Mars Archives - Iran News Daily

In Travelling Earth, Mars, Bacteria Survives

reporter 1222 — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 05:25:12 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Tanpopo mission addresses the possibility of natural interplanetary transport of microbial life called panspermia.

Imagine microscopic life-forms, such as bacteria, transported through space, and landing on another planet. The bacteria finding suitable conditions for its survival could then start multiplying again, sparking life at the other side of the universe.

This theory, called “panspermia”, support the possibility that microbes may migrate between planets and distribute life in the universe. Long controversial, this theory implies that bacteria would survive the long journey in outer space, resisting to space vacuum, temperature fluctuations, and space radiations, eurekalert.org reported.

“The origin of life on Earth is the biggest mystery of human beings. Scientists can have totally different points of view on the matter. Some think that life is very rare and happened only once in the Universe, while others think that life can happen on every suitable planet. If panspermia is possible, life must exist much more often than we previously thought,” says Dr. Akihiko Yamagishi, a Professor at Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences and principal investigator of the space mission Tanpopo.

In 2018, Dr. Yamagishi and his team tested the presence of microbes in the atmosphere. Using an aircraft and scientific balloons, the researchers, found Deinococcal bacteria floating 12 km above the earth. But while Deinococcus are known to form large colonies (easily larger than one millimeter) and be resistant to environmental hazards like UV radiation, could they resist long enough in space to support the possibility of panspermia?

To answer this question, Dr. Yamagishi and the Tanpopo team, tested the survival of the radioresistant bacteria Deinococcus in space. The study, now published in Frontiers in Microbiology, shows that thick aggregates can provide sufficient protection for the survival of bacteria during several years in the harsh space environment.

Dr. Yamagishi and his team came to this conclusion by placing dried Deinococcus aggregates in exposure panels outside of the International Space Station (ISS). The samples of different thicknesses were exposed to space environment for one, two, or three years and then tested for their survival.

After three years, the researchers found that all aggregates superior to 0.5 mm partially survived to space conditions. Observations suggest that while the bacteria at the surface of the aggregate died, it created a protective layer for the bacteria beneath ensuring the survival of the colony. Using the survival data at one, two, and three years of exposure, the researchers estimated that a pellet thicker than 0.5 mm would have survived between 15 and 45 years on the ISS. The design of the experiment allowed the researcher to extrapolate and predict that a colony of 1 mm of diameter could potentially survive up to 8 years in outer space conditions.

“The results suggest that radioresistant Deinococcus could survive during the travel from Earth to Mars and vice versa, which is several months or years in the shortest orbit,” says Dr. Yamagishi.

This work provides, to date, the best estimate of bacterial survival in space. And, while previous experiments prove that bacteria could survive in space for a long period when benefitting from the shielding of rock (i.e. lithopanspermia), this is the first long-term space study raising the possibility that bacteria could survive in space in the form of aggregates, raising the new concept of “massapanspermia”. Yet, while we are one step closer to prove panspermia possible, the microbe transfer also depends on other processes such as ejection and landing, during which the survival of bacteria still needs to be assessed.

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Mars Rock Samples Could Bring Alien Viruses to Earth, Warns Expert

reporter 1222 — Sat, 09 May 2020 14:53:25 +0000

Mars Rock Samples Could Bring Alien Viruses to Earth, Warns Expert

A Stanford professor urged NASA to make protocols for the human Mars mission as they are concerned about alien viruses contaminating Earth.

As the first humans prepare for the Mars mission, experts warn that protocols are necessary to keep extraterrestrial pollutants from hitchhiking on space ships and astronauts when returning home from the Red Planet, the Daily Mail reported.

Stanford professor of aeronautics and astronautics Scott Hubbard said in an interview that the solution is ‘planetary protection’.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced last year that NASA is aiming to put humans on Mars sometime in the 2030s – and as early as 2035.

Although exciting, the mission could be detrimental to Earth if the space faring heroes return carrying alien pollutants.

Speaking with Stanford News Hubbard said: ‘In my opinion, and that of the science community, the chance that rocks from Mars that are millions of years old will contain an active life form that could infect Earth is extremely low.’

‘But, the (Mars) samples returned by (NASA) will be quarantined and treated as though they are the Ebola virus until proven safe.’

Past space missions to Mars, such as Viking I and II in the mid-1970s, used large budget rockets that were able to be sterilized using just intense heat.

However, now that rockets are being developed at a low cost at both universities and companies, like SpaceX, these small craft ‘will be burdened by the cost of planetary protection.’

Hubbard notes that although heat alone is not enough to decontaminate the technology, combining the process with chemical cleaning may be effective.

The tubes that return with the samples aboard the upcoming Mars 2020 mission, which is sending NASA’s Perseverance Rover, will have to ‘be baked at a high temperature’ be for human staff can interact with them.

‘To guard against back contamination, there is a major effort to ‘break the chain of contact’ between the returning spacecraft and Mars rock samples,’ said H ubbard.

‘For example, autonomous sealing and welding techniques to create three or four levels of containment are planned.’

‘In my opinion, and that of the science community, the chance that rocks from Mars that are millions of years old will contain an active life form that could infect Earth is extremely low.

‘But, the samples returned by MSR will be quarantined and treated as though they are the Ebola virus until proven safe.’

Hubbard acknowledges the fact that humans cannot be cleaned like robots and looks to past protocols.

‘As for humans, the Apollo astronauts from the first few moon missions were quarantined to ensure they showed no signs of illness,’ he said.

‘Once it was found that the moon did not pose a risk, the quarantine was eliminated. Such a procedure will undoubtedly be followed for humans returning from Mars.’

Not only are experts concerned about contaminating Earth, they also have fear of humans spreading their germs on Mars.

However, a team of researchers from Nova Southeastern University in Florida, along with colleagues W. Raquel Peixoto and Alexandre Rosado from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro suggest human microbes will initiate the process of terraforming the red planet and create an environment that can sustain life.

The team wants to develop a process that involves screening promising microbes and discarding dangerous ones prior to releasing them on Mars.

A major argument by the researchers is that the prevention of contamination is a ‘near impossibility,’ as the authors phrase it in the study.

However, space agencies have put specific protocols in place to prevent the contamination of other planets and experts have noted that more research needs to be done before we start polluting other worlds.

The idea of protecting celestial bodies dates back to the 1950s when the philosophy of planetary protection was created with a sole purpose of recommending and designing such protocols that protects space from Earthly microbes.

It argues that our germs can contaminate scientifically important areas of the solar system – similar to how a crime scene can be compromised if someone not involved touches evidence.

Although the idea of sterilization has been around for decades, Lopez and his team believe it is inevitable that our germs will make it to Mars and other planets.

‘Mainly, microbial introduction should not be considered accidental but inevitable,’ reads the paper published in FEMS Microbiology Ecology.

The post Mars Rock Samples Could Bring Alien Viruses to Earth, Warns Expert appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Iranian researcher develops cooling system for travel to Mars

reporter 1222 — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 09:40:28 +0000

Cooling the surrounding environment of astronauts has been turned into a major concern due to NASA’s serious planning to send astronauts to the Mars.

For this purpose, a group of Mechanical engineers in Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts state, headed by Jamal Yaghoubi as a top and prominent Iranian researcher, managed to design a new electric cooling system that lacks any moving part.

This electro-hydrodynamic system, which has successfully been tested at the International Space Station (ISS), uses some liquids with an electric charge to cool the environment. The mentioned fluids pass through the narrow pipes to keep the heat away from the surrounding area of astronauts without creating noise or shaking.

Heat is one of the greatest threats to space travel which constantly causes problem for astronauts. Although the space outside the Earth is very cold, but when a spacecraft is exposed to the sunlight, it suddenly becomes very hot and its temperature reaches to a boiling point unless the spacecraft’s surface has a reflective property.

Moreover, it should be kept in mind that electrical, electronic and mechanical systems and even body of astronauts generate heat and activity of all of these devices in vacuum condition causes no air to transmit or convert heat, so that accumulation of this heat can be problematic.

According to Yaghoubi, this system was successfully tested in International Space Station (ISS) in 2017, so that a more complex and advanced sample of it will be constructed by 2021, costing $10 million.

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Microbes in Driest Desert: Clues to Life On Mars

reporter 1222 — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 07:50:08 +0000

For the first time, researchers have seen life rebounding in the world’s driest desert, demonstrating that it could also be lurking in the soils of Mars.

Led by Washington State University planetary scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch, an international team studied the driest corner of South America’s Atacama Desert, where decades pass without any rain.

Scientists have long wondered whether microbes in the soil of this hyperarid environment, the most similar place on Earth to the Martian surface, are permanent residents or merely dying vestiges of life, blown in by the weather.

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schulze-Makuch and his collaborators reveal that even the hyper-arid Atacama Desert can provide a habitable environment for microorganisms.

The researchers found that specialized bacteria are able to live in the soil, going dormant for decades, without water and then reactivating and reproducing when it rains.

“It has always fascinated me to go to the places where people don’t think anything could possibly survive and discover that life has somehow found a way to make it work,” Schulze-Makuch said. “Jurassic Park references aside, our research tell us that if life can persist in Earth’s driest environment there is a good chance it could be hanging in there on Mars in a similar fashion.”

The dry limit of life

When Schulze-Makuch and his collaborators went to the Atacama for the first time in 2015 to study how organisms survive in the soil of Earth’s driest environment, the craziest of things happened.

It rained.

After the extremely rare shower, the researchers detected an explosion of biological activity in the Atacama soil.

They used sterilized spoons and other delicate instrumentation to scoop soil samples from various depths and then performed genomic analyses to identify the different microbial communities that were reproducing in the samples. The researchers found several indigenous species of microbial life that had adapted to live in the harsh environment.

The researchers returned to the Atacama in 2016 and 2017 to follow up on their initial sampling and found that the same microbial communities in the soil were gradually reverting to a dormant state as the moisture went away.

“In the past researchers have found dying organisms near the surface and remnants of DNA but this is really the first time that anyone has been able to identify a persistent form of life living in the soil of the Atacama Desert,” Schulze-Makuch said. “We believe these microbial communities can lay dormant for hundreds or even thousands of years in conditions very similar to what you would find on a planet like Mars and then come back to life when it rains.”

Implications for life on Mars

While life in the driest regions of Earth is tough, the Martian surface is an even harsher environment.

It is akin to a drier and much colder version of the Atacama Desert. However it wasn’t always this way.

Billions of years ago, Mars had small oceans and lakes where early lifeforms may have thrived. As the planet dried up and grew colder, these organisms could have evolved many of the adaptations lifeforms in the Atacama soil use to survive on Earth, Schulze-Makuch said.

“We know there is water frozen in the Martian soil and recent research strongly suggests nightly snowfalls and other increased moisture events near the surface,” he said. “If life ever evolved on Mars, our research suggests it could have found a subsurface niche beneath today’s severely hyper-arid surface.”

Next Steps

On March 15, Schulze-Makuch is returning to the Atacama for two weeks to investigate how the Atacama’s native inhabitants have adapted to survive. He said his research team also would like to look for lifeforms in the Don Juan Pond in Antarctica, a very shallow lake that is so salty it remains liquid even at temperatures as low as -58 degrees Fahrenheit.

“There are only a few places left on Earth to go looking for new lifeforms that survive in the kind of environments you would find on Mars,” Schulze-Makuch said. “Our goal is to understand how they are able to do it so we will know what to look for on the Martian surface.”

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