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Genuine question: How do we know the organic compounds seen by Rosetta do not come from Earth and were not brought by Rosetta itself?
by mdup 10y ago
Genuine question: How do we know the organic compounds seen by Rosetta do not come from Earth and were not brought by Rosetta itself?
- giomasce 10y agoUsually spacecrafts like that are built in clean rooms and care is taken so they are sterilized when sent to space. I have no specific answer, though.
- ygra 10y agoThis will be especially true for instruments that are designed to find such compounds. It would be fairly embarrassing to send the probe into space, only to notice that apparently interplanetary space is full of organic compounds no one else has ever seen ...
- JohnDoe365 10y agoThat blurry something on the inner side of the lens turned out to be an ... ant?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- okket 10y agoFrom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)#Design_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)#Design_an... Rosetta was built in a clean room according to COSPAR rules, but "sterilisation [was] generally not crucial since comets are usually regarded as objects where you can find prebiotic molecules, that is, molecules that are precursors of life, but not living microorganisms", according to Gerhard Schwehm, Rosetta's project scientist. See also the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Target Categories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection#Target_categories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection#Target_ca...