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NASA's Planetary Protection Officer has suggested that it's time to contaminate Mars slightly aggressively before humans arrive with their microbiomes in tow:
Is there life on the surface of Mars? The clock is ticking on scientists' window to solve that long-standing question before astronauts—and the microbes that live on them—contaminate the planet. Today, at a meeting in Washington, D.C., of NASA's planetary science advisory committee, the agency's new planetary protection officer raised the possibility of opening up a few of the planet's most promising regions to more aggressive exploration.
Just a few weeks into the job, Lisa Pratt, formerly a geomicrobiologist at Indiana University in Bloomington, has signaled that she wants the office to be open to the notion that a degree of contamination might be necessary to explore several of the planet's most habitable spots. Previously, the office has served as a watchdog to prevent the contamination of Mars and other planets with microbes from Earth, and vice versa. But now, time is pressing, given NASA's long-term goals, Pratt says. "No matter what we do, the minute we've got humans in the area we've got a less pristine, less clean state," Pratt said at the meeting. "Let's hope we know before the humans get there, one way or the other, if there is an ecosystem at or near the surface."
Although no region of Mars is banned for exploration, international treaties set the allowable levels of microbial contamination on robotic spacecraft destined for other planetary environments. Some scientists say it is too costly to meet the sterilization requirements to explore the potentially warm and wet "special regions" on Mars that are most likely to harbor microbes. Only the 1970s Viking landers achieved the cleanliness necessary to explore a special region. A growing number of scientists have argued that the agency needs to rethink its plans, as Science reported last year.
Related 2013 paper: The overprotection of Mars (DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1866) (DX)
Previously: NASA Posts Planetary Protection Officer Job Position
(Score: 2, Disagree) by bradley13 on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:07PM (18 children)
If there is microbial life on Mars, it is adapted to its habitat - which is like nowhere on Earth. Too cold for liquid water, mostly there's no water anyway, with an almost nonexistent atmosphere consisting mainly of CO2. Any microbial life we transport to Mars will almost certainly die; at worst it will enter some sort of permanent estivation state. What earthly life is not going to do is conquer Mars, or compete with any native life.
Scientists may then worry that they will detect the earthly life, and mistake it for Martian life. This is possible, but will fail any sort of repeatability test, simply because there would be so little earthly life present.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:45PM (3 children)
There are plenty of extremophile organisms [wikipedia.org] that live in conditions that would make Mars look like paradise. There have been experiments on certain types of lichen and cyanobacteria [planetary.org] that have been subjected to conditions as harsh as Mars and still managed to thrive after about a month of enduring the high radiation levels, thin atmosphere, very low temperatures, and lack of water that characterise the Martian environment:
Natural selection being what it is, whatever can manage to survive and reproduce will pass on those characteristics that enabled it to do so to the next generation, and further beneficial mutations that will be selected for will make the next surviving generations even more adapted to life on the red planet. No, the risk of microbial contamination is quite real, and is a realistic concern.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday February 24 2018, @10:38PM (1 child)
Neat. The next question then is whether it would be moral not to introduce such life to Mars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @12:02AM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:05AM
How did they determine their mood? I mean, as far as I can tell, humans don't typically stop their life processes when they are unhappy, unless that unhappiness gets extreme. And do lichens even have the ability to commit suicide?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday February 24 2018, @03:02PM (7 children)
The problem is that some Earth life may well be better adapted than any Mars life to living on Mars. Let us keep in mind that chemical activity goes up with warmth over the ranges in which life can survive. That means a population of organisms which lives in a warmer climate can reproduce faster, breed larger populations per unit volume with greater competition, and hence, evolve faster than organisms in colder climates (and less available solar and geothermal energy). In particular, there would be a several billion year period in which Earth life would have evolved sophisticated cellular chemistry which hypothetical Mars life might not be able to match.
OTOH, maybe Martian life won the evolutionary lottery, and we should be worried about life going the other way. We'll just have to see.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @03:29PM (1 child)
Just send blankets with smallpox.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:15PM
A highly irresponsible suggestion. Smallpox is endangered!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @03:57PM (4 children)
It sounds like global warming is generally good for life then.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:56PM
Heating ice is generally good for water. Heating water is generally good for steam. Equilibriums are tricky.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @11:43PM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @10:06AM
There's not much point to the observation when we already know that humans can take those temperatures easily.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:08AM
Yeah, that's why life thrives in a boiling pot. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 24 2018, @04:56PM (4 children)
While the soda-pop cartoon above is unlikely in the extreme, redirecting an ice-rich asteroid or comet for Mars-intercept and then sending a cargo of 10,000kg of assorted photosynthesizing microbes as a followup drop on the same crater could be enough to get something started. A small sea of microbes evolving in a "friendly spot" on Mars might have a chance of finding a way to spread to the larger environment. The chances of a few kg of e-coli finding a way to spread before they die off are many orders of magnitude smaller.
Now, whether or not the "evolved" Mars microbes are friendly or hostile to Terrestrial life is pretty much beyond our control, no matter how they get their initial start, the adaptations taking place on a planetwide scale (propelled by dust-storms, etc.) are too diffuse to manage. If it goes sour, we'll just have to write off planet-side colonization and stick to asteroids and such.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday February 24 2018, @05:12PM (3 children)
Another environment where life could thrive on Mars is within an underground ocean.
Now what's the mechanism for getting the source of contamination from the seemingly barren surface to miles below? I don't know. Maybe an impact that adds some heat and penetrates the crust? There's also a lot of (salty?) surface ice [nationalgeographic.com] and temperatures on Mars can reach 70°F (20°C) at the equator. Imagine organisms gaining a foothold and seeping down through the crust.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 24 2018, @05:15PM (2 children)
How hot is the Mars core? These guys are living deep underground on Earth, but it's pretty hot in their neighborhood:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10336-gold-mine-holds-life-untouched-by-the-sun/ [newscientist.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @08:41PM (1 child)
IIRC, Mars' core is cold and no longer molten.
(Score: 2, Informative) by SvenErik on Saturday February 24 2018, @08:59PM
According to this article [newscientist.com], the core is still liquid and have a temperature up to 1500 Kelvin (1225°C/2240°F).
"Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Bertrand Russell
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday February 24 2018, @11:37PM
The thing is, there's enough interplanetary transport of matter that if anything durable enough to live on Mars is around, it's probably there already.
If you want to check for independent origin, check for DNA sequences and ribosome structure. If neither of those are the same, then it's separate evolution. If either, especially ribosome structure, are the same, then it's same source...and we probably can't say which was the source.
That said, noise level might be a problem if there's a common origin, but a long separation.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.