Frank Kummer works for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Thirty samples of rock, soil, and atmosphere will be brought back to Earth by NASA's Mars Sample Return Mission in the early 20th century. Before humans visit the Red Planet, the goal is to look for signs of past life and learn more about it.
The Philadelphia Inquirer asked questions from comments made by the public after a presentation by NASA about the mission. Mars sample return scientists responded.
It's not possible for samples to be sterile before they return to Earth.
If the samples were sterile, a lot of the science would be lost. One of the main reasons for returning samples is the destruction of organic compounds that could be biosignatures.
The work cannot be done on the space station or in the atmosphere.
Making Martian material available to the best instruments in laboratories around the world is the main driver for returning samples. There are many challenges in space, including mass, power and volume. Space is a challenging environment for manipulating samples, precluding some key measurement capabilities, which would reduce the science value of the samples.
Is there a way to make sure the samples are safe before they leave?
We would do it if there was a test. A series of tests must be done to demonstrate safety in order to change our containment protocol. We need to prove that the samples are safe before we can treat them.
Some people are concerned about NASA's plan to bring Mars samples back to Earth.
NASA has assigned a chance that the samples could contain life on Mars.
Mars has been shown to be inhospitable, and that has changed our view of how likely it would be for us to cause harm on the planet. The extreme environment of Mars makes it less likely that there is life on the planet. The fact that Mars meteorites are landing on Earth all the time suggests that we don't have much to worry about. We don't know if it's safe to keep Mars material, so we'll keep it contained until we do.
It wouldn't be done until the 2030s, and a biosafe facility would be constructed for it.
A facility will be built to contain the samples and to distribute subsets of the samples that are determined to be safe either by sterilizing the sample subset or by using the cumulative results of measurements to conclude the samples are safe.
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