Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

The Andromeda Strain – the 1971 movie, but how real for a 21st century return to Earth of Mars samples?
Credit: Universal Pictures

Shipment back to Earth by robotic means of bits and pieces from Mars remains an expensive and daunting task. Having our planet on the receiving end of Mars collectibles is deemed a “low risk” affair in terms of ecological and public safety – but that risk is not zero.

Rocketing Martian flotsam could well mean dealing with biological “hot property,” not to mention sparking heated oratory and public anxiety about creepy-crawlies from Mars chomping away at Earth’s biosphere.

High-magnification and replication. Creepy-crawler snagged in outer space and brought back to Earth in movie, Andromeda Strain.
Credit: Universal Pictures

Sci-fi, real-time?

In many ways, hauling back the goods from the Red Planet resonates in some quarters as a replay of novelist Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, transformed into a 1971 sci-fi film that dramatized the idea of alien organisms infecting the Earth.

Overview of the NASA/European Space Agency Mars Sample Return mission as now foreseen.
Credit: ESA/K. Oldenburg

Does the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic hold some clues for how to handle samples brought back to Earth from Mars, a place that could potentially host extraterrestrial microbes?

For more information, go to my new Space.com story:

Could Mars samples brought to Earth pose a threat to our planet? What the coronavirus (and ‘Andromeda Strain’) can teach us – The coronavirus pandemic reinforces that it’s best to be prepared.

https://www.space.com/mars-sample-return-threat-earth-coronavirus-andromeda-strain.html

Unabashed plug: My National Geographic book – Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet – details ethical exploration of the Red Planet, including sample return and terraforming that world.

It can be found here:

https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Our-Future-Red-Planet/dp/1426217587