Searching for Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky
by Lee Billings
Anton Tarazi
10/24/15
Earth Science
C 1,3,5 Block
When it was recently announced that there was water on Mars, the scientific community was abuzz with ideas and goals to search for life there. The article Searching for Life in Martian Water Will Be Very, Very Tricky by Lee Billings was about how difficult it will actually be for probes or humans to search for life on Mars without possibly contaminating it. Spacecraft which traveled and will travel to Mars will all naturally have millions of microbes on them because no sterilization methods are capable of completely killing all microbes that may reside on their surface. These microbes could hypothetically thrive on the Martian surface and create colonies that may deceive scientists into believing that Mars contains life, even though it was really just contamination from Earth. Another potential threat would be that microbes brought by Earthlings may be harmful to the hypothetical microbes on Mars and damage the possible ecosystem. To combat this problem, multiple Special Regions are being designated across the Martian landscape and every two years the list of Special Regions is updated. Special Regions are the areas most likely to contain life and are a complete no-go zone for all unsanitized future space missions. Humans are highly unlikely to be able to go to these Special Regions in the foreseeable future because one can’t treat a human with the same chemicals and radiation used to sterilize a machine. Billions of taxpayer dollars will have to be used up to try to make it possible to completely sterilize a probe so it can be able to go to a Special Region. This may be completely futile, though, because previous spacecraft may have already contaminated the soil, or maybe prehistoric asteroids originated from Earth already transferred microbes to Mars, or maybe there is no life on Mars and we would have wasted billions trying to find useless sterilization techniques. This is a very delicate situation and even the scientists at NASA aren’t sure how to proceed.
The findings this article presents have a tremendous impact on how humanity can explore Mars and other planets that may contain life. The fact that we aren’t allowed to contaminate it in any way severely dampens the extent of our findings. This presents a huge hurdle scientists must find away around because otherwise we might never make it to Mars. NASA’s 2030 goal for reaching Mars may never take flight unless humanity finds a way to sterilize spacecrafts and their occupants. This also has a profound impact on you and me because NASA gets its funding from taxpayer dollars and if they need hundreds of millions of dollars to find ways to combat this problem, the money is not being used elsewhere such as to fund schools or help the needy. There is an important decision to make, one with only three choices: Do we explore Mars and forget about the fact that we may contaminate it? Do we invest billions of dollars into finding proper sterilization techniques? Or do we temporarily give up our dream of exploring the Red Planet?
I chose this article because when water was recently found on Mars it created many ambitious goals of finding life there, but few people realized all the complications. Shedding light on the fact that we may contaminate Mars, something overlooked by most people, the article explains all of the complications and impracticalities involved in actually exploring Mars for life . This article was really well written and gave an in depth look at the problem and what is needed to solve it. The author explained all of the complications that NASA is facing and what they mean really thoroughly. The use of important historical evidence as well as a few quotes made the article more interesting and informative. Though the article explained everything really well, one question that I have is: Assuming sterilization techniques were perfected, how will rovers be able to access the hard to reach Special Regions where there may be life? Many of the Special Regions are in extremely remote areas of Mars such as at the bottom of ravines or the bases of active volcanoes, so rovers like Curiosity won’t be able to access them. I personally feel that though further research should be invested into finding life on Mars, it is a waste of time and money to spend billions of dollars creating adequate sterilization techniques because if microbes from Earth were to be transmitted to Mars, it is very likely that they have done so already.
Anton did a great job with his Current Events Article review. His Review was very clean and easy to comprehend. I think that he did a good job. Anton did a good job explaining what things meant. Often in articles, in articles that are difficult to read, things are usually explained yet when someone reviews the article, they seem to assume that that the person already knows what it means. Anton was able to explain to everyone what special regions are, “areas most likely to contain life and are a complete no-go zone for all unsanitized future space missions”. He also does a good job explaining the process and how scientists will go deeper into their research. He explained to the reader why this is a difficult process. Humans cannot go to mars due to microbes. It is even difficult to send a probe to those special regions since they have to be sterilized. And the last positive part of his article was how he asked questions in his article for example, “Do we explore Mars and forget about the fact that we may contaminate it? Do we invest billions of dollars into finding proper sterilization techniques? Or do we temporarily give up our dream of exploring the Red Planet?” This showed the reader what he was thinking when reading the article as well as allowing the reader to ask themselves questions.
ReplyDeleteIt was very interesting understanding how difficult it is to get to Mars. Knowing that the spacecraft has to be sanitized shows that scientists know what they are doing and that they really care about this experiment or possibly life changing discovery. A second aspect that is interesting is those special zones. Scientists have spent years its seems until this day where what they have been looking for may finally become discovered soon! It is trustworthy that they know what they are doing, making sure that future space missions do not go there in order to preserve the area. This article was very interesting with many more interesting facts within it but these are two that really stood out to me.
Overall Anton did a very good job on his article so it is very difficult to critique. One thing that he could improve on is that although I did like how he included his own questions, he should have put less because it seems to lose the reader’s train of thought. One or two would have been good but four was a bit much. Overall good job on your article Anton!
Evelyn Kluemper
ReplyDelete11/12/15
Earth Science
Anton’s review of“Searching for Life in Martian Water Will be Very, Very Tricky” by Lee Billings was informative. He clearly states the implications of sending probes or spacecrafts to Mars, including potentially contaminating the planet and destroying its ecosystem. Anton also explains the cost of further research for an effective sterilization process. It was interesting how he described the difficulties of scientists exploring the Special Regions.
I learned about Special Regions on Mars and that they are mostly in remote areas of the planet that are difficult to access. It had not occurred to me that perhaps asteroids that originated from Earth have already contaminated Mars and these attempts for a sterilization technique are unavailing.
In the short term, many would agree that the spending of this money may be beneficial to schools and the poor. However, what was not mentioned was the potential long-term benefits of exploring a new planet, which we may not realize for many generations to come. For example, although it may seem absurd now, perhaps with new discoveries, we may find that Mars will be habitable for humans in the distant future. Also, there may be discoveries on Mars that could provide technological benefits on Earth.