[meteorite-list] Did Life Arrive Before the Solar

[Ron Baalke]

>     Just a sort of footnote to my previous post on this topic.  I forgot
> the most
> obvious example of critters in space.
>     On April 20, 1967, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft landed on the moon.
> Unknown to us,
> it was carrying some uninvited passengers.  When Surveyor 3 was being
> prepared for
> launch, somebody apparently coughed on it, and a colony of a common
> bacteria,
> Streptococcus mitis, was established on a piece of foam insulation that
> covered one
> of Surveyor's circuit boards.

The Apollo 12 astronauts retrieved the Surveyor 3 camera and cables, threw them in
a bag, and upon careful inspection up their return to Earth, they discovered
bacteria in the camera.  Since no quarantine efforts were made, the bacteria
most likely came from inside the Apollo capsule or from the researchers
inspecting the camera on Earth.

Ron Baalke