論文

査読有り 国際誌
2019年11月

Assessment of the probability of microbial contamination for sample return from Martian moons II: The fate of microbes on Martian moons

Life Sciences in Space Research
  • Kosuke Kurosawa
  • ,
  • Hidenori Genda
  • ,
  • Ryuki Hyodo
  • ,
  • Akihiko Yamagishi
  • ,
  • Takashi Mikouchi
  • ,
  • Takafumi Niihara
  • ,
  • Shingo Matsuyama
  • ,
  • Kazuhisa Fujita

23
開始ページ
85
終了ページ
100
記述言語
英語
掲載種別
研究論文(学術雑誌)
DOI
10.1016/j.lssr.2019.07.006
出版者・発行元
Elsevier BV

This paper presents a case study of microbe transportation in the Mars-satellites system. We examined the spatial distribution of potential impact-transported microbes on the Martian moons using impact physics by following a companion study (Fujita et al., in this issue). We used sterilization data from the precede studies (Patel et al., 2018; Summers, 2017). We considered that the microbes came mainly from the Zunil crater on Mars, which was formed during 1.0-0.1 Ma. We found that 70-80% of the microbes are likely to be dispersed all over the moon surface and are rapidly sterilized due to solar and galactic cosmic radiation except for those microbes within a thick ejecta deposit produced by natural meteoroids. The other 20-30% might be shielded from radiation by thick regolith layers that formed at collapsed layers in craters produced by Mars rock impacts. The total number of potentially surviving microbes at the thick ejecta deposits is estimated to be 3-4 orders of magnitude lower than at the Mars rock craters. The microbe concentration is irregular in the horizontal direction due to Mars rock bombardment and is largely depth-dependent due to the radiation sterilization. The surviving fraction of transported microbes would be only ∼1 ppm on Phobos and ∼100 ppm on Deimos, suggesting that the transport processes and radiation severely affect microbe survival. The microbe sampling probability from the Martian moons was also investigatesd. We suggest that sample return missions from the Martian moons are classified into Unrestricted Earth-Return missions for 30 g samples and 10 cm depth sampling, even in our conservative scenario. We also conducted a full statistical analysis pertaining to sampling the regolith of Phobos to include the effects of uncertainties in input parameters on the sampling probability. The most likely probability of microbial contamination for return samples is estimated to be two orders of magnitude lower than the 10-6 criterion defined by the planetary protection policy of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR).

リンク情報
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lssr.2019.07.006
PubMed
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31791609
ID情報
  • DOI : 10.1016/j.lssr.2019.07.006
  • ISSN : 2214-5524
  • PubMed ID : 31791609

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