Plans to protect solar system - from humans

[LONDONER]

NASA is trying to find a way to prevent humans from destroying the rest of our solar system, but I don't think it's going to work. After a little over fifty years, we have over 200,000 things orbiting the earth, creating hazards for the satellites that are vital to modern life on earth.

On the earth itself, there is hardly any area that has clean air, soil, and water. Anyone who thinks we will not contaminate the rest of the universe is naive.

http://gawker.com/nasa-has-already-hired...ncation=10

[TigerLover]

You might be right about the solar system but saying we'll contaminate "the universe" is very naive.
That's like flicking a speck of dust into the ocean and then declaring that you've contaminated the entire Atlantic.

[5sigma]

I love that they're taking these precautions. 'Destroy' is a bit emotive though. The Earth isn't an isolated system anyway. Planets get hit from time to time by comets/asteroids etc, throwing up material into interplanetary space, on which a microbe might hitch a ride and make its way to another body. There's been cross contamination between Earth and Mars since long before life arose here.

Enceladus and Europa are known to have liquid water interiors that might harbour life. If life is found there its genesis was likely local to that body as the probability of Earth ejecta reaching there is very small - meaning the organism wouldn't be traceable to the same common ancestor as life on Earth.

The reason Mars is a problem is that it's closer and we've been swapping rocks with Mars for a long time and so if we find life there it'll likely be traceable to the same common ancestor as Earth life. It would be hard to declare that the organism's genesis was on Mars because much Earth bacteria remains unidentified which is why it's important that we minimise the bacterial traffic that the article talks about.

They're doing a cool thing with the Cassini mission when they're done with it in 2017. They're going to plunge it into Saturn rather than just power it down and leave it, specifically to prevent interfering with the moons.

Hello again by the way - I joined ages ago and then never really posted.....then someone mentioned astronomy