Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Mars sample return to Earth – a major undertaking by NASA, the European Space Agency.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Now underway is a multi-nation, multi-billion dollar Mars Sample Return program, a project for the 2030’s to hurl to Earth a select smorgasbord of soil, rock and atmosphere from the Red Planet.

NASA and the European Space Agency are working together on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. The plan is for those gathered and contained Mars collectibles – roughly a pound of extraterrestrial goodies — to be plopped into the Utah Test and Training Range in west-central Utah.

Hot property

Proposed Utah landing zone (red ellipse) for the Mars sample return mission.
Image credit: NASA

But shooting back to Earth bits and pieces from Mars means how to deal with the potential for biological “hot property” – also called backward contamination. That term can heat up oratory and public unease, of people visualizing creepy-crawlies from that distant world munching away at Earth’s biosphere.

Once on Earth, Mars specimens will make their way to a sample receiving facility.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Arguably, it has the makings of a real-time 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.

For more information, go to my new Multiverse Media SpaceRef story — Martian Samples on Earth, Planetary Protection from Contamination Becomes Hot Issue – at:

https://spaceref.com/science-and-exploration/martian-samples-earth-planetary-protection-contamination/