The Mars rover collects rock samples. (Photo: Nasa / JPL-Caltech)
When NASA sent the Mars rover Perseverance to Mars, it also pursued the goal of having the little robot take rock samples from the surface of the alien planet. At the end of this decade, the samples are due to return to Earth on the “Mars Sample Return” mission, in which Esa is also involved in addition to NASA. And it is precisely this mission that gives experts a headache. It is about nothing less than the future of our own planet and potential dangers imported from orbit.
The first space capsule with soil and rock samples from the surface of Mars is to land in the Utah desert and from there to be brought directly to a laboratory. The laboratory has biosafety level four, the highest currently available biosafety level. In such laboratories, pathogens such as the Ebola virus are usually examined.
What sounds safe at first, however, also harbors dangers. Nobody knows what will be in the samples. If there are signs of fossil life millions of years old, there could also be potential pathogens in the rock – pathogens from Mars, against which we would probably have no protection. If the capsule breaks on impact in the desert, these pathogens could escape and lead to a contamination of wild animals, rivers and plants and thus also endanger human life.
Low probability and high costs
As regulated in the United Nations Space Treaty, space travelers must avoid “adverse changes in the earth’s environment as a result of the introduction of extraterrestrial matter”. This statement is supported by the ICAMSR, the “International Committee Against Mars Sample Return”. The committee therefore advocates examining the soil samples from Mars either on the moon or in a laboratory that is circling in orbit.
“We support a Mars sample return mission as part of the Lunar Gateway space station when samples are brought to a specially designed biohazard investigation module in lunar orbit or are part of a larger lunar base concept as envisaged in NASA’s Artemis program, ”said Barry DiGregorio, Director of ICAMSR, opposite New Scientist. “This is the only way to guarantee one hundred percent protection of the earth’s biosphere.” running a complex bio-laboratory in space would create enormous costs and difficulties. The risk that a single unsterilized Martian particle penetrates the earth’s biosphere is, according to Esa, just one in a million.
