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A comment on NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus. Parent comment

Re:NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule... by idlewords on Saturday December 16, 2023 @10:49PM (#38670176)
No, almost certainly not. There are individual living microbes and spores on the various landers, but unlike the microbiome that would travel with a human mission, they're not viable and have no mechanism to get to somewhere where they'd be viable.
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Re:NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule... by RajT88 on Saturday December 16, 2023 @11:36PM (#38670347)
I mean, you say that, but also this story was a thing that happened:

https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankton-found-on-the-outer...

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Re:NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule... by vel0city on Sunday December 17, 2023 @08:41AM (#38672773)
The leading theory is air currents from the planet slowly contaminated the station over the decades, not contamination before launch. It's also then still pretty protected by radiation still being so close to Eath. Our probes go through pretty tight clean room packaging, shed almost all their outside layers before leaving Earth orbit while still being very toasty, and then get blasted by intense radiation for months and are finally separated by some pretty massive distances on the planet.
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