News Blog - Astrobiology from Mars

November 2022 - Give comments to Mars Sample Return Campaign

Now you can give comments on Mars Sample Return Campaign, deadline 19th of December:

Pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), as amended, the Council on Environmental Quality Regulations for Implementing the Procedural Provisions of NEPA and NASA's procedures for implementing NEPA, NASA intends to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to identify and analyze potential environmental impacts of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign Proposed Action and No Action Alternative. Cooperating agencies for this effort include the U.S. Air Force (in accordance with their Environmental Impact Analysis Process), U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Request for Comments

NASA encourages all interested parties to provide comments concerning the content and analysis presented in the Draft PEIS. In addition to, or in place of, attending one of the public meetings, you have the opportunity to submit comments directly to the project docket (Docket ID: NASA-2022-0002) at Regulations.gov or by mail during the public comment period: November 4 - December 19, 2022. To be considered in the Final PEIS, all comments must be postmarked or received online by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) (9:59 p.m. Mountain Standard Time [MST]) on December 19, 2022.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nepa-mars-sample-return-campaign/

Mars Sample Return (MSR) Campaign Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement*

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasa_mars_sample_return_draft_peis_november_2022_secured.pdf

Planetary Protection - 5th of September 2022

The threat caused by Martin microbes is quite seldom handled in public media. Now there is exception: New York Times 31st of August 2022:  To Prevent a Martian Plague, NASA Needs to Build a Very Special Lab  . And in Finland Helsingin Sanomat newspaper made a short version of the article in New York Times, 4th of September 2022: Uhka Avaruudesta . In the articles astrobiologist John Rummel is interviewed. In these articles the risks are underestimated. The weak point of the sample return, is the transport of samples through the Earth atmosphere. In that phase there is a high risk of failure. Example: The NASA Genesis sample return mission crashed on Utah 2004 as the parachute did not open, spreading the samples on the desert. We should not bring samples to Earth. A proposal by Barry DiGregorio has been to establish a quarantine lab on Moon, where the samples could be safely tested The Moon: A 100% isolation barrier for Earth during exobiological examination of solar system sample return missions . 

Presentation in Kirkkonummi - Update 13th of May 2022: 

I gave an "Astrobiology from Mars and Planetary Protection" presentation in Kirkkonummi. Here is a 15 minute YouTube video of the 50 minute presentation:< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUxJb2AuCjE  . 

Comments on Mars Sample Return - 29th of April 2022

 You can now affect the plans for Mars sample return. From the Director for ICAMSR , Barry E. DiGregorio:  For anyone who wants to voice their comments to post in the Federal Register either for or against NASA’s plan to return Martian samples directly to Earth,  now is the time - the comment period ends May 15th. Just hit the blue ‘Comment” button on the following document link below: National Environmental Policy Act; Mars Sample Return Campaign. 

My comment is below.

Curiosity Mars Flower Sol 3396 -  9th of March 2022

The Curiosity Sol 3396 "Mars flower" is not the only one in Gale crater. Very similar objects were also in Curiosity Sol 753 and Sol 758 images. See also article 18th of January 2022, Lonnie Shekhtman NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center: NASA's Curiosity Rover Measures Intriguing Carbon Signature on Mars 

SSoCIA in Finland 2024? - 21st of January 2022

 The Society for Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology  (SSoCIA) is planning to have the year 2024 conference in Finland. SSoCIA is lead by Dr. Kelly Smith from Clemson University. I participated the 2018  SoCIA conference in University of Nevada, Reno.

Dr.Small is back - 18th of December 2021

 Dr. Lyall Winston Small is continuing his Mars image analysis, now Perseverance images:  Perseverance Images .  And analysis is discussed in Mars rover blog .

New article -  6th of May 2021

See a researchgate article by R. G. Joseph, Richard Armstrong, Xinli Wei, Carl Gibson, Olivier Planchon, David Duvall1, Ashraf M. T. Elewa, N. S. Duxbury, H. Rabb, Khalid Latif1, Rudolph Schild:  Fungi on Mars? Evidence of Growth and Behavior From Sequential Images . 

NASA Perseverance soft landing to Jezero crater - 25th of February 2021

 Congratulations for NASA Perseverance  team for soft landing to Jezero crater. Interesting times to study the  RAW image files . In the first color images there is at once interesting objects for further study.  See also my Mars rover's image archive  Mars Today  . On first images below we may see dissolution cavities on stones. Barry DiGregorio made a groundbreaking study about dissolution cavities in Martian stones:  Dissolution cavities in Upper Ordovician sandstones from Lake Ontario: Analogs to vesiculated rocks on Mars? Proc. SPIE 4859, Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology V, (26 February 2003). 

Dissolution cavities means the following: An organism dies and gets buried in soil. During time it gets fossilized. Later acidic water can wear out the fossilized organism leaving only the hole left to the stone, a  kind of negative fossil. Barry shows in this article that the holes in Martian stones may have formed this way as similar stones holes in Earth. See also article , 7th of March 2021, Andreas Muller, B.E.DiGregorio: GreWi-Exklusiv: Neuer Mars-Rover könnte Missionsziel schon am Landeort erfüllen  ("New Mars rover could meet mission target at landing site").

Planetary Protection -  14th of January 2021

 I have got information, that when NASA plans Mars missions, the top priority is the costs, not planetary protection. So the contamination risk of the Earth is mostly bypassed or ignored inside NASA administration. I think that the price tag should not matter when we think of saving Earths biosphere from contamination by martian microbes, which could, in worst case, convert Earth's biosphere completely to something we could not recognize anymore.We can just think what has been the global price tag of COVID19 pandemic, and multiply that with 100 if martian microbes are spread on Earth. 

NASA plan is to bring samples from Mars directly to Earth. I estimate from previous success rate of sample return missions, that the risk of failure, for contamination of the Earth biosphere is as high as 20 percent, which is unacceptable.

Our technology for making safe entry from space to surface of Earth is not mature enough yet. Example: The NASA Genesis sample return mission crashed on Utah 2004 as the parachute did not open, spreading the samples on the desert. NASA has Planetary Protection Officers, but their common sense words of contamination risks are overruled by money and politics. The President of the United States, Joe Biden should take this issue on his desk. On December 2020 the White House National Space Council published a document  National Strategy for Planetary Protection. Joe Biden should take care that it is strictly followed. New plan for NASA and SpaceX in short:

 (A) Manned missions to Mars must be postponed to distant future, until it is made sure that microbes of Mars do not cause any harm to Earth lifeforms.

(B)  Execute the tests in Mars with robotic laboratories. Do not bring samples to Earth.  

A proposal by Barry DiGregorio has been to establish a quarantine lab on Moon, where the samples could be safely tested  The Moon: A 100% isolation barrier for Earth during exobiological examination of solar system sample return missions. Inside NASA there has been presented even completely insane views:  "The contamination of Earth with Mars microbes will happen anyway sometime in future, so lets make it now and see what happens".  I ask: How stupid people can be?

Patricia Ann Straat  - 10th of November 2020

 It is sad to tell that Dr. Patricia Ann Straat has died on October 23rd 2020. The Labeled Release experiment by Gilbert Levin and Patricia Ann Straat, on NASA Viking missions 1976, was the first one to detect life on another planet.  Patricia wrote an excellent book on her research work  To Mars with Love. I had the luck to have an email exchange with Patricia about her book one year ago.

Mars with Celestron 8 - October 2020

Here is series of Mars with my Celestron 8 telescope.

Books by Rizzo and DiGregorio - 9th of March 2020

Added to chapter  Stromatolites and Microbialities and to chapter  Fossils on Mars:There is new publications by astrobiologist Vincenzo Rizzo and Barry DiGregorio.  

Rizzo in International Journal of Astrobiology, Cambridge University press, March 2020: Why should geological criteria used on Earth not be valid also for Mars? Evidence of possible microbialites and algae in extinct Martian lakes</a>. 

DiGregorio has written a new book: Discovery on Vera Rubin ridge: Trace fossils on Mars?. The book has been reviewed by former NASA Viking Lander biologist Gilbert V. Levin. 

There is also interesting new discovery concerning thiophenes molecule in Curiosity data, presented by Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Jacob Heinz, Universe Today, March 6 2020, Evan Gough:  Curiosity Finds Organic Molecules That Could Have Been Produced by Life on Mars. However, the statement by Schulze-Makuch about sending astronauts to Mars to verify microbes moving, is very unthougthfull and irresponsible when considering planetary protection issues.