2019-06-01_Discover

Phoenix

Viking I

Viking II

Pathfinder

Opportunity

Spirit

SPECIAL REGIONS

SPECIAL REGIONS

Curiosity

InSight

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need to change, not everyone is as careful as NASA.

“I think it’s fantastic that [private] companies are

pushing the limits and pushing the ideas and are

getting people excited,” says Nina Lanza, a planetary

geologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New

Mexico. But she’s also afraid that as those companies

seek to be the first to land humans on Mars, the com-

petition will overshadow and even hurt the scientific

process. “That’s awesome, but it’s not as careful as we

really need to be thinking,” she says.

BARRED FROM WATER

Ultimately, how and where we hunt for life will

likely shape the new approach to contamination.

With water being a key ingredient for life as we know

it, environments rich in the substance are consid-

ered the most habitable, so they’ll play a key role.

(While life could evolve in an unexpected water-free

way, it makes more sense to focus on the one path

evolution is known to have followed.)

Today, only the most stringently scrubbed space-

craft are permitted to explore water-rich areas,

classified as “special regions” by NASA. Most rov-

ers don’t make the cut. “Wherever there is water,

you are not supposed to touch or smell it,” says

Edgard Rivera-Valentin, a planetary scientist with

the Universities Space Research Association at the

Lunar and Planetary Institute.

If NASA’s clean robots can’t visit habitable regions

under today’s rules, then the buggy humans who

pilot them are definitely out of bounds. But spe-

cial regions are, by definition, the most interesting

to life-seeking scientists, and of course human

Martians will need water to survive.

Rummel sees a way to keep everyone happy. Clean

rovers could retrieve ice and bring it back to human

habitations. “If we’re going to send people to Mars,”

says Rivera-Valentin, “it should be to areas we don’t

think that life can be.”

Another way to resolve the tension between

wanting to examine but not spoil the most delicate

possible ecosystems? Simply wait. “If there’s life on

Mars now, then there’s going to be life on Mars in

10, 50, 100 years,” Clifford says. Surely, the biggest

discovery in human history is worth delaying while

we improve sterilization technology and let robotic

missions further scout the Martian biosphere in the

meantime.

“I would much rather us take a slower, more

thoughtful pace in our exploration of Mars,” says

Clifford, “than go hellbent and send a manned

spacecraft as soon as we can at the lowest possible

cost — and in the process, potentially irreversibly

contaminate the planet.”^ D

Nola Taylor Redd is a freelance science journalist

with a focus on space and astronomy. Find her

on Twitter: @NolaTRedd NA

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OUT THERE

A topological map

of Mars (blues

represent low areas;

reds, high) reveals

how much of the

world is off limits:

Places near water,

dubbed “special

regions,” require

extra sterilization

to explore.

“If we’re

going to

send people

to Mars, it

should be

to areas we

don’t think

that life

can be.”

— planetary

scientist Edgard

Rivera-Valentin