Extremophiles on Viking

[VedekPako]

Who wants to beat that Extrema-philes hitched a ride on the Viking Lander and have already colonized Mars?

 

If not the Viking Lander, than perhaps one of the numerous Soviet ones.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well my guess is that the entire solar system could easily have been contaminated with Earth bacteria, thrown up due to meteorite impact. Dunno if they could have survived this or a long trip through space though.

[VedekPako]

There's a large concentration of Methane gas in various places on Mars.

 

Or perhaps, 4 billion years ago, a meteorite impacted Mars and contaminated the Earth.

 

Maybe Astrobiologists can put a few extremophiles in a vacuum chamber and simulate the effects of space.

[Spyman]

Apollo 12 and the remote possibility of interplanetary contamination

The Surveyor 3 landing site was later selected also as the landing target for the Lunar Module of the Apollo 12 manned lunar mission in 1969. Several components of the Surveyor 3 lander were collected and returned to the Earth for study of the long-term exposure effects of the harsh lunar environment on man-made objects and materials. Although space probes have returned to Earth in the decades since Apollo 12, this remains the only occasion in which humans have "caught up" with a probe sent to another world.

 

It is widely claimed that a common type of bacteria, Streptococcus mitis, accidentally contaminated the Surveyor's camera prior to launch, and that bacteria survived dormant in the harsh lunar environment for two and one-half years, supposedly then to be detected when Apollo 12 brought the Surveyor's camera back to the Earth. This claim has been cited by some as providing credence to the idea of interplanetary panspermia, but more importantly, it led NASA to adopt strict abiotic procedures for space probes to prevent contamination of the planet Mars and other astronomical bodies that are suspected of having conditions possibly suitable for life. Most dramatically, the Galileo spacecraft was removed from orbit around Jupiter to avoid the possibility of colliding with the Jovian moon Europa.

 

However, independent investigators have challenged the claim of surviving bacteria in Surveyor 3 on the Moon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyor_3

[CaptainPanic]

Looking at earth, I would say that life is extremely contageous. Therefore, it is likely to spread everywhere it can.