Is accidental transportation of microbes to Mars bad?

Submitted by Responsible-Maybe912 t3_zs7j43 in askscience

And what I mean by this is would it be considered a negative or positive in the eyes of scientists if microbes from earth somehow survived the journey through space(either now through drones, or later through human settlement/exploration). Would microbial life on Mars matter as far as origin, and how would it affect our understanding of the red planet?

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celo753 t1_j1b80g1 wrote

It depends on who you’re asking. Some people believe we should purposefully colonize other planets with life, in the hopes that someday some of it will thrive. For scientists, it is very bad, since it will make experiments that check for the remnants/presence/building blocks of life possibly return false positives. In the grand scheme of things, taking humans to mars is impossible without contamination of the red planet, and the scientific value of having a human on-site on mars likely outweighs the negatives of contamination.

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Interesting-Month-56 t1_j1baq0t wrote

For the purposes of studying extraterrestrial environments and clean experiments about the origins of life, not having terrestrial life on board is important.

For the purposes of studying how well terrestrial life can adapt and thrive in nonterrestrial environments, having them provides a natural experiment.

The hard fact is that it’s almost impossible to exclude terrestrial bacteria from any space craft. So for now, scientists try their best, and eventually it won’t matter.

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katinla t1_j1e4luz wrote

Scientists have discussed this and agreed that we'd better not contaminate Mars with Earth life, at least not util we have confirmed if there is or isn't any indigenous life. This was formalized in article IX the Outer Space Treaty. Based on this agreement COSPAR was founded, and they defined the 5 categories of planetary protection.

Therefore, all vehicles going to Mars are thoroughly decontaminated before launch.

This requirement is a bit less strict for vehicles that are not intended to land, or going to other celestial bodies that are not deemed of any interest for the origins of life, or where Earth microbes are not expected to survive.

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