Being able to make the distinction between panspermia induced by human activity, and panspermia that occurred through some other mechanism is important. The po

Being able to make the distinction between panspermia induced by human activity, and panspermia that occurred through some other mechanism is important. The possibility that life jumped the gap on meteorite strike debris does not make protecting against contamination any less important. Actually, I would say that it makes it more important. If there was no possibility for non-human related panspermia, then if we found an organism on Mars that appears closely related to an earth organism, then we could write it off as contamination and ignore it. However since non-human related panspermia could conceivably happen, it would be more difficult to pin such a discovery on contamination.