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Thread: NASA Should Beware of Viruses From Outer Space

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    NASA Should Beware of Viruses From Outer Space

    NASA Should Beware of Viruses From Outer Space

    The US will be collecting Mars dirt for return to earth. Private companies will be zipping around in space, the moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt. So NASA needs plans to safeguard against viruses that may be brought back to Earth.

    (Bloomberg Opinion) -- This summer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will launch a rover designed to collect samples of the Martian surface and store them until they can eventually be brought back to Earth. When they arrive, according to a former NASA scientist, they’ll be “quarantined and treated as though they are the Ebola virus until proven safe."His statement caused a minor media sensation, and understandably so. In the midst of one pandemic, Americans aren't ready for another imported from outer space. But ready or not, the U.S. and other spacefaring nations need to start updating planetary-protection measures for a new era of spaceflight.In the years ahead, NASA's Mars initiatives will likely be emulated by other countries. Ambitious private space companies are eager to follow with their own robots (and perhaps, eventually, humans). Clearer safety guidelines are essential both for protecting Earth and for ensuring that a wary public is comfortable with humanity's next steps into the solar system.No one knows, of course, if there’s life elsewhere in the universe. But as far back as the mid-1950s, scientists were thinking about ways to prevent alien lifeforms from contaminating the Earth (and vice-versa). In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty codified a consensus that member states should avoid "adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter." When the Apollo 11 astronauts returned from the moon in 1969, they were immediately sealed in a decontamination chamber for three weeks, on the off chance that they had conveyed lunar micro-organisms to Houston.In the years that followed, planetary-protection guidelines were gradually updated. The Committee on Space Research (or COSPAR), a global research group, came up with non-binding protocols for various types of missions, and wisely requested that any "non-terrestrial replicating entity" — that is, a lifeform — remain contained on landing. At NASA, the Office of Planetary Protection ensures that these and other guidelines are followed when planning new missions.But while these rules worked well enough when NASA was mostly focused on protecting other planets, they’re turning out to be incomplete or obsolete in an era of one-of-a-kind missions like the Mars sample return. In 2018, a review by the National Academy of Sciences found that "there did not appear to be a solid scientific basis" for some of the agency's planetary-protection rules. And even as it prepares to launch the new Mars rover in July, NASA has yet to come up with policies on how to safely distribute any returned samples to scientists.Meanwhile, private space companies increasingly have the technology and ambition to make Mars visits of their own. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, says he hopes to send a crewed mission there in 2024. If the company manages to meet that unlikely deadline, it might be able to avoid planetary-protection requirements altogether. At the moment, no federal agency has jurisdiction to authorize and supervise such a mission. Among other problems, that regulatory gap places the U.S. out of compliance with the Outer Space Treaty.Addressing these issues is essential, and not just to avoid a real-life Andromeda Strain. For one thing, steps taken by the U.S. now will be adapted by COSPAR and become a non-binding global standard, which should help ensure that this new space age is a safe one. At the same time, a public scarred by the coronavirus is likely to be wary of any space missions that require Ebola-level containment strategies. If NASA and other spacefarers want to assure people that they shouldn’t be worried about Martian Ebola, they need to prove that their safety efforts are as failsafe as their engineering.For a start, NASA should reassess its planetary-protection measures in light of recent technological advances, and make sure it fills any gaps. It should also establish a standing forum devoted to updating those policies as circumstances warrant. Imposing safety requirements on private space companies is a trickier issue that ultimately will require congressional action. But in the meantime, NASA should link planetary-protection compliance to eligibility for federal contracts.There's no telling when and where the next pandemic will emerge. But with a little care, NASA and its partners can all but guarantee that it won’t be extraterrestrial.
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    Lummy's Avatar Senior Member
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    If beings in outer space are attacking earth, why is there never any follow up in the way of an invasion by the mother ship? I know -- don't ask. LOL.

    What if the explanation for evolution, which I don't particularly embrace as I once did, is viruses from outer space? And what if these viruses from outer space were actually clever manufacturing tools?

    And we were a work in progress?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lummy View Post
    If beings in outer space are attacking earth, why is there never any follow up in the way of an invasion by the mother ship? I know -- don't ask. LOL.

    What if the explanation for evolution, which I don't particularly embrace as I once did, is viruses from outer space? And what if these viruses from outer space were actually clever manufacturing tools?

    And we were a work in progress?
    Panspermia I believe theorizes that bacteria (micro-organisms) seeded the earth not viruses.
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    I remember back in the good ole days of NASA. After a supposed trip to the moon the astronauts would check out of the Hilton and go to "quarentine".
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cotton1 View Post
    I remember back in the good ole days of NASA. After a supposed trip to the moon the astronauts would check out of the Hilton and go to "quarentine".
    They will continue to do that.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    Panspermia I believe theorizes that bacteria (micro-organisms) seeded the earth not viruses.
    NASA says they have found frozen bacteria on meteors.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-m...7252KQ20110307

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    Panspermia I believe theorizes that bacteria (micro-organisms) seeded the earth not viruses.
    ... and then, the endosymbiotic theory appeared in which larger cells engulfed bacteria (prokaryotes) to form eukaryotic cells. Mitochondria to animal cells and Chloroplasts to plants cells.

    Prokaryotes Eukaryotes Mitochondria of
    Eukaryotic cells
    Chloroplasts of Photosynthetic eukaryotes
    DNA 1 single, circular chromosome Multiple linear chromosomes
    compartmentalized in a nucleus
    1 single, circular
    chromosome
    1 single, circular chromosome
    Replication Binary Fission
    (1 cell splits into 2)
    Mitosis Binary Fission
    (1 cell splits into 2)
    Binary Fission
    (1 cell splits into 2)
    Ribosomes "70 S" "80 S" "70 S" "70 S"
    Electron Transport Chain Found in the plasma membrane around cell Not found in the plasma membrane
    around cell (found only in the cell's mitochondria and chloroplasts)
    Found in the plasma membrane around mitochondrion Found in the plasma membrane around chloroplast
    Size (approximate) ~1-10 microns ~50 - 500 microns ~1-10 microns ~1-10 microns
    Appearance on Earth Anaerobic bacteria:
    ~3.8 Billion years ago
    Photosynthetic bacteria:
    ~3.2 Billion years ago
    Aerobic bacteria:
    ~2.5 Billion years ago
    ~1.5 billion years ago ~1.5 billion years ago ~1.5 billion years ago
    https://www.khanacademy.org/

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    Viruses come from mutations whether it is natural or made in a Chinese lab. Who is to say that bacteria could not morph into a virus?

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    Quote Originally Posted by carolina73 View Post
    Viruses come from mutations whether it is natural or made in a Chinese lab. Who is to say that bacteria could not morph into a virus?
    No, viruses do not come from mutations. Mutations are related to loss of function and not the other way around. Viruses can arise from recombination events that could be natural occurring or not. There are at least three theories trying to explain the origin of viral genomes and for some, they circulated even before bacteria or eukaryote cells arose in nature. No, bacteria cannot morph into a virus. However, viral genomes can infect bacteria and become phages. In fact, phage therapy has been around since yesterday and more is getting investigated about their use in the fight against bacterial antibiotic resistance.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5547374/

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