Planetary protection implementation on future Mars lander missions

A workshop was convened to discuss the subject of planetary protection implementation for Mars lander missions. It was sponsored and organized by the Exobiology Implementation Team of the U.S./Russian Joint Working Group on Space Biomedical and Life Support Systems. The objective of the workshop was to discuss planetary protection issues for the Russian Mars '94 mission, which is currently under development, as well as for additional future Mars lander missions including the planned Mars '96 and U.S. MESUR Pathfinder and Network missions. A series of invited presentations was made to ensure that workshop participants had access to information relevant to the planned discussions. The topics summarized in this report include exobiology science objectives for Mars exploration, current international policy on planetary protection, planetary protection requirements developed for earlier missions, mission plans and designs for future U.S. and Russian Mars landers, biological contamination of spacecraft components, and techniques for spacecraft bioload reduction. In addition, the recent recommendations of the U.S. Space Studies Board (SSB) on this subject were also summarized. Much of the discussion focused on the recommendations of the SSB. The SSB proposed relaxing the planetary protection requirements for those Mars lander missions that do not contain life detection experiments, but maintaining Viking-like requirements for those missions that do contain life detection experiments. The SSB recommendations were found to be acceptable as a guide for future missions, although many questions and concerns about interpretation were raised and are summarized. Significant among the concerns was the need for more quantitative guidelines to prevent misinterpretation by project offices and better access to and use of the Viking data base of bioassays to specify microbial burden targets. Among the questions raised were how will the SSB recommendations be integrated with existing Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) policy and how will they apply to and affect Mars '94, Mars '96, MESUR Pathfinder, and MESUR Network missions? One additional topic briefly considered at the workshop was the identification of some issues related to planetary protection considerations for Mars sample return missions. These issues will form the basis for a follow-on joint U.S./Russian workshop on that subject

Mars Sample Handling Protocol Workshop Series: Workshop 4

In preparation for missions to Mars that will involve the return of samples to Earth, it will be necessary to prepare for the receiving, handling, testing, distributing, and archiving of martian materials here on Earth. Previous groups and committees have studied selected aspects of sample return activities, but specific detailed protocols for the handling and testing of returned samples must still be developed. To further refine the requirements for sample hazard testing and to develop the criteria for subsequent release of sample materials from quarantine, the NASA Planetary Protection Officer convened a series of workshops in 2000-2001. The overall objective of the Workshop Series was to produce a Draft Protocol by which returned martian sample materials can be assessed for biological hazards and examined for evidence of life (extant or extinct) while safeguarding the purity of the samples from possible terrestrial contamination. This report also provides a record of the proceedings of Workshop 4, the final Workshop of the Series, which was held in Arlington, Virginia, June 5-7, 2001. During Workshop 4, the sub-groups were provided with a draft of the protocol compiled in May 2001 from the work done at prior Workshops in the Series. Then eight sub-groups were formed to discuss the following assigned topics: Review and Assess the Draft Protocol for Physical/Chemical Testing Review and Assess the Draft Protocol for Life Detection Testing Review and Assess the Draft Protocol for Biohazard Testing Environmental and Health/Monitoring and Safety Issues Requirements of the Draft Protocol for Facilities and Equipment Contingency Planning for Different Outcomes of the Draft Protocol Personnel Management Considerations in Implementation of the Draft Protocol Draft Protocol Implementation Process and Update Concepts This report provides the first complete presentation of the Draft Protocol for Mars Sample Handling to meet planetary protection needs. This Draft Protocol, which was compiled from deliberations and recommendations from earlier Workshops in the Series, represents a consensus that emerged from the discussions of all the sub-groups assembled over the course of the five Workshops of the Series. These discussions converged on a conceptual approach to sample handling, as well as on specific analytical requirements. Discussions also identified important issues requiring attention, as well as research and development needed for protocol implementation

Mars Sample Handling and Requirements Panel (MSHARP)

In anticipation of the return of samples from Mars toward the end of the first decade of the next century, NASA's Office of Space Sciences chartered a panel to examine how Mars samples should be handled. The panel was to make recommendations in three areas: (1) sample collection and transport back to Earth; (2) certification of the samples as nonhazardous; and (3) sample receiving, curation, and distribution. This report summarizes the findings of that panel. The samples should be treated as hazardous until proven otherwise. They are to be sealed within a canister on Mars, and the canister is not to be opened until within a Biosafety Hazard Level 4 (BSL-4) containment facility here on Earth. This facility must also meet or exceed the cleanliness requirements of the Johnson Space Center (JSC) facility for curation of extraterrestrial materials. A containment facility meeting both these requirements does not yet exist. Hazard assessment and life detection experiments are to be done at the containment facility, while geochemical characterization is being performed on a sterilized subset of the samples released to the science community. When and if the samples are proven harmless, they are to be transferred to a curation facility, such as that at JSC

Forecast for the Remainder of the Leonid Storm Season

The dust trails of comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle lead to Leonid storms on Earth, threatening satellites in orbit. We present a new model that accounts in detail for the observed properties of dust tails evolved by the comet at previous oppositions. The prediction model shows the 1767-dust trail closer to Earth's orbit in 2001 than originally thought; increasing expected peak rates for North America observers. Predictions for the 2002 storms are less affected. We demonstrate that the observed shower profiles can be understood as a projection of the comet lightcurve

A Study of Soil and Duricrust Models for Mars

This project includes analysis of the Mars Pathfinder soil data (spectral, chemical and magnetic) together with analog materials and the products of laboratory alteration experiments in order to describe possible mechanisms for the formation of soil, duricrust and rock coatings on Mars. Soil analog mixtures have been prepared, characterized and tested through wet/dry cycling experiments for changes in binding and spectroscopic properties that are related to what could be expected for duricrusts on Mars. The smectite-based mixture exhibited significantly greater changes (1) in its binding properties throughout the wet/dry cycling experiments than did the palagonite-based mixture, and (2) in its spectral properties following grinding and resieving of the hardened material than did the palagonite-based mixture

Astrobiological Perspectives on the Early Evolution of Our Biosphere

The Earth's Biogeologic clock is presented in viewgraph form

Dark Material on Planetary Satellites and Rings

Material of low albedo covers the surfaces, and in some cases constitutes the surfaces, of many planetary satellites. The low mean densities and water ice absorption bands detected in the spectra of some of these bodies show that they are fundamentally icy, but other bodies contain substantial fractions of rocky material. If we define three arbitrary albedo categories ranging from very low to very high, we find that there are many examples in each group