Given that we’ve never found any evidence of life on Mars, and the worst outcome here would be that we somehow… put life on mars that survives and starts to live there on its own? Seems like it’s not something worth worrying about.
The idea being that if we contaminate the environment it’s going to make it next to impossible to discover native life, if it in fact exists.
Yeah, discovering the presence of microbial life on another celestial body is a huge deal, and could be the most important scientific discovery of our lifetimes. So it is imperative that prevention of contamination occur, in order to preclude any methods of dismissing the discovery.
Just picture it from a religious angle. The evangelical community would be salivating to discredit such a discovery, so to prevent that mess it is worth being extra careful.
There is no amount of careful that is going to prevent the effort, in this case. I would hope that the powers that be in religious circles are prepared to explain why life exists on other planets in the context of their current world view. It’s not like it’s hard.
Sure, but don’t make it easier for them to bring people over to their side by being sloppy.
We could land probes on the sun to kill microbes that survived decontamination back in the assembly lab. That way we’ll know for certain we won’t introduce native Earth bound life on bodies like Europa.
All these worlds are ours, except Europa. Make no landing there.
“god works in mysterious ways” usually covers it.
The main significance of finding life on another planet would be that it meant life was possible on another planet.
If that life somehow originated on Earth… Ok? The odds of that happening are essentially zero, with some randomly occurring microbes that happened to get into a spacecraft on the surface of Earth, that then could survive in space, and then somehow survive on the surface of Mars.
But hell, if it actually happened? That’d be awesome! You’d have somehow created, by accident, a self sufficient Martian ecosystem.
Again, the chance that such a thing could happen is effectively non existent. You are talking about microbes that could somehow survive in the extremely hospitable environment in Earth’s surface where we live, then space, then Mars. Life tends to be specialized to the degree that it wouldn’t usually thrive in all of those places.
Seriously though, somehow getting anything to live on the surface of Mars would be an immense win, not something to try to avoid.
Tardigrades. Bacteria living in anaerobic conditions under the Ross ice sheet. Possibly other microbial life that is resistant to direct solar rays and the cold of space that we don’t know of, because we haven’t tested those capabilities.
It isn’t far fetched. We know for certain there are life forms on earth that can survive exposed to the vacuum of space, at least for a while. And others survive conditions on earth just as hostile as those on mars.
Not at all, at least depending on the nature of the life found. If it was demonstrably independent of earth life, then you’d have proof of two separate abiogenesis events, which would be absolutely huge, not to mention the potential biochemical applications. Even if it were likely of the some origin, it may well have completely novel biology.
At some point we’re probably going to give up hope of finding life on Mars, but until then, it would be stupid to confound the possibility of ever finding a signal by throwing up a bunch of noise. And that’s not even getting into the whole invasive species problem.
I think you mean Prime Directive.
Anyway, back to new space stuff, the big mystery this week seems to be what happened to SpaceX’s classified satellite launch. Different reports have it falling back to earth, oribiting without separating from the final stage, or otherwise failing to deploy. SpaceX are saying everything went fine at their end.
My favorite conspiracy-flavored theory: both the original November 15 launch window and the actual launch window occurred while a previously-known classified satellite (catalogued by some amateurs as USA-276) was passing overhead. So, either USA-276 is a maneuvering satellite for orbital observation (it’s know to have come within four miles of the ISS) and the Zuma launch was a refueling job, or the object which deorbited was USA-276, and the new satellite just took its place.
We’ll be able to figure that out. Does SpaceX stop launches or do gov’t agencies stop using them? Lost.
Launches continue as usual? Not lost.
Sounds like if something did happen then it’s not on SpaceX. This was a weird mission from the start it sounds. Super secret with the original launch not public until a few weeks before and with possibly some custom adapter for this “Zuma” payload that wasn’t done at SpacsXs own processing facility. So sp7nds like the screwup is on Northrop Grumman.
Launches for SpaceX could,continue if it’s on Grumman for the failure and not the F9.
So it seems that SpaceX has released a ‘strongly worded statement’ saying that their part went off without issue. Grumman is saying they can’t comment on a secret thingy. Other sources are essentially guessing that the fault, if there was a fault, was in the separation module. Which was designed and built by Grumman. But nobody knows for certain and we may never know.
This almost falls into the I’d tell you but I’d have to shoot you category.
My guess is a British secret agent sabotaged Musk’s orbital doomsday weapon.