Controversy Grows Over whether Mars Samples Endanger Earth

A L L T O G E T H E R N O W
Although MSR’s true risks for interplanetary ecological catastrophe 
may be unknown, the threat that negative public opinion poses for 
the mission is clear to most participating scientists. Even so, 
engagement with the public should be welcomed, says Penny Boston, 
an astrobiologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. What better way 
to push forward the research needed to fill in knowledge gaps about 
planetary protection, she reasons, than getting people interested in 
the topic and its weighty stakes? “That will allow us to both optimally 
protect Earth’s biosphere and humans while still making the best full 
use of the analyses of the Mars samples to answer the science 
questions,” Boston says. 
Similarly, while a chilling effect from harsh handling restrictions for 
MSR’s samples seems more probable than the eruption of some 
otherworldly pandemic from lax biosafety protocols, some argue that, 
in absolute budgetary terms, erring on the side of caution simply isn’t 
very expensive. 
According to astrobiologist Cassie Conley, who succeeded Rummel as 
NASA’s planetary protection officer from 2006 to 2017, by the time 
MSR’s capsule impacts in a dry lake bed in Utah, “taxpayers will have 
invested at least $10 billion to bring these samples to Earth. So isn’t it 
worthwhile to spend 1 percent more to construct the best possible 
facilities and instrumentation for studying these samples while also 
ensuring that MSR doesn’t cause something bad to happen to the 
only planet we can live on?” 
There is, however, one additional concern complicating the debate: 
MSR is no longer alone in its quest for fresh Red Planet rocks, and 
other projects may not abide by its still-emerging rules. China 
recently announced its own independent plans to bring Martian 
material directly to Earth, perhaps earlier than the NASA/ESA Mars 
Sample Return campaign, and there is also the “wild card” of Elon 
Musk’s Mars-focused SpaceX efforts leading to human voyages to 
Mars and back far sooner than most experts anticipate. 
China’s entry in particular worries Barry DiGregorio, an 
astrobiologist and founding director of the International Committee 
Against Mars Sample Return (ICAMSR). “Unless [returning samples 
from Mars] is done as a global effort in order to share the findings in 
real time with all spacefaring nations instead of as a national goal, no 

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single country will know what the other has found or what problems 
they are having with containment,” he says. 
That’s why DiGregorio contends priority should be given to ruling out 
each and every sample’s prospects for harming Earth’s biosphere 
before it is brought back to our planet—something best done in a 
dedicated space station or even an astrobiology research lab built as 
part of a lunar base. “Of course,” he adds, given increasingly high 
global geopolitical tensions, “this concept will likely be a hard sell”—
but now is the “critical time” to consider it. 

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Document Outline

• Controversy Grows Over whether Mars Samples Endanger Earth
  • RISKY BUSINESS
  • CAUTIONARY COSTS
  • ALL TOGETHER NOW