Possibility of Dangerous Life Forms on Mars
“If life is found in any sample, it must be assumed to be hazardous until proven otherwise,” according to NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. An earlier NASA report found that handling such samples safely would require a new type of secure facility, which would take an estimated 10 years to design and build.
President George W. Bush, in January of 2004, announced to the world that he wanted to send our astronauts back to the Moon by 2015, and then onto Mars eventually. To make this vision a reality, NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group went to work on a report regarding research to certify such missions. Part of this research was to make sure there would be no dangerous life forms on Mars that would possibly cause harm to human astronauts.
As part of the research through “Preventing the Forward Contamination of Mars” (2006), it was thought that a robotic sample-return mission plan is probably the most reliable way to ensure safety during these Martian trips. But according to an article in New Scientist Space, “Martian life might threaten human mission,” no amount of robotic testing could rule out the possibility of living microbial life at future human landing sites. Astronauts could bring these little fellows back home to Earth with them, causing quite a bit of potential dangerous consequences. But the main focus is in the airborne dust, in the soil around a future landing site, or whatever depths the astronauts may reach.
Our Mars missions today are identifying and studying regions on the red planet that contain evidence on some level for habitable environments. These indicate the past or current presence of liquid water, with the evidence for water on Mars being widespread. What we do not know about—yet—if there is or has been life on Mars, and we also do not know if any of the Martian environments sustain life. But our information is growing, along with our understanding of the planet with the developing databases, showing us that there may be diverse environments on Mars which may or may not have been hospitable to life at one time or another.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives, Technical Concerns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
