Satellite image of the South Lunar pole and the Schrödinger basin
NASA / Science Photo Library
The moon could be more welcoming to life than we thought, increasing the risk of future moon missions contaminating the lunar lunar surface.
Spatial missions must follow policies on “planetary protection” to avoid contaminating other bodies of the solar system with microbes of the earth – which could mislead us by thinking that these bodies have their own life forms.
Many protections that we have on earth, like our atmosphere and our magnetic field, do not exist on the moon. Consequently, its surface is exposed to high energy particles in space, extreme temperatures and the deadly ultraviolet light of the sun, making it a severe environment so that organisms survive.
For this reason, most astronomers consider the most sterile lunar surface. The space research committee places it in the second category of the lowest planetary protection, as well as Venus and Comettes, for bodies which have “only a remote chance that contamination by space vessels can compromise surveys”.
But new research by Stefano Bertone at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and his colleagues suggest that life could survive for days, or potentially more than a week, in certain regions of the poles of the Moon, where the future Mission of Artemis de la NASA plans to visit. This means that there are risk missions will contaminate these areas, leading to false positives in studies looking for life.
“We return to the moon. We will leave traces. We need more work to understand what type of traces we will leave and how to minimize them,” Bertone at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) told Helsinki, Finland, September 12.
Bertone and his team examined five common organizations which are naturally resistant to extreme environments, including black mold (Aspergillus Niger) and bacteria Staphylococcus aureus And Bacillus subtilis, And tested the amount of ultraviolet light that they could withstand in the laboratory. Then, they compiled data for UV levels, sun exposure and temperature fluctuations on the surface of the moon and used this to produce a card showing where the five organisms could survive for at least one day.
All organizations could survive in well -lit areas, apart from the permanently shaded regions where the sun and UV light cannot reach, said Bertone, and these well -lit areas are potential targets for lunar exploration. Black mold was the most robust, surviving in large regions up to seven days.
“This is a very important study, and it is clear that if there is a danger [of contamination]So some actions must be taken, but it should also be understood that [such actions] will have economic consequences, ”explains Stas Barabash at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. For example, space agencies may decide that the equipment must be sterilized more rigorously, which will affect the cost of the missions, he says.
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