The Rock From Mars (31 page)

Painful as it could get, the dispute over the Mars rock was proving to be a valuable and forceful goad to scientists. Derek Sears, the pioneering cosmochemist who had so riled David McKay and Kathie Thomas-Keprta at the cocktail party, just months earlier had coauthored an editorial in a planetary science journal, saying: “The Antarctic meteorite Allan Hills 84001 may be at the center of a revolution in our thinking about the origin of life on Earth, Mars, and perhaps elsewhere . . . because it has forced a reexamination of the importance of microbes in the ecosystem, the nature of the smallest possible life forms, the nature of organic materials and structures that led to the origins of life and the temperature regime at which life originated.”

What kept the process honest and fruitful, in the end, would be the collective interactions of the tribe of interested scientists. And the tribe was like a complicated organism.

To maintain balance and objectivity, McKay had formed two teams: the Red (for Mars) Team to elucidate the evidence supporting his hypothesis that life once swam on that planet; the Blue (for Earth) Team to gather evidence against the hypothesis.

Steele worked on the Blue Team. McKay had directed him to start out with the hypothesis that every bit of biological evidence in the meteorite was terrestrial contamination and see if he could prove it.

Steele considered the effort worthwhile because the McKay team’s claims had affected such a wide range of research, including the “life on Earth” field. The Mars rock had opened so many gates. What Steele didn’t know yet was that it would lead him back around to Bill Schopf. Steele would play a supporting role in a confrontation that would make some of the current spitball fights seem mild.

Steele would work in the Building 31 lab for fourteen months before eventually taking a job in Washington, D.C., on the leafy campus of the Carnegie Institution. McKay would continue to fund Steele’s research. Among his other affiliations, Steele was linked to the NASA Astrobiology Institute through a McKay proposal. The two of them found ways to make it work.

Some of their conversations were tough, and the cramped internal politics of the space center could be annoying. But for now, in his exchanges with McKay in a quiet corner of Building 31—even when the evidence did not go the way McKay had hoped—Steele was finding the calm and rational discourse, the “sense of fair play” he had so ardently missed in that raucous introduction to his new life, and in the bitter public debate since.

ANTARCTICA—THE METEORITE HUNTERS

Robbie Score, shown during the 1984–85 Antarctic meteorite hunt, when she was credited with the discovery of the meteorite that would become famous. It was her first visit to “the ice.” (Catherine King-Frazier)

The 1984–85 meteorite search team. Standing, from left: John Schutt, Carl Thompson, Scott Sandford, Bob Walker; sitting in front are Robbie Score and Catherine King-Frazier. (Robbie Score)

The desolate site at Allan Hills, on the Far Western Icefield, where Robbie Score found the unusual Mars rock some 16 million years after it was blasted off Mars, and 13,000 years after it landed on Earth. (Robbie Score)

Intrepid meteorite hunters in the Antarctic have collected some 30,000 specimens, including about three dozen from Mars, since scientists realized that special conditions were at work to preserve and isolate them on the polar ice. (Linda Martell, Antarctic Search for Meteorites [ANSMET])

Robbie Score at work in the meteorite lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, shown here sawing a Mars rock found in a part of Antarctica called Elephant Moraine. Other researchers determined that this specimen contained trapped gases that matched the atmosphere of Mars, as measured by the Viking landers. (NASA)

HOUSTON AND THE MOON—
THE FIRST EXTRATERRESTRIAL GEOLOGY

Apollo astronauts and geologists picnic among the trees during a February 1969 geology training trip to western Texas, near Sierra Blanca, about 80 miles southeast of El Paso. Astronauts Jim Lovell and Fred Haise are in the left foreground, and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (back to the camera) are in the background. Among the others (mostly geologists from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey) is NASA’s David McKay, third from right. (NASA/Andrew “Pat” Patnesky)

David and Mary Fae McKay, circa 1975, at home in a Houston suburb near the NASA space center there. The McKays’ romance had flowered in Japan. (Courtesy of the McKay family)

UNMASKING THE METEORITE

Duck Mittlefehldt’s research on ordinary meteorites led him to an extraordinary rock. He discovered that meteorite ALH84001 was not a chip off an asteroid but a very unusual chunk of Mars. (Kathy Sawyer)

Chris Romanek, shown on a ship during a research expedition in the South Pacific in 1996, had specialized in studies of carbonate seashells and become fascinated by the presence of carbonate globules (also called rosettes, pancakes, or moons) in the unusual Mars rock. He was the first to consider possible similarities between structures in the ancient Mars rock and those seen in forms proposed as “nanofossils” found around hot springs on Earth. (Courtesy Chris Romanek)

The Allan Hills meteorite, before it was sawn apart, weighed 4.25 pounds. A field team member described it in initial notes as “highly-shocked, grayish-green,” and covered with a black fusion crust from its fiery descent. There was also the editorial comment “Yowza-Yowza.” (NASA)

The rock, which Score designated ALH84001, is shown after it was cleaved at the NASA lab in Houston. It would turn out to be the oldest rock known from any planet, packed with clues not available in any known Earth rock about the early history of the planets. (NASA)