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NASA searches for life from the moon in recently rediscovered historic footage By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
NASA has released rare, never-before-seen footage of researchers looking for signs of life in the samples brought back by the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969. As most of the people worldwide know, on July 16, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a journey to the moon and into history. Four days later, while Collins orbited the Moon in the command module, Armstrong and Aldrin landed Apollo 11’s lunar module, Eagle, on the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, becoming the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface. The footage shows biologists and chemists at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California working in a specially designed clean room applying the most sophisticated analytical techniques of the time to search for life. Staff at the research center had been searching the center's archives for unique Apollo artifacts to showcase as the agency prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing Saturday. The footage was recorded on an obsolete 16-mm film format and was digitized and remastered for public release, said NASA in its report. According to NASA when astronauts were first sent to the moon, scientists couldn’t rule out the possibility that our nearest neighbor might contain life. The analyses, conducted both at Ames and Johnson Space Center in Houston, conclusively proved that the moon was, as suspected, bereft of living organisms. Nevertheless, these tests became the first time that NASA looked for the possibility of life existing on another world using samples from that world. “We were really concerned about contaminating the samples with our own bacteria,” said Caye Johnson, biologist from Ames, now retired, who worked with the Apollo lunar samples. “We had to be careful that we didn’t introduce a microbe into the samples and then falsely say that we’d found life.” Researchers adorned with masks, gloves, boot coverings and smocks worked in a clean room environment – cleaner than a sterile surgical room – to protect them from exposure to potential hazards from the samples. In these experiments, the researchers tried to encourage the growth of any potential organisms in the lunar samples, providing nutrients and testing over a range of conditions that might be suitable for reproduction. Periodically microscopes were used to inspect for growth. After several months of testing, no life was detected, said NASA in its statement. “Why were we doing 300 different environments? Because on Earth today, bacteria live in all sorts of strange environments that you wouldn’t expect,” said Johnson. NASA and its lead center for astrobiology continue the compelling quest to find life beyond Earth so that we may one day answer that most profound human question: Are we alone? The entire 19 minute footage of the Apollo biological sampling experiment can be found here* ---------------- Is there life beyond Earth? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to: news@amcostarica.com |
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