Are We Contaminating Other Worlds? Supposedly we are very worried about polluting other worlds and even polluting ourselves when we send ships and humans into space. Let me start at the beginning and tell you why we worry about this. We worry about polluting other worlds because humans and our planet are germ factories. We can’t help it; we have all sorts of bacteria living inside us and on the outside. Our planet has bacteria everywhere. Given the environment we have to work in just sending a probe means it would have to be thoroughly sterilized if we don’t want to contaminate the life on another world. We are not as good at sterilization as many think. We sent a rover to Mars which was supposed to be sterilized and then NASA realized they forgot to completely sterilize it. The drill was said not to be sterilized and this was used to drill into the Martian soil which means we sent any bacteria that was on it into the planet Mars. Since we are walking germ factories unless we are covered by completely sterilized suits there is a very good chance we would leave our germs on another planet. As far as concerns for humans not getting contaminated because NASA has them covered, let me repeat the story of Apollo. If you are old enough to remember a lot of moon dust got into the lander and the astronaut had to fly back to the return capsule in it. They did and splashed down in the ocean where they were taken out of the return capsule by sailors from an aircraft carrier. These sailors had to row back in a boat with the astronauts without protective gear which could have exposed them also to any contamination. Once the carrier was reached the astronauts were paraded across the deck through waiting crowds of crewmen before they got to a decontamination chamber where they stayed for a while. What a joke that was. It seemed to me it was only done to convince us NASA was looking out for us, even though they had committed such a big series of no nos. A NASA scientist has already said the search for alien life could have been hampered by human contamination. NASA has done everything possible according to one scientist to make sure everything they send into space is completely sterilized, but he contends no matter how hard you try he says there are microbes which remain which hitch a ride. It may not be many, but a few are too much. It is an unfortunate fact if we sent a probe to an inhabited world the germs on it could change that world and if life there was not immune, these germs might turn out to be deadly. Just because something is not deadly to us doesn’t mean it won’t be to an alien life form. It would be a terrible thing to send out astronauts to worlds we had sent probes to years before only to find out we wiped out an entire civilization without realizing it. This is a problem both humans and extraterrestrials would face if they met. How would we know it was safe to meet them or for them to meet us due to the bacteria we carry and maybe they carry? We have always been very anxious to meet aliens, but it could turn out to be deadly, not because they were not friendly, but because we just couldn’t handle the germs we got from them. Many people believe there are ruins on the moon, Mars and some asteroids and could even be more on the other planets. Do we have an effective way to check out bacteria and viruses before we go to these places to make sure they are safe for humans? I think it might be impractical now and there is another problem and that is there could be other unknown forms of microscopic life we know nothing about which could be lurking in these ruins if they exist. When some ancient Egyptian tombs were opened the air was deadly. This was due to the fact molds had built up in them over the centuries and this was on earth, imagine what might be waiting to contaminate us on other worlds. Every time I hear about countries wanting to bring back samples from other planets and asteroids, I can’t help but feel we are taking a chance. We brought back moon rocks and apparently were lucky with them but will our luck continue to hold out? We are finding out some life can exist in space, if not indefinitely, for quite some time. Plankton was found on the outside of the International Space Station and most scientists believe it came from space not from the planet earth. We have also found a tiny animal known as a Water Bear can live in space. Its scientific name if a tardigrade. An experiment was conducted and these creatures were sent into space and returned ten days later. Almost 70 percent were still alive. They were sent to the moon in an Israeli lander which crashed and dumped them out of their container. We have found live living inside rocks which are hundreds of thousands of years old. How did these bacteria survive? They somehow survive without oxygen and eat minerals. Could these bacteria survive in space? We cannot say for sure there are other forms of life which can or can’t survive in space. There is so much undiscovered life in our oceans for example we never know what we might find. Contamination is a big problem to us, but perhaps it might not be to an alien. I guess it might depend on how they were constructed or how advanced they were. What I mean is this. They might not be carbon based like us and might be immune to anything we could inadvertently throw at them. The reverse might also be true. On the other hand, even if they were susceptible to microbes and such, they may have developed a way to defend against them. There is no doubt we have a problem in this area. When we read about all the plans for space exploration how many times do we see this problem discussed? I can say almost never in my case. The problem is a very important one. It is not important just because a probe might send microbes to another planet stopping us from getting a pristine look at the natural microbial life there, but because as I said before we could do damage and that certainly would not be fair to that world or any other. Sterilization for space vehicles is an imperfect method of cleansing spacecraft and maybe it is time to try and develop a fool proof method.
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