Yes, I think it would myself, but that's personal opinion. It would be examined thoroughly by COSPAR - an international group of thousands of scientists who meet every two years to examine such things.
There are many suggestions now for potential habitats on Mars. Whether any of them actually exist is yet to be determined, we need to look at them close up on the ground and see if there is liquid water there.
Humans would definitely carry extremophiles to Mars. Just because a microbe can live on your skin for instance, or in your clothes, doesn't mean it can't also live in Antarctica, or in a reactor cooling pond, or indeed in a hydrothermal vent (those are all actual examples, first two for radiodurans which can be found sometimes in people's clothes).
The thing is extremophiles often retain their extreme capabilities when living in less extreme habitats. And many of the microbes in any habitat, typically, are unknown to science because they are currently impossible to cultivate or study, the problem of Microbial dark matter.
There are two possibilities here.
First they could decide that it is possible to land humans on Mars without contaminating it. This is what NASA is basically counting on.
The idea there is that Mars has special regions that should not be contaminated with Earth life. This is a map of them:
From Nature article: Water seems to flow freely on Mars
A landing in those regions has to be sterilized to at least Viking levels of sterilization, anything that will physically come into contact with potentially habitable parts of Mars.
The special regions would also include the warm seasonal flows, shown as black stars in this map.
Now the current NASA idea would be to land humans in the area outside those special regions. Then they send rovers to examine spots of interest where there might be present day or past Mars life. Humans go nowhere near them. They then return these samples to the human habitats for analysis there. That, they hope, will keep human contamination by Earth life away from the special regions.
Note that the special regions are sometimes changed. For instance recent discovery of those warm seasonal flows inside the equatorial zone, in the Valles Marineres. There are a couple of other ideas for potential habitats in the equatorial region including idea that lichens could use the night time humidity to live there (based on DLR experiments) and the advancing sand dunes bioreactor
- and Gilbert Levin thinks that Viking found life there which perhaps in some way uses liquid water they manage to get from the morning frosts as they sublimate. His is a minority view but not sure it should just be ignored, when we have so little knowledge of Mars as yet. If life can survive in equatorial regions, either using his idea of somehow (not clearly specified) using the sublimating frost - or else like the DLR lichens using night time 100% humidity of the atmosphere through to early morning before the frosts deliquesce - that would make the whole of Mars basically a special region.
I see two main problems with this. First - what if there is a hard landing - the spacecraft crashes and all on board die. Okay - it's tragic for the astronauts too - but they did do this voyage knowing that this is a possibility. But it also would mean that Mars is irreversibly contaminated - at least hard to see how you could reverse the effects of that. Especially if the crash was result of some major mistake during the insertion burn ending up with it crashing, say, into a polar region or the special regions instead of the intended target region. How can you reliably prevent that in something as complex as a human landing?
But even in equatorial region - with food, soil, water, air, human bodies tragically spread out over a large area of Mars after the crash - how could that ever be reversed especially as dust storms would be bound to occur before you could begin to think of doing anything about it and spread material throughout Mars?
The other is, that - human habitats will leak millions of microbes anyway. Each time you leave your habitat, even if you use the Suitport - then you will release a cubic foot of air into the Mars atmosphere which will have numerous microbes in it. And your spacesuits leak all the time, designed to leak air around the joints for mobility. And would the astronauts keep all their wastes on board? ISS is nowhere near a closed system and I expect a manned mission to Mars would be venting many waste products from the habitat - gas, liquid, probably even solid wastes such as feces in a long stay.
Some contamination of the surroundings of the habitat seem inevitable. And then - the thing is - that though the conditions there are very inhospitable - still some microbes can survive them. And - the main thing is the UV, but that can be blocked by a few mm of soil, or for that matter, just by the microbe falling into the shadow of a boulder or pebble. And then - this is a point Carl Sagan made long ago - in the dust storms, the microbes, imbedded in a tiny grain of sand, could be carried anywhere on Mars. And the dust is iron rich and good at blocking out UV.
As for cosmic radiation, levels on the surface are similar to the interior of the ISS as Curiosity's weather station on Mars found out. So no problems for microbes. And even the occasional solar storms, though deadly for humans, are easily survivable by radioresistant microbes.
So what is to stop microbes from the human habitats being carried in the dust storms to the special regions?
They would have to answer these questions, about dust storms and about hard landings, to show that it is safe for planetary protection. Though the Planetary Protection office seem confident a way ahead will be found - they are not actually the ones that draw up the guidelines. COSPAR do, a team of experts who have to evaluate all the research to date. And their reputations are on the line there - nobody would want to have their name to a report that leads to Earth life being introduced to Mars - that would be a major disaster to find life there that you introduced yourself - what could have been the biggest discovery of our century in biology becoming more like a joke that went horribly wrong.
So they will be very careful I'm sure. And I don't see myself how they will approve these ideas. Will have to see. Can't really judge until they make the decision and approve some particular procedure. All the COSPAR workshops I've seen so far have said some contamination is inevitable and said that more research is needed on its effect.
The other possibility is that they say that we are no longer in the exploratory phase and have found as much as we need to know about pristine Mars and that there is no problem contaminating it. But by the OST there has to be worldwide agreement on that, as it impacts on ongoing experiments not just by NASA but also by ESA, Roscosmos, etc. And I find it unlikely, given how little Mars is explored on the ground so far, that there will be world wide agreement any time soon that we understand Mars so well - and also understand the effects of introducing Earth life to the planet well enough - that contamination of the planet with Earth life doesn't matter.
Originally they used to talk about an "exploration phase" which was expected to be a few decades. But in recent COSPAR discussions they talk of the exploration phase as currently open ended, so I think this solution is unlikely myself in the near future.
I think myself - the obvious compromise solution is to send humans to Phobos or Deimos instead and explore Mars by telepresence.
See my To Explore Mars With Likes Of Occulus Rift & Virtuix Omni - From Mars Capture Orbit, Phobos Or Deimos
And continue with that approach at least until we have a more thorough understanding of Mars.
On potential habitats for present day life on Mars, see my Are There Habitats For Life On Mars? - Salty Seeps, Clear Ice Greenhouses, Ice Fumaroles, Dune Bioreactors,...
There are many suggestions now for potential habitats on Mars. Whether any of them actually exist is yet to be determined, we need to look at them close up on the ground and see if there is liquid water there.
Humans would definitely carry extremophiles to Mars. Just because a microbe can live on your skin for instance, or in your clothes, doesn't mean it can't also live in Antarctica, or in a reactor cooling pond, or indeed in a hydrothermal vent (those are all actual examples, first two for radiodurans which can be found sometimes in people's clothes).
The thing is extremophiles often retain their extreme capabilities when living in less extreme habitats. And many of the microbes in any habitat, typically, are unknown to science because they are currently impossible to cultivate or study, the problem of Microbial dark matter.
There are two possibilities here.
DECIDE THAT HUMANS CAN LAND ON MARS WITHOUT CONTAMINATING IT
First they could decide that it is possible to land humans on Mars without contaminating it. This is what NASA is basically counting on.
The idea there is that Mars has special regions that should not be contaminated with Earth life. This is a map of them:
From Nature article: Water seems to flow freely on Mars
A landing in those regions has to be sterilized to at least Viking levels of sterilization, anything that will physically come into contact with potentially habitable parts of Mars.
The special regions would also include the warm seasonal flows, shown as black stars in this map.
Now the current NASA idea would be to land humans in the area outside those special regions. Then they send rovers to examine spots of interest where there might be present day or past Mars life. Humans go nowhere near them. They then return these samples to the human habitats for analysis there. That, they hope, will keep human contamination by Earth life away from the special regions.
Note that the special regions are sometimes changed. For instance recent discovery of those warm seasonal flows inside the equatorial zone, in the Valles Marineres. There are a couple of other ideas for potential habitats in the equatorial region including idea that lichens could use the night time humidity to live there (based on DLR experiments) and the advancing sand dunes bioreactor
- and Gilbert Levin thinks that Viking found life there which perhaps in some way uses liquid water they manage to get from the morning frosts as they sublimate. His is a minority view but not sure it should just be ignored, when we have so little knowledge of Mars as yet. If life can survive in equatorial regions, either using his idea of somehow (not clearly specified) using the sublimating frost - or else like the DLR lichens using night time 100% humidity of the atmosphere through to early morning before the frosts deliquesce - that would make the whole of Mars basically a special region.
PROBLEMS WITH LANDING OUTSIDE THE SPECIAL REGIONS - 1 - HARD LANDING
I see two main problems with this. First - what if there is a hard landing - the spacecraft crashes and all on board die. Okay - it's tragic for the astronauts too - but they did do this voyage knowing that this is a possibility. But it also would mean that Mars is irreversibly contaminated - at least hard to see how you could reverse the effects of that. Especially if the crash was result of some major mistake during the insertion burn ending up with it crashing, say, into a polar region or the special regions instead of the intended target region. How can you reliably prevent that in something as complex as a human landing?
But even in equatorial region - with food, soil, water, air, human bodies tragically spread out over a large area of Mars after the crash - how could that ever be reversed especially as dust storms would be bound to occur before you could begin to think of doing anything about it and spread material throughout Mars?
PROBLEM 2 - LEAKY HUMAN HABITATS
The other is, that - human habitats will leak millions of microbes anyway. Each time you leave your habitat, even if you use the Suitport - then you will release a cubic foot of air into the Mars atmosphere which will have numerous microbes in it. And your spacesuits leak all the time, designed to leak air around the joints for mobility. And would the astronauts keep all their wastes on board? ISS is nowhere near a closed system and I expect a manned mission to Mars would be venting many waste products from the habitat - gas, liquid, probably even solid wastes such as feces in a long stay.
Some contamination of the surroundings of the habitat seem inevitable. And then - the thing is - that though the conditions there are very inhospitable - still some microbes can survive them. And - the main thing is the UV, but that can be blocked by a few mm of soil, or for that matter, just by the microbe falling into the shadow of a boulder or pebble. And then - this is a point Carl Sagan made long ago - in the dust storms, the microbes, imbedded in a tiny grain of sand, could be carried anywhere on Mars. And the dust is iron rich and good at blocking out UV.
As for cosmic radiation, levels on the surface are similar to the interior of the ISS as Curiosity's weather station on Mars found out. So no problems for microbes. And even the occasional solar storms, though deadly for humans, are easily survivable by radioresistant microbes.
So what is to stop microbes from the human habitats being carried in the dust storms to the special regions?
They would have to answer these questions, about dust storms and about hard landings, to show that it is safe for planetary protection. Though the Planetary Protection office seem confident a way ahead will be found - they are not actually the ones that draw up the guidelines. COSPAR do, a team of experts who have to evaluate all the research to date. And their reputations are on the line there - nobody would want to have their name to a report that leads to Earth life being introduced to Mars - that would be a major disaster to find life there that you introduced yourself - what could have been the biggest discovery of our century in biology becoming more like a joke that went horribly wrong.
So they will be very careful I'm sure. And I don't see myself how they will approve these ideas. Will have to see. Can't really judge until they make the decision and approve some particular procedure. All the COSPAR workshops I've seen so far have said some contamination is inevitable and said that more research is needed on its effect.
DECIDE HUMANS WILL CONTAMINATE MARS, BUT THAT IS OKAY NOW BECAUSE WE HAVE DONE ENOUGH EXPLORATION OF PRISTINE MARS
The other possibility is that they say that we are no longer in the exploratory phase and have found as much as we need to know about pristine Mars and that there is no problem contaminating it. But by the OST there has to be worldwide agreement on that, as it impacts on ongoing experiments not just by NASA but also by ESA, Roscosmos, etc. And I find it unlikely, given how little Mars is explored on the ground so far, that there will be world wide agreement any time soon that we understand Mars so well - and also understand the effects of introducing Earth life to the planet well enough - that contamination of the planet with Earth life doesn't matter.
Originally they used to talk about an "exploration phase" which was expected to be a few decades. But in recent COSPAR discussions they talk of the exploration phase as currently open ended, so I think this solution is unlikely myself in the near future.
I think myself - the obvious compromise solution is to send humans to Phobos or Deimos instead and explore Mars by telepresence.
See my To Explore Mars With Likes Of Occulus Rift & Virtuix Omni - From Mars Capture Orbit, Phobos Or Deimos
And continue with that approach at least until we have a more thorough understanding of Mars.
On potential habitats for present day life on Mars, see my Are There Habitats For Life On Mars? - Salty Seeps, Clear Ice Greenhouses, Ice Fumaroles, Dune Bioreactors,...
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
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