inShareAntaeus Orbiting Quarantine Facility

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inShareAntaeus Orbiting Quarantine Facility (1978) In the summer of 1978, 16 Faculty Fellows from universities around the U.S. met at NASA’s Ames Research Center near San Francisco to spend 10 weeks designing an Earth-orbiting Mars sample quarantine facility. It was one of a series of similar Ames-hosted Summer Faculty http://pumaferrarishoes.blogbaker.com/2012/07/12/tom-cruise-led-forbes-annual-list-of-the-100-higheDesign Studies conducted since the late 1960s. At the time, NASA actively considered Mars Sample Return (MSR) as a post-Viking mission. Agency interest flagged as it became clear that no such mission would receive funding, so publication of the 1978 design study, titled Orbiting Quarantine Facility: The Antaeus Report, was delayed until 1981. http://pumaferrarishoes.blogbaker.com/2012/07/12/the-best-random-factoids-from-nbcs-olympic-media-g Viking 2 on the rocky northern plain of Utopia Planitia, September 1976. Image: NASA The Ames Faculty Fellows noted that the http://pumaferrarishoes.blogbaker.com/2012/07/12/the-various-angle-annotated-puma-to-be-gorgeousthree biology experiments on the Viking landers had found neither organic carbon nor clear evidence of ongoing metabolic processes in the soil they tested on Mars. Furthermore, the Viking cameras had observed no obvious signs of life at the two rather bland Viking landing sites. Nevertheless, the Fellows wrote, http://pumaferrarishoes.seesaa.net/article/280743559.html“the limitations of automated analysis” and the fact that “the landers sampled visually only a small fraction of one percent of the planet’s surface” meant that there could be “no real certainty” about whether Mars was lifeless. This, they argued, meant that, “in the event that samples of Martian soil are returned to Earth for study, special precautions ought to be taken to safeguard them. . .the samples should be considered to be potentially hazardous to terrestrial organisms until it has been conclusively shown that they are not.” http://pumaferrarishoes.seesaa.net/article/280743348.html Their report listed three options for attempting to ensure that samples would not accidentally release martian organisms on Earth. The MSR spacecraft might sterilize the sample en route from Mars to Earth, perhaps by heating it. Alternately, the unsterilized sample might be quarantined in a “maximum containment” facility on Earth or in Earth orbit, outside our planet’s biosphere. The Fellows noted that each of these three options would have advantages and disadvantages; sterilizing the sample, for example, might ensure that no martian organisms could reach Earth, but would likely also damage the sample, diminishing its scientific utility. The Antaeus study emphasized the third option because it had not been studied in detail previously.http://pumaferrarishoes.seesaa.net/article/280742978.html The Faculty Fellows explained the significance of the name they had selected for their Orbiting Quarantine Facility (OQF) project. http://pumaferrarishoes.seesaa.net/article/280742778.htmlAntaeus was a giant in Greek mythology who forced passing travelers to wrestle with him and killed them when he won. The Earth was the source of Antaeus’s power, so the hero Hercules was able to defeat the murderous giant by holding him above the ground. “Like Antaeus,” they explained, a martian organism “might thrive on contact with the terrestrial biosphere. By keeping the pathogen contained and distant, the proposed [OQF] would safeguard the Earth from possible contamination.” http://pumaferrarishoes.seesaa.net/article/280741702.html The OQF would comprise five 4.1-meter-diameter cylindrical modules based on European Space Agency Spacelab hardware. The Fellows assumed that the modules and many of the other components needed to assemble and operate the OQF would become available during the 1980s as the Space Shuttle Program evolved into a Space Station Program. http://pumaferrarishoes.seesaa.net/article/280741327.html