"We're talking about a completely different ecosystem, a completely different potential biosphere," he says. "Anything that has contacted Mars directly will be contained or sterilized before it is returned," says Clement.Īnd Bell says he's not worried about the possibility that any Martian germs mixed in with the rocks might escape into the environment and cause problems or disease, "despite the fact that many science fiction fans out there are probably concerned about that."Īny life on Mars would be ill-suited to survive on Earth, says Bell, as it would have evolved in a separate biosphere, or environment that supports life. "You could imagine what would happen if you have pathogenic organisms from another planet and you had that sort of event take place," says DiGregorio.īut Clement says that multiple panels of scientific experts have weighed in on the risk of Mars sample return over the years and that "those panels have all agreed that the potential hazard is very, very low."Įven so, he says, NASA is taking a conservative approach. "We're just going to bring it back and have it come back to the Utah desert, much like the Genesis solar-sample return mission, which, of course, broke up, broke open on impact," says Barry DiGregorio, a science writer with a group called the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return, which has long opposed plans to bring Martian rocks directly to Earth. Still, some observers find this proposal disturbing. "That 90-mile-an-hour landing, just like with a baseball, is well within the Earth-entry system's capabilities." "We like to refer to it as a 90-mile-an-hour fastball, where the landing site is the mitt," says Clement. The sanitized container would then go into yet another container, which would also be sealed and put into the Earth-entry vehicle, which is what would eventually land in the Utah desert, without a parachute. To get ready, NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars last year, has been drilling cylindrical samples of rock and sealing them inside metal tubes. Now, though, the effort appears to be on a fast track, with NASA officials collaborating with the European Space Agency and making plans to launch a set of retrieval spacecraft as soon as 20. "Until recently, there hasn't been a lot of focus on the details of the sample return facility and all that," he explains, "because we didn't think it was going to happen." Questions like how to contain any potential microbes? Or what specific features are needed for the secure lab (or labs) that will house the rocks? Still, Doran says no one has thought through exactly how to handle Martian specimens. Talk of such a mission has gone on for decades, and it will cost billions of dollars to accomplish. For scientists, this is a long-held dream Having a rock sample from Mars here on Earth would let scientists run exhaustive lab tests to look for evidence of whether this cold, harsh, rocky world was once habitable and maybe even inhabited. "I think that it's a very low probability that there's anything living at the surface of Mars," says Doran, who also serves on an international committee devoted to planetary protection.
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