Education

Who’s afraid of Martian microorganisms?

What we bring to and back from outer space has profound ethical implications, argues Sergio Carrasco-Martos, this year’s winner of the 2008 Mekel Prize, awarded to the best MSc student essay on the subject of ethics and technology.

If we aren’t careful, bringing microorganisms back from outer space missions could lead to our extinction.

Ethical questions arise every day in the world of science and technology, but bonus points to the Spaniard Sergio Carrasco-Martos for coming up with one that is truly out of this world. Or as he puts it in the title of his 2008 Mekel Prize Award winning essay, ‘Sample Return Mission to Mars – The dilemma of planetary contamination versus the search for life and its origins’.
While the greater forces push for more space missions to Mars, Venus and beyond, and talk of a new ‘Space Race’ heats up as countries like China and India develop their space programs, Carrasco-Martos’ essay reminds the reader that the we must always consider the potential human ‘cost’ of our space explorations; namely, that our biosphere could be contaminated, perhaps catastrophically so, by microorganisms brought back from outer space. 
Carrasco-Martos’ essay opens with a history of Mars exploration to date. It’s been more than thirty years since Viking spacecraft went to Mars searching for signs of life. “Since then there have been, and there are plans for, more ambitious sample return missions (SRM) to Mars,” Carrasco-Martos writes, adding that the ideal approach for such missions is for unmanned spacecraft to land on Mars’ surface, collect soil samples in containers, and then return these containers to Earth by means of a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and an Earth Return Capsule (ERC).

Such samples from Mars and other planets could tell us if there is life elsewhere in our solar system. “But cross contamination risks arise, namely: forward contamination, the bringing of terrestrial microorganisms and spores to Mars; and backward contamination, bringing hypothetical Martian microorganisms back to Earth,” Carrasco-Martos warns.
“This leads to two new categories of planetary protection requirements,” he continues. “To avoid forward contamination, cleaning and sterilization methods must be applied to ensure the spacecraft leaves Earth carrying as few microorganisms as possible. And to prevent backward contamination, a sample return, or containment, facility would be mandatory to ensure the Earth’s protection.” 

Pandemic
“I’ve always liked to show a critical attitude and defend or criticize other people’s arguments, sort of moderating discussions and searching for consensus. It goes with my personality,” Carrasco-Martos, a second year MSc aerospace student from Barcelona, Spain, says of his decision to enter the Mekel Prize essay contest.
While a space-related theme is particularly apt for an aerospace engineering student, so too are the themes of exploration and contamination for any Spaniard who knows his country’s history, as it was the great 16th century Spanish explorers whose unwitting ‘contamination’ of the Americas led to the deaths of untold millions of Native American Indians whose immune systems were defenseless against the Old World bacteria and viruses these explorers brought with them to the New World.
Small pox, cholera, measles influenza…historians believe that up to 90 percent of the American Indian populations perished from illnesses introduced to the Americas by the people, livestock and goods traveling from Old World Europe to the New World Americas.
And so to the 21st century and beyond, when space exploration is universal and history threatens to repeat itself in possibly Martian form, according to groups like the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return (ICAMSR), which oppose space missions on contamination grounds, arguing that contamination risks for Earth could lead to a pandemic and ultimately our extinction.
“My aim with this essay was to consider both sides of the issue, increase public awareness and help enforce more stringent containment facility requirements for samples brought back from Mars,” Carrasco-Martos says.
The subject of his essay stemmed from a faculty trip to the European Space Agency (ESA). While visiting the facility where all European space missions are born, an ESA employee spoke to his group about the future space missions in the pipeline.
“I of course was eager to hear about all the cool missions, but the only thing I heard was that a sample return mission to Mars, for instance, involves planetary contamination issues that cannot be dealt with by today’s standards, and that therefore there were no current plans for such missions,” Carrasco-Martos recalls.
“I immediately thought this was a matter of the utmost concern, and that it was unfair that this was only known by the minority of people struggling to overcome these barriers and get a green light for what would be awe-inspiring space missions. So when it came to writing an essay on ethical questions, I didn’t hesitate to choose this subject.”

Philosophy
Although Carrasco-Martos’ future career undoubtedly lies in the aerospace engineering, he believes engineers should be well-rounded individuals with interests extending beyond science and technology. “I’ve always loved to write, always been loyal to the Latin dictum ‘verba volant, scripta manent’ (words fly away, writings remain), so the Mekel essay contest was a great opportunity to get back to this,” he says. “I believe words are the most important part of the legacy we leave behind with the flow of time.”
In 2006, Carrasco-Martos completed a double-degree (MSc) program in telecommunications engineering between his home university, the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), and the University of Stuttgart. In 2007, he entered TU Delft’s aerospace MSc program (Space Systems Engineering) and is currently completing a joint-internship plus Master’s thesis at the European Space Agency, Radio-navigation Systems & Techniques Section.
Despite his success in engineering, Carrasco-Martos retains a passion for writing, philosophy and Spanish literature. “It’s something that I’ve missed during my years of engineering studies, because writing and philosophizing really give structure to my ideas, sort of organizing my mind,” he explains. “Engineering doesn’t need to be all about intuition, formulas and computer simulations. There must always be a human ‘supplement’ or something that helps us orientate our thoughts, which is why I really appreciated the opportunity to write an essay for the Mekel Prize.”

The full version of Sergio Carrasco-Martos’ Mekel Prize winning MSc essay is available at: http:// platformet.tudelft.nl/mekel-prize.html. During a special Mekel Prize award ceremony on October 23, 2008, Carrasco-Martos received a statue of Professor Mekel and a check for 1,000 euro.

Editor Redactie

Do you have a question or comment about this article?

delta@tudelft.nl

Comments are closed.