Facility Alternation Or Construction Project National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa: Fill & Download for Free

Space Launch is a Regulated EnterpriseThis was set up by the FAA prior to Trump leaving office. Note the review period immediately following the inaugaration of Biden.FAA Holding Public Scoping Period for SpaceX Boca Chica Environmental AssessmentSince the link is not secure I reproduced the text below on this secure platform.But first a discssion.New Sheriff In TownThe Biden administration has issued a lot of Executive Orders and Executive Actions and put people at the head of agencies which hs reversed the policies of the Trump administration this week. These are very broad and far reaching.There are insiders closely connected to the Biden Administration who benefit at the expense of outsiders who will not.With respect to Musk, the major aerospace and automotive companies are closely connected to Biden as insiders in this context. Small cap and private aerosapce firms like SpaceX, are not. TSLA is a special case, yet TSLA is not as closely associated with Biden as GM Ford Toyota and others.The Biden administration has worked quickly to put new people in charge of various agencies and has a different focus than the previous administration to reflect these changes in policies.Wall Street Stopped Trading YesterdaySo, for example, the Biden administration worked quickly to stop trading on Wall Street yesterday to protect Administration insider friends when those insiders lost major money. Insiders called on Biden and complained about Robin Hood traders who were attacking those friends who were thought to be guilty of front running the market by issuing naked shorts.Naked Shorting DefinitionNaked shorts is the practice of selling shares that don’t yet exist. Its a way of making money from nothing. That’s why its regulated and illegal generally.Yet, naked short selling has been blamed for a failure of the markets to do what they should.It appears always that big traders win at the expense of small traders which is impossible in a fair market. Is the market not fair?The big guys must be engaging in naked short selling somehow and driving prices up and down at will.So, this is the bane of traders for a long long time and blamed for everything from an over valued TSLA stock to an under valued silver futures market.Now, when legal action was threatened major players have said that’s just a conspiracy theory among a group of sore losers and generally won. When the media discussed it they came to the same conclusion.So, on Reddit a group of Robin Hood traders said well, if we can get a group of people to trade on this front runner theory, THEY will lose THEIR money if their conspiracy thory is WRONG. Here’s the kicker, the front runners will lose money if the conspiracy theory is right! This will highlight the action and draw attention to the bad guys and stop the practice.There were enough people who lost money this way to give it a try to move markets.Because it is not illegal for people to have a trading strategy even a wrong one… so, that’s what happened.Major hedge funds lost their shirt BECAUSE THE ROBIN HOOD TRADERS WERE CORRECT YESTERDAY IN THEIR SUPPOSITION THAT THE BIG GUYS WERE ENGAGING IN ILLEGAL ACTIVITY. haha. The most telling thing is how quickly the Biden Administration moved to protect the insiders NOT THE LITTLE GUYS but the big guys, the insiders. This is bad news for Musk and Spacex imho.Its important to get through what is being spun and what is not.Toxic put together this thread to explain what is going on with Robin Hood traders that I think is superior to anything in the financial press.Thread by @toxic on Thread Reader AppStep 0: Citadel pays Robinhood for order flow. Citadel gets to see RH's orders a few milliseconds before they're filled. Citadel may choose to front-run some of those trades.Step 1: RH's customers and WallStreetBets start manipulating $GME. This is happening in the open.Officially, they're manipulating $GME (and $BB and $KOSS) because these low-value stocks are being very heavily shorted, and if something moves the value of the stock up (like, tens of thousands of retail investors acting in near unison), those short-sellers may be forced to sell...to cover their borrowed shares. If most shares are held by retail investors who won't sell, the price will skyrocket (supply/demand) until someone does. The bear hedge funds and such will still have to buy to cover, which may cause a bit of a liquidity crisis for the funds.The concept of "Screw the hedge fund vampires who exist only to destroy companies like Gamestop" is a big part of /r/WallStreetBets's messaging. It's a compelling message, and a decent secondary reason for this.The primary reason to manipulate markets remains profit, though.Step 2: HFTs buy shares ahead of Robinhood users.Remember Citadel, the firm who can front-run robinhood trades, and got to see all of that RH data a little early because they paid for flow? Yeah. When do you think they started buying $GME in front of RH traders on momentum?Because the volume of shares exchanged suggests that the HFT folks were all over this, all the way to $150. The message on WSB might be "lots of little guys screwing big Wall Street", but the truth is that the HFT robots were screwing everyone, while paying RobinHood a kickback.Step 3: A hedge fund becomes insolvent. Today it was Melvin Capital Management. It very likely won't be the last.Melvin immediately sells off a portion of itself, because it needs the influx of cash or it will vanish in a poof of smoke, vaporizing ~$15 Billion in the process.Step 4: Who's the lead investor, picking up part of a usually successful fund at fire-sale prices?Right. Citadel, probably with some of the cash they made by repeatedly profiting in the milliseconds before filling the trades that collapsed this fund.WSJ News Exclusive | Citadel, Point72 to Invest $2.75 Billion Into Melvin Capital ManagementHedge fund Melvin Capital has been hit hard by a series of short bets to start the year, down nearly 30% for 2021 through Friday, people familiar with the firm said.https://www.wsj.com/articles/citadel-point72-to-invest-2-75-billion-into-melvin-capital-management-11611604340Step 5: Citadel still has access to RH order flows, is still allowed to front-run them and/or pocket the spread, and can use that and other information to determine the next over-leveraged fund that's going to get squeezed.They might even be able to accelerate the squeeze.So, the next time you discount the impact of "4chan with a bloomberg terminal", remember that they are not the only ones who stand to benefit from intentionally screwing exposed short-sellers.The professionals are all too happy to amplify the efforts of the amateurs for profit.Because if amateurs manipulate the market, uh, truthfully, then nobody loses their license."I (retail investor) bought because I hate Citron & hedge funds, and we're going to screw them for profit. Join us, but do your own due diligence. YOLO!" might just be legal. IANAL.If a licensed broker/dealer did this, they'd lose their license, and probably go to jail. Martha Stewart did time for less.But Citadel, by paying for order flow and sitting in the middle, gets to legally ride-along, printing money the whole way.So, when you ask yourself, "who pays for no-commission trades, and why?" or "what's the harm of RobinHood's business model?", take a look at what happens behind the scenes, in the milliseconds after you press buy, but before you own those shares.It's vampires all the way down.buy. buy to cover. My kingdom for an edit button.SpaceX & the FAAThis is important in this context because it shows how the Biden Administration works to help their friends at the expense of their opponents. Which is bad news for SpaceX.What’s ahead under Joe Biden, industry by industryThe FAA is holding a public scoping period to assist the FAA in determining the scope of issues for analysis in the draft environmental assessment (EA). As a part of the public scoping period, the FAA requests public comments. More information about providing public comments can be found at the end of this email.SpaceX ActivitiesSpaceX proposes to conduct Starship/Super Heavy launch operations from the Boca Chica Launch Site. SpaceX’s proposed launch operations include suborbital launches (flight tests) and orbital launches. The proposed action also includes pre-flight operations (tank tests, mission rehearsals, and static fire engine tests) and construction activities associated with launch activities, including: expanding the solar farm, adding infrastructure and facilities at the vertical launch area (VLA), a liquid natural gas pretreatment system, and a liquefier. At the VLA, SpaceX is proposing to construct a redundant launch pad and commodities, a redundant landing pad, two integration towers, tank structural test stands and a desalination plant. More information about the project can be found on the FAA project site located here.Environmental AssessmentThe draft EA will be prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA; 42 United States Code 4321 et seq.), the Council on Environmental Quality Regulations for Implementing the Procedural Provisions of NEPA (40 Code of Federal Regulations Parts 1500–1508 [2020]), and FAA Order 1050.1F, Environmental Impacts: Policies and Procedures. The FAA is considering the preparation of a Programmatic EA for this effort.Concurrent with the NEPA process, the FAA will be initiating consultation required by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act to determine the potential effects of the FAA’s undertaking on historic properties. The FAA will also be consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act regarding potential effects to threatened and endangered species and critical habitat. Pursuant to the U.S. Department of Transportation Act of 1966, the environmental review will comply with the requirements of Section 4(f) of the Act.The alternatives under consideration include the proposed action and the no action alternative. Under the no action alternative, the FAA would not issue new licenses to SpaceX for any test or launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site. SpaceX could conduct missions of the Starship prototype launch vehicle as authorized by the current license (LRLO 20-119A). The license expires on May 27, 2022.Public CommentsThe FAA requests public comments on potential alternatives and impacts, and identification of any relevant information, studies, or analyses of any kind concerning impacts affecting the quality of the human environment. The FAA is considering the preparation of a Programmatic EA for this effort. Please include any comments on the preparation of a Programmatic EA. Please submit comments by January 22, 2020 to the following email address: [email protected]. Before including your address, phone number, e-mail address, or other personal identifying information in your comment, be advised that your entire comment—including your personal identifying information—may be made publicly available at any time. While you can ask us in your comment to withhold from public review your personal identifying information, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so.Stacey M. ZeeOffice of Commercial Space TransportationFederal Aviation Administration

No of course not. But I wouldn’t be permitted to do it even if I wanted to. Viruses aren’t the concern but microbes are. Not only that, Earth is protected by many laws. You would not be permitted to do this. Naturally enough - after all we don’t want to risk returning anything from Mars that could be harmful to humans or to the environment of Earth.If you think extraterrestrial life is bound to be harmless, think to yourself - what if half the microbes on Earth had mirror DNA or used different amino acids, or maybe didn’t even have proteins or carbohydrates? Those are all theoretical possibilities. When Earth life is the only life we know of in the entire universe, we have no way to know if they are actual realities that we may find on Mars. Mirror DNA is particularly simple - reflect a cell in a mirror and it should work, but all the chemicals in their mirror forms (most of which are incompatible with Earth biochemistry).Would our ecosystems and the creatures and plants in them still manage just fine? Would you be just fine if half the microbes on your skin and in your stomach were mirror DNA, or didn’t have proteins or carbohydrate or were not based on DNA?Well, perhaps, who knows, but it seems a bit unlikely that they would be “drop in” replacements for Earth microbes. So what happens to Earth if martian microbes did turn out to be different and spread out and evolved and adapted (as microbes do rapidly) and ended up in all our ecosystems?No, we do have to protect Earth at least until we know what we are returning.And we will, for sure. We have many environmental laws. These would all be triggered by the initial Environmental Impact Assessment. Everyone has to do those, inclidng private space before they launch any mission into space. And they should want to do these too.These are not laws you can get around. They absolutely have to do them. There is no way that anything can be transferred from Mars to Earth from any source, no matter who does it, until it is cleared as totally safe for Earth’s environment.- there may well be microbes on Mars. Here are some of the news stories of the last decade all about possibilities of microbes on or near the surface, within the top few cms or mms.News coverage of potential present day habitats of life on MarsThis is one of the most recent - about the possibility that some of these habitats could even be oxygen rich:Sponges on Mars? We ask Stamenković about their oxygen-rich briny seeps modelI know this may seem science fiction. But Mars was a terrestrial planet like Earth in the early solar system. A world with oceans, atmosphere, volcanoes, hydothermal vents. Life evolved here so we have to consider the possibility that it evolved there. And if so it could have evolved indepdently from Earth life and that means it could be any concievable or even not yet concievable extraterrestrial biology.We should explore Mars from orbit first, via telepresence, and from Earth with our robots there, and find out if there is any life there on or near the surface before we even think about sending humans to the surface. We should also be very careful not to return any life from Mars to Earth accidentally. Not even as a bit of dust in a spacecraft flying back and forth. This is not me saying this. This is what the law will say once we go through that legal process. That is - until we know what is there.So - why do we need to do this?A virus is not possible as it has to be adapted to our biology and for a virus to jump from a martian microbe or lichen to a human would be incredible. But there are many other ways that martian microbes could harm us. Perhaps the easiest to understand, a disease of martian biofilms could infect the human lungs. That may seem incredible until you think about Legionnaires’ disease. It is not a disease of humans at all. It is just a disease of biofilms that is able to infect our lungs using the same methods it uses for biofilms. It has gradually started to adapt to human lungs but a martian microbe could do that too after it infects us.So could there be such organisms on Mars that are harmful to us? That was the subject of this study, lead by David Warmflash of the NASA Johnson Space Center: Assessing the biohazard potential of putative martian organisms for exploration class human space missions.First the authors look at the ways that Earth microbes harm us. They can beInfectious, causing damage only if they multiply inside the host - either invasive throughout the host or local in their effectToxic - hazardous components of the cells, or the products of their metabolism may harm other organisms incidentally - not targeted at us but still can kill us.Those two categories are not exclusive - an infectious organism might also produce toxic byproducts.Now, most microbes on Earth are absolutely harmless to humans. They may live on our skin, and even if not at all adapted to us, they cause us no harm at all - unless of course you have a wound and they get inside the wound. Our bodies are well able to cope with them.However, there are a few that are harmful to us, and those are not necessarily adapted to humans or even to macro organisms. One of the best known diseases of this type is Legionnaire's disease. Normally it lives inside amoebas, inside the cellular fluid. However, it can also live independently without any host in biofilms. Yet it can also live inside the lungs of human beings. It uses the same adaptations that let it live inside a biofilm, or an amoeba, to live inside our lungs.This could easily be duplicated on Mars. A similar organism could survive in a biofilm on Mars just as Legionnaire's disease does on Earth. Or it could survive inside a single cell larger microbe on Mars. All that it needs to be a potential risk to humans is to live naturally in an environment similar to what it might encounter later in a human host. As they say in the paper:"The causative bacterium, Legionella pneumophila, is a facultative, gram-negative rod that is one of several human pathogens now known to be carried in the intracellular environments of protozoan hosts. Additionally, L. pneumophila can also persist, even outside of any host, as part of biofilms. In essence, all that a potentially infectious human pathogen needs in order to emerge and persist in an environment is to grow and live naturally under conditions that are similar to those that it might later encounter in a human host. On Mars, these conditions might be met in a particular niche within the extracellular environment of a biofilm, or within the intracellular environment of another single-celled Martian organism.".Next, they give an example of an organism that produces a toxin. Their example is the anaerobe Clostridia, which often lives as spores in soils. Some of its species are locally infectious in wounds. and can release life threatening toxins at times, including C. tetani which causes Tetanus, and C. perfringens.As another example, they mention another species of Clostridia, botulinum, contaminates food stored in anaerobic conditions, which releases a toxin that interferes with the way our nerves work. This microbe can lead to the fatal paralysis of Botulism when ingested. Of course it is not adapted in any way to paralyse humans - there is no evolutionary advantage in that. This is just a byproduct of its metabolism that happens to be harmful to hum ans. So the same could be true for Mars microbes, they might produce byproducts that happen to interfere with our metabolism in ways that harm us.Photomicrograph of Clostridium botulinum bacteria. Though it is not adapted to humans, it produces a toxin which coincidentally is a nerve toxin which causes the rare but serious Botulism disease. This toxin is paralysing if ingested, and can be fatal. This is one way in which Mars microbes could be harmful to humans directlyAnother example is Clavicepts purpurea which produces ergot disease, in crops. When humans eat those diseased crops, it can lead to limb loss, convulsions and hallucinations, and again there is of course no evolutionary advantage in this for the microbe. There is no need for the Mars life to be related to us in any way for it to produce coincidentally toxic substances like this.Here is another example of my own to add to the list. Aspergilliosis, a frequent cause of hay fever in humans. It's a fungus which is capable of surviving in extreme conditions. For most people, it's no trouble at all. For others it's a minor nuisance. It's not adapted to be virulent, and is normally easily kept out by our immune system, However, it can be harmful and even deadly to people with a damaged immune system.It seems an interesting example, seems to me because of Joshua Lederberg's "On the other hand, microorganisms make little besides proteins and carbohydrates, and the human or other mammalian immune systems typically respond to peptides or carbohydrates produced by invading pathogens." which I mentioned above in Why we can't prove yet that Mars life is safe for Earth and his .If some microbe from Mars for some reason is able to adapt to survive in our lungs, and if it is only remotely related to Earth life, our immune system might not recognize it as harmful. If so, we might all respond as if we had damaged immune systems, like the patients who die from Aspergilliosis. So perhaps this may give us an idea of what to expect.Another example comes from Chris Chyba: cyanobacteria killing cattleLake Eyrie in October 2011 during its worst cyanobacteria bloom for a long time. The cyanobacteria produced microcystins which is a liver toxin and can cause sudden death in cattle within hours, also often kills dogs swimming in the water and is a skin irritant for people.As Chrys Chyba summarizes the situation in his abstract:"It is unlikely that these cyanobacteria evolved the toxins in response to dairy cows; rather the susceptibility of cattle to these toxins seems simply to be an unfortunate coincidence of a toxin working across a large evolutionary distance"This is of no advantage at all to the cyanobacteria. Cows are neither predators on them, nor do they eat cows. It's just a coincidence that they happen to produce a chemical that is toxic over a very wide evolutionary distance.In the same paper he gives the example of Serratia marcenscens, a bacterium which is found in water and soil, as a free living microbe - and is an "opportunist pathogen" of animal species as widely diverse as humans and elkhorn coral.This sort of "poisoning by coincidence" is quite common, and you may be able to think of many more examples for yourself.For instance, cocoa plants produce theobromine which kills dogs if they eat too much chocolate. The cocoa plant doesn't need to defend itself against dogs. Cyanobacteria also produce BMAA which is implicated in Alzheimer's. Again there is no advantage to the cyanobacteria to give humans Alzheimer's. It is just a chemical that happens to resemble one of the amino acids L-serine, and so gets misincorporated into proteins causing Alzheimer's. Even life that is based on a different biochemistry from Earth might easily, through near coincidence, produce chemicals that Earth life misincorporates in this way.So, in the same way microbes from Mars could quite easily produce deadly toxins for Earth life and would not need to be adapted to us in any way at all to do that.Now, the worst case is actually if it is an unrelated biology. Not even DNA maybe. Mirror DNA, maybe it uses different amino acids. Maybe it has no carbohydrates and no proteins - after all according to some theories the earliest microbes didn’t have those things. Maybe martian life is like RNA world cells but evolved to incredible complexity and capabilities, with the encymes made up of RNA fragments as ribozymes in much smaller more compact cells.You might think “Oh but how can it infect us if it is so different?”.But then you might reflect “How would our body defend against it if it is so different?”Some microbes are “primary producers” and don’t depend on any other microbes for life. Some can make all their ingredients just from sunlight, air, water and a few trace chemicals.Our lungs, or sinuses, say, or our skin, would be like a petri dish of organics and the foreign life might find it indigestible or poisonous, but it might like it, or like some element of it. It might then start thriving.Joshua Lederberg was a Nobel winning microbiologist, and microbe geneticist, and closely involved in early searches for life on Mars, summarizes it like this (emphasis mine):"If Martian microorganisms ever make it here, will they be totally mystified and defeated by terrestrial metabolism, perhaps even before they challenge immune defenses? Or will they have a field day in light of our own total naivete in dealing with their “aggressins”?That’s in his "Paradoxes of the Host-Parasite Relationship"And in more detail in Parasites Face a Perpetual Dilemma:"Whether a microorganism from Mars exists and could attack us is more conjectural. If so, it might be a zoonosis to beat all others.[a zoonosis is a disease that can be transferred to humans from animals - but here he also means from microbes, though if there is oxygen in the water on Mars it could also have tiny primitive animals there]"On the one hand, how could microbes from Mars be pathogenic for hosts on Earth when so many subtle adaptations are needed for any new organisms to come into a host and cause disease? On the other hand, microorganisms make little besides proteins and carbohydrates, and the human or other mammalian immune systems typically respond to peptides or carbohydrates produced by invading pathogens. Thus, although the hypothetical parasite from Mars is not adapted to live in a host from Earth, our immune systems are not equipped to cope with totally alien parasites: a conceptual impasse."So, he is saying that our immune system and defenses are keyed to various chemicals produced by Earth life. such as peptides and carbohydrates. It's entirely possible that Mars life doesn’t use those chemicals at all.Of course our antibiotics would do nothing to stop them.For all we know a martian microbe might kill the first astronauts to land on Mars as soon as they find its habitat there.As for returning to Earth, I don’t think the worst case is end of humanity with this scenario - maybe was in the 1960s but not now with modern technology. But it is having to live in plastic bubble shelters for the rest of our civilization to keep out invasive microbes harmful to human health that are now ineradically part of the world’s ecosystems. Having to always wear hazmat suits when you leave your habitat and never swim in the open sea, or lakes, only in carefully sterilized swimming pools etc.Knowing that this is a possibility we won’t let anyone risk that. It was possible at the time of Apollo when we were much less careful and hadn’t had the experience of things going wrong with modern technology that we have had since then. But it is no longer permitted.. We can’t return a sample either without first ensuring it is safe for Earth and that includes even a bit of dust that gets into a spaceship shuttling back and forth between Earth and Mars.I am not talking about personal opinion here but strict legal processes. It all starts with an Environmental Impact Statement in the US, which everyone has to do including private space. Normally it is a bit of a nuisance but not much more than a formality though it may take some years.But for a Mars sample return that would spawn numerous other legal processes including examining its effects on ecosystems, agriculture, human health, etc. EvenMargaret Race did a legal analysis and the number of things that would have to be sorted out is just incredible. This is assuming you don’t know what is in the sample and that it could be any concievable form of extraterrestrial biology and even things we don’t know yet how to imagine.Then there are many sample return studies by the European Space foundation and the National Research Council and others that all conclude we have to protect Earth. When asked to give expert witness in legal proceedings these authors will all say that we have to protect our planet from martian microbes. There is no possibility of them saying anything else if you read the literature on the subject.More details here:Protecting Earth's Environment For A Mars Sample Return - Has NASA Started The Legal Process Yet?Some colonization enthusiasts think that they would be able to return material from Mars to Earth just by saying to everyone that it is safe. But it doesn’t work like that.It did used to. They are so familiar with the way it worked for Apollo that it is no surprise if unreflectingly they expect it to happen like that again.Back in 1967 we could have returned a sample from Mars to Earth and so long as we didn’t think it was likely to be dangerous, then it would be like the Moon sample return which is now considered woefully inadequate.With the Moon they didn’t even publish the regulations until the day of the launch. It was not a proper law either. It is not even certain that what hey did was legal by the standards of the day — but there wasn’t any scrutiny of its legality. It just all seems so amazingly haphazard by modern standards. I was a child back then, watched the Apollo landing with great excitement - and I never noticed gave it any thought when the astronauts were taken out of the capsule in an open dinghy. They wore decontamination suits, but to put them on, the divers had to throw them in through the capsule door. The inside was covered in dust which smelt like gunpowder, so for sure some dust got into the sea just by opening the door. Then they wiped them with permanganate wipes and threw the wipes into the sea - they had no idea!(You can read about all this in “When Biospheres Collide”, a history of the NASA planetary protection)There were many breaches of containment. Amusingly, Buzz Aldrin has an anecdote in his biography of how ants crawled into the quarantine facilities while he and Neil Armstrong were staying for two weeks after return from the Moon. But that was just one of numerous breaches.All this simply would not be permitted today. Indeed, NASA are going to send a sample caching rover to Mars this very year, 2020. They hope to return the sample in a follow up mission they have not yet built that they will start work on only after this one has headed off for Mars. They have not yet started on the legal processes as far as I can see.Well - the legal processes would likely take at least until 2040 to complete by my best estimates. Quite possibly a decade or more longer - that is if they plan to return an unsterilized sample that may have alien microbes in it and if they have no idea what type of biology may be involved. This all starts with an Environmental Impact Assessment which is normally a reasonably straightforward but tedious process. For example, Cassini couldn’t launch until its radioisotope was cleared. NASA needed formal approval from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)NASA Receives Approval to Launch Cassini MissionThat approval is required by presidential directive.“Before Administrator Goldin sent the request for launch approval to OSTP, two separate processes were completed to address the environmental and safety aspects of the mission. NASA completed an Environmental Impact Statement in June 1995 and a supplement in June 1997, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act and NASA policy. “The same thing applies to any mission which carries a radioisotop source. We know how to contian them safely but it still needs to go through the process of an EIS. Mars 2020 has to go through the same process. No public hysteria this time AFAIK but still had to have an EIS before they could approve the launch. Final Environmental Impact Statement for Mars 2020.This is nothing to do with it being a NASA mission. If SpaceX want to launch a radioisotope heat source to space too, they have to go through the same process.But Margaret Race looked at the implications of doing one of those for a Mars sample return in her legal review paper for a robotic sample return (Planetary Protection, Legal Ambiguity, and the Decision Making Process for Mars Sample Return).It is just incredible how much is involved. I don’t think NASA have a clue - I don’t know why but I have asked many people if they know of anything they have done on this and done literature surveys and I have posted articles on my blog about it and not found even as much as a summary paragraph of how they plan to tackle the legal situation for a Mars sample return or how they plan to complete it in less than several decades.This is my short summary of what is needed based on her paperShe found that under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (which did not exist in the Apollo era) a formal environment impact statement is likely to be required, and public hearings during which all the issues would be aired openly. This process is likely to take up to several years to complete.During this process, she found, the full range of worst accident scenarios, impact, and project alternatives would be played out in the public arena. Other agencies such as the Environment Protection Agency, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, etc, may also get involved in the decision making process.The laws on quarantine will also need to be clarified as the regulations for the Apollo program were rescinded. In the Apollo era, NASA delayed announcement of its quarantine regulations until the day Apollo was launched, so bypassing the requirement for public debate - something that would be unlikely to be tolerated today.It is also probable that the presidential directive NSC-25 will apply which requires a review of large scale alleged effects on the environment and is carried out subsequent to the other domestic reviews and through a long process, leads eventually to presidential approval of the launch.Then apart from those domestic legal hurdles, there are numerous international regulations and treaties to be negotiated in the case of a Mars Sample Return, especially those relating to environmental protection and health. She concluded that the public of necessity has a significant role to play in the development of the policies governing Mars Sample ReturnProtecting Earth's Environment For A Mars Sample Return - Has NASA Started The Legal Process Yet?To add to all that though you need to look at the likely requirements for a Mars sampel return handling facility. The problem is it has to contain any concievable microbiology based on any form of biology - mirror DNA, RNA world, any amino acids, maybe something we haven’t even imagined yet would work as a basis for life processes.When you add up the timescale for everything - if they start the legal process this year, there is no way they can complete it before 2040 and it could easily take a decade or two longer. I think once NASA realize this, and given that they want it back by the early 2030s at the latest, they will just arrange to sterilize the sample before returning it. There are alternatives but that is the easiest and lowest cost way to do it and can be done without triggering any of our environmental laws. If they find life there first, maybe they return it to above GEO. The ISS would not count as safe because it doesn’t break the chain of contact between Earth and Mars.ANSWERING SOME OBJECTIONSWouldn’t Mars life have got here already?Not too likely. Our meteorites come from at least a couple of meters below the surface. The martian life would most likely be in fragile surface habitats of dust and ice that would not be knocked into space by most meteorites. There are many other difficulties including a shock of ejection that would kill most Earth microbes including just about all known photosythetic life. Some microbes could survive the transition but it is not clear that any have - and we are talking about capabilities of unknown microbes of an unknown biology here, not Earth life.We simply don’t know but it may never have happened even in the early solar system.Isn’t Earth uninhabitable for Earth life with its warmth and oxygen?No. First, the surface is highly oxygenated with perchlorates and with hydrogen peroxide and the characteristically red rusts covering the surface. There is some oxygen in the atmosphere as well. Martian life would not be put off by Earth’s oxygen. Also it has had hydrothermal vents in the past and still may have them not yet detected, perhaps in caves. It might have acid sulfur caves below the surface. Microbes in the dust may well retain capabilities to survive in hot conditions as well as acid conditions such as human stomachs. Or if not could evolve these capabilities. Itis not clear that any niche on Earth is off-limit from spores of microbes that may exist in the Martian dust, likely in small numbers but they could be protected from UV by the iron oxides and imbedded in cracks in dust grains. That is an idea Carl Sagen suggested which is still not ruled out.What about places without life?This wouldn’t matter if Mars was sterile like the Moon. Go to the Moon or an asteroid or even the moons of Mars, no problem. Those are the natural places to go, too.Mars is such an incredibly dangerous place to go early on. Imagine this - you have just left Earth orbit, Earth is receding behind you, and then you get a chemical leak. Or a fire. Or a small meteorite pierces your spaceship. Or an explosion like the one for Apollo 13.This is not fiction. The ISS has had numerous small incidents. Sometimes our spacecraft that we launch into space have glitches. None of this matters because if needs be we know we can abort back to earth.But - imagine you are just leaving Earth orbit and you get an explosion. Vital equipment is destroyed. You now have to try to do a McIver type solution with sticky tape and cardboard, maybe, to keep it together, much like the astronauts did for Apollo 13, but this time your solution has to last 500 days. Not just a week. That is how long it takes to get back to Earth via Mars on the shortest path, after you leave Earth orbit.The retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, former commander of the ISS, interviewed by New Scientist, put it like this in their article "We should live on the moon before a trip to Mars""I think ultimately we’ll be living on the moon for a generation before we get to Mars. If the world and the moon were threatened and the only way to preserve our species was to launch from Earth, we could go to Mars with yesterday’s technology, but we would probably kill just about everybody on the way.""It’s as if you and I were in Paris, paddling around in the Seine in little canoes saying, 'We’ve got boats, we’ve got paddles, let’s go to Australia!' Australia? We can barely cross the English Channel. We’re sort of in that boat in space exploration right now. A journey to Mars is conceivable but it’s still a lot further away than most people think."The Moon is not only safer, it's also a natural place to begin to develop reliable technology for multi-year missions throughout the solar system. If we can achieve that then the cost of human missions to the Moon will go down dramatically to a fraction of the normal cost. Imagine what a cost saving it would be if we could send a crew to the Moon for two years with no resupply from Earth, as if it was an interplanetary mission to Mars? We need these shake out cruises close to Earth first.Once we have biological closed systems working on the Moon, then missions throughout our solar system that last for a decade or more could be as easy to support as ones that last for a couple of years or less. Once we have that capability, we can go to Venus, Mars and beyond, even to Mercury, the asteroids and Jupiter's Callisto, with no worry about narrow safety margins.Or whatever we do, we can do shake down cruises in the Earth Moon system to make sure everything is working well before we send the crew on their interplanetary missions, to Mars, or Venus so far from help from Earth, or any possibility of aborting back to Earth.Protecting Earth's Environment For A Mars Sample Return - Has NASA Started The Legal Process Yet?My draft paper that I hope to publish some day on this topic (encouraged by an astrobiologist friend), probably only a selection from it:Potential Severe Effects of a Biosphere Collision and Planetary Protection ImplicationsMy encyclopedia based on importing articles from Wikipedia and then adding the new research - they don’t cover any of the recent news stories about potential habitats for life on Mars and much of it seems to be about a decade out of date:Astrobiology EncyclopediaAnd my online book on planetary protection - as far as I know only the second complete book on the subject (the first is “When Biospheres Collide”, a history of the NASA planetary protection)OK to Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps?Then - as I said the Moon is the natural place to go first - not only that - I was astonished to find it is actually more habitable to humans than Mars - at least for the first few tens of thousands of settlers. For instance the vacuum is an asset, better than the best vacuum of any chip factory on Earth, great for making chips and solar panels. The CO2 on Mars is not much benefit - CO2 is a waste gas to get rid of unless you export more food than you import and if you have a reasonably closed system. The thin atmosphere on Mars means that as you walk around on the surface, great clouds of dust would rise and stay suspended in the air - on the Moon the astronauts got filthy with the dust too, but at least when kicked, the dust just flew up in little parabolas and back down again and couldn’t get suspended in the air.The Moon also has potential for commercial exports of various types to Earth. So far the only thing Elon Musk has suggested Mars could export to Earth is intellectual property rights from the inventions they make there (physical exports would be so expensive to return they would not pay for the transport)Have a look at the comparisons in my book and see what you think:Case For Moon FirstThen - once we go furhter afield - the best place for humans in the Jupiter system is not Europa (of course you don’t want to bring Earth microbes there until you know if there is native life and what Earth life does to it) - it is Callisto. Orbiting well outside the dangerous radiation belts that kill humans in hours unprotected on the Europan surface. It turns out to be one of the most habitable moons of the solar system for humans - that is - unless you include Saturn’s moon Titan which surely wins the prize, to find out why see myValue Of Titan As Base For Humans In Saturn System - Surprisingly - Once There - Easier For Settlement Than Mars Or The Moon(also covers Callisto)Eventually humans may transform the asteroid belt into space habitats and perhaps right out to the Oort cloud. The potential here in terms of human habitable area is absolutely vast. Trillions just in the asteroid belt alone, using the asteroids to construct habitats slowly spinning for gravity.Asteroid Resources Could Create Space Habs For Trillions; Land Area Of A Thousand EarthsI actually think we need to be more careful the other way around, to make sure that we explore the galaxy in a way that is sustainable and protects the galaxy both for the sake of other creatures and ourselves.Our pale blue dot - any other home for us in our universe?

We can learn something yes, but we do this much better with in situ missions on Mars. Even though NASA and ESA have prioritized a sample return mission - there are many papers by astrobiologists saying that we need to prioritize in situ missions. See myAstrobiologists advocating strongly for an in situ search on Mars firstThey warn that we are likely to return samples as ambigious for their discipline as the martian meteorites we already have, and that it won’t help to resolve the central questions in their field. However NASA and ESA aren’t listening.NASA is launching a mission to cache samples on Mars in a few days time, and ESA are preparing a mission to go to Mars to collect them in 2028Revealed: How a spacecraft will bring Mars rocks to EarthEurope to Mars – and back!However these missions are not designed to answer the central questions about whether Mars had past life or has present day life. For past life, it can’t drill deep enough to find ancient life - surface deposits of organics won’t have survived billions of years of the ionizing radiation.For present day life, it can’t distinguish between living microbes and the organics from comets and micrometeorites which hit the Martan surface in vast quantities.These missions also will have to be designed to protect Earth. Once they realize that they can’t return an unsterilized sample by their target date of 2031, I am pretty sure they will just sterilize it and return a sterilized sample. It’s not likely to have life in it anyway.Ironically, with Curiosity’s discovery of the brines below the surface in 2015, there just possibly may be life in the dust just below the wheels of the rover as it travels over the sand dunes. Some think that Viking found life in the 1970s. It will not answer these questions as it is not equipped to be able to scoop up a sample of this material, just 2 cms below the surface, to search for this life.I have more hopes for the ESA in situ rover Rosalind Franklin. But it is not equipped to be able to test for life in an unambiguous way either, sadly. Unless it is exceedingly lucky, at most it likely finds tantalizing hints.However it can drill to a depth of 2 meters a capability that Perseverance doesn’t have. NASA’s Perseverance is designed to drill into rock, a few cms depth. It is just about certain to find organics since Curiosity found organics, but seems unlikely to find life, even if there is life there a few cms into the sand dunes or ancient life buried and preserved a couple of meters below the surface.CAN’T RETURN ENOUGH SAMPLES TO SEARCH FOR LIFEThe problem with missions like this is that the amount of material you can return from Mars with a mission like this is limited. Very limited, less than a kilogram total.Most think that life on Mars will be hard to find, elusive. We may have to drill in many different spots below the surface, or drive around on the surface until it is found.However what makes this worse is that we already know there are organics on Mars, both from our meteorites and from our rovers in situ. The problem is that most of the surface organics probably comes from micrometeorite, meteorite and comet infall.Detail from the drilling which provided Curiosity's first detection of organics. The organics seem to come from meteorites.Organics doesn't normally mean life on Mars, as many meteorites have organics in them and the main puzzle for Mars is to understand why it has so little organics. It should have a lot more and there is some process actively destroying it.A 1990 paper predicted that between 2% and 27% of the Martian soil would be contributed by meteorites, of which 1% to 10% typically is organics. According to calculations, if there was no degradation of the organics, Mars should have 60 ppm of organics from organics deposited into the regolith, averaged over its entire surface to a depth of a hundred meters (see page 10 of this paper)..I discuss this in Organics created on Mars by non life processes in my Touch Mars? book.So, how do you tell the difference between organics from comets and micrometeorites, and organics from life? The answer is you need to search for life in situ- send instruments to Mars that are able to tell the difference.Past life also may be hard to find, only present in some of the many layers that you find when you drill at least 2 meters below the surface. The ionizing radiation is only moderately sterilizing over century timescales, similar to the interior of the ISS. But over billions of years, back to the time when Mars was more habitable, surface organics would be completely destroyed.Only half the amino acids are destroyed on the surface in 65 million years but it’s an exponential process. In 130 million years then only an eighth are left, after 215 million years, only a sixteenth and so on.Every 650 million years you get a 1,000 fold reduction in the numbers of small organic molecules such as amino acids on the surface because of cosmic radiation. It degrades the organics to water vapour, methane, carbon dioxide etc, leaving nothing but volatiles.Since it's an exponential process, that's a million fold reduction every 1.3 billion years. It becomes a trillion fold reduction after 2.6 billion years and so on.It would take only a very lucky accident to find traces of past life on Mars, unless you can drill at least two meters. It’s not likely that Perseverance, the rover that NASA is about to send to Mars, finds past life, unless it was exposed to the surface recently, within a few million years.IF VIKING FOUND LIFE IN THE 1970S THEN IT MAY BE EASY TO RETURN A SAMPLENow, if there is present day life almost everywhere on Mars, you could have a simple mission, grab a bunch of soil and return it and you are done. You will have at least some life in it.Some think there could be life in the equatorial regions and that the Viking mission already found it. If so, you just need to dig a couple of cms and find the life, and there may be spores in the dust on the surface.At least, you would find this life if you do return the dust. AFAIK the Perseverance rover is not going to cache any dust except by accident and for sure it is not going to dig even a few cms below the surface like Viking did, as it doesn’t have that capability.MARS SURFACE MARGINALLY HABITABLEEven if Mars does have present day life almost everywhere, it is probably only marginally habitable. The two Viking landers could be lucky, or we could send one that is unlucky.In extreme habitats like that on Earth, the life tends to be patchy. You have apparently identical sites, but maybe some small difference in humidity / or temperature or just chance, there is life here, and 10 cms to the right then there isn’t life.So, even if there is life almost everywhere, you still need life detection instruments of some sort to detect the life in order to be sure to return it and distinguish it from the infall of organics from comets.ORGANICS FROM MARTIAN ASTEROIDS CLOSELY RESEMBLE LIFEThose organics often resemble the organics from life. For instance we have several martian meteorites and some of them like the Tissint meteorite have organics in them that we would return as top priority, Curiosity or Endurance (it’s successor) would not be able to distinguish these organics from life.This is why astrobiologists say we need to search for life in situ on Mars first. If we just go and grab organics, searchign only for organics and not life, we are likely to return something like this:They found organics, but not just any old organics. It also had a much lower ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12 than the present day Mars atmosphere. (Original paper here). Here carbon 12 is the light stable isotope of carbon which gets taken up preferentially by biological processes through kinetic fractionation.What's more, the difference between those two ratios was similar to the difference between the ratio for a piece of coal (biological in origin of course) and our atmosphere.For sure those would be top priority to return, yet, nobody knows yet if they were caused by life. The problem is that inorganic processes can also sort out carbon isotopes in a similar way in rare situations - but often enough so it would not prove it is life on Mars.For more on this see myTissint meteorite from MarsSo, a sample return mission is likely to be confused by many false positives on Mars, returning things like that which, even if they were produced by life, will be as ambiguous to astrobiologists as the martian meteorites we already have.NO FAULT OF ASTROBIOLOGISTS - THEY HAVE WARNED THAT WE NEED TO SEARCH IN SITU FIRST FOR MANY YEARSIf this happens it is no fault of the astrobiologists. They have warned NASA mission planners for years that this mission is likely to yield ambiguous results for astrobiology, but they don’t get listened to. For some of the astrobiology papers saying we need to search in situ first see myAstrobiologists advocating strongly for an in situ search on Mars firstDecadal review white paper by Bada et al - sample return of "pristine" Mars meteorites is not worth the price of millions of dollars per gram - we need to search in situ with parts per trillion sensitivityMars samples would cost as much per gram as the world's most expensive diamondsDifficulty of keeping returned sample free of contamination from Earth - Mars 2020 will have a permitted 1 part per billion of Earth originated biosignaturesPaper by David Paige: "Mars Exploration Strategies: Forget About Sample Return!"Paper: "New priorities in the Robotic Exploration of Mars: The Case for In Situ Search for Extant Life""Priority 1: In situ search for extant life""Priority 2: In situ search for extinct life""Priority 3: Sample return"Decadal summing up doesn't discuss this issueAstrobiologists arguing strongly for an in situ search on Mars firstDecadal white paper by Bada et al - sample return of "pristine" Mars meteorites is not worth the price of millions of dollars per gram - we need to search in situDO HAVE INSTRUMENTS TO SEARCH IN SITUWe do have the instruments to search in situ too, especially now, marvelous things. Tiny “labs on a chip” using microfluidics to move samples around in a lab you could place on a fingernail, and entire end to end DNA sequencing in a device you could hold in one hand. I cover some of the instruments we could send to Mars here in my “Touch Mars:” free online book on planetary protection:In situ instrument capabilities (sections)Rapid non destructive preliminary samplingDetection of trace levels of organics and of chiralitySearch for life directly by checking for metabolic reactionsElectron microscopeOptical microscopy and Raman microscopyAtomic force microscopyUsing an optical microscope to watch microbes swimmingUsing an optical microscope to watch fluorescing microbesNear field scanning optical microscopyBeyond the diffraction limit with expansion microscopy (physically expand a cell to make it easier to study) and other forms of superresolution microscopyDirect search for DNABut this is not the way NASA and ESA are doing it.For instance the Perseverance rover that NASA is about to launch to Mars is going to be drilling into rocks to get its samples. The mission is designed by and for geologists who always are interested in rocks. All its samples will be from rocks. Not likely to return either past or present day life though it will tell us a lot about past and present day conditions on Mars, give us more information about whether it is or was habitable. But we already know it was habitable and likely is in places today.If there is indeed life below the surface just cms below the sand dunes we could be in the ironic situation where Persverance is driving over dunes with martian life in them, oblivious as it homes in on various rocks of geological interest to drill into them to return samples to Earth to search for life.CURIOSITY BRINESBack on 2015, Curiosity discovered brines, indirectly, that form just cms below the surface of sand dunes as it drives over them.This was a serendipitous discovery announced in April 2015. Liquid brines that form through deliquescing salts (perchlorates) - the salts take in water from the atmosphere (same principle as the salts you use to keep equipment dry).They noticed that when Curiosity drives over sand dunes, then the air above them is drier than it is normally. When it leaves the sandy areas the humidity increases.Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) on NASA's Curiosity Mars roverIt’s temperature and humidity sensors are located on these booms on the rover’s mastNASA Mars Rover's Weather Data Bolster Case for BrineThis shows that something in the sand dunes is taking up water vapour from the air, and rather a lot of it too. They calculated that the perchlorates in the sand must take up so much water at night that the liquid brines would be habitable, except that they are too cold for Earth life. This shows how it works:Also though these brines are too cold for life at night, in the day time they warm up, and they become warm enough but dry out - then reform in the night by taking water from the humid atmosphere (Mars atmosphere is close to 100% humidity at night, very little water but the atmosphere is so cold that it can’t take up much at night)I talk about all that in more detail hereCuriosity brinesVIKING LABELED RELEASEThe Viking missions also got interesting results for the Viking labeled release, when they scraped some dust from below the surface and tried to incubate them. The problem was that the instruments they sent got confused by the perchlorates in the dust, which nobody predicted. It would have been able to find life unambiguously on Earth but on Mars the other instruments couldn’t confirm it.To this day some think they discovered life indeed a recent re-analysis found evidence of circadian rhythms offset from the temperature fluctuations that are far enough away to be impossible to explain by usual chemical processes.Some of the 1970s labeled release results are puzzling for life. However other results are just as puzzling for the non life explanations. Also, there's been some renewed interest after another researcher re-analysed the old Viking data and spotted patterns characteristics of circadian rhythms (metabolic cycles) significantly offset from the temperature variations, by two hours. This is especially hard to achieve through complex chemistry without life, which could only explain a 20 minute delay.Patterns characteristic of circadian rhythms in the Viking labeled release data. The interesting thing is that they are significantly offset from the temperature variations, which to an expert on circadian rhythms who spotted this, strongly suggested life rather than non life processes. More on this in the section Rhythms from Martian sands - what if Viking detected life? (below) and followingSo anyway we now have a sample return mission. Perseverance is launching to Mars in a few days to go drilling and caching samples. ESA are going to do a follow up mission to return those samples to Earth.Or will they? This takes us to another advantage of searching in situ. It is far easier to protect Earth indeed, there is no possibility of any risk to Earth’s environment from in situ study of life on Mars.Also if we find life on Mars and study it there first, then we know what it is before we return it.LEGAL ISSUES WITH A SAMPLE RETURN?I still haven't seen anything anywhere about the legal process of a Mars sample return.Earth is well protected by numerous environmental laws that didn't exist in the time of Apollo. So for sure they will have to do a safe sample return.But ESA and NASA are aiming to launch a mission to pick up samples by 2028. That's just not possible within the limits of the studies on the receiving facility and the legal process so far.TIME TO CONSTRUCT THE SAMPLE RETURN FACILITY AND GET IT READY FOR USE - AT LEAST 12 YEARSIf you go by the Space Studies Board study of 2009, the most recent study to look at a timescale - they say that planning, design, site selection, environmental reviews, approvals, constrcution, commissioning and pre-testing needs to be done 7 to 10 years before operations begin. Then 5 to 6 years are needed for refinement and maturation of the procedures in the sample return facility.If this started today then that takes us to 2032 trhough to 2036 before the facility is ready and the sample return studies say the facility has to be ready before launch of the mission to return the samples.Text: Planning, construction of Sample Receiving Facility, pretesting etc 7-10 yearsIn addition, 5 to 6 years for refinement, and maturation of facilities for safely containing and handling samples (paraphrase)- Space Studies Board - 20097 Sample-Receiving Facility and Program OversightYou might wonder why they think so long a period as 5 to 6 years is needed for maturation of the facilities. This is because in the case of the Apollo sample receiving facility, there were many breaches of their protocol (which was also inadequate to protect Earth from any life in the lunar samples). This is covered in “When Biospheres Collide”.I haven't even seen any analysis by NASA or ESA of how they would build the receiving facility or any suggestions of what the timescale would be.MUCH MORE STRINGENT REQUIREMENTS ADDED IN 2012 BY THE EUROPEAN SPACE FOUNDATIONThe Space Studies Board study is from ten years ago, but the requirements on the facility have increased since then with the ESF study in 2012 as a result of research into the possibility of cells that are much smaller than Earth cells with hypothetical extraterrrestrial biology, and as a result of the discovery of how easy it is for capabilities to be transferred to unrelated microbes via gene transfer agents.Since ESA is part of the collaboration then this applies for sure.The new requirements go well beyond the diffraction limited optical resolution limit of 0.2 microns.The resolution of the best optical microscope is 200 nm. So this is a quarter of the size of the smallest particle you can see in a microscope. It’s unlikely that the requirements for any future Mars Sample Receiving Facility would be less stringent than this.The probability that a single unsterilized particle of 0.01 µm diameter or greater is released into the Earth’s enviroment shall be less than 1 in a million.[if this requirement is too stringent then it needs expert review]The release of a single unsterilised particle larger than 0.05 µm is not acceptable under any circumstanceThe ESF study says the situation needs to be reviewed with new understandingThey added a caution that it is likely that minimum size limits for viruses and GTAs or free living organisms will reduce further in the future. They thought it unlikely that there will be another reduction in size limits as major as this (from 250 nm to 50 nm). However they said that that possibility also can't be completely ruled out.Section 3.7:Based on our current knowledge and techniques (especially genomics), one can assume that if the expected minimum size for viruses, GTAs or freeliving microorganisms decreases in the future, and this is indeed possible, it will be at a slower pace than over the past 15 years.However, no one can disregard the possibility that future discoveries of new agents, entities and mechanisms may shatter our current understanding on minimum size for biological entities.As a consequence, it is recommended that the size requirement as presented above is reviewed and reconsidered on a regular basis.For sure these limits need a review, eight years later. A systematic review is needed in case there is some relevant research since then that suggests the possibility of a smaller size of cell, especially of one based on a different biochemistry not based on DNA.For more details see myMars Sample Receiving Facility and sample containmentFor the study itself seeESA Mars Sample Return Study (2012)LEGAL PROCESS - LIKELY AT LEAST A DECADEThen, they haven't started the legal process which would at least several years and I can't see it as taking less than a decade. If it was just the Outer Space Treaty it would be quite a short process but as a sample return mission, this will involve numerous laws to protect Earth's environment and international treaties that didn't exist at the time of Apollo. I am going by Margaret Race’s legal analysis inPlanetary Protection, legal ambiguity and the decision making process for Mars sample return.I have often asked around and nobody knows anything about any legal analysis of how they will do it.There are many environmental and health and safety laws to protect Earth that didn't exist at the time of Apollo. They can't ignore them.They have to go through due process and it is hard to see this taking less than a decade to go through it in both the US and Europe, indeed to go through it in either country alone would likely take longer than that. It could easily take a lot longer when you look at what is involved.In principle they could start building the sample return facility in parallel with the legal process. However in practice neither ESA nor NASA are likely to commit the half billion dollars or so of funding for the facility until they are reasonably confident they know what the legal requirements will be.WHY WE DO NEED STRICT REGULATIONS TO PROTECT EARTH - EXAMPLE OF MIRROR LIFEWe rightly do have strict legislation to protect Earth too. Our ecosystems matter. Finding out about life on Mars is of great interest but few would prioritize that over protecting our own ecosystems.I like to use the example of mirror life. Astrobiologists vary in their views about how much extraterrestrial biology could differ from Earth life, with some thinking it could resemble it closely and some saying it could be very different.However I think everyone agrees that mirror life is physically and biologically possible. This is life with the DNA spiraling in the opposite direction and all the molecules including the amino acids similalry mirror images of their Earth counterparts.Ordinary life would not be able to eat mirror life and some chemicals have different effects on us if they are mirror reversed.So, would our ecosystems function in the same way if half the microbes in every ecosystem eventually was mirror life?I think few astrobiologists would have the confidence to say that replacing half the microbes by mirror life would leave the ecosystem unchanged. It seems unlikely. Also the effects would seem more likely to be adverse rather than beneficial.Yet if mirror life started to spread in our biosphere, at a microbial level, perhaps in the seas or lakes to start with, there would be no way to stop this.ANSWERS ARE NEEDED BEFORE AN UNRESTRICTED SAMPLE RETURNWhen you don't know what is in the sample you need answers to questions like this before returning it.If you can't say it is totally safe to do an unrestricted sample return you then need to go through the legal processes to check that our environments are safeguarded during a sample return.Lawyers and judges won't permit shortcuts for such an important process. The public will be involved too. These questions would be fully aired in the public and the mission planners will need answers to them.As far as I can tell they haven’t even started this process.For more about this see Margaret Race’s article. This is just a short extract from it.Text: Sample return missions could have significant impacts. Intense public debate likely. Formal impact statement could take several years and cover impacts, accident scenarios and project alternatives. Legal challenges can cause lengthy delays(paraphrase)This is my summary of what she says in a bit more detail:She found that under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) (which did not exist in the Apollo era) a formal environment impact statement is likely to be required, and public hearings during which all the issues would be aired openly. This process is likely to take up to several years to complete.During this process, she found, the full range of worst accident scenarios, impact, and project alternatives would be played out in the public arena. Other agencies such as the Environment Protection Agency, Occupational Health and Safety Administration, etc, may also get involved in the decision making process.The laws on quarantine will also need to be clarified as the regulations for the Apollo program were rescinded. In the Apollo era, NASA delayed announcement of its quarantine regulations until the day Apollo was launched, so bypassing the requirement for public debate - something that would be unlikely to be tolerated today.It is also probable that the presidential directive NSC-25 will apply which requires a review of large scale alleged effects on the environment and is carried out subsequent to the other domestic reviews and through a long process, leads eventually to presidential approval of the launch.Then apart from those domestic legal hurdles, there are numerous international regulations and treaties to be negotiated in the case of a Mars Sample Return, especially those relating to environmental protection and health. She concluded that the public of necessity has a significant role to play in the development of the policies governing Mars Sample ReturnYou can read it in detail here:Planetary Protection, legal ambiguity and the decision making process for Mars sample return.See also myMars Sample Return Legal Issues and International Public DebateLikely 2040 Before Mars Samples Returned Safely, Legally -Yet Not Likely To Return Life - Needs To Be Detected In Situ FirstSTERILIZING THE SAMPLE RETURNCan you see an alternative here to just sterilizing the sample?They would have to sterilize it before it contacts Earth’s biosphere.That could happen on Mars or during the journey back, or in orbit around Earth. Otherwise there is the potential of a chain of contact from the Mars surface to Earth’s biosphere, and the whole legal process and Mars receiving facility etc is triggered.A simple way to do this would be to take a gamma ray source on board the spaceship which could sterilize the sample during the six month journey back to Earth.A more complex approach would be to return an unsterilized sample to a high Earth orbit, say, above GEO and then use telerobotics to remove a fragment of the unsterilized sample and sterilize it before returning it to Earth. That would leave unsterilized material in orbit in case it is needed for remote study via telerobotics from Earth.All this would be possible within the Outer Space Treaty without triggering any of the legislation to protect the biosphere of Earth.COLLIDING BIOSPHERES - WOULD MARTIAN LIFE REALLY BE A RISK TO EARTH LIFE?Here I’d like to expand on those mirror life remarks and fill it out a bit more, about how yes, it is possible that life from Mars could be a risk to Earth ecosystems if we don’t take the right care to protect Earth. So I am glad we do have these legal processes in place. We need them.I have a preprint, registered with the Open Science Foundation. I hope some day to have the time to finish it and see if I can get it published with an astrobiology journal - encouraged by an astrobiologist friend (I’m not an astrobiologist myself, a mathematician, but I’ve had a long term interest and he thinks what I have to say can be of interest for publication).Meanwhile it’s here if you want to take a look at it:Potential Severe Effects of a Biosphere Collision and Planetary Protection ImplicationsCOLLIDING BIOSPHERES COULD BE BENEFICIALIf you are optijmistic, invasive martian life on Earth could be beneficial.Schlaepfer et al did a survey of invasive species and in their table 1 they find many non native species that are actually beneficial. Some were deliberately introduced for their value for conservation. Many of the best examples were introduced unintentionally. Here are some of their categories.Habitat, shelter, and food for native species (e.g. non native tamarisk as nesting sites for nesting birds, and non native plants in California for native butterflies to lay their eggs and for the caterpillars to feed).Catalysts for restoration - e.g. non native guava trees in Kenya support fruit eating birds and encourage seed dispersal leading to forest restorationEcosystem engineers - e.g. non-native sea squirts (ascidian) in intertidal waters in Chile creating three dimensional matrix that increases species richnessTaxon substitution - e.g. Aldabra giant tortoise replacing extinct Cylindraspis giant tortoise in the Mascarene island (this one was intentional)The potential conservation value of non‐native species.Perhaps non native life from Mars could benefit Earth ecosystems in some way. For instance, it could, help challenged ecosystems to take up nitrogen more efficiently for instance (nitrogen is rare in the Martian atmosphere and it is just on the verge of possible for Earth microbes to fix it at those pressures, for a survey of the literature, see my section Sources of nitrogen - essential for life on Mars , in Okay to Touch Mars?: or my Sources of nitrogen on Mars in my preprint Potential Severe Effects of a Biosphere Collision).But it could be harmful. First, what about the argument that it can’t survive on Earth?POSSIBILITY OF HAZARDOUS LIFE FOR HUMANS - MARS NOT RADICALLY DIFFERENT FOR MICROBESSometimes enthusiasts argue that martian life is not likely to be able to survive in human habitats because of the lack of oxygen, warmth etc. Robert Zubrin compares this with sharks trying to survive in the savannah.However, it’s not so different as it seems. The surface of Mars is highly oxygenated with perchlorates, hydrogen peroxide, a small amount of oxygen in the air and potentially significant amounts in the brines, according to the work of Vlada Stamenković. This is an interview I did via email with him:Sponges on Mars? We ask Stamenković about their oxygen-rich briny seeps modelAlso Earth is not likely to be too warm. Mars probably has hydrothermal vents, and so, at least some microbes that in the past have lived in very hot conditions and pre-adapted to live in such conditions. What’s more the surface is often well above zero degrees centigrade in the equatorial regions in daytime.Until we know more it’s reasonable to suppose that Martian life is able to survive on Earth. Also, after returning it to Earth then over a period of time, if it is able to compete on equal terms with Earth life, it can spread and adapt perhaps to all or most of our ecosystems.WOULD AN ECOSYSTEM WORK THE SAME WAY WITH HALF THE LIFE BASED ON A DIFFERENT BIOCHEMISTRY?There would also be risk of larger scale environmental disruption, even if the martian microbes are harmless to humans. As the National Research Council put it in 2009:The risks of environmental disruption resulting from the inadvertent contamination of Earth with putative martian microbes are still considered to be low. But since the risk cannot be demonstrated to be zero, due care and caution must be exercised in handling any martian materials returned to EarthAssessment of Planetary Protection Requirements for Mars Sample Return MissionsThese reports haven't gone into details of how the environment could be disrupted. To give some points to think over right away (I will come back to this later), would our ecosystems work the same way if eventually half the microbes in the soil, half the plankton in our oceans and half the microbes in the guts of animals and ourselves were mirror DNA, say, or PNA, or TNA, or had novel amino acids that Earth life doesn't use, or didn't use proteins, to give a few examples?How would Earth life respond to eating food with novel amino acids it never encountered before or with mirror versions of the amino acids it has already? What about accidental poisons, like the way that cyanobacteria can kill dogs and cows?This is especially so if the extraterrestrial microbes have a different biochemistry; they seem unlikely to be exact "drop in" replacements to terrestrial microbes. There would be changes in their composition and how they function. Microbes with their shorter lifespans would adapt relatively quickly, but higher lifeforms might find it a significant challenge.The legislators would not ignore arguments such as these. There would be extensive public debate, and Earth would be protected.Would an ecosystem work the same way if half the microbes are Earth originated and half are martian life? If the martian life is based on a different biochemistry? Perhaps with perchlorates used internally instead of chlorides, and producing different chemicals that make sense on Mars but are unfamiliar with Earth life?If it spread through Earth’s biospheres and most microbes in ecosystems became a mix of Earth and martian microbes, many or all higher life on Earth might not be adapted to coexist with these microbiomes with their alien chemistriesFor instance their cells might well incorporate perchlorates instead of salts and chemical signals and toxins from an alien biochemistry.Toxic algal blooms in the Great Lakes kill dogs and cows that eat them, so for sure, alien life could harm us if it spread through our ecosystems.HARMFUL TO HUMANS OR OUR BIOSPHEREThis life could be hazardous to humans or our biosphere. To take a simple example, legionnaires disease is an infection of biofilms that can use the same methods to infect human lungs, seeing it as a warm biofilm - it is not adapted to humans. Some strains of it are now adapting to our environments, spread by humans infected by it, but the same could happen with Martian life that invades the lungs of an astronaut.Astrobiologists say that though it is possible that Mars life could be mystified by an alien biochemistry, it’s also possible that it hasn’t evolved any resistance to it, never having encountered it before. Joshua Lederberg put it like this:"If Martian microorganisms ever make it here, will they be totally mystified and defeated by terrestrial metabolism, perhaps even before they challenge immune defenses? Or will they have a field day in light of our own total naivete in dealing with their “aggressins”?from: "Paradoxes of the Host-Parasite Relationship"Our lungs might offer no resistance, not even recognizing it as life as it munches away at them, and with a different biochemistry they would be likely to be naturally resistant to our antibiotics, which target particular processes of the pathogens.From the example of legionnaires’ disease it could be harmful to humans directly too. Amongst other points, antibiotics would be likely to do nothing to stop life based on an alien biochemistry. After all, Earth microbes evolve resistance by using alternatives to the particular cell processes targeted by the antibiotics. Alien life, if based on a different biochemistry, would likely already use different cell processes from the ones targeted by the antibiotics. Our medicines would most likely offer no or little protection to us.Also, there could be acidophiles on Mars as well. It’s likely to have acidic sulfate caves for instance. Martian life might perhaps be able to live in our guts too. Would our digestion system work the same way if half the microbes in our guts, eventually, originated on Mars?So, it could be harmless, yes, but there is a distinct possibility that we find life on Mars that is hazardous to humans. It is because of this possibility that we are required to check it is safe before returning any to Earth.CLAUDIOS GROS - IF WE ASSUME BIOLOGICAL DEFENCES ONLY EVOLVE IN THE PRESENCE OF AN ACTUAL THREAT NOT JUST A THEORETICAL POSSIBILITY OF A THREATThe physicist Claudius Gros briefly describes the potential results of a clash of biospheres in his "Genesis project" to develop ecospheres on transiently habitable planets (see section 4.2 Biosphere compatibilities of this paper). Here, he makes an interesting additional point. Generally our biology only evolves defense mechanisms for a threat which is actually present, not just one that is a theoretical possibility that the life has never encountered.If martian life is unrelated to Earth life, especially, then any threat it presents has so far only ever been a theoretical possibility as far as any Earth life is concerned.He is using this argument for Earth life introduced to a foreign extraterrestrial biosphere, but you can equally apply it the other way around for martian life returned to Earth."Here we presume, that general evolutionary principles hold. Namely, that biological defense mechanisms evolve only when the threat is actually present and not just a theoretical possibility. Under this assumption the outlook for two clashing complex biospheres becomes quite dire.""In the best case scenario the microbes of one of the biospheres will eat at first through the higher multicellular organism of the other biosphere. Primitive multicellular organism may however survive the onslaught through a strategy involving rapid reproduction and adaption. ... ""In the worst case scenario more or less all multicellular organism of the planet targeted for human settlement would be eradicated. The host planet would then be reduced to a microbial slush in a pre-cambrian state, with considerably prolonged recovery times. The leftovers of the terrestrial and the indigenous biospheres may coexist in the end in terms of ‘shadow biospheres’ "It could be that it is totally harmless, or indeed beneficial. Or it could be harmful. We need to know. We need to know before returning life to Earth. Also we need to know before sending humans to Mars.We need to protect any native life on Mars too. A good example here, if there is life on Mars that is a precursor to DNA, e.g. RNA based life then it risks being made extinct by whatever processes made it extinct on Earth. It would be a tragedy to lose something like that before we have time to study it and see what we risk losing and make an informed decision.See also myNASA's Plan To Reduce Planetary Protection For Mars Risks Accidentally Extinguishing Second Genesis Of Life Before We Find ItToo Late For NASA / ESA To Legally Return Mars Unsterilized Sample To Earth By 2032 - Protecting Earth's Environment A PriorityPotential Severe Effects of a Biosphere Collision and Planetary Protection ImplicationsAlso here is the link again, my online book on planetary protectionOK to Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps?