3 ms·

At this point isn’t Mars already contaminated?

• idlewords 3y ago
  No, almost certainly not. There are individual living microbes and spores on the various landers, but unlike the microbiome that would travel with a human mission, they're not viable and have no mechanism to get to somewhere where they'd be viable.
  • RajT88 3y ago
    I mean, you say that, but also this story was a thing that happened: https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankton-found-on-the-outer-surface-of-the-iss/ https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankton-found-on-the-outer...
    • vel0city 3y ago
      The leading theory is air currents from the planet slowly contaminated the station over the decades, not contamination before launch. It's also then still pretty protected by radiation still being so close to Eath. Our probes go through pretty tight clean room packaging, shed almost all their outside layers before leaving Earth orbit while still being very toasty, and then get blasted by intense radiation for months and are finally separated by some pretty massive distances on the planet.