By 
April 13th, 2024
This illustration shows a concept for multiple robots that would team up to ferry to Earth samples collected from the Mars surface.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA is set to offer its response to that hard-hitting report issued last September by the Mars Sample Return Independent Review Board, including the rolling out of next steps for the program.
This Monday, NASA will share the agency’s recommendations regarding a path forward for the costly Mars Sample Return initiative, but within a balanced overall science program.
Indeed, such an enterprise has long been a major goal of international planetary exploration for the past two decades.
But the concept of snag, bag, and hurling samples from Mars back to Earth has also been met with controversy in some quarters; for one, the specter of Andromeda Strain and putting the Earth’s biosphere in jeopardy by ecologically-hungry martian microbes continues to be a topic of concern.
The Andromeda Strain – the 1971 movie, but how real for a 21st century return to Earth of Mars samples?
Image credit: Universal Pictures
Space bugs
“Is the U.S. ready for extraterrestrials? Not if they’re microbes. How to defend Earth from space bugs” is an opinion piece posted April 11 by the Houston Chronicle.
Under the rubric of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense, former Democratic Congresswoman Donna Shalala and Susan Brooks, a former U.S. Attorney and Republican Congresswoman. Together they serve on the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense.
Donna Shalala served as Secretary for Health and Human Services in the Clinton Administration. Brooks served parts of Indiana.
The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense is a privately funded entity established in 2014, set up to evaluate the status of U.S. biodefense efforts and issues recommendations to produce meaningful change.
Image credit: Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense
Unforeseen dangers
“Space exploration provides some of the greatest challenges and opportunities of our time. But as we venture further into the unknown, we also expose ourselves to new and previously unforeseen dangers,” Shalala and Brooks write.
While many debate the possibility of advanced, intelligent life elsewhere, few consider the probability of non-intelligent alien microorganisms. These life forms could exist on other planets or moons, hitchhike on spacecraft, or move through the universe in the asteroids they inhabit. They could also be Earth microbes that mutate or evolve in response to the stress of spaceflight, becoming more virulent, resistant, or invasive. Either would seriously threaten the public health, safety, and security of humans, animals, and plants operating in space or living on Earth,” they note.
Labeling it “Astrobiodefense,” as they term it, is an expression anchored in the defense against biological threats in space and on Earth that result from space exploration.
Image credit: Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense
Neither hypothetical nor fictional
There are two goals, Shalala and Brooks point out: to prevent the contamination of extraterrestrial environments with Earth organisms; and to prevent extraterrestrial or mutated terrestrial microbes from harming Earth’s inhabitants.
“As fantastical as it may sound, astrobiodefense is neither hypothetical nor fictional,” they observe, calling for urgent attention and action.
“For the United States, NASA has already started programs to prevent forward and backward contamination, ensure the health and safety of astronauts, and identify and control biological hazards. The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] is also responsible for monitoring the payloads of commercial spaceflight and how they might affect public health.”
But now, they write, given more missions into space, the potential dangers are mounting.
Wanted: coordination and collaboration
“Recent missions, for example, brought specimens back from asteroid Bennu and aimed to drop human remains on the Moon. We need to do more and soon,” they add.
Artwork shows OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at asteroid Bennu.
Image credit: NASA/University of Arizona
Shalala and Brooks state that the U.S. needs to invest in research and development of new technologies and medical countermeasures to detect, diagnose, treat, and prevent diseases in space and on Earth.
Furthermore, there is need to enhance our bio-surveillance and symptom monitoring to track and analyze space-related biological threats in real time.
“We need to strengthen our coordination and collaboration between agencies and partners, both nationally and internationally,” they continue, “to share information and resources without compromising the kinds of competition that result in scientific advances and economic gains.”
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Perils of the unknown
Additionally, they observe, there is need for more than modest, and fluctuating, budgets, a wing, and a prayer. “More policymakers and decision-makers in Washington need to understand the importance and benefits of astrobiodefense in particular and the space program in general.”
In closing, Brooks and Shalala state in our pursuit of promise, “we have a duty to protect ourselves and our planet from the perils of the unknown, and to preserve and respect the integrity and diversity of life in the universe.”
By investing in and strengthening astrobiodefense, they conclude, “we can ensure that our quest for discovery does not jeopardize our security and survival. Let’s get ahead of this problem, before we are ‘go’ to launch.”
For more information, visit the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense website at:
https://biodefensecommission.org/
To read the op-ed in its entirety, go to:
Posted in Space News
The International Committee Against Mars Sample Return (www.icamsr.org) has been addressing this important issue since we were founded in January 2000. Two of our founding members had a biology instrument on both NASA twin Viking Landers in 1976 and they have presented data over a 40 year period that suggests their experimental results found microbial metabolism in the soil samples they examined on Mars. More importantly no other extant life technology was ever sent by NASA or other space faring country to characterize what kind of microbes might be causing such a reaction. Instead, in 1977 NASA just told the American public and the world that the life detection experiment on Viking known as the Labeled Release instrument could not have detected extant life on Mars because another instrument on both Viking Landers (GCMS) designed to find organic molecules did not find them to the parts per billion level. NASA closed the book on the findings of the Labeled Released instrument on Mars without ever considering the data from the organic analyses instrument known as a Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer might be wrong. Not another extant life detection instrument has ever been sent to Mars in all the years since Viking. However both NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Rovers still operating on Mars had updated organic detection instruments onboard and both have found organic molecules in the soil, rocks and atmosphere of Mars.
Instead of spending billions of dollars on a risky plan to return samples of Mars directly to Earth that might deliver an invasive species to our biosphere why not use that money to send additional extant life experiments to Mars capable of resolving the issue of microbial metabolism that the Viking Labeled Release found in 1976?
Sincerely yours,
Barry E. DiGregorio – Director for the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return (www.icamsr.org)
https://independent.academia.edu/BarryDigregorio
The history of science is replete with individuals (and cadres of individuals) who believe that their research interests are so extremely important that the research deserves extraordinary amounts of funding. I have been a research faculty for over four decades, exploring life in harsh terrestrial environments such as rock surfaces. I have no interest in getting involves in Mars research on this topic, because I think that those who are involved maintain mental blinders to new ideas. Although the term has often been abused, such blinders worn often lead to dead-end paradigms sometimes recognized decades later as misguided and often driven by the psychological needs of cadre leaders. This appears to be the case with the desire to send samples from Mars back to Earth, instead of using much cheaper and proven research strategies to analyze in situ samples on Mars to resolve almost all of their research questions. Ultimately, it takes stunning arrogance by only few scientists to even suggest that their research agenda is worth money that could be spent ameliorating climate change, let along worth even a 1 in a million chance of devastating Earth’s biosphere. I have heard no research from NASA that even attempts to evaluate the hypothesis that the apparently minimal biosphere of Mars is due to a biological agent on Mars inimical to life as we understand it. And simply “laughing” at such a notion (as I am sure it happening upon reading these words) would be typical of individuals stuck in a sinking mental paradigm. NASA should not “laugh off” warnings of biological peril, but treat such concerns as a low probability but possible outcome … and ask the fundamental questions: is this research agenda worth the risk? is it worth the extraordinary expense? is the ego-driven drive for sample return more important than other research issues that could truly be solved using comparable funding levels? After four decades in the research trenches related to life’s activity on rock surfaces, my answer to all three questions is a resounding no. I suspect that those without paradigm blinders removed would answer the same.