Oxygen envelops Saturn's icy moon Dione

Since the oxygen was produced by the high radiation around gas giants, this might make searching for life on exoplanets harder. Oxygen is considered a marker for life on Earth like planets, but if they are orbiting a gas giant, we can't say for sure why the oxygen is in high concentration. The high levels of radiation also means life on the surface of moons orbiting gas giants will have a harder time.

Originally posted by gortex
reply to post by el1jah

 

post by el1jah
For the sake of conversation, what do you think about``seeding life``.

I don't think we have the right to infect other planets or moons with Earth born organisms , we couldn't say for sure that the body didn't already contain life , we would only recognize life as we understand it whereas an alien life form maybe totally different , maybe silicone based or something even more exotic

It may already be too late, some of the early Soviet probes that crashed on Mars were probably not sterilized (e.g. the "Mars" series of probes). Even the Viking 1 and 2 weren't completely sterilized. The Mars Odyssey Orbiter which was supposed to orbit Mars but crashed instead may have not been completely sterilized.

Even the Rovers Spirit and Opportunity may have been carrying passengers from earth:

Towards the end of July 2005, it was reported by the Sunday Times that the rovers may have carried the bacteria Bacillus safensis to Mars. According to one NASA microbiologist, this bacteria could survive both the trip and conditions on Mars. A book containing this claim, Out of Eden by Alan Burdick, is due to be published in the United Kingdom. Despite efforts to sterilise both landers, neither could be assured to be completely sterile.[6]

en.wikipedia.org...


Then there is the natural transfer of biological material between planets that can occur when an asteroid hits one planet and sends material out into space which then lands on another planet. Just look at all the martian meteorites we find on earth.

So the terraforming of Mars may have already begun. I saw an interview once with Mars exploration advocate Robert Zubrin and he said teraforming Mars was not a bad thing. To paraphrase, he said something like "Given the choice between protecting Martian microbes and making Mars habitable for humans, I pick humans".

But space scientists are taking this issue much more seriously now. When we start to send probes to places like Dione and Europa, they are committed to sending truly sterilized probes.

If that's so ,than you should rather build an establishment here then on the moon, because I think that maybe collecting oxygen is easier then producing oxygen...