Exobiological Investigations on Russian Spacecrafts

Abstract

To investigate the possibility of prebiotic synthesis of organic molecules in open space, conditions involved irradiating nucleosides and inorganic phosphate during five Earth-orbiting Russian space missions that included Salut-7 (13- and 16-month missions), Mir, Bion-11, and Cosmos-2044. Dry films of samples were exposed from 2 weeks up to 16 months to the entire set of factors encountered in open space during Earth-orbiting missions. After each mission, products synthesized during flight and any compounds that remained undegraded were analyzed. The analyses demonstrated that increased flight duration led to the decay of both synthesized nucleotides and initial nucleosides. Corresponding laboratory experiments indicated that infrared radiation caused the greatest amount of decay to products of prebiotic reactions. Experiments revealed that 5′-mononucleotides were the main chemical products of the major derivatives synthesized of certain nucleosides. Exposure to ultraviolet (UV) C₁₄₅ was more effective than UVC₂₅₄ in producing a comparatively higher yield of mononucleotides, while the energy flux of the latter was one order of magnitude less (10^-7 as compared with 10^-6 for UVC₁₄₅). In the course of the laboratory simulation experiments the heating of solid samples yielded the greatest production amount (6.34% for adenosine derivatives).