HR: 1340h
AN: P43A-0915    [Abstracts]
TI: The Medusa Sea Floor Monitoring System
AU: * Flynn, F T
EM: mflynn@mail.arc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA Ames Research Center, MS 239-15, Moffett Field, CA 94035 United States
AU: Schultz, A
AF: Oregon State University, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences 104 COAS Admin Building, Corvallis, OR 97331
AU: Gupta, M
EM: mglgr@mindspring.com
AF: Los Gatos Research, 67 East Evelan Ave., Mountain View, CA 94041 United States
AU: Powers, L
EM: lsp@biocat.ece.usu.edu
AF: National Center for the Design of Molecular Function, Utah State University 4155 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322 United States
AU: Klinkhammer, G
EM: gklinkhammer@oce.orst.edu
AF: Oregon State University, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences 104 COAS Admin Building, Corvallis, OR 97331
AB: The Medusa Sea Floor Monitoring System (MSMS) is a technology development project that is designed to enable fundamental research into understanding the potential for and limits to chemolithoautotrophic life. This is life within which inorganic carbon is converted to organic carbon and where only inorganic compounds serve as electron acceptors and electron donors. Such life forms are postulated to be capable of surviving in a Europan ocean. If we can prove that such life forms exist on Earth it would provide credence to the hypothesis that they might exist on other planets or moons in our Solar System. It has been hypothesized that one environment which might foster such life is associated with sub-seafloor hydrothermal vent structures. The goal of the MSMS project is to develop an instrument capable of testing this hypothesis. The MSMS instrument is an evolution of a sea floor monitoring system developed by Dr. Adam Schultz. Its design is the result of many generations of hardware and dive programs. Medusa provides the capability to measure and sample effluent and influent sea floor hydraulic flows associated with hydrothermal vent structures, active sea mounds, and sea floor bore holes. Through this proposal we are developing the next generation Medusa system and initiating the integration of several select chemical and biological sensors into the Medusa backbone. These sensors are an in situ flow-through spectral chemistry system, a cavity ringdown 12C/13C system, and an intrinsic fluorescence instrument. der way. This instrument can be used to target and discriminate between biological samples for automated sample collection
DE: 4894 Instruments and techniques
DE: 4294 Instruments and techniques
DE: 3035 Midocean ridge processes
DE: 3094 Instruments and techniques
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
SC: Planetary Sciences [P]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting