All spacecraft sent to the Moon have carried viable microorganisms with them. Because the Moon’s surface environment is sterilizing to life and the Moon itself is not considered to house indigenous life forms, NASA policy has not required the elimination or even the measurement of microbial contamination on lunar space equipment prior to launch. Yet multiple exposure studies have demonstrated that microorganisms can likely survive high-velocity impacts and exposure to space stresses for some time. Does any of the Earth biomass residing on lunar hardware remain viable? The Artemis program offers a chance to take advantage of this natural experiment, through a mission that is both feasible and promises to generate unprecedented data on microbial survival. We propose a two-phased mission in which imaging would be conducted to obtain data on previously crashed spacecraft near the Lunar South Pole, then astronauts would recover spacecraft debris to return to Earth for analysis of viable life and biosignatures. We propose the name SOTERIA for this planetary protection mission, for the Greek goddess of safety and delivery from harm.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    SOTERIA: Searching for Organisms Through Equipment Recovery at Impact Areas


    Contributors:
    J. A. Lee (author) / P. J. Boston (author) / D. Buckner (author) / R. C. Everroad (author) / L. S. Marshall (author) / J. E. Moores (author) / R. Reitz (author) / A. C. Schuerger (author) / D. J. Smith (author) / P. J. Stooke (author)

    Publication date :

    2020


    Size :

    2 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English





    SOTERIA: Searching for Organisms Through Equipment Recovery at Impact Areas

    J A Lee / P J Boston / D Buckner et al. | NTRS | 2020



    Reliability Assessment on Searching Time for Parking in Urban Areas

    Lam, W. H. K. / Tam, M.-L. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2003