Posted on 02/07/2009 1:13:11 PM PST by KevinDavis
The two Viking landers that went to Mars in the 1970s were heat-sterilized to prevent contaminating the red planet with any Earth microbes. Since then, procedures have been relaxed because of the presumably inhospitable conditions on Mars.
But in a policy forum article in the journal Science this week, Christopher McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center argues for tougher restrictions.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
ROFL..environmentalists are claiming Mars now...
I completely oppose logging old-growth forests on Mars.
“save mars”
I don’t get it. If earth microbes really did infest mars, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Save the Martian Owls..
Probably some anti human in space person or anti space person..
"Get your ass to Mars."
It is a very big question as to whether or not there is life on Mars. We shouldn't cloud up the answer to that question by introducing life there and essentially forcing an answer to the question.
Once we have discovered one way or the other, then we can decide whether or not to terraform its surface into something more conducive to human life. But for now caution is warranted.
You mean I can’t dump my trash on Mars? Damn! I was looking forward to littering the place up.
I tend to agree. I have no problem with seeing that all that goes is sterile till we know one way or the other.
No matter what. If bacterial life is found there will be a debate if it’s truely native followed by a debate over whether we should contaminate the place.
Personally, I suspect we will find native bacterial life and we’ll study it but I’m not to concerned with “contaminating” the place after the science is done.
I thought all the worlds are ours except for Europa.
Jeeeeez guys,,, of course we need to only send microbe-free spaceships to Mars. Sometimes its like we didn’t learn anything at all from “War of the Worlds”.
OTH,, no microbe could survive the trip though space,,except maybe* the cold i had last fall. That nasty little SOB was a tough one, we need to weaponize it.
Yeah, we wouldn’t want to kill off the Martians with some nasty Earth disease.
oH Crap. Now if we find some little tiny bacteria on Mars we are going to treat it like old growth forest or something.
Hell no.
Put men on the the stinking planet ASAP. If we hadn’t killed our Space Programs we would have had a base there on the surface of Mars already.
We keep sending these tiny little tinker toys up there that move one mph instead of real rovers like we had on the moon. And hey, we didn’t wait to find bacteria on the moon before we put man up there. What are we supposed to do, sift through every inch of soil and strata to make sure there are no NATIVE VIRGEN MICROBOS.
Heck we haven’t even found everything that lives on earth yet and many of them have died off naturally. We better start Colonizing Space before the human race elects more obambis.
Keep the environuts out of Space.
Earth (and Mars) are contaminated daily from ET debris.
Meteorites from Mars have been found here on Earth, and I’m sure the same can be said for Mars containing foreign fragments from the asteroid belts, the moons of the outer planets, possibly even ancient earth or the moon.
Additionally, there is cometary debris that enters the gravity wells of both Earth and Mars.
These contain various chemical and organic compounds that might be considered contaminants under NASA standards.
I’m pretty sure Mars has been exposed to various life-bearing matter over the eons, and if life is (was) able to survive on Mars, it will, or has in the past, in which case it is probably still surviving somewhere on the planet.
As a general policy, sterilizing equipment is probably a good idea, and should be standard practice, but fixating on it and going all OCD is ridiculous.
Chances are, it won’t make a bit of difference.
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