NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
Detecting Pyrolysis Products from Bacteria in a Mars Soil AnalogueOne of the primary objectives of the 1976 Viking missions was to determine whether organic compounds, possibly of biological origin, were present in the Martian surface soils. The Viking gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GCMS) instruments found no evidence for any organic compounds of Martian origin above a few parts per billion in the upper 10 cm of surface soil, suggesting the absence of a widely distributed Martian biota. However, it is now known that key organic compounds important to biology, such as amino acids, carboxylic acids and nucleobases, would likely have been missed by the Viking GCMS instruments. In this study, a Mars soil analogue that was inoculated with approx. 10 billion Escherichia coli cells was heated at 500 C under Martian ambient pressure to release volatile organic compounds from the sample. The pyrolysis products were then analyzed for amino acids and nucleobases using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and GCMS. Our experimental results indicate that at the part per billion level, the degradation products generated from several million bacterial cells per gram of Martian soil would not have been detected by the Viking GCMS instruments. Upcoming strategies for Mars exploration will require in-situ analyses by instruments that can assess whether any organic compounds, especially those that might be associated with life, are present in Martian surface samples.
Document ID
20040079772
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Glavin, D. P.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Cleaves, H. J.
(Scripps Institution of Oceanography La Jolla, CA, United States)
Schubert, M.
(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Lyon, France)
Aubrey, A.
(Scripps Institution of Oceanography La Jolla, CA, United States)
Buch, A.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Mahaffy, P. R.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Bada, J. L.
(Scripps Institution of Oceanography La Jolla, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2004
Subject Category
Life Sciences (General)
Meeting Information
Meeting: Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference
Location: Copenhagen
Country: Denmark
Start Date: June 5, 2004
End Date: June 11, 2004
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available