Two researchers have concluded that sterilizing spacecraft heading to Mars is largely a waste of money.
Two researchers have concluded that sterilizing spacecraft heading to Mars is largely a waste of money.
As far as Mars is concerned, say Fairén and Schulze-Makuch, such efforts are probably in vain since “Earth life has most likely already been transferred to Mars.” Meteorite impacts have had 3.8 billion years to spread Earth life forms to Mars. Several Earth spacecraft have visited Mars without undergoing the sterilization procedures now in place. If organisms transferred to Mars over the eons failed to survive, modern organisms would likely face the same fate. If they did survive, say Fairén and Schulze-Makuch, “it is too late to protect Mars from terrestrial life, and we can safely relax the planetary protection policies.”
They also note that NASA’s “Office of Planetary Protection is like an interplanetary Environmental Protection Agency” and that its “‘detailed and expensive’ efforts to keep Earth microorganisms off Mars are making missions to search for life on the red planet ‘unviable.’”
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Two researchers have concluded that sterilizing spacecraft heading to Mars is largely a waste of money.
As far as Mars is concerned, say Fairén and Schulze-Makuch, such efforts are probably in vain since “Earth life has most likely already been transferred to Mars.” Meteorite impacts have had 3.8 billion years to spread Earth life forms to Mars. Several Earth spacecraft have visited Mars without undergoing the sterilization procedures now in place. If organisms transferred to Mars over the eons failed to survive, modern organisms would likely face the same fate. If they did survive, say Fairén and Schulze-Makuch, “it is too late to protect Mars from terrestrial life, and we can safely relax the planetary protection policies.”
They also note that NASA’s “Office of Planetary Protection is like an interplanetary Environmental Protection Agency” and that its “‘detailed and expensive’ efforts to keep Earth microorganisms off Mars are making missions to search for life on the red planet ‘unviable.’”
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Anthropologists figure 90% of the folks in North America when the first Euros got here died from child hood deseases that had’t gotten to the new world in the last fewthousand years.
I’m guessing Mars has less biological contact with us then the Americas had to Europe.
…also how do you test for life without cleaning the ship of it?
However, unlike EPA, the Office of Planetary Protection has been 100% effective in eliminating coal-burning power plants on Mars.
Perhaps by exposing them to hard vacuum and radiation for 6 months? Dunno.
I guess if life is found on Mars it could be tested in the future.
If its anything close to Earth like organisms then it could have been brought by spacecraft.
But if genetic testing reveals its a billion years different, then Mars has life.
But then again how do we know it didn’t originally come from Earth in the first place?
Either way it just doesn’t matter except to the few scientists who are directly effected by it. Their whole research is based on Mars having evolved its own life.
In the end if people truly think that we might colonize Mars in the next 500 years then it doesn’t matter. We will contaminate the planet eventually. And we will dominate the planet with our own idea of life.
If you think we will never colonize Mars then go ahead and try to keep it Earth life form free.
Its one of those questions that will eventually have to be answered. In the future when we find other planets to live on and set out to colonize them at what level of native life do be make the cut off to not colonize the planet.
Do we stop at microbes, plants, fish, or just invade and colonize when there is anything less than sentient life?