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Planetary protection for a Mars sample return: Difference between revisions

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Planetary protection for a Mars sample return (edit)

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This describes the issues, see the risk mitigation section for the solutions proposed for these issues.
 
The ESF report points out that the facility must also double as a clean room, to keep Earth micro-organisms away from the sample. As a result, this greatly adds to the complexity of the facility, and so to the risk of failure, since clean rooms and biohazard rooms have conflicting requirements (biohazard containment facilities are normally built with negative air pressure for instance, to keep organisms in, and clean rooms with positive air pressure to keep organisms out). It will be the first such facility ever to be built. [NEEDS CITE - NOT IN ESF REPORT]
 
The ESF report also points outsays that biohazard facilities are designed to contain known hazards. The new facility must contain unknown hazards as well. It'sand aknowledge muchabout harderMars problembiology to(if containany) unknownwill hazards,have especiallya withsteep thedevelopment diversitycurve.. of life forms now known to be potentially hazardous such as GTAs and ultramicrobacteria (as described above).
 
{{bq|Unless future Mars landers and/or rovers discover living organisms on Mars and gather significant information before a Mars sample is returned, knowledge about Mars biology (if any) will have a very steep development curve with an MSR: the sample will land overnight and the scientific investigations will have no or only limited preliminary steps. This differs significantly from, for example, the incremental development of synthetic biology that becomes increasingly complex, building upon past experience and experiments.}}
 
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=http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/file_download/10/MSRDraftTestProtocol.pdf}}</ref>
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