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NASA Orbiter Reveals Details of a Moister Mars
Matt_dk writes "NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars. This discovery suggests that liquid water remained on the planet's surface a billion years later than scientists believed, and it played an important role in shaping the planet's surface and possibly hosting life."
If life developed completely independently on Mars, it would be drastically different (on the cellular level) than anything we have here. If life is found on Mars which is cellularly similar to ours, we must conclude that one planet was the source and the other was "contaminated" via rocks or spacecraft or somesuch.
In short, sending a biosphere to Mars would not do anything to hamper our ability to prove or disprove that life developed independently on Earth and Mars.
And I doubt "environmentalists" (whatever that means) have the collective will and political power to interfere in NASA missions which don't directly harm particularly-cute animals. Outside of a few parts of California, fanatical environmentalist culture is pretty rare.
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