developed. The population might explode, consume all the available micronutrients, and then die off. Or it might become a pest, inhibiting the release of other, more useful microorganisms later on. And it might obscure any extant martian microorganisms or micoorganism fossils when those could provide a far better template than earth-based extremophiles. We'll want something robust and sustainable, a planned ecosystem genetically engineered to produce all the right byproducts and which changes in concert with the alterations to atmosphere, global temperature, and soil composition without any unintended extinction events.