Life on Mars with Andy Weir

Speaking of microbial life on our neighboring planets, I am reminded of a fun brainstorm I had with Andy Weir, author of The Martian ► video

Our discussion led me to believe that humanity will create a rich ecosystem on Mars; we will not import it. Each planet can serve a genetic data vault backup for the other, but we will only transplant humanity and a few special species (cats perhaps) across the worlds. It is much more likely that we will modify and direct the rapid of evolution of microbes and plants in-situ, and then consider further “invasive species” imports after a terraformed ecosystem is well underway.

After a space artifact tour and discussion about his book and life on Mars (around minute 6), we then spoke about a simpler way to do a microbial sample return from Mars, remote syn bio, and purposeful panspermia.

For interstellar travel, we would send the data, not the DNA. The timeframes and radiation exposure make the transmission of tissue a pointless paper exercise. This is unfortunate, of course, for our dreams of exploration, using the physical bodies we are so accustomed to today.

“The stars are not for man, that is, not for biological humans 1.0” — Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Today, we could already “send the data not the DNA” for microbial life transmission, purposeful panspermia if you will. We would send robotic probes to the distant stars, with the precursor chemicals for a synthetic biology rig to assemble the DNA locally, ideally incorporating feedback about the local environment (food, shelter, clothing for the microbes if you will, given what kind of world we have found with a planet/moon-picking optimizer using remote sensing before landing). The biological matter-compiler, would insert the DNA into zombie cells (lacking any DNA, and relatively immune to soft errors from prolonged radiation exposure during the trip) and off they go. So, the long trip to the distant system would contain inert chemicals and no physical DNA that needs protection, and no biological life needing food and breeding over the eons. We can protect the data more easily than the biology.

Several years ago, I organized a meeting with Craig Venter and Scott Hubbard (who led NASA’s Mars program, and before that, NASA’s astrobiology program). It was fascinating. The Mars program has been focused on a long series of steps to prepare for a “sample return” from Mars, to bring back putative signs of life for analysis here on Earth. This material return is quite expensive (just like the moon missions, sending a probe to the moon is a fraction of the complexity and cost of bringing a spacecraft back).
So Craig’s idea was to do a sample return without the complexity of a return flight and the cost of escaping the Martian gravity well.

We would send a gene sequencer to Mars, modified perhaps for a wider range of nucleic acids (but some argue that the RNA and DNA set may likely be conserved across the solar system based on theories of the timing and continuity of panspermia, with a ton of material still transferring naturally between Earth and Mars every year). The sequencer would be on a robotic rover (which may be a cave diver or drill probe to get to the likely zone of life. Like Earth, most of the living biomass would be a fair bit underground).

And, for those who worry that we might discover a castaway microbe from Earth, the answer is fairly simple: if it’s indigenous to Mars, it will live in a colony, and there will be many of them. If it came from Earth, it is very unlikely to propagate into a colony in the local environment (and if it did, that would be a fascinating discovery in its own right, offering a harness for biological terraforming of the abundant CO2 to oxygen).

With the discovery of microbes (living or potentially even deceased), we would sequence locally, and beam the data back to Earth. On Earth, we could study the data, which would be fascinating in its own right. But we might be able to take it a step further and boot up a living cell with the Martian DNA here on Earth. We can easily synthesize the physical DNA with just the data. Synthetic Genomics (a company started by Venter where I served on the board for a decade) has already demonstrated that this “genetic alchemy” is possible, by removing 100% of the DNA from a microbe, replacing it with a foreign bolus, and converting the cell into the foreign species — a free-living organism that created a trillion offspring. We can “print to life”, and the software creates its own hardware. So, this would be a living sample return via data. We could call it the Andromeda Strain.

Reddit discussion

P.S. I also introduced him to some actual rocks from Mars, a first for him.