Todays PanCam depository on Exploratorium consists of rock portraits.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/pancam/2005-04-09/

Very intriguing gallery...

especially the left image on 2nd row, with truncated rock and apparently white material on one side of rocks to the right!

The mining and processing operations you suggest may be appropriate for colonization many decades down the road, but for the immediate research and exploration missions, an orbiting "mother ship with robotic drones" is the most practical approach. Jeff7, Mode5 and cIclops answered well so I won't repeat...

Remember, the Martians tried the direct landing and exploration gig back in the 30's and ended up D E A D. Fortunately, we on Earth didn't get wiped out because biocontamination hadn't been invented yet...

--Bill

Getting back for a moment to whether humans should be put on the surface of Mars: if it wasn't for the biocontamination issue, the argument for going that small remaining distance if you've already put them into Mars orbit would be extremely strong, thanks to the fact that Mars (unlike the Moon) has easily accessible resources (atmosphere and ground ice) that can be used to sustain a surface crew but not an orbiting crew.

But the biocontamination argument against it is still extremely strong. If one argues that Mars is already contaminated by terrestrial organisms transferred from Earth to Mars via meteorite, then the main scientific argument for running up the huge expense of sending humans to Mars promptly collapses too. And if one argues that it's unlikely that manned crews would contaminate more than a very small slice of Mars: the problem is that they WILL, at an absolute minimum, seriously contaminate every single local part of the planet that they actually try to examine scientifically. For all these reasons -- more than the expense of the expedition, although the latter is also a serious problem -- I think it will be a very long time before we send humans to the surface of Mars.

By the way, keep in mind that if you're going to adopt the alternative of just putting a crew into orbit around Mars and having them teleoperate surface-exploration robots without that maddening radio time lag, you can explore Venus in exactly the same way. And it's closer (if less scientifically interesting, and more exposed to solar particle radiation and X-rays...)

Mention of a crewed orbiter around Venus brought up one other issue - venturing outside of Earth's magnetic field. Missions to the moon were lucky - a good solar flare could kill off an entire crew.
If I remember right, the October flare from a year or two ago fried an instrument on one of the Mars orbiters. Imagine the radiation dose closer to the sun - and Venus has no magnetic field, so there is no safe haven there.

And what exactly is the basis for assuming this? That earth DNA will somehow jump into Martian DNA (if it exists) and modify it to such an extent that it can't be detected? Or that earth organisms will suddenly thrive in the harsh Martian environment, far harsher than any on Earth, and destroy all Martian life? Or that Redpeace have just issued a press release?

Great pics Dilo, thank you for posting. The 3rd one down on the right is my favorite. The split in the rock with the inner surface exposted is begging for a close-up.

The first point below explains the need to keep things in as pristine a state as possible.

http://www.cosparhq.org/scistr/PPPolicy.htm

Sample Return Missions from Mars

Category V. The Earth return mission is classified, “Restricted Earth return.”

• Unless specifically exempted, the outbound leg of the mission shall meet Category IVb requirements. This provision is intended to avoid “false positive” indications in a life-detection and hazard-determination protocol, or in the search for life in the sample after it is returned. A “false positive” could prevent distribution of the sample from containment and could lead to unnecessary increased rigor in the requirements for all later Mars missions.

• Unless the sample to be returned is subjected to an accepted and approved sterilization process, the sample container must be sealed after sample acquisition, and a redundant, fail-safe containment with a method for verification of its operation before Earth-return shall be required. For unsterilized samples, the integrity of the flight containment system shall be maintained until the sample is transferred to containment in an appropriate receiving facility.

• The mission and the spacecraft design must provide a method to “break the chain of contact” with Mars. No uncontained hardware that contacted Mars, directly or indirectly, shall be returned to Earth. Isolation of such hardware from the Mars environment shall be provided during sample container loading into the containment system, launch from Mars, and any in-flight transfer operations required by the mission.

• Reviews and approval of the continuation of the flight mission shall be required at three stages: 1) prior to launch from Earth; 2) prior to leaving Mars for return to Earth; and 3) prior to commitment to Earth re-entry.

• For unsterilized samples returned to Earth, a program of life detection and biohazard testing, or a proven sterilization process, shall be undertaken as an absolute precondition for the controlled distribution of any portion of the sample.


Edit:
"you can explore Venus in exactly the same way." -BruceMoomaw
Yes, exactly. The same technology could be used for any number of locations. It's well worth getting this done now. The return on investment would be used as a way to continue further missions. DARPA and the US military are going in this direction(remote robotics). We can piggyback their research and vice-versa. I think this is one of the main reasons why Bush is supporting Mars exploration. You could call it the "red budget" instead of the "black budget".

Me: "...the problem is that [landed humans] WILL, at an absolute minimum, seriously contaminate every single local part of the planet that they actually try to examine scientifically."

Ciclops: "And what exactly is the basis for assuming this? That earth DNA will somehow jump into Martian DNA (if it exists) and modify it to such an extent that it can't be detected? Or that Earth organisms will suddenly thrive in the harsh Martian environment, far harsher than any on Earth, and destroy all Martian life? Or that Redpeace have just issued a press release?"

No; it's the fact that Earth DNA (and/or other terrestrial biochemicals) will get mixed in with Martian ones to the extent that we can't tell what chemicals we're detecting really evolved on Mars and which are misinterpreted terrestrial ones. In short, it's the danger that terrestrial germs and their biochemicals will so DILUTE any evidence of native Martian microbes (whether fossil evidence or still-living organisms) so much as to render that evidence seriously ambiguous in nature and so hopelessly confuse their study. And, to repeat, the environments that we most hope to find extant Martian organisms in are precisely those pockets of the Martian environments where Earth germs could live right now -- such as the subsurface liquid-water table, or near-surface polar ices that periodically thaw into pockets of liquid water. Even if we do find some Martian organisms so utterly alien in biochemistry that there is no danger of mistaking them for Earth microbes, we will have no way of knowing for sure whether Mars also evolved other organisms bearing a closer resemblance to Earth microbes.

This is hardly just my judgment -- as Donald Robertson pointed out a few years ago in "Space News", it's become the majority consensus among astrobiologists, and is a reason why they are coming to oppose the idea of any manned mars landings for a long time (as opposed to robotically returning samples of Martian surface material to Earth for study, perhaps selected efficiently by manned crews orbiting Mars). Certainly there is no remotely convincing scientific rationale for taking that last step and actually putting humans on the Martian surface for a long time -- as the Mars Strategic Roadmap group has noted, given both the danger of biocontamination and the difficulty of space-suited EVAs under the relatively high gravity of Mars, even a human crew on the surface would do a great deal of their exploration using robots controlled from either their home base or their pressurized rovers. In short, manned Mars exploration will, for a long time, be radically different in nature from what we became used to on Apollo -- so different that there will be little advantage in humans teleoperating those robots from the surface rather than from Mars orbit. Why spoil the possibility of so much invaluable scientific study just for the PR value of hastily putting one flag-waving clown on Mars (to paraphrase Tom Lehrer's deadly description of the Apollo Program)?

Good post(s), Bruce. The critical problem we face is ensuring that we do not contaminate Mars with our DNA or microbes. It would be terrible to not be able to determine if that bug or DNA fragment was ours or theirs.

Admittedly, Mars may be contaminated by earlier spacecraft or "earth meteors", but we can't risk more episodes.

Sending an orbiting laboratoryt Mars will be a tremendous undertaking, but the overhead of safely and sterile-ly landing a human on Mars is more tremendous. It's that last step down to qnd out of Mars' gravity well that is the dilly. For the cost (in terms of both $ and mass) of "one flag-waving clown on Mars" a dozen or more Rovers could land and work for many Sols.

--Bill

And even if Mars was already "contaminated" by meteors from Earth, that simply would show that life in some degree is capable of hopping from planet to planet without our intervention.

Very good point, Bill. Especially about earlier spacecraft. NASA had all of the American craft designed to land on Mars sterilized, I know (the Vikings, Pathfinder and the MERs, as well as MPL), but what about MCO? And IIRC, the Russians did *not* go through a sterilization process on their Mars landers -- several of which sem to have reached the surface, if not in operational condition.

It's very true that a trace of biomatter on a crashed Mars probe is far less likely to contaminate the whole planet than a whole human outpost -- people exist in a veritable soup of microbes, parasites and symbionts. Our very breath contains organic material. Filters designed to keep such particles from moving one way or another are expensive and clog up easily -- they could be an answer for very short-term human stays on the surface, but would become a maintenance nightmare on a months-long stay.

By the same token, it's fair to say that human-delivered micro-organisms would get sterilized pretty quickly by the Martian surface conditions, as would any Martian microbes -- we're going to have to look beneath the surface to find any evidence of the latter, I'm sure.

It all comes down to intentions, I think. If we never intend to try and establish a human presence on Mars, then it makes sense to *never* even attempt to land there -- it would pose far too great a risk of contamination. However, if we *do* intend to put humans on Mars to stay, then by definition we will be *intending* to place a terrestrial environment on Mars (no matter what extent). In which case, the problem becomes maintaining "pockets" of uncontaminated Martian environments for study.

Since we're operating with a severe lack of information on the quantity, distribution and current status of Martian biotics, *any* discussion of cross-contamination -- either way -- is an exercise in energetic arm-waving. And since we're a long way from making firm plans about landing humans on Mars, we have many, many opportunities to expand our data on Martian biotics before we commit men and materiel to *any* such plan. Hopefully, by the time we *do* start serious work towards a manned Mars landing, we'll have more information and can make rational decisions about the contamination risks.

-the other Doug

No matter what our ultimate plans for Mars are, we need to be very, very careful about studying the baseline bio-conditions there. Mars in the most likely chance we'll have to study another (potential) biosphere in the next millenia and it would be nice to know whether or not life took root anywhere else besides Earth. The next candidates are Jovian and Saturnian satellites (Europa, Titan, etc) but it will be many yeasr before we get there.

--Bill

Mode5. it seems they heared you!

So how long do we wait? Say MSL or some other rover in the next 20 years finds Martian Microbes! Do we then NEVER land a human there? Supoose we don't find any? Do we keep looking for hundreds of years before landing humans?

Science is important and these questions must be answered, but at some point humans must walk on Mars. I think it is ridiculous to travel all the way to Mars and then never land. Surely the landing site will have a robot colony that will have completely investigated the nearby area and declared it microbe free.