The future mission that NASA prepares to transporthumans to marsis leading the US space agency to consider aspects such aswhat to do if an astronaut becomes ill during the return trip and it is not known whether the infection has occurred on the red planet. Experts suggest that an extraterrestrial virus can be really dangerous, since it could unleash a plague on Earth.
For the moment, NASA is consideringmonitor astronauts’ health meticulously during all phases of the missionwith the aim of “being able to justify before the inhabitants of the Earth that if an astronaut arrives ill it is not something unknown of Martian origin, but something totally normal within the foreseeable”, has indicated Cassie Conley, of the Planetary Protection Office at NASA. For example, it is already known that being confined to small environments for hundreds of days causes nasal congestion and skin rashes.
In addition, NASA is also working on doing everything possible to minimize the chances that astronauts could get sick during the mission. For example,Human explorers will have to move away from “special regions”, that is, areas where conditions would allow terrestrial microbes to survive and reproduce. Yneither are they going to set foot on a Martian setting that hasn’t been visited and explored in the first place by a robot.
These and other guidelines are part of a planetary protection protocol drawn up in 2008 by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), part of the International Council for Science. Both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have committed to following this protocol, the highest priority of which is to protect Earth from any possible “further contamination” from Mars.
