9 ms·

R.S.L.s are treated as special regions that NASA’s current robotic explorers are barred from because the rovers were not thoroughly sterilized We're not going

by crusso 11y ago

R.S.L.s are treated as special regions that NASA’s current robotic explorers are barred from because the rovers were not thoroughly sterilized We're not going to sterilize our research equipment going to Mars and we're not going to search likely sites where we could find life because we don't want to contaminate them. And yet, looking for signs of life native to Mars (or even water which might support life) is the top reason we're there, judging by the headlines. Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict.

goatforce5 11y ago
> Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict. Perhaps it's not so much of a conflict as a multi-staged approach... The non-sterile equipment is currently roaming around and has just said "Hey! There's probably water and maybe life over there!" and now we get to build something to go poke at it with a sterilized stick.
mapt 11y ago
All equipment designed for landing on Mars in the modern era is extensively sterilized. The concern is that given what we've learned about microorganisms in space, this may not be enough; "Extensively sterilized" is never "Perfectly sterilized", at least, not without building it out of solid metal and annealing it in space. There was also a last-minute variance granted to the drill bit on Curiosity, which was contaminated between sterilization and launch by briefly opening the box in a lower-spec clean room. http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-planetary-protection.html http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-pla... As we enter an era of inexpensive launch capacity, the sterilization step is actually so expensive it may exceed the cost of the launch vehicle. There is a case to be made for dropping these protections: They're a barrier in the way of a widespread robotic exploration mission, and a manned mission is going to be implicitly contaminative, since you can't run humans through an autoclave. The most conservative route to detecting life before sending humans is years and years of robotic launches to a variety of regions, with several sample returns. It's arguable, but I'm not sure we have the stomach to do that before the 2030's, there's no sign of the major expansion of NASA funding that would be required for the decade of exponentially escalating robotic precursors to a human mission, on the horizon. Given that we're apparently not going to protect Mars from life, that brings into question why we should bother pretending that's what we're doing today. There have already been substantial transfers on previous landers and impactors.
- Symmetry 11y ago
  There have certainly been metioroids starting on Mars that made it to Earth without being sterilized[1]. Now, Earth does have a deeper gravity well which might make a difference but Earth microbes have had geological epochs to make the trip to Mars wheres you'd only expect a meteoroid to remain recognizable on Earth's surface for that long in comparison. So I figure that if contamination of Mars by Earth life was a problem it would have happened by the Paleozoic. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001
  - david_shaw 11y ago
    That makes sense, but wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that there's a major difference between natural seeding of life on other planets via meteors, and humans bringing it over while trying to find natural life? Furthermore, what if life on Mars were fragile enough that Earthly microscopic organisms destroyed it?
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      At some point we'll either have to either stop worrying about life on Mars being hidden under a rock somewhere or forever put a "humans keep out" sign on Mars.
      - trose 11y ago
        I'm kinda of this thought process as well. If there are hospitable conditions there and we haven't found microbes after a while, I think we should just start dumping tons of them over there. We need something to put some atmosphere there for us. Algae seems to be a really good bet.
        WalterBright 11y ago
        And suppose we do find some biological slime there? Does that then make Mars off limits to all of humanity for all time?
lawpoop 11y ago
I'm supposing rather that they don't want to "discover" martian microbes or organic molecules that are actually stow-away Earthlings.
oso2k 11y ago
I'll first refer you to my previous post about Clean Room Operations at JPL [0]. All equipment leaving Earth is sterilized. The thoroughness of sterilization varies from project to project, instrument to instrument, and the agreed to HW & Planetary Protection Plans. It helps ensure that equipment is not giving false readings. Serious money is also laid out for HW & Planetary Protection (there's a whole division of probably 150 people at JPL) and sophisticated equipment used to test for contamination. However, if there was deviation from the original Planetary Protection Plan [1], it was likely to execute some other test, timing/scheduling conflict, or some other "administrative" reason. And with respect to finding water on Mars, why would you send your robot to a polar cap or even a "lake" with visible/detectable water? If you're attempting to prove that water and water flow processes exist & are active on Mars, it's probably better to test a fringe area, hence, the 3.3m requirement. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6809134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6809134 [1] http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-planetary-protection.html http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-pla...
- emcrazyone 11y ago
  "All equipment leaving Earth is sterilized" Should that read all equipment leaving Earth from the United States? Do other countries with developing space programs adhere to the same practices? Does the US have agreements with other countries to make sure we're all on the same page so to speak?
  - oso2k 11y ago
    JPL (& many other NASA centers) collaborate quite regularly with the International Space Community. ESA [0] being the prime example (Cassini-Huygens[1], MER [2], etc.). This also includes commercial collaborators as well like SpaceX, LMA, Ball, etc. The community is relatively small and quite professional about their work. They usually don't take shortcuts. But to answer your first question, Yes. All HW & Planetary Protection practices are not equally applied by all collaborators. However, ISO 14644-1 [3] is now a 15 year-old standard, at least, for Clean Room work environments. Such practices and the HW & Planetary Protection Plans are for Project Managers & Principal Investigators to manage & implement. "Faster, Cheaper, Better; pick any two" [4] we always said in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at JPL. Agreements are in place for all projects, and, it usually in the Principal Investigator's best interest to ensure his instrument/subsystem has the best HW & Planetary Protection Plan in place. It ensures their instrument/subsystem is operating nominally and has the longest usable life possible. [0] http://www.esa.int/ESA http://www.esa.int/ESA [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Huygens_probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Huygen... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Related [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin#Career
gambiting 11y ago
The article mentions how equipment that needs to be sterilized is baked to a very high temperature - but I wonder, can it not be sterilized with radiation, like we already do with food? All electronics on a rover are already radiation hardened, after all Curiosity has to work while having a chunk of plutonium strapped to its back. Is this not an option of some reason?
- outworlder 11y ago
  The chunk of plutonium is very well shielded. Curiosity is more likely to be irradiated by cosmic rays than it is by its RTG. It doesn't matter anyway, as some microorganisms are known to endure exposure to open space for years. Sterilizing Curiosity would likely be impractical (its size and weight are comparable to a small car, which is much larger than a potato). A smaller probe designed for finding life and only that could be a safer bet.
- gee_totes 11y ago
  What happens when Curiosity contaminates the RSLs with radiation?
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    There are many types of radiations: --- For sterilization, they will probably use gamma rays. They are strong enough to break a lot of chemical molecules, and then kill all the bacteria. But the gamma rays are not strong enough to break the atoms nuclei or make them radioactive. So the rover will be sterilized but not radioactive. This is similar to the process that irradiate food with gamma rays. You can store them in a perfectly sealed place without refrigeration and they a are safe to eat because they don't have bacteria and they don't have radiation. So this is a safe method. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation --- Another different radiation process is to irradiate it with neutrons. It kills the bacteria but it also may make some nuclei radioactive. (I don't know the necessary doses, so perhaps this may be safe, but I'd be much more careful. Something like this is used to treat cancer. Also, this don't produce a lot of radioactive atoms, and the rover is small, so the radioactive material will be not too much. Anyway, as I said before, I'd be much more careful.) --- Another possibility is mixing the food (for example a tea) with some radioactive material (for example plutonium). This kill the bacteria but also may kill whoever takes it. If you are very careful with the doses, you may use something like this for medicine applications (for example with radioactive iodine). But I guess that if the dose is low enough not to kill the patient, it will not kill all the bacteria. This is definitively not the method they may use to sterilize a rover.
ChicagoBoy11 11y ago
And that someone seems to be this lady, with this most BAMF job responsibility ever: “These are ongoing conversations,” said Catharine A. Conley, NASA’s planetary protection officer, who coordinates the efforts to minimize the chances of life inadvertently crossing the solar system.
- sanoli 11y ago
  Isn't this nearly impossible in the long (although here I mean really, really long) term? Think of trying to minimize the chances of some flu strain in one continent from getting to the other. I mean, once humans start going here and there, what do you do, do you keep everything in containment (exhaled gases, excrements, every form of waste)?
  - mapt 11y ago
    The only way you could keep human biota 100% contained is if the humans never interacted with anything outside the welded-shut steel sphere they inhabited - in which case, why bother bringing them to Mars?
    - Symmetry 11y ago
      Well, shorter times delays on teleop are a useful thing. Humans can do that just as well from orbit but if you've gone all that way then the gravity on Mars might be enough of a health benefit to make it worth while landing.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      The view across part of Valles Marineris?
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  I must be missing something. How would you ever land men on mars if you are striving not to allow life to cross between planets?
  - 11y ago
mzs 11y ago
Didn't MSL and Curiosity (Gale) both get pretty close?
zokier 11y ago
> And yet, looking for signs of life native to Mars (or even water which might support life) is the top reason we're there, judging by the headlines. Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict. (emphasis mine) maybe it is just media that needs to work out this conflict.
JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
"signs of life" versus "life", big difference.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Sterilization is not a binary thing, it's a matter of degrees. All of NASA's Mars rovers have been constructed in clean rooms and sterilized according to planetary protection protocols. But there are levels of such protocols and though the levels that have been used so far are quite high they are not sufficient to reduce the chance of some micro-organisms surviving the trip to Mars low enough to justify risking putting the rovers in environments with potential Martian life. Additionally, only recently have we been able to construct rovers that could host the equipment necessary to reliably detect and study Martian life, so the level of sterilization that we've been using hasn't been a problem.
WalterBright 11y ago
There cannot be a manned mission to Mars with this policy.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ypcx 11y ago
What would you do if you wanted to postpone, as long as you possibly can, the disclosure of discovery of life on Mars? Exactly. Ridiculous question, of course, how do I even dare to have a thought like that here on HN, the bastion of reason. Unless there are reasons to suppress everything that would somehow threaten the status quo. Pause for a second and ponder the inexplicable urge to downvote this comment, which is only expressing a simple thought.
- ypcx 11y ago
  You have to question the motives of an agency which needs half a century of spaceflight and trillions of dollars to admit water on a nearby planet.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Yeah, it's like they are doing ...science.
mirajshah 11y ago
The amount of armchair condescension on HN is appalling. According to the reddit AMA, NASA does do some amount of sterilization before going to Mars, it is enough to justify the exploratory mission. More sterilization would probably take more man hours, more $$$, which would delay the mission to account for an (estimated) low probability of finding water. It seems like they've chosen to iterate instead of getting it perfect the first time, something we're all familiar with. "The rovers have been sterilized for their particular landing sites where there's been no evidence of present day liquid water. To go to the RSL rovers will be required to be sterilized to a higher level. We also take samples of microbes that might be on the spacecraft before they're launched, so we can compare with any future discoveries. -RZ" [1] Apart from that, "These features are on steep slopes, so our present rovers would not be able to climb up to them.-RZ" [2] They will be working on moving further. Let's congratulate them for this wonderful major accomplishment at least. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars_scientists_ask_us_anything_about/cvh68vj https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars_scientists_ask_us_anything_about/cvh4c5j https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars...
- crusso 11y ago
  Please don't invent hostile motives in my post when none were being offered. I was simply pointing out the impasse expressed in the article. This isn't NASA's internal blog of scientists, so I'd think that possibly dumb speculation could be offered. The iteration explanation makes some sense, although these seem like very expensive iterations.
  - InclinedPlane 11y ago
    You are literally strolling into a subject you know nothing about and putting forward an opinion that amounts to "wow, these guys sure are dumb, huh?" It's a very common way to comment on science stories and it's absolutely infuriating. Why not this? "So, I don't understand what's going on here, this seems weird because of X, Y, or Z, can someone explain what's going on?" Or this? "Is NASA really so dumb that they would do X, Y, and Z given that A, B, and C seem to be at odds with that?" Instead we get: "Hah. NASA is so dumb." Even though we live in 2015 and the results of even 15 minutes of effort involving google and wikipedia could clear up a lot of these misconceptions. Why are people so heavily invested in maintaining their own ignorance? Why do people insist on jumping to the conclusion that thousands of top tier scientists couldn't POSSIBLY have thought of the same things that occurred to them in the few moments spent thinking about it before deciding to make a post?
CoffeeDregs 11y ago
Agreed. I heard a guest on NPR address this and he made two points: there's likely already been plenty of material transferred between the two planets; and human arrival will guarantee the transfer of biological material. Another take @ http://www.marssociety.org/home/about/faq/ http://www.marssociety.org/home/about/faq/ Q: What are the risks of contaminating Mars with Earth life forms, or vice versa? A: Actually, it is arguable that this has already been happening for billions of years. During his study of known Martian meteorite ALH84001, Cal Tech's Joseph Kirschvink showed that large parts of the rock were never heated above 40C (104F), proving the theory of University of Arizona researcher Jay Melosh that it is possible for rocks to be ejected from one planet's surface and land on another's surface without being excessively heated. More importantly, this discovery showed that not all rocks ejected from either Mars or Earth are sterilized -- a fact that, when combined with the known ability of microorganisms to remain alive in a dormant state for millions of years, means that Earth life has probably already traveled to Mars, and if life ever existed on Mars, it has already traveled to Earth.

by crusso 11y ago

goatforce5 11y ago

> Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict. Perhaps it's not so much of a conflict as a multi-staged approach... The non-sterile equipment is currently roaming around and has just said "Hey! There's probably water and maybe life over there!" and now we get to build something to go poke at it with a sterilized stick.

mapt 11y ago

All equipment designed for landing on Mars in the modern era is extensively sterilized. The concern is that given what we've learned about microorganisms in space, this may not be enough; "Extensively sterilized" is never "Perfectly sterilized", at least, not without building it out of solid metal and annealing it in space. There was also a last-minute variance granted to the drill bit on Curiosity, which was contaminated between sterilization and launch by briefly opening the box in a lower-spec clean room. http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-planetary-protection.html http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-pla... As we enter an era of inexpensive launch capacity, the sterilization step is actually so expensive it may exceed the cost of the launch vehicle. There is a case to be made for dropping these protections: They're a barrier in the way of a widespread robotic exploration mission, and a manned mission is going to be implicitly contaminative, since you can't run humans through an autoclave. The most conservative route to detecting life before sending humans is years and years of robotic launches to a variety of regions, with several sample returns. It's arguable, but I'm not sure we have the stomach to do that before the 2030's, there's no sign of the major expansion of NASA funding that would be required for the decade of exponentially escalating robotic precursors to a human mission, on the horizon. Given that we're apparently not going to protect Mars from life, that brings into question why we should bother pretending that's what we're doing today. There have already been substantial transfers on previous landers and impactors.

Symmetry 11y ago
There have certainly been metioroids starting on Mars that made it to Earth without being sterilized[1]. Now, Earth does have a deeper gravity well which might make a difference but Earth microbes have had geological epochs to make the trip to Mars wheres you'd only expect a meteoroid to remain recognizable on Earth's surface for that long in comparison. So I figure that if contamination of Mars by Earth life was a problem it would have happened by the Paleozoic. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001
- david_shaw 11y ago
  That makes sense, but wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that there's a major difference between natural seeding of life on other planets via meteors, and humans bringing it over while trying to find natural life? Furthermore, what if life on Mars were fragile enough that Earthly microscopic organisms destroyed it?
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    At some point we'll either have to either stop worrying about life on Mars being hidden under a rock somewhere or forever put a "humans keep out" sign on Mars.
    - trose 11y ago
      I'm kinda of this thought process as well. If there are hospitable conditions there and we haven't found microbes after a while, I think we should just start dumping tons of them over there. We need something to put some atmosphere there for us. Algae seems to be a really good bet.
      - WalterBright 11y ago
        And suppose we do find some biological slime there? Does that then make Mars off limits to all of humanity for all time?

lawpoop 11y ago

I'm supposing rather that they don't want to "discover" martian microbes or organic molecules that are actually stow-away Earthlings.

oso2k 11y ago

I'll first refer you to my previous post about Clean Room Operations at JPL [0]. All equipment leaving Earth is sterilized. The thoroughness of sterilization varies from project to project, instrument to instrument, and the agreed to HW & Planetary Protection Plans. It helps ensure that equipment is not giving false readings. Serious money is also laid out for HW & Planetary Protection (there's a whole division of probably 150 people at JPL) and sophisticated equipment used to test for contamination. However, if there was deviation from the original Planetary Protection Plan [1], it was likely to execute some other test, timing/scheduling conflict, or some other "administrative" reason. And with respect to finding water on Mars, why would you send your robot to a polar cap or even a "lake" with visible/detectable water? If you're attempting to prove that water and water flow processes exist & are active on Mars, it's probably better to test a fringe area, hence, the 3.3m requirement. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6809134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6809134 [1] http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-planetary-protection.html http://www.space.com/13783-nasa-msl-curiosity-mars-rover-pla...

emcrazyone 11y ago
"All equipment leaving Earth is sterilized" Should that read all equipment leaving Earth from the United States? Do other countries with developing space programs adhere to the same practices? Does the US have agreements with other countries to make sure we're all on the same page so to speak?
- oso2k 11y ago
  JPL (& many other NASA centers) collaborate quite regularly with the International Space Community. ESA [0] being the prime example (Cassini-Huygens[1], MER [2], etc.). This also includes commercial collaborators as well like SpaceX, LMA, Ball, etc. The community is relatively small and quite professional about their work. They usually don't take shortcuts. But to answer your first question, Yes. All HW & Planetary Protection practices are not equally applied by all collaborators. However, ISO 14644-1 [3] is now a 15 year-old standard, at least, for Clean Room work environments. Such practices and the HW & Planetary Protection Plans are for Project Managers & Principal Investigators to manage & implement. "Faster, Cheaper, Better; pick any two" [4] we always said in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at JPL. Agreements are in place for all projects, and, it usually in the Principal Investigator's best interest to ensure his instrument/subsystem has the best HW & Planetary Protection Plan in place. It ensures their instrument/subsystem is operating nominally and has the longest usable life possible. [0] http://www.esa.int/ESA http://www.esa.int/ESA [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Huygens_probe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Huygen... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Related [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanroom [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin#Career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Goldin#Career

gambiting 11y ago

The article mentions how equipment that needs to be sterilized is baked to a very high temperature - but I wonder, can it not be sterilized with radiation, like we already do with food? All electronics on a rover are already radiation hardened, after all Curiosity has to work while having a chunk of plutonium strapped to its back. Is this not an option of some reason?

outworlder 11y ago
The chunk of plutonium is very well shielded. Curiosity is more likely to be irradiated by cosmic rays than it is by its RTG. It doesn't matter anyway, as some microorganisms are known to endure exposure to open space for years. Sterilizing Curiosity would likely be impractical (its size and weight are comparable to a small car, which is much larger than a potato). A smaller probe designed for finding life and only that could be a safer bet.
gee_totes 11y ago
What happens when Curiosity contaminates the RSLs with radiation?
- gus_massa 11y ago
  There are many types of radiations: --- For sterilization, they will probably use gamma rays. They are strong enough to break a lot of chemical molecules, and then kill all the bacteria. But the gamma rays are not strong enough to break the atoms nuclei or make them radioactive. So the rover will be sterilized but not radioactive. This is similar to the process that irradiate food with gamma rays. You can store them in a perfectly sealed place without refrigeration and they a are safe to eat because they don't have bacteria and they don't have radiation. So this is a safe method. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation --- Another different radiation process is to irradiate it with neutrons. It kills the bacteria but it also may make some nuclei radioactive. (I don't know the necessary doses, so perhaps this may be safe, but I'd be much more careful. Something like this is used to treat cancer. Also, this don't produce a lot of radioactive atoms, and the rover is small, so the radioactive material will be not too much. Anyway, as I said before, I'd be much more careful.) --- Another possibility is mixing the food (for example a tea) with some radioactive material (for example plutonium). This kill the bacteria but also may kill whoever takes it. If you are very careful with the doses, you may use something like this for medicine applications (for example with radioactive iodine). But I guess that if the dose is low enough not to kill the patient, it will not kill all the bacteria. This is definitively not the method they may use to sterilize a rover.

ChicagoBoy11 11y ago

And that someone seems to be this lady, with this most BAMF job responsibility ever: “These are ongoing conversations,” said Catharine A. Conley, NASA’s planetary protection officer, who coordinates the efforts to minimize the chances of life inadvertently crossing the solar system.

sanoli 11y ago
Isn't this nearly impossible in the long (although here I mean really, really long) term? Think of trying to minimize the chances of some flu strain in one continent from getting to the other. I mean, once humans start going here and there, what do you do, do you keep everything in containment (exhaled gases, excrements, every form of waste)?
- mapt 11y ago
  The only way you could keep human biota 100% contained is if the humans never interacted with anything outside the welded-shut steel sphere they inhabited - in which case, why bother bringing them to Mars?
  - Symmetry 11y ago
    Well, shorter times delays on teleop are a useful thing. Humans can do that just as well from orbit but if you've gone all that way then the gravity on Mars might be enough of a health benefit to make it worth while landing.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    The view across part of Valles Marineris?
DanielBMarkham 11y ago
I must be missing something. How would you ever land men on mars if you are striving not to allow life to cross between planets?
- 11y ago

mzs 11y ago

Didn't MSL and Curiosity (Gale) both get pretty close?

zokier 11y ago

> And yet, looking for signs of life native to Mars (or even water which might support life) is the top reason we're there, judging by the headlines. Seems like someone in NASA needs to work out this conflict. (emphasis mine) maybe it is just media that needs to work out this conflict.

JimmaDaRustla 11y ago

"signs of life" versus "life", big difference.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Sterilization is not a binary thing, it's a matter of degrees. All of NASA's Mars rovers have been constructed in clean rooms and sterilized according to planetary protection protocols. But there are levels of such protocols and though the levels that have been used so far are quite high they are not sufficient to reduce the chance of some micro-organisms surviving the trip to Mars low enough to justify risking putting the rovers in environments with potential Martian life. Additionally, only recently have we been able to construct rovers that could host the equipment necessary to reliably detect and study Martian life, so the level of sterilization that we've been using hasn't been a problem.

WalterBright 11y ago

There cannot be a manned mission to Mars with this policy.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ypcx 11y ago

What would you do if you wanted to postpone, as long as you possibly can, the disclosure of discovery of life on Mars? Exactly. Ridiculous question, of course, how do I even dare to have a thought like that here on HN, the bastion of reason. Unless there are reasons to suppress everything that would somehow threaten the status quo. Pause for a second and ponder the inexplicable urge to downvote this comment, which is only expressing a simple thought.

ypcx 11y ago
You have to question the motives of an agency which needs half a century of spaceflight and trillions of dollars to admit water on a nearby planet.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Yeah, it's like they are doing ...science.

mirajshah 11y ago

The amount of armchair condescension on HN is appalling. According to the reddit AMA, NASA does do some amount of sterilization before going to Mars, it is enough to justify the exploratory mission. More sterilization would probably take more man hours, more $$$, which would delay the mission to account for an (estimated) low probability of finding water. It seems like they've chosen to iterate instead of getting it perfect the first time, something we're all familiar with. "The rovers have been sterilized for their particular landing sites where there's been no evidence of present day liquid water. To go to the RSL rovers will be required to be sterilized to a higher level. We also take samples of microbes that might be on the spacecraft before they're launched, so we can compare with any future discoveries. -RZ" [1] Apart from that, "These features are on steep slopes, so our present rovers would not be able to climb up to them.-RZ" [2] They will be working on moving further. Let's congratulate them for this wonderful major accomplishment at least. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars_scientists_ask_us_anything_about/cvh68vj https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars_scientists_ask_us_anything_about/cvh4c5j https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3mq1wl/were_nasa_mars...

crusso 11y ago
Please don't invent hostile motives in my post when none were being offered. I was simply pointing out the impasse expressed in the article. This isn't NASA's internal blog of scientists, so I'd think that possibly dumb speculation could be offered. The iteration explanation makes some sense, although these seem like very expensive iterations.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  You are literally strolling into a subject you know nothing about and putting forward an opinion that amounts to "wow, these guys sure are dumb, huh?" It's a very common way to comment on science stories and it's absolutely infuriating. Why not this? "So, I don't understand what's going on here, this seems weird because of X, Y, or Z, can someone explain what's going on?" Or this? "Is NASA really so dumb that they would do X, Y, and Z given that A, B, and C seem to be at odds with that?" Instead we get: "Hah. NASA is so dumb." Even though we live in 2015 and the results of even 15 minutes of effort involving google and wikipedia could clear up a lot of these misconceptions. Why are people so heavily invested in maintaining their own ignorance? Why do people insist on jumping to the conclusion that thousands of top tier scientists couldn't POSSIBLY have thought of the same things that occurred to them in the few moments spent thinking about it before deciding to make a post?

CoffeeDregs 11y ago

Agreed. I heard a guest on NPR address this and he made two points: there's likely already been plenty of material transferred between the two planets; and human arrival will guarantee the transfer of biological material. Another take @ http://www.marssociety.org/home/about/faq/ http://www.marssociety.org/home/about/faq/ Q: What are the risks of contaminating Mars with Earth life forms, or vice versa? A: Actually, it is arguable that this has already been happening for billions of years. During his study of known Martian meteorite ALH84001, Cal Tech's Joseph Kirschvink showed that large parts of the rock were never heated above 40C (104F), proving the theory of University of Arizona researcher Jay Melosh that it is possible for rocks to be ejected from one planet's surface and land on another's surface without being excessively heated. More importantly, this discovery showed that not all rocks ejected from either Mars or Earth are sterilized -- a fact that, when combined with the known ability of microorganisms to remain alive in a dormant state for millions of years, means that Earth life has probably already traveled to Mars, and if life ever existed on Mars, it has already traveled to Earth.