Since the 1976 Viking Mission to Mars, follow-on efforts to resolve its controversial life detection results have been thwarted by two heretofore insurmountable difficulties: the huge expense of sterilizing the entire spacecraft to protect the integrity of life detection experiments; and the lack of a practical robotic life detection package that could produce results acceptable as unambiguous by the scientific community. We here present a method that assures sterility and the complete integrity of robotic life detection experiments, all at a negligible cost. Second, we propose a candidate set of integrated, highly sensitive experiments that we believe could produce results acceptable to the vast majority of scientists. In addition to the biology-chemistry issue, the extensively debated oxidative state of the Martian surface and other chemical and physical characteristics of the Martian soil would be determined. We present our concept for a miniaturized instrument that could carry out a number of candidate experiments to achieve the objective.


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    Title :

    A Sterile Robotic Mars Soil Analyzer



    Conference:

    SPIE Instruments, Methods, and Missions for Astrobiology ; 2002 ; Waikoloa, HI, United States


    Publication date :

    2002-01-01


    Type of media :

    Preprint


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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