Engineering topics
Lynch, Kennda
Publications and source records attributed to Lynch, Kennda.
The Astrobiology Primer v2.0
Astrobiology is the science that seeks to understand the story of life in our universe. Astrobiology includes investigation of the conditions that are necessary for life to emerge and flourish, the origin of life, the ways that life has evolved and adapted to the wide range of environmental conditions here on Earth, the search for life beyond Earth, the habitability of extraterrestrial environments, and consideration of the future of life here on Earth and elsewhere. It therefore requires knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology, and many more specialized scientific areas including astronomy, geology, planetary science, microbiology, atmospheric science, and oceanography. However, astrobiology is more than just a collection of different disciplines. In seeking to understand the full story of life in the Universe in a holistic way, astrobiology asks questions that transcend all these individual scientific subjects. Astrobiological research potentially has much broader consequences than simply scientific discovery, as it includes questions that have been of great interest to human beings for millennia (e.g., are we alone?) and raises issues that could affect the way the human race views and conducts itself as a species (e.g., what are our ethical responsibilities to any life discovered beyond Earth?).
Proceedings of the Next Generation Exploration Conference
The Next Generation Exploration Conference (NGEC) brought together the emerging next generation of space leaders over three intensive days of collaboration and planning. The participants extended the ongoing work of national space agencies to draft a common strategic framework for lunar exploration, to include other destinations in the solar system. NGEC is the first conference to bring together emerging leaders to comment on and contribute to these activities. The majority of the three-day conference looked beyond the moon and focused on the "next destination": Asteroids, Cis-Lunar, Earth 3.0, Mars Science and Exploration, Mars Settlement and Society, and Virtual Worlds and Virtual Exploration.
Enzyme-Cascade Analysis of the Rio Tinto Subsurface Environment: A Biosensor Experiment
The Portable Test System (PTS), designed & developed by Charles Rivers Laboratories, Inc. (Charleston, SC) is a portable instrument that was designed to perform analysis of enzymatic assays related to rapid assessment of microbial contamination (Wainwright, 2003). The enzymatic cascade of Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) is known to be one of the most sensitive techniques available for microbial detection, enabling the PTS to be evaluated as a potential life detection instrument for in situ Astrobiology missions. In the summer of 2003 the system was tested as a part of the Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE) ground truth science campaign in the Rio Tinto Analogue environment near Nerva, Spain. The preliminary results show that the PTS analysis correlates well with the contamination control tests and the more traditional lab-based biological assays performed during the MARTE field mission. Further work will be conducted on this research during a second field campaign in 2004 and a technology demonstration of a prototype instrument that includes autonomous sample preparation will occur in 2005.
Mars Analog Rio Tinto Experiment (MARTE): 2003 Drilling Campaign to Search for a Subsurface Biosphere at Rio Tinto Spain
The MARTE (Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment) project, an ASTEP field experiment, is exploring for a hypothesized subsurface anaerobic chemoautotrophic biosphere in the region of the Tinto River- or Rio Tinto- in southwestern Spain. It is also demonstrating technology needed to search for a subsurface biosphere on Mars. The project has three primary objectives: (1) search for and characterize subsurface life at Rio Tinto along with the physical and chemical properties and sustaining energy sources of its environment, (2) perform a high fidelity simulation of a robotic Mars drilling mission to search for life, and (3) demonstrate the drilling, sample handling, and instrument technologies relevant to searching for life on Mars. The simulation of the robotic drilling mission is guided by the results of the aseptic drilling campaign to search for life at Rio Tinto. This paper describes results of the first phase of the aseptic drilling campaign.
The MASSE Project: Applications of Biotechnology for Planetary Exploration
Automated life-detection experiments for solar system exploration have been previously. proposed and used onboard the. Viking, Mars lander,s, although. with ambiguous results. The recent advances in biotechnology such as biosensors, protein microarrays, and microfluidics alongside increased. knowledge in biomarker science have led to vastly improved sophistication and sensitivity for a new approach in life detection. The MASSE project has taken the challenge of integrating all of this knowledge into a new generation of interplanetary flight instrumentation for the main purpose.ot combining several mutually. confirming tests for life, organic/microbial contamination, prebiotic and abiotic chemicals into a small low powered instrument. Although the primary goal is interplanetary exploration, several terrestrial applications have become apparent specifically in point-of-care medical technology, bio-warfare, environmental sensing and microbial monitoring of manned space-flight vehicles.