Mars Sample Receiving Facility and sample containment: Difference between revisions
Mars Sample Receiving Facility and sample containment (edit)
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{{quotation|The risks of [[Environmental degradation|environmental disruption]] resulting from the inadvertent contamination of Earth with putative martian microbes are still considered to be low. But since the risk cannot be demonstrated to be zero, due care and caution must be exercised in handling any martian materials returned to Earth.<ref name=nrc2009_4p46>
{{cite report |title=Assessment of Planetary Protection Requirements for Mars Sample Return Missions |publisher=National Research Council |year=2009|url=http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12576&page=46}}</ref>}}
To deal with these issues, these reports recommend construction of a special a Mars Receiving Facility<ref name=MSRtaskgroup>[http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/summary/msr Mars Sample Return: Issues and Recommendations (Planetary Protection Office Summary)] Task Group on Issues in Sample Return. National Academies Press, Washington, DC (1997)</ref>.
To deal with these issues, the [[NASA]] Office of Planetary Protection<ref>[http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/about NASA Office of Planetary Protection]</ref> recommends construction of a special a Mars Receiving Facility. They recommend that the facility should be operational at least two years prior to launch,<ref name=MSRtaskgroup>[http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/summary/msr Mars Sample Return: Issues and Recommendations (Planetary Protection Office Summary)] Task Group on Issues in Sample Return. National Academies Press, Washington, DC (1997)</ref> with various estimates on the time taken to build the facility and bring it to operational readiness. Preliminary studies have warned that it may take as many as 7 to 10 years to get it operational.<ref>{{cite report |title=Assessment of Planetary Protection Requirements for Mars Sample Return Missions |publisher=National Research Council |year=2009 |chapter=7 "Sample-Receiving Facility and Program Oversight" |page=59 |url=http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id{{=}}12576&page{{=}}59 |quote=''It has been estimated that the planning, design, site selection, environmental reviews, approvals, construction, commissioning, and pre-testing of a proposed SRF will occur 7 to 10 years before actual operations begin.17,18,19 In addition, 5 to 6 years will likely be required for refinement and maturation of SRF-associated technologies for safely containing and handling samples to avoid contamination and to further develop and refine biohazard-test protocols. Many of the capabilities and technologies will either be entirely new or will be required to meet the unusual challenges of integration into an overall (end-to-end) Mars sample return program.''}}</ref>▼
The 1997 NRC report recommended that the facility should be operational at least two years prior to launch, as a result of many lapses of containment in the Apollo sample handling procedures <ref>page [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SE1qAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31 31] of Board, S.S. and National Research Council, 1997. Mars sample return: issues and recommendations. National Academies Press.</ref> Later sample return studies don't explicitly give this requirement but the rationale still applies.
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The official reports stress the need for public debate at the international level due to the ethical issues involved.
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The ESF report also points out that biohazard facilities are designed to contain known hazards. The new facility must contain unknown hazards as well. It's a much harder problem to contain unknown hazards, especially with the diversity of life forms now known to be potentially hazardous such as GTAs and ultramicrobacteria (as described above).
Other risks mentioned in these studies, and by the Planetary Protection Office include the possibility of human error, accidents, natural disasters, security breach, actions by terrorist or 'activist' groups or crime, leading to release of the materials, once the samples are on the Earth surface.<ref name=esf2012_PP-crime-etc>{{cite report |title=A Draft Test Protocol for Detecting possible biohazards in martian samples returned to Earth|publisher=NASA |year=2002 |quote="Procedures for handling a breach of the SRF due to different causes (e.g. leak, disaster, security breach etc) should be considered in he development of plans for handling a breach. Concerns about security should also be reconsidered, epecially in view of the potential disruptive activities of any terrorist or 'radical' groups that may be opposed to sample return (page 101) .... The breach could be the result of an accident or a crime - as a result of activity either outside or within containment (page 104)"|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130215100651/http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/file_download/10/MSRDraftTestProtocol.pdf}}</ref>
==== Target probabilities for proposed biohazard facilities ====
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