
oh goody
Great, let's bring back some mutated space bacteria. I see no possible ways this could go badly!
Two NASA astronauts are set to venture outside the International Space Station (ISS) in search of signs of life. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams should have been back on Earth months ago, but, thanks to issues with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule, are spending some additional time on the ISS before a planned return to Earth …
They've already brought space bacteria back. The Apollo 12 astronauts brought parts from Surveyor 3 back from the moon where they had been sitting for several years. When scientists looked at the parts they found them contaminated with bacteria leftover from the probes construction. The bacteria were still alive.
The Earth has been hit many times by large meteorites (eg the dinosaur killer). Many of these impacts have been large enough to eject debris from the Earth that could hit other solar system objects.
Given the toughness of many microbes, other planets must have been contaminated by microbes carried on such Earth originated meteorites.
It is currently thought that Mars still had liquid water up to around 3 billion years ago. Earth has had life for over 3.7 billion years. This implies a period of several hundred million years when both Earth and Mars could host life. During that period both Earth and Mars would have been hit by many object large enough to eject rocks (with bacterial passengers) to the other planet.
This leads to an interesting question - did life originate on Earth and contaminate Mars or did it originate on Mars and then contaminate Earth
The icon seems fitting ==========>
For all we know, 3.7 billion years ago a predecessor to oumuamua arrived at Earth and kick started the whole 'life' thing in our solar system.
There is certainly some conjecture to suggest that this is a viable option.
And the evidence that simple life can survive a vacuum for periods of time supports this.
So LA burns but the priority for the boffins in the US is a manned mission to Mars. Priorities eh?
Did you also think that someone with a doctorate in English literature should've been relieving overworked doctors in hospitals during COVID's peak?
The boffins who design aerospace hardware and missions have little to do with firefighting and wild fire risk.