We wouldn't send humans to the surface in that case not now.
I think just about everyone is agreed on that in the planetary protection community, because we would introduce Earth life to Mars. Which is potentially invasive, just like e.g. invasions of cane toads in Australia.
Especially if it turns out to be not related to Earth life, then we'd be super careful not to introduce Earth life.
Those who want to send humans to Mars are assuming that the surface is either so inhospitable that we won't introduce life to the planet, or that all life there is identical to corresponding life on Earth (I find that last rather implausible myself).
I think that if it turned out to be not Earth life, even Robert Zubrin I imagine would change his views - as his reasons for saying we can't contaminate Mars is because he thinks Mars life will be identical to Earth life.
But what we could do is to send humans to orbit around Mars and explore the surface by telerobotics. Which is in many ways better than being on the surface.
No clumsy spacesuits, no danger of death to the humans from a stumble and damaged air-hose or visor,, automatically digitally enhanced vision and fine control with haptic feedback - and you can leave your telerobot on location continuing some experiment or just patiently waiting while you sleep or control some other robot - no travel time to get there, no need to put on spacesuit, it's a total win win situation there.
And what's more as it all depends on streaming video from the surface then back on Earth we can follow every single detail of what the astronauts do exploring the surface via telerobots - see the surface just as they do, even feel what they feel via haptic feedback which they would use.
I'm talking about the scientific community here and exobiologists. And some might still argue that we can explore with humans on the surface without harming Martian life. That would have to be proven though before the international community would agree to it.
After all we don't even send humans to explore the lakes below the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet - could easily just melt a hole down to them and drop a sub in to explore them, but instead we carefully send robotic probes and have waited for many years until we had the technology developed to do this without introducing surface Earth life to the lakes.
So if we are that careful about subsurface lakes isolated from the surface for a few million years, certainly we will be careful about sending humans to the surface of Mars. Once we have time to debate it.
We wouldn't just launch to Mars for sure. It would need to be approved by COSPAR as all space capable nations have signed the Outer Space Treaty. Quite possibly politicians in the early stages and some enthusiastic scientists might say we should send humans to the surface right away. But as it worked through the processes needed to get approval for the launch via COSPAR and the other steps needed to get launch approval, then this is what would happen - surely.
It would be like the case of lake Vostock where the Russians originally wanted to drill right down into the subsurface Antarctic lake - but delayed because of the contamination risks - and when they did finally do so still had some criticism internationally that they might have contaminated the lake in the process because of some possible flaws in their protocol (relying on the water rushing back out and freezing to protect the lake. That wasn't sending humans there, just a drill bit.
So there would be a huge amount of debate internationally about what to do with Mars and until we know a great deal more about the situation, hard to see how humans on the surface would be approved.
I think just about everyone is agreed on that in the planetary protection community, because we would introduce Earth life to Mars. Which is potentially invasive, just like e.g. invasions of cane toads in Australia.
Especially if it turns out to be not related to Earth life, then we'd be super careful not to introduce Earth life.
Those who want to send humans to Mars are assuming that the surface is either so inhospitable that we won't introduce life to the planet, or that all life there is identical to corresponding life on Earth (I find that last rather implausible myself).
I think that if it turned out to be not Earth life, even Robert Zubrin I imagine would change his views - as his reasons for saying we can't contaminate Mars is because he thinks Mars life will be identical to Earth life.
But what we could do is to send humans to orbit around Mars and explore the surface by telerobotics. Which is in many ways better than being on the surface.
No clumsy spacesuits, no danger of death to the humans from a stumble and damaged air-hose or visor,, automatically digitally enhanced vision and fine control with haptic feedback - and you can leave your telerobot on location continuing some experiment or just patiently waiting while you sleep or control some other robot - no travel time to get there, no need to put on spacesuit, it's a total win win situation there.
And what's more as it all depends on streaming video from the surface then back on Earth we can follow every single detail of what the astronauts do exploring the surface via telerobots - see the surface just as they do, even feel what they feel via haptic feedback which they would use.
I'm talking about the scientific community here and exobiologists. And some might still argue that we can explore with humans on the surface without harming Martian life. That would have to be proven though before the international community would agree to it.
After all we don't even send humans to explore the lakes below the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet - could easily just melt a hole down to them and drop a sub in to explore them, but instead we carefully send robotic probes and have waited for many years until we had the technology developed to do this without introducing surface Earth life to the lakes.
So if we are that careful about subsurface lakes isolated from the surface for a few million years, certainly we will be careful about sending humans to the surface of Mars. Once we have time to debate it.
We wouldn't just launch to Mars for sure. It would need to be approved by COSPAR as all space capable nations have signed the Outer Space Treaty. Quite possibly politicians in the early stages and some enthusiastic scientists might say we should send humans to the surface right away. But as it worked through the processes needed to get approval for the launch via COSPAR and the other steps needed to get launch approval, then this is what would happen - surely.
It would be like the case of lake Vostock where the Russians originally wanted to drill right down into the subsurface Antarctic lake - but delayed because of the contamination risks - and when they did finally do so still had some criticism internationally that they might have contaminated the lake in the process because of some possible flaws in their protocol (relying on the water rushing back out and freezing to protect the lake. That wasn't sending humans there, just a drill bit.
So there would be a huge amount of debate internationally about what to do with Mars and until we know a great deal more about the situation, hard to see how humans on the surface would be approved.
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
4.8m answer views110.4k this month
Top Writer2017, 2016, and 2015
Published WriterHuffPost, Slate, and 4 moreHuffPost, Slate, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Insider, and Science 2.0