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Russia's Mars Mission Raising Concerns
eldavojohn writes "Space.com has a blog on Russia's Phobos-Grunt project designed to explore the planet further. He voices concerns about part of this exploration that is dubbed LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment) and backed by The Planetary Society that involves sending several samples of Earth's hardiest microbes to see if they can survive the round trip voyage. Space.com's correspondent Leonard David did some legwork to ensure that The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was being upheld as it prevents cross-contamination between planets and receives some interesting responses from experts on this mission. The Phobos-Grunt mission will also deploy a Chinese sub-satellite 'Firefly-1,' which will attempt to figure out how water on Mars disappeared. Unfortunately, The United States is not taking part in Phobos-Grunt."
The only potential downside to it that I can see is if it obscures evidence that life existed on other planets.
And wouldn't you say it's a pretty huge downside?
It's the tiny difference between finding extraterrestial life, or not. In exchange for... Absolutely nothing!
Does't seem like a great deal.
I don't know why we're so concerned about cross-contamination. The only potential downside to it that I can see is if it obscures evidence that life existed on other planets.
I just find it hard to care about balls of rock and their 'pristine environment'.
Well, the article cites fear of Forward-Contamination which is
the contamination of other worlds with Earth microbes. The risk of forward-contamination is twofold: that human beings may accidentally seed a previously sterile world, thus creating "extraterrestrials" that are really of terrestrial origin (and which might even make it impossible to determine whether the life later found is terrestric or local); or that an actual alien biosphere could be devastated by Earth's bacteria.
So if these escape on Mars and we land later and find microbes how do we know that 1) they aren't really terrestrial or evolved descendants of our microbes and 2) they didn't inadvertently disrupt or destroy original organisms to the planet.
I think it's more so a caution but scientists and people interested in the idea of life forming independently on other planets care very much so.
My work here is dung.
Of course. Everyone knows that the primary difference between almost all intelligent life throughout the universe is forehead appearance.
I don't really see the "tremendous value" in that knowledge. Or, more accurately, I can't fathom why that knowledge would be more valuable than learning that we can successfully transplant living organisms and watch them thrive.
What is the value of life in the first place? As I see it, it is the culmination of billions of years of evolution. The same goes for native life on Mars with one important exception. It is unlikely that there is any evolution in common with Earth (unless some of the panspermia theories are correct). New biological processes, new knowledge unlike anything seen on Earth. It might even be incorporated into terrestrial life at some point to improve survivability or other properties. That'd be valuable. And if we find evidence of panspermia. Then you have a huge puzzle bigger than merely figuring out how to spread life around.
I don't really care where life came from, I want to know where it can go.
It can go anywhere. So now that you know, can we get back to not erasing important data?
Article IX
In the exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, States Parties to the Treaty shall be guided by the principle of co-operation and mutual assistance and shall conduct all their activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, with due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty. States Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose.
The debate is already in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" novel : should we protect other planets from earth's lifeforms ? While it would be nice to find definite proofs in favor or against panspermia, I would tend to be in favor of as much contamination as possible, as early as possible. Terraformation will eventually be scheduled. The sooner we start, the better.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I find it funny that we are concerned with damaging an extraterrestrial biosphere but are completely ok with trashing our own. I bet those up in arms about some _potential_ mars bacteria being wiped out, give a shrug and a yawn when told of the countless Earth species on the brink of extinction. I'm not saying they aren't worth protecting, but rather, we need to get our priorities straight here on the ground too.
The 'real estate' value of Mars is always so totally overstated. NOBODY WILL EVER LIVE THERE. You want to know why?
1) Because it will make much more sense to live in free space (IE on an asteroid or space colony) where you avoid the huge energy cost of going up and down a gravity well.
2) Mars provides virtually nothing in the way of resources which are not available in places easier to get to.
3) The environment of Mars is actually MUCH harsher than the environment in space, and probably much harsher than the environment of the Moon. So why exactly would we so desire to live there?
4) If environments as harsh as Mars are desirable real estate for people to live on, then why aren't Antarctica and Green Land, and the Sahara Desert all chock full of people already? They are CERTAINLY much less harsh and much cheaper places to live. Good luck selling those Martian building lots...
5) Even speculating about Terraforming is pretty much beyond science. The time and energy inputs required are probably 1000's and maybe millions or billions of times anything we can deploy today. The time frame could easily range into the millions of years no matter how capable you are. There is certainly no sense at all in planning a space program based on a payoff that somehow relies on a technology that is no more than an idle dream which might exist in 200 or 1000 years, if ever.
This does all tie in to some extent to the OP, Mars' value is not ever going to be economic. Its value is purely scientific and there is no reasonable anticipation that it will ever be otherwise. Spoiling the pristine conditions on Mars would seriously degrade the value of exo-biology work done there in the future. So it IS a bad idea, and it would be a costly mistake.
Now, the question of the actual safety of Phobos-Grunt is a whole other thing. We'll just have to leave that to experts. At least they value the principle of avoiding contamination. Maybe they're a little biased, but the risk doesn't seem super excessive to me. OTOH it also sounds like the experiment itself is mostly a PR stunt, so on that basis I'd give it the thumbs down. Not worth making a huge stink about though.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson