Public Perceptions, Priorities, and Solar System Exploration
PART 5: HOW THE STORY SPREAD
173 CHAPTER 6 • SURVIVOR! (?) THE STORY OF S. MITIS ON THE MOON
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
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story of S. mitis on the Moon.42 In postflight comments, Conrad said, “The thing that had the bacteria in it was the television camera. The Styrofoam in between the inner and outer shells. There’s a report on that. I always thought the most significant thing that we ever found on the whole g---n Moon was that little bacteria who came back and lived and nobody ever said s---t about it.”
In his postflight comments, “Lunar Surface Journal” contributor Marv Hein, citing the NASA report “Analysis of Surveyor 3 Material and Photographs Returned by Apollo 12,” said, “the survival of microbes was anticipated at the time Surveyor III was launched.” He noted that the microbes identified by Mitchell and Ellis in their chapter of the report were S. mitis cultured from “sample 32 extracted from foam insulation used between 2 aluminum plates of the camera circuit boards and extracted through a hole originally cut for the placement of electronic components. It is estimated that between 2 and 50 cells were isolated from the foam sample. There is significant discussion (in the NASA report) as to how it may have survived.”
In his postflight comments, journal contributor Ken Glover noted, “There is a distinct possibility that the microbes found in the Surveyor TV camera got there as a result of post-flight contamination. As of 2004, it seems generally accepted that the history of the particular microbes found in the Surveyor III parts will never be resolved.”43
I also found a classroom “teacher sheet” for grades 9–12, “All About Microbes,” developed for a NASA-sponsored project (now defunct) called
“NASA Explores,” that replicated this “survivor” story.44 This curriculum supplement included the following “Q&A”:
What unmanned probe unknowingly carried the Streptococcus mitis bacte- ria to the Moon in 1967? How was the bacteria returned to Earth?
Surveyor 3 carried the bacteria to the Moon, and the crew of Apollo 12 returned it to Earth.
The source provided to answer this question was the 1998 NASA Marshall story mentioned above.
42. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a12/a12.surveyor.html (accessed 17 January 2020).
43. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a12/a12.surveyor.html (accessed 17 January 2020).
44. http://www.nasaexplores.com, no access date, hard copy in author’s files.
175 CHAPTER 6 • SURVIVOR! (?) THE STORY OF S. MITIS ON THE MOON
Beyond the universe of NASA’s website, I found further accounts. The following information, for example, came from a reference.com entry on Surveyor III:
Perhaps Surveyor 3’s [sic] most remarkable finding, though, was a complete accident. A common bacteria, Streptococcus mitis, was unintentionally pres- ent inside the spacecraft’s camera at launch. Around 50 to 100 of these bac- teria survived dormant in this harsh environment for 3 years, to be detected when Apollo 12 brought the camera back to Earth. The discovery, while paid comparatively little attention at the time, gave some credence to the idea of interplanetary panspermia, but more importantly, led NASA to adopt strict abiotic procedures for space probes to prevent contamination of Mars and other bodies suspected of having conditions suitable for life; most dramati- cally the Galileo spacecraft was deorbited to avoid impacting Europa.45
I also found an interesting “reader forum” hosted by the web news ser- vice Space.com in 2004 on the topic “Organisms can survive the vacuum of space.” Readers leaned hard toward “yes,” and several repeated the story of S. mitis surviving on the Moon. “Cosmic Ancestry,” a website maintained by an advocate of strong-panspermia theory,46 retold the story, too, in an entry entitled “Bacteria: The Space Colonists.” According to this account, S. mitis
“had survived for 31 months in the vacuum of the Moon’s atmosphere.”
Noting the strong-panspermia view that, “when the first bacteria colonized the Earth, almost 4 billion years ago, it was by our standards a hostile place,”
the entry went on to cite accounts of bacteria surviving in spore form for tens of millions of years. Here the story of S. mitis surviving a stint on the Moon was used to bolster the case for the seeding of life on Earth from outer space.
An entry on the Lunar and Planetary Institute’s website on the Apollo 12 Surveyor III analysis took the middle road, stating:
A particularly important aspect of the Surveyor 3 analysis was the search for living material on the spacecraft. Surveyor was not sterilized prior to launch, and scientists wanted to know if terrestrial microorganisms had survived for two and a half years in space. One research group found a small amount of the bacteria Streptococcus mitis in a piece of foam from inside the TV cam- eras. They believed that these bacteria had survived in this location since before launch…. Another research group found no evidence of life inside a section of electrical cable. Some people associated with the curation of the
45. http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Surveyor_3 (accessed 24 May 2006). This informa- tion is no longer available online.
46. See footnote 2.
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Surveyor 3 materials have suggested that the one positive detection of life may be the result of accidental contamination of the material after it was returned to Earth.47