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Mars Exploration Must Consider Contamination
letxa2000 writes: "CNN is reporting that the National Research Council has submitted a report to NASA that recommends certain precautions be taken if NASA is to send astronauts to Mars to guarantee that they don't bring back Mars-based bacteria and contaminate earth; including possibly banning the return vehicle from entering the Earth's atmosphere. What is the likelihood of bacterial life on Mars infecting the earth if we ever get around to visiting Mars in person?"
A transplanted organism with no 'predators' would be a bad thing. Just look at what happened to Australia after Bart brought his frog there.
Another interesting possibility is that we may infect Mars. What if the astronauts get there, and some random bacteria is on their spacesuit? Or some other piece of equiptment for that matter? It 'd be like smallpox in the New World all over again. We could actually see life on Mars destroyed by our visit, before we ever actually get to see much of it.
Shouldn't we be more worried about the other way around first - the contamination of Mars by some Earthly micro-organism?
I think great care should be taken.
If I learned anything from the feature film Mission to Mars, it's that I should not have gone to see that movie. That, plus we have to be careful when we go to Mars. Yeah.
My apologies to real films.
.sig last updated Jan. 14, 2000
Of course the spacesuits would have to be decontaminated.
I know ... why not have the astronauts strip in space, then float over to the awaiting spacecraft ...
Seriously though ... can we prevent it? My bet would be that we can't be 100% guarenteed that we'd get all the bacteria/critters.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Sounds alot like the scare about bringing back "moon bacteria" back when we first landed there. Now it seems funny to us, to think that bacteria would have been on the moon. But, you never know, i guess.
A toxin might kill an astronaut. That would be tragic, but not a disaster. The problem to be worried about is communicable disease, namely an organism (bacteria, virus) that harms the host and can spread. The organisms that work this way on this planet have evolved with us over a very long period of time. An organism that had never encountered a human before, or perhaps even earthly DNA, seems exceedingly unlikely to be communicable -- hasn't had the practice.
Still, I have to admit, this sounds an awful lot like, "this code should work".
I think that taking reasonable precautions is prudent.
But let's be serious. I enjoyed "The Andromeda Strain" as much as the next guy, but I don't think this is very realistic. A chimp can't catch a cold from me. I can only play host to a limited number of bacteria that a lizard is susceptible to. And they want me to believe that there may be some man-killer bacteria on Mars? Even if you're one of these nutters who thinks that big headed grey dudes seeded our solar system with their DNA, why would you think a flesh-eating bacterium would evolve on a planted WITH NO FLESHY BEINGS?
I think we're all just a bit too eager to see Data dork Yar.
-Peter
Sorry..but that is a rather dumb solution.
Remember that the distance between planets and the sun is exceptionally large. It's not like you say you go to the local pizza store on your way home from school. Whenever they try to get something close to Mars, there is a rather small window in which the planets are aligned correctly (mind you, not in a straight line, but in an orbital curve) That is the shortest distance between earth and mars. Now, what you are saying is to burn fuel so that it gets close to the sun, then turn around and burn more fuel to get away from the gravitational pull of the sun back to earth. Meanwhile doing this so that the orbit from mars, around the sun, back to earth is lined up. (Remember that nike's commercial? Over the garage, through the window, nothing but net!)
In addition, you mention a crew. The farthest that manned space missions have gone is to the moon and back. We barely have the resources nor the technology to get to Mars, nonetheless the sun. Anything that can kill bacteria will kill humans first. So exposing the entire ship to the gamma radiations of the sun is near suicide. Secondly, you would need a huge amount of life support system to keep the humans alive for the duration of the entire trip (earth to mars, mars to sun, sun to earth)
Now the thing here is this. You have the right idea. All in all, solar radiation can sterilize just about any bacteria that we know of. Just having a probe fly through the emptiness of space will sterilize the exterior. The part that they are concerned with is the cargo (ie, Martian rocks and stuff).
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"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
This makes me wonder what, if anything, we left on the moon.... growing.... breeding... multiplying in the lunar dust...
The fact of the matter is that preventing contamination is impossible - we have pieces of Mars rock entering our atmosphere all the time. Most bacteria is incredibly hardy - the vacuum of space and heat of re-entry are certainly survivable. Please see this essay, entitled "Estimated Flux of Rocks Bearing Viable Lifeforms Exchanged Between Earth and Mars". Realistically, our primary concern is with accidentally seeding Mars with Terran bacteria - if that happens, we may never know whether or not Mars had any native life.
sending people is more expensive but it gets you more funding as well.
Once we know one way or another what kind of life exists on mars, then we can start thinking about sending humans. But that will invariably and irrevocably change mars.
European explorers sent bacteria that hosts in humans around the world, which infected other humans. Bacteria don't just infect humans by chance, they evolve to live happily in them. Why would a new bacteria be sitting on mars waiting for a type of lifeform that has never been there?
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Benjamin Coates
All right, Mr. Submitter, I'll answer your question: I haven't the foggiest idea. I've learned a little here or there about microorganisms and their possible existence outside of the Earth during my lifetime, and I regard myself as a relatively intelligent person, and tend to have strong opinions about most anything, including stuff I don't know much about. But the awful truth is that I'm not the least bit qualified to speculate on the likelihood of extraterrestrial infections on Earth. That's not an informative answer, I admit, but it's honest, and I daresay a great deal more honest than nearly all of the responses you've received so far.
To be sure, there have been a few replies so far that seem to be thoughtful and well-informed, and perhaps they come from people who really are qualified to answer the question; but like I said, I'm not really qualified to make that evaluation. Almost all of the rest, it seems to me, are comments from people who may be relatively intelligent, may have read a thing or two about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and have all kinds of strong opinions about anything, and now they are speculating with wild abandon. Which is fun, but they will give you almost no reliable answers to your question, and may lead you completely astray.
You probably wouldn't be having this problem if you had posted this question in a forum about "News for Molecular Biologists, Stuff That Matters to Astrophysicists". Why did you expect you expect to get any useful answers here?
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
Wasn't there a controversy over a test on Viking?
As for the trip from mars to earth. It's been made too, hasn't it? You know, all those rocks from Mars that you can find in Antartica? There are various theories about how live might survive such a jouney. Has anyone proved it yet?
Me too for the person who correctly noted that it's more important to protect human life from potential harm than it is to protect bacteria on Mars from harm. Live competes, that's the story of microbes. Tough luck to them and anti-biotics for those in you and me.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.