Public Perceptions, Priorities, and Solar System Exploration
PART 4 CONTINUED): CONTESTING THE CLAIM
Even before NASA came to be, the international science community was dis- cussing the possibility of extraterrestrial life and steps that might be taken to prevent forward and back contamination—respectively, the transport of terrestrial microbial life to extraterrestrial environments in the course of solar system exploration and the return to Earth of extraterrestrial microbial life, should it exist, in samples brought back from solar system bodies.32 In the early days of planning for Apollo missions to the Moon, NASA deemed protecting Earth from possible contamination by extraterrestrial biology a public health issue. Thus, the Agency addressed concerns about possible back contamination by planning for the quarantine of astronauts and mate- rial samples returned from the Moon. A key element of the Apollo quaran- tine program was the construction of a Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL)
31. http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Streptococcus_mitis (accessed 17 January 2020).
For the record, S. mitis should not be confused with other streptococcus bacteria, such as Streptococcus pyogenes, or group A streptococcus, which causes strep throat. See http://
www.mayoclinic.com/health/strep-throat/DS00260/DSECTION=causes (accessed 17 January 2020).
32. See Michael Meltzer, When Biospheres Collide: A History of NASA’s Planetary Protection Programs (Washington, DC: NASA SP-2011-4234, 2011) p. 1516; and Steven J. Dick and James E. Strick, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004) pp. 24–29.
171 CHAPTER 6 • SURVIVOR! (?) THE STORY OF S. MITIS ON THE MOON
at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC, now Johnson Space Center) to contain and analyze lunar samples.33
NASA established an “Unmanned Spacecraft Decontamination Policy”
in 1963, “based on acceptance of the scientific opinion that lunar surface conditions would mitigate against reproduction of known terrestrial micro- organisms and that, if subsurface penetration of viable organisms were to be caused by spacecraft impact, proliferation would remain highly localized.”
Nonetheless, spacecraft going to the Moon were subject to decontamination procedures specified in this policy, which was applied to the Surveyor lunar missions.34 By 1967, NASA had given up on the goal of sterilization for lunar missions and adopted a lunar quarantine policy to prevent contamination of Earth by extraterrestrial life.35
With that background established, this story can now fast-forward into the 21st century. I began conducting communication research for the NASA Planetary Protection Program in 2002. In a 10 December 2002 memo responding to a query from me about the story of S. mitis as a “lunar survivor,”
as reported on various websites, Planetary Protection Officer Rummel said:
The [claim] of Streptococcus mitis surviving on the Moon in the Surveyor camera body is almost certainly incorrect. The detection of S. mitis in the camera body was the subject of two conference presentations at the 1970 [sic] Lunar Science Conference, but there was no peer-reviewed paper with that result at the time, nor has there ever been. The original papers (gray, very, very, gray) were cited by Jerry Taylor in the 1972 Annual Reviews of Microbiology…and got into the peer-reviewed literature that way.36
Rummel told me that in 1998, he had gotten in touch with JPL Surveyor Project Scientist Leonard Jaffe about this “survivor” claim and that Jaffe had
33. NASA and the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) agreed to put G. Briggs Phillips, the PHS liaison to the MSC, in charge of lunar quarantine. See Charles R. Phillips, The Planetary Quarantine Program: Origins and Achievements, 1956–1973 (Washington, DC: NASA SP-1902, 1974) pp. 30–33. In 1963, the PHS detailed Capt. Lawrence B. Hall to NASA to develop a spacecraft sterilization program for the Agency. Hall became NASA’s Planetary Quarantine (PQ) Officer. For an extended discussion of quarantine and sterilization during the Apollo era, see Meltzer, When Biospheres Collide, pp. 55–59.
34. See Phillips, The Planetary Quarantine Program, p. 31.
35. “On August 24, 1967, NASA entered into an Interagency Agreement, ‘Protection of the Earth’s Biosphere from Lunar Sources of Contamination,’ with the Departments of Agriculture; Interior; and Health, Education, and Welfare…. The National Academy of Sciences was also a party to this interagency agreement. NASA subsequently issued a string of implementing documents. See Phillips, The Planetary Quarantine Program, p. 31.
36. See footnote 25.
50 YEARS OF SOLAR SYSTEM EXPLORATION: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 172
told him “there was a film of the procedure to sample the camera, and that the samplers had broken sterile protocol inadvertently (by placing their sam- pling tool outside the sterile hood).” Jaffe passed along to Rummel a mes- sage he had received from his Surveyor Project colleague Richard Green (the R. H. Green of Knittel, Favero, and Green) about the LRL analysis of the Surveyor III camera. Green had told Jaffe: “Re: the sampling: You were cor- rect, the sampling of the camera was suspect. I took movie film of the entire procedure, and it shows up on it as well. I believe that I still have the film somewhere in storage. If it would be helpful, I could try and find it.” Rummel told me his “best guess is that this bug did not, ever, survive even the trip out, let alone the stay on the lunar surface.”37
In 2004, at an Astrobiology Science Conference held at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, Rummel gave a presenta- tion entitled “Strep, Lies(?), and 16mm Film: Did S. mitis Survive on the Moon? Should Humans Be Allowed on Mars?”38 In his talk, Rummel con- sidered whether “sufficiently stringent procedures” were followed to pre- vent microbial contamination during collection, delivery, and analysis of the Surveyor III camera. Dissecting Mitchell and Ellis’s “S. mitis: survi- vor” claim, he determined that the answer was “no” and asserted that the microbial growth they had reported was the product of lab contamination during analysis. A paper on biological contamination studies of lunar land- ing sites, published in 2004, coauthored by Rummel, and published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, also challenged the claim, as follows:
One suggestion that bacteria might survive on the Moon came when the crew of Apollo 12 returned to the Earth with selected components from the unmanned Surveyor III probe, including the television camera that had spent over 2 years on the lunar surface. Scientists working at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) claimed to have isolated a colony of viable Streptococcus mitis bacteria from a sample of foam collected inside the camera housing….
However, all of the other camera components, including an internal section of the electrical cabling, did not contain viable terrestrial bacteria…nor was S. mitis found in the test camera that never went to the Moon. Meanwhile, it has been suggested that there is photographic evidence that these bacteria did not survive on the Moon, but instead were isolated due to laboratory contam- ination of the foam during analysis in the LRL…. Nevertheless, the Surveyor III bacteria controversy illustrates the potential confusion associated with terrestrial biological contamination that can lead to false positive detection
37. J. D. Rummel, personal communication with author, 10 December 2002.
38. Rummel provided his PowerPoint presentation to the author.
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of life. Future microbiological investigations of the Apollo site materials that have remained on the Moon for over 30 years could help resolve the Surveyor III issue. It also should be emphasized that even if bacteria delivered by lunar spacecraft are inactivated or sterilized on the Moon, due to the harsh surface conditions, organic compounds from dead cells will remain and could leave biomarkers in lunar samples returned to Earth.39