This much was clear: We had to determine whether the most phenomenal discovery in the history of science was nothing more than a fluke. Was Crimsococcus halocryophilus really and truly from Mars? Or was it just a remnant from past Mars missions, one of thirty-or-so thousand bacteria that hitch rides from Earth to the Red Planet, despite our best efforts to sterilize probes, rovers, robotic arms, and sample containers?
Two camps emerged after Crimsococcus’ discovery: the Crims-optimists, convinced we had finally discovered “life on Mars” and rushing to assure credit, patents, and fame; and the Cry-pessimists who insisted Crimsococcus—an “extremophile” who could survive extreme cold or heat—was little more than the offspring of an Earthling bug brought to Mars on the arm, leg, or tire of a contaminated landing vehicle.
Harold Hale, the Harvard astrobiologist, led the latter, soul-crushing camp. Despite my general pessimism, I—though not (yet) a scientist of Dr. Hale’s renown—was an Crims-optimist. I like to think if it weren’t for my idea that our NASA MarsMicro team adapt the BiolEyeT technology for our Martian maneuverings, Crimsococcus halocryophilus would still be languishing in obscurity where we found her, in a partly-frozen sea of brine beneath the planet surface.
If Crimsococcus—whom I nicknamed Crimsy—were merely a “forward contaminant” (a bug forwarded from Earth to Mars), “How do you explain its discovery nowhere near any previous landing sites? And below ground?” Those were the kinds of press questions Dr. Hale dismissed.
“Rigorous testing is still required,” he told these hungry journos, with the same haughty tone he used when I was his “lab girl” (yeah, he called me that, but not to my face). “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” he said, effecting a faint faux accent (he was from my hometown, Kenosha, Wisconsin). “All we have at this point are extraordinary claims.”
“Extraordinary evidence is code for ‘pompous, self-appointed gatekeeper’,” my mentor told me. Marcia Levitt was the best. The good angel on my left shoulder to Dr. Hale’s imperious specter on my right. Her West, here in Seattle at the University of Washington (UW), to his East in Cambridge, Mass. Wisdom, my father told me tapping my forehead, is somewhere in between. Our decision to man the MarsMicro rover with a modified BiolEyeT lab did, in fact, emerge from a heated, months-long debate between Drs. Levitt and Hale, with me in the middle, since it was my idea.
We had a simple dilemma: How to test for a microbe on a planet that, at its closest to Earth, was thirty four million miles distant; at its farthest, two hundred and fifty million miles (401 million km) away. Even on Earth, “ship sample to lab” was a critical part of the testing process. That’s fifteen minutes in Kenosha; two hours in LA traffic; six to eight months from Mars to Earth. And no telling if the samples would survive the trip.
Once on Earth, the sample might have to be grown in a Petri dish, like when the doctor swabs your throat for Strep. Or it might have to undergo some complicated tests with high-tech gadgets in billion-dollar labs.
BiolEyeT promised ten times faster results without the need to grow a colony in nutrient-rich agar—baby food for bacteria—like with a throat swab. I found out about the technique almost by accident: my then-boyfriend got an internship with the company that made it. The “accidental” part was his getting the internship. The “almost” qualifier was me watching an online video about how BiolEyeT’s “bio-illumination” technology eliminated “send sample to lab” by lighting up the bacteria on site, in minutes. Kind of like inserting the fire into the firefly. Food production companies used the technology in their plants; I wondered if we couldn’t use it on Mars.
Dr. Levitt liked the idea, even adding me as an author on a paper for the journal Microbe: “Methods to detect bacterial microorganisms in non-Earth environments in situ,” which means on site—no mail, drone, courier, UPS, or Mars voyage required. Dr. Hale, whose opinion could mean funding or not, wasn’t convinced a key part of the test called a “phage” would survive the journey. Short for bacteriophage, a phage is a virus that infects a bacteria, a germ’s natural predator. The guys at BiolEyeT figured out how to get phages to light up inside a germ, calling them “reporter phages,” like the journalists always pestering us for a story. “If the phages don’t make it, you’ve got no test,” Hale proclaimed. But they did make it, and Crimsy lit up with green-and-blue neon reporter phages when the MarsMicro rover did the tests all those millions of miles away.
No one was sure what to expect when the water samples came out of the ground. The cheer we sent up at Mission Control was part surprise, part amazement, and part relief. Drs. Levitt, Shonstein, Marcum, Brando, and me, the Ph.D.-to-be, weren’t wasting taxpayer money after all. I know how hard it was for my team to hear we risked squandering billions during Congressional testimony. I sat in the audience on Capitol Hill, watching the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology grill Dr. Levitt, looking for any reason to take NASA—and taxpayers—out of the loop. I remember the morning Dr. Hale testified. We held our collective breath: What would he say? He was skeptical in the media. Doubtful on grant applications. And everybody knew he didn’t exactly like the idea a woman—Dr. Levitt—was the principal investigator (PI) leading our team.
“Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do,” Dr. Hale said, his right hand raised before the phalanx of inquisitors, camera crews, interns, aides, and water glasses on the table of truth before him.
“It is my professional and scientific opinion...”
Oh shit. Here it comes.
“...after much consideration and intimate involvement in the planning and funding process...”
Dragging out the agony. Get it over with! Plunge in the knife!
“...that if we fail to support a mission of this magnitude, our people, the American People, will be the worse off for it,” he read from a prepared statement. “What Dr. Levitt and her hand-picked team of scientists and researchers promise is the payoff of Mars mission spending that dates to 1964 and Mariner Three. Our last Mars rover, Foresight, found the strongest evidence yet of extremophile life below the planet surface and along the slopes lineae. Coupled with new techniques to distinguish between life native to Mars and possible contaminants from previous missions that somehow survived; and a new method to identify microbes on the planet, MarsMicro presents our best opportunity yet to find life on the Red Planet.”
Oh my God! I was almost in tears. Had I been able to stand and walk through the crowd to the hallway outside, I would have left the room and broken down. I was way more emotional than I would have been if Dr. Hale had just condemned the whole thing as a scientific lark. But I could barely free one arm—there were that many people in the audience—so I craned my head and looked around, dabbing my wet eyelashes on my sleeve. I could only see the back of Dr. Levitt’s head, but Dr. Brando caught my gaze and smiled. I smiled back, big and wide, and rolled my eyes and tossed my head just a pinch. Can you believe it? Dr. Hale knocked it out of the park. For us.
It was fun watching the post-docs doing the congratulatory shoulder grip thing on Dr. Levitt and mugging for selfies as we sat down for lunch at this cafe blocks from the Capitol. Everyone was in shock: not a hint of skepticism from Dr. Hale’s lips.
“However this turns out, I want to thank you guys for all your love and support,” Levitt said.
“To our fearless PI,” Dr. Shonstein said, toasting with her Pepsi.
“Here, here,” Dr. Marcum agreed, raising his lox-and-cream-cheese-lathered bagel.
“For she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow,” the team sang. “That nobody, not even Hale, can deny.”
We got our funding and our ride-along ticket, only the second round trip in Martian history. MarsMicro would return to Earth in two-steps: dock at the world’s first privately-funded space station to offload Crimsy for safety and viability tests; then back to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) for future trips (no more leaving valuable rovers on Mars, a key selling point for a budget-conscious Congress). Crimsy—millions of Crimsys, actually—would make the trip in temperature-controlled incubators called “incupods” that rotated to reproduce Mars’ 0.38 G gravitational field.
Bioweapon and biohazard experts aboard the space station would gradually increase the chilly temperatures and artificial gravity to see how Crimsy would adapt. “One Gs at fifty eight degrees” was our mnemonic for the first test: subjecting Crimsococcus to average Earth gravity and average Earth temperature, Fahrenheit. Lots of other tests and experiments on Earth would follow.
Reviewing it now, I’m thinking “brilliant plan. What could possibly go wrong?”