Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense

Last Monday, NASA shared the agency’s recommendations regarding a path forward for the costly Mars Sample Return initiative, but within a balanced overall science program.

The idea of bringing back to Earth select samples from Mars has long been a major goal of international planetary exploration.

NASA is now reaching back to government, industry and academic teams to come up with innovative ideas – ways to perform a lower-costing and timely shoot and ship effort to rocket back to Earth bits and pieces of Mars.

Perseverance rover deposits select rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on Mars’s surface for future missions to retrieve and bring back to Earth for detailed study.
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Strain gauge

But the quest to bring collectibles to Earth from Mars has long been steeped in controversy in some quarters. That is, there are worries regarding the introduction of ecologically-hungry Martian microbes into Earth’s biosphere.

For sci-fi movie-goers, it’s real-time Andromeda Strain.

Interestingly, raising their hand of concern about misbehaving microbes from afar are members of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. They were set up to evaluate the status of U.S. biodefense efforts, “Protecting U.S. public health security beyond party lines,” according to their website.

“Is the U.S. ready for extraterrestrials? Not if they’re microbes,” explains a recently issued opinion piece.

For more information, go to my new Space.com story – “’Astrobiodefense:’ Thinktank calls for defending Earth from space bugs” – at:

https://www.space.com/mars-sample-return-op-ed-astrobiodefense