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Tangent: but in my layman understanding of all this, is it possible that we’re actually cross contaminating Mars with tiny amounts of earthly life? I know the

Tangent: but in my layman understanding of all this, is it possible that we’re actually cross contaminating Mars with tiny amounts of earthly life? I know the travel and radiation probably makes it unlikely but also seems plausible to me a few specks of mold spores or DNA fragments could survive and be preserved in the cold of space/mars. Is it possible that in billions of years, when the sun has warmed and/or pulled mars closer, this seeds another earth-like evolution of life? It all seems improbable but nothing surprises me in space.

saalweachter 3y ago
The short answer is, yes, maybe. Probes intended to land on other planets are sterilized, I believe, to try to avoid such contamination. It's a long shot that such contamination is possible, and the sterilization probably isn't perfect, but there's a general consensus that it's probably not impossible, and hey, it'd be pretty dumb to at least not like wipe down the probe before shooting it into space.