Rovers Banned from Investigating Martin Liquid

[//FTP]

     As many of you currently know there is liquid on Mars! On September 29, 2015 NASA (U.S. Government Agency) officially announced that they have chemical proof of water. The majority of people who know about this think that NASA should investigate it, but they can't. NASA is banned from going anywhere near the water, due to the international space treaty. In 1967, almost every country in the world signed the "international space treaty" or "space law". The international space treaty prohibits parties from placing "weapons of mass destruction" on the Moon, Earth's Orbit, and on any other planet, testing weapons of mass destruction on the Moon, Earth's Orbit, and on any other planet, and disrupting discoveries on other planets. Since NASA's rover has traveled from Earth to Mars, 54.6 million kilometers, it has gotten unsanitary. If NASA ever wants to be able to test the water, they have to find a way to sanitize the rover.

 

 

This week, NASA scientists announced that they had found chemical evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars. While they make a compelling case, the existence of seasonal rivers of briney water will never be 100 percent confirmed until we can see it and touch it and analyse it, and if it’s not actual humans on Mars doing that, we’ll have to study it vicariously through our far-flung robots.

Except we can’t. Not as long as those far-flung robots originated on Earth, anyway. Right now, NASA’s Curiosity rover is about 50 kilometres from the site that scientists suspect holds liquid Martian water, but thanks to an international treaty signed in 1967, it’s not allowed to go anywhere near it.

This is because to get where it is on the surface of Mars, Curiosity had to travel 225 million kilometres from Earth through space, and along the way it could have picked up dirt and dust and all kinds of mysterious microbes that make it far from sterile. As Marcus Strom points out at The Sydney Morning Herald, "That's a long way to go without having the right sort of shower."

Gross, Curiosity. Just go stand over there, will you? No, no, keep going, further. Yep, keep going. Okay that's good, thank you!

And while scientists do their best to sterilise their space-faring equipment once it arrives at its destination via what Swinburne University astronomer Alan Duffy describes as "a very intense ultraviolet tanning salon", if they can’t guarantee sterilisation, there’s no going near that water. 

"Because liquid water appears to be present ... we have to take extra precautions to prevent contamination by Earth life," Rich Zurek, the chief scientist for NASA’s Mars program, explained during a Reddit AMA yesterday. "Our current rovers have not been sterilised to the degree needed to go to an area where liquid water may be present."

As Akshat Rathi writes for Quartz, every country on Earth is bound by the stipulations of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forbids "anyone from sending a mission, robot or human, close to a water source in the fear of contaminating it with life from Earth". 

Not that NASA couldn't sterilise the crap out of its rovers if it wanted to. As UNSW astrobiologist Malcolm Walter told The Sydney Morning Herald, they could blast Curiosity with crazy amounts of heat and radiation that would wipe out anything and everything that managed to survive the journey from Earth without a shadow of a doubt, but then they'd be wiping out the rover's internal electronics in the process. Not exactly practical.

"In order to be completely sterile, they'd have to use really powerful ionising radiation or heat, both of which would damage the electronics," says Walter. "So they go as far as they dare."

What's the solution? We all know that NASA is planning on sending humans to Mars for the first time in mid-2030, so maybe some lucky astronauts will get to see liquid Martian water with their own eyes. Another option would be to send robots to Mars that are capable of building other robots that can investigate that water with little risk of contamination. Last year, NASA announced that it's developing robots that can 3D-print infrastructure on Mars, so this could well be a possibility.

Until then, Curiosity and its rover buddy Opportunity will just have to revel in the ambigious state of their cleanliness, and stay the hell away from the water.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty#Responsibility_for_activities_in_space

http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why-nasa-s-mars-rovers-are-banned-from-investigating-that-liquid-water

http://www.space.com/14729-spacekids-distance-earth-mars.html

[WolfDeville]

Well this is just lovely...

[Godlygamer23]

It makes a lot of sense. Any kind of earthly contamination will skew what we find in the water, causing us to see microbial life and dirt particles that actually came from earth. The decontamination process used gets rid of a lot of things, but not everything.

 

Also, moved to Off Topic as it doesn't really have anything to do with technology directly. More to do with space.

[Darth-Marius]

it makes sense

[Asulenovcer]

I agree with the ban.

[GoldSrc]

Well, at least we know there's water in there, now we need to know if there's something in the water, if I can see that on my lifetime it would be one of the greatest days for mankind.

[Godlygamer23]

Well, at least we know there's water in there, now we need to know if there's something in the water, if I can see that on my lifetime it would be one of the greatest days for mankind.

Even if there's nothing special in the water, we can maybe use it to aid us in colonizing Mars. It's cool to think about the concept that Mars was once like Earth.

[GoldSrc]

Even if there's nothing special in the water, we can maybe use it to aid us in colonizing Mars. It's cool to think about the concept that Mars was once like Earth.

We still have to figure out a way to deal with the radiation if we send humans to do the tests on the water.

Not to mention the fuel to get back to Earth.

[SansVarnic]

Good post but please fix the quote cant read in dark theme.

[SImoHayha]

Damn you TREATIES WE NEED TO KNOW

[Godlygamer23]

We still have to figure out a way to deal with the radiation if we send humans to do the tests on the water.

Not to mention the fuel to get back to Earth.

Our current solution to putting humans on Mars is a one-way trip. One-way there. No way back.

[Godlygamer23]

Damn you TREATIES WE NEED TO KNOW

We can't due to contamination.

[Atmos]

Even if there's nothing special in the water, we can maybe use it to aid us in colonizing Mars. It's cool to think about the concept that Mars was once like Earth.

 

Yea... Really gets me wondering if there was once advanced life on mars, that would be amazing. Then again, if there ever was life there it would have probably been very basic microbial life forms.

[TetraSky]

This is just ridiculous...

[Godlygamer23]

Yea... Really gets me wondering if there was once advanced life on mars, that would be amazing. Then again, if there ever was life there it would have probably been very basic microbial life forms.

We can at least speculate and use our imagination as to what's on Mars, or even what's out there beyond Earth and our solar system.

[Me1z]

Not really sure how traveling through space would leave the rover unsanitary. As far as we know life cannot survive in a vacuum, so its as sterile as its going to get. What else is there to cause contamination? Mars dust? The same martian soil that will already be present in the water? The ban seems a bit pointless to me, but then again I'm no rocket scientist.

[Godlygamer23]

Not really sure how traveling through space would leave the rover unsanitary. As far as we know life cannot survive in a vacuum, so its as sterile as its going to get. What else is there to cause contamination? Mars dust? The same martian soil that will already be present in the water? The ban seems a bit pointless to me, but then again I'm no rocket scientist.

You ever hear of the water bear? It can survive a vacuum, complete dehydration, and ionizing radiation that would kill humans.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

[Atmos]

We can at least speculate and use our imagination as to what's on Mars, or even what's out there beyond Earth and our solar system.

 

Well that's easy (kind of, okay not really) the universe is just so damn large beyond comprehension that there simply must be other intelligent life. Perhaps even life forms so far advanced they have the capacity to move freely between regions of the universe. Either way, just holding onto that bit of speculation is awesome, just the thought that there most likely is another intelligent lifeform blazing across the universe is enough to keep me up at night, wondering just how far evolution can vary.

[GoldSrc]

Our current solution to putting humans on Mars is a one-way trip. One-way there. No way back.

I know, but it would be cool if we had the technology to bring back home those other little rovers that gave us so much information about Mars.

Just like it would be cool to bring Hubble down and put it on display at a museum instead of letting it burn in the atmosphere.

[Me1z]

You ever hear of the water bear? It can survive a vacuum, complete dehydration, and ionizing radiation that would kill humans.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade

 

Until now I had never heard of them. And I kinda wish I hadn't. I can't say I very much like the idea of microscopic immortal space animals. And I have changed my opinion, one planet filled with these things is enough, retiring the current rover is probably for the best.

[Guest]

That's bullshit. Even if they did no one would know

[ICantThinkOfAnyGoodName]

That's bullshit. Even if they did no one would know

There's two reasons this treaty exists:

1. If earth life would contaminate the water on Mars, any evidence of life found on Mars could actually be the earth life that contaminated it.

2. If some microscopic life form exists on Mars, it could potentially be wiped out due to earth life.

So basically, it would make it harder to find any life forms on mars and also could be a threat to them if they happen to exist.

[Albatross]

But how will we ever know otherwise? :(

[soup]

     As many of you currently know there is liquid on Mars!

 

 

How do you figure that?  NASA has discovered chemical evidence that at one point there was liquid water on Mars they HAVE NOT found any liquid water now.

[NumLock21]

So close and yet so far...