Galileo Carrying the seeds of life for Europa???

Quote from MSN:

"PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 14 — NASA plans to crash its $1.5 billion
Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter next weekend to make sure it doesn't
accidentally contaminate the planet's ice-covered moon Europa with
bacteria from Earth. After Galileo's orbit carries it behind Jupiter
at 12:49 p.m. PT Sunday, the aging probe will plunge into the planet's
stormy atmosphere at a speed of nearly 108,000 mph."

Are they serious? Was this really NASA's reason for crashing Galileo
or is this NASA's attempt to get its weekly BIG headline?

Matt

On 2003-09-15, Matt wrote:

"PASADENA, Calif., Sept. 14 — NASA plans to crash its $1.5 billion
Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter next weekend to make sure it doesn't
accidentally contaminate the planet's ice-covered moon Europa with
bacteria from Earth. After Galileo's orbit carries it behind Jupiter
at 12:49 p.m. PT Sunday, the aging probe will plunge into the planet's
stormy atmosphere at a speed of nearly 108,000 mph."

Are they serious? Was this really NASA's reason for crashing Galileo
or is this NASA's attempt to get its weekly BIG headline?

They really mean it. Conditions on Europa may support life. Bacteria
can survive in practically any conditions. They don't want to contaminate
the field up there. Some time they may want to survey Europa for life
and they don't want to screw that up by salting the mine with bacteria.

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 15:53:00 -0400, Esmail Bonakdarian
wrote:

just to add, NASA now disinfects/neutralizes all the equipment it sends
to space, it didn't do that at the time with Galileo - not sure why.

They did this in the past, too. What has come to light is the fact that tests
indicate that we don't really know how to disinfect something like a space probe
with absolute certainty. To be really sure you need to use measures that would
destroy the probe. This is a big issue still with respect to designing missions
to places that might support life. We hope we got it right, but don't know for
certain.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Esmail Bonakdarian wrote:

Chris L Peterson wrote:

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 15:53:00 -0400, Esmail Bonakdarian
wrote:


just to add, NASA now disinfects/neutralizes all the equipment it sends
to space, it didn't do that at the time with Galileo - not sure why.

They did this in the past, too. What has come to light is the fact that tests
indicate that we don't really know how to disinfect something like a space probe
with absolute certainty.

All the way back to the Ranger moon probes, IIRC; but you're correct -
it doesn't work very well.

I expect they're seeding Jupiter's atmosphere with this maneuver. So now
when we discover life in the clouds, we won't know if it's indigenous.

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 16:55:34 -0700, lal_truckee wrote:

I expect they're seeding Jupiter's atmosphere with this maneuver. So now
when we discover life in the clouds, we won't know if it's indigenous.

Not impossible, of course, but Jupiter seems pretty hostile to even the most
sturdy Earth organisms, and the re-entry will involve lots of heat (which does
work very well to sterilize things, if you don't care what happens to the thing
being heated.)

Crashing into Jupiter seems like a better idea than crashing into Europa. It
isn't like they have a lot of choices.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Very interesting! I guess you learn something everyday! Thanks y'all.

David Nakamoto writes:

The reason; it's impossible with a spacecraft that size, and (probably
more
importantly) the Galileo budget didn't allow for it. Also, there was no
reason to suspect that there would be any chance of life on any of those
worlds even after the Voyager fly-bys. It was the data collected by the
Galileo spacecraft itself that made scientists suspect that there might be
life hidden somewhere underneath Europa's surface.


--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pinprick holes in a colorless sky
Let inspired figures of light pass by
The Mightly Light of ten thousand suns
Challenges infinity, and is soon gone


"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 15:53:00 -0400, Esmail Bonakdarian

wrote:

just to add, NASA now disinfects/neutralizes all the equipment it sends
to space, it didn't do that at the time with Galileo - not sure why.

They did this in the past, too. What has come to light is the fact that
tests
indicate that we don't really know how to disinfect something like a space
probe
with absolute certainty. To be really sure you need to use measures that
would
destroy the probe. This is a big issue still with respect to designing
missions
to places that might support life. We hope we got it right, but don't know
for
certain.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

"Chris L Peterson" wrote

Not impossible, of course, but Jupiter seems pretty hostile to even the
most
sturdy Earth organisms, and the re-entry will involve lots of heat (which
does
work very well to sterilize things

Jupiter's atmosphere has temperature ranges that include those on the Earth,
lots of water, hydrocarbons, nitrogen, sulfur and various crud drifting
hourly in from space. There's lightning, radiation and 5 or so billion
years. Jupiter could be teeming with life.

In terms of re-entry heat, some scientists think Earth life may have been
seeded by crud from space. What is Galileo?

David Low

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 09:52:56 GMT, "David Low" wrote:

Jupiter's atmosphere has temperature ranges that include those on the Earth,
lots of water, hydrocarbons, nitrogen, sulfur and various crud drifting
hourly in from space. There's lightning, radiation and 5 or so billion
years. Jupiter could be teeming with life.

Maybe.

In terms of re-entry heat, some scientists think Earth life may have been
seeded by crud from space. What is Galileo?

The two most likely ways that bacterial life could survive to seed another
planet are (1) on or in tiny meteoroids, which decelerate so quickly when
interacting with an atmosphere that they don't heat up, but just drift down, and
(2) inside bodies that are large enough not to heat up internally, but only
ablate on the outside as they descend (typical meteorite producers).

Galileo certainly isn't the first, and is very fragile compared to the second.
Given the huge volume of dense atmosphere that it will be moving through at
cosmic velocities, I don't see how anything in Galileo could possibly survive.
It will continue to burn until there is nothing left.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

David Low wrote in message
news:Y9W9b.484794$o%2.216645@sccrnsc02...

Jupiter could be teeming with life.

In terms of re-entry heat, some scientists think Earth life may have
been seeded by crud from space. What is Galileo?

Boo hoo hoo too late anyway. If any "seeding" is going to happen,
the atmospheric probe would have done a good job of that back in
December 1995.