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Designed to travel to the Utah desert without any parachutes slowing down falls, the sample return capsule will be transported to the highest possible fourth-level biosafety laboratory (BSL-4), which works with pathogens such as the Ebola virus. With the ability to finally thoroughly examine signs of present or past life on Mars, these specimens will become a glittering prize for science: “Transporting intact specimens from Mars to Earth has been the goal of generations of planetologists,” he says. The NASA.
AFP / “Scanpix” nuotr./Dronas “Ingenio”
But the search for answers by space agencies overshadows the safety of life on Earth: No one knows if these specimens, which will soon be collected by the Perseverance Martian, do not contain Martian pathogens that we will have no resistance to. And we don’t know if the capsule will remain airtight when it falls (NASA’s Genesis probe, which collected solar wind samples, broke when it fell in Utah in 2004 due to a parachute failure), posing a risk of urban pollution. and wildlife. . Although BSL-4 labs are extremely safe, there have been omissions in the past, mainly due to human error.
Although the risk is low, it is not zero. Space agencies are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control in Sweden to try to deal with them. But they cannot say that there are no risks, and that is the problem, because the UN Space Treaty prohibits polluting the worlds we visit and, upon our return, the Earth. The treaty states that space travelers must avoid “adverse environmental changes on Earth due to aliens.”
With Covid-19 demonstrating the terrifying effects of a pandemic, NASA and ESA should definitely change tack. There is a clear new course: transporting samples for analysis to a space station orbiting the Moon, or to a laboratory on the Moon itself, both of which could be installed in ten years.
This position is supported by the International Committee against the Return of Samples from Mars (Sample return of the International Committee against Mars – ICAMSR), highlighting the dangers of returning to Earth. “We support the Mars specimen return mission as part of the Lunar Gateway space station project if the specimens are delivered to a specially equipped biohazard module in lunar orbit, or as part of a larger lunar base concept under the NASA’s Artemis program, “said the Director of ICAMSR. Barry DiGregorio. “This is the only way to guarantee the protection of 100 percent of the Earth’s biosphere.”
NASA and ESA say the samples should be returned to Earth solely because of the cost and difficulty of operating a complex BSL-4 laboratory in space, as microgravity “would interfere with analysis of the samples.” But that’s a problem for space agencies, they can’t expect the Earth’s population to take unknown risks.
If space agencies really do intend to pilot flights to the Moon in preparation for trips to Mars, they can certainly find ways to analyze dangerous off-planet examples. And now the opportunity exists to do so, because the mission to transport samples collected by Perseverance from Mars will not rise until 2026, and its design is not yet final.
Reuters / Scanpix Photo / Perseverence’s First Test Drive
“Leaving samples in a stable Martian orbit is one of several strategies that can be taken when sampling the surface of Mars,” says ESA. Space agencies should do this and wait for a completely safe way to analyze them off-planet. It will be wonderful to learn about life on Mars, but this knowledge shouldn’t cost us all of Earth.
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