AGU Astrobiology Special: Icy Worlds Get New Planetary Protection Guidelines

This week from AGU astrobiology special edition: Icy worlds get new planetary protection guidelines

AGU News

AbSciCon26 – Next week 17-22 May!
Next week, the Astrobiology Science Conference will convene in Madison, Wisconsin, hosting 900 scientific posters, talks, town halls and plenary lectures. Reporters and press officers interested in press registration should email AGU Media Relations at [email protected]. Please include a link to a byline, masthead or a staff page listing your name and position. Freelancers should provide a link to a portfolio or links to at least three bylined science news stories published in the last 12 months.

Can’t make it in person? Remote attendees can join a small set of online-only discussion sessions on Zoom via the conference app. Recordings of the audio and slide presentations from in-person town halls, plenaries and oral sessions will be available on demand on the conference app about 72 hours after each session is finished. AGU media relations will be on site to help reporters connect with attending scientists.

[press information] [AbSciCon home] [program] [online-only sessions] [media advisories and tips]

Astrobiology Science Conference Highlights

Drill expedition finds living microbes 1 kilometer deep into the seafloor

• Tuesday 2:00 PM abstract | app schedule
  Session: Turning Ocean Worlds Inside Out: From Drilling Beneath the Seafloor to Cryosphere Surfaces I Oral
  William Brazelton [email protected]
• Deep in Earth’s crust, single-celled organisms are carrying on with life, suggesting similar conditions could be habitable on other ocean worlds. The International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 399 visited the Atlantis Massif, an underwater mountain rising 14,000 feet from the seafloor in the middle of the Atlantic, where tectonic activity has brought typically inaccessible mantle rock to the surface. The researchers were on a mission to sample life below the seabed and explore how non-biological reactions between water and rocks in this environment may simulate the ancient conditions that set the stage for life on Earth and, possibly, other worlds in our Solar System. They drilled 1,267.8 meters (4,159 feet) down from the southern wall near The Lost City Hydrothermal Field and found metabolically active microbes..

At mountain summits, soil microbes use hydrogen gas to make energy

• Wednesday 2:00 PM abstract | app schedule
  Session: How Disequilibrium Fuels Life: Observations of Metabolic Opportunities Related to Dramatic Environmental Gradients I Oral
  Angelique Ray [email protected]
• In the extreme heights of the Andes, soil microbes unlock hydrogen power. Thousands of meters up on Mt. Aconcagua in the Andes, in freezing cold, parching dryness, and intense UV radiation, microbes’ metabolisms get weird. After studying soil samples at elevations from 3,300 to 6,900 meters above sea level, researchers found that the higher the elevation, the more soil microbes use “trace hydrogen oxidation” to derive energy from tiny amounts of hydrogen gas in the atmosphere. Near the mountain’s summit, microbes used this strategy 75 times more intensely than at the lowest elevation where it was observed. The finding helps researchers understand how life persists not only in extreme Earth environments, but potentially under similar conditions on Mars.

These microbes may subsist on oxygen made by rocks

• Wednesday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
  Session: Aerobic Aliens: Are Aerobic Worlds Inevitable? Pathways to Planetary Oxygenation I eLightning
  Kayla Sorensen [email protected]
• With no plants around, these underground microbes get oxygen from rocks. Deep underground, the lack of sunlight prevents the creation of oxygen through photosynthesis by organisms like plants and algae, the way most oxygen on Earth is made — but microbes down there have other ways to get the gas. When crushed-up silicate minerals react with oxygen-free water, researchers found, they produce enough oxygen and hydrogen to support hardy subterranean microbes that don’t require much oxygen to live. Since silicate minerals and water occur on worlds like Mars, Europa, and Enceladus, it’s possible life could subsist in a similar way beyond Earth.

Need medicine in space? Just add water.

• Wednesday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
  Session: Microbial and Human Habitability of Mars: Is Synthetic Biology the Solution? I Poster
  Adrianna Hudyma [email protected]
• Astronauts might one day make their own medications by adding water to a test tube. In the future, years-long space missions will need medicines to treat low bone density, radiation poisoning, and other medical issues — but these protein-based drugs would break down over the course of such long voyages, eventually rendering them useless. A better approach may involve taking the protein-building parts of living cells and freeze-drying them in test tubes, a method that has kept them viable for nearly three years in unpublished lab experiments. Adding water to a test tube could revive those protein-builders even years into a mission, giving astronauts the tools to make their own medicines on demand.

Forget washing machines: astronauts may clean their clothes with plasma guns

• Thursday 10:00 AM abstract | app schedule
  Session: Planetary Protection for Crewed Missions: New Strategies, Emerging Technologies, and Lessons Learned I Oral
  Gabe Xu [email protected]
• On future long-haul missions, even astronauts will need cozy comforts like bedding and sofas to stay comfortable for years in space. But current space-approved cleaning methods don’t work well on soft materials, which make great breeding grounds for microbes. Instead, researchers are trying another approach: blasting cotton T-shirt fabric with plasma jets, which produce reactive oxygen and nitrogen species that kill microbes better than vacuuming or surface wipes can. Trials on clean fabric so far show no impacts to the fabric itself, and researchers are now running tests with several microbe species. They also plan to test a handheld, soda-can-sized plasma jet cleaning tool currently being designed.

Exoplanet atmospheric complexity is an Earth-agnostic signature of life

• Monday 2:00 PM abstract | app schedule
  Session: Assembly Theory Across Scales: From Molecules to Planetary Systems I eLightning
  Estelle Janin [email protected]
• Life is a planetary process that accrues complexity on a global scale. To detect life beyond Earth without reference to Earth’s particular biology, scientists have proposed looking for signatures of molecular complexity based on the number of steps needed to construct a molecule. Biological molecules have a large “assembly index” of greater than 15. By extending this concept to atmospheric complexity, researchers can search for life in the spectra of exoplanet atmospheres as observed from our home planet (or general vicinity).

Humpback whale night thrums and other possible missed signals from non-human intelligences

• Monday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
  Session: Searching for Technological Signatures of Life Beyond Earth II Poster
  Fred Sharpe [email protected]
• The search for extraterrestrial life is limited by human capacity to imagine how to look, listen and recognize intelligence. Low pitched (30 to 250 Hertz), above-water rumbles of humpback whales, recorded for the first time by scientific observers, demonstrate how observing the communication of non-human intelligent life on Earth expands our imagination of life beyond Earth. The “night thrums” can travel more than 10 kilometers above the waves, and had been noted by sea kayakers, lighthouse keepers and other quiet ocean visitors. The new study confirms a spectrum of other humpback aerial pizzles, chuffs, boils, howls and hoots that add an open-air dimension to the whales’ communication.

Icy worlds get new planetary protection guidelines

• Monday 3:45 PM abstract | app schedule
  Session: Accessing Ocean Worlds: Challenges and Technologies for Sub-ice Exploration and Science I Poster
  Peter Doran [email protected]
• An international scientific committee aims to keep Europa, Enceladus and other icy moons pure for science – and Earth safe from returning samples. With the Europa Clipper and Juice missions en route to survey the large, icy moons of Jupiter for signs of life, astrobiologists are already planning for more robot missions to can drill into the ice and take samples. To prevent visiting spacecraft from contaminating pristine worlds with stowaway lifeforms from Earth, the Committee on Space Research recently released an update to its Planetary Protection Policy, first published in support of the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty. The new guidelines define icy worlds, establish the driest and coldest conditions at which Earth life can survive and assign a 1,000-year period of biological exploration for all icy worlds during which contamination controls should be honored to preserve them for science.

Searching for life in the stars is controversial, putting some scientists’ safety at risk

• Thursday 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM session abstracts
  Online Session: Safety for Scientists: Astrobiology, a Global Issue, and a Call to Action
• Searching for life beyond earth can become an incendiary activity: it often generates significant public attention and emotion around a topic that is inherently controversial and uncertain. Misunderstandings about the science involved sometimes end in public backlash that threatens scientists’ safety. A session about how astrobiologists deal with these challenges will include talks on:
  • International safety recommendations and the specific safety challenges astrobiologists face. app schedule
  • How to foster trust between scientists and the public in advance, to preemptively mitigate the impacts when misunderstandings do arise and promote acknowledgement of scientific expertise even when science cannot offer certainty. app schedule
  • How potential public reactions to extraterrestrial life in the future could, by association, impact the researchers studying it. app schedule
  • Scientists’ firsthand experiences with the aftermath of putting controversial research out into the world. app schedule

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