{"id":724,"date":"2022-03-31T15:37:06","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T15:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/speaking-of-stem\/?p=724"},"modified":"2022-03-31T15:37:06","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T15:37:06","slug":"life-on-mars-the-ethics-of-space-exploration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/speaking-of-stem\/life-on-mars-the-ethics-of-space-exploration\/","title":{"rendered":"Life on Mars: the ethics of space exploration"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Image of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Source.<\/a><\/p>\n

In Episode Five of the popular television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage<\/i> (1980)<\/a>, entitled \u201cBlues for a Red Planet,\u201d astronomer Carl Sagan gave his audience a tour of the Red Planet, Mars, as scientists of the time understood it. He talked about the Viking missions<\/a>, launched by NASA in the mid-1970s and carrying experiments designed to test for the presence of microbial life. The results of those experiments proved controversial, and are still the subject of debate<\/a>. Is there life on Mars? The question remains unanswered.<\/p>\n

Current missions look to change that. NASA\u2019s Perseverance Rover<\/a> carries the first life-detecting experiments on the Red Planet since Viking. The China National Space Administration\u2019s (CNSA) Zhurong rover<\/a> explores the planet\u2019s surface, collecting data on temperature, atmospheric pressure, and notable features including possible mud volcanoes. These robotic \u201castronauts\u201d are, according to NASA<\/a>, laying the groundwork for future human exploration. NASA plans to land humans on the Moon by 2024<\/a> and use lunar exploration as a stepping-stone<\/a> to send astronauts to Mars. The Artemis Moon missions will give scientists a chance to refine technologies<\/a> needed for long-term, sustainable human habitation in space.<\/p>\n

If, one day, humans have the technology to terraform the Red Planet, remaking Mars in Earth\u2019s image, should we? This is one of the questions the field of space ethics attempts to answer. Scientists and scholars questioned the plausibility and the ethical implications of terraforming as early as the 1980s<\/a>. The mere presence of humans and human-made objects in extraterrestrial environments means there will be changes to those environments, be they intentional or unintentional. NASA already takes precautions<\/a> before launching its rovers and landers, constructing the spacecraft in a sterile environment, but introducing humans adds a series of new challenges.<\/p>\n

People leave traces of their presence<\/a>, like the golf balls, tools, and spacecraft parts from the Apollo missions that remain on the surface of the Moon. Both government agencies and private companies want to launch further missions, which means further changes to the existing environment. The human-made change is key here. Do we as a species have the right to irrevocably change another planet\u2019s environment to suit our own needs? If we terraform Mars, there is no reversing the process. In making Mars more Earth-like, we may erase traces of the planet\u2019s past, and thus opportunities to understand its history.<\/p>\n

If either robotic or human visitors do find life on Mars, what happens next? Carl Sagan, again in Cosmos<\/i>, wrote<\/a>, \u201cIf there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if they are only microbes.\u201d In his view, life had value for its own sake, and humans did not have the right to interfere with it. Later scholars expanded on these ideas. In 2017, the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) released the results of a workshop on ethical considerations in space exploration<\/a>, recommending the preservation of a \u201csecond Genesis\u201d (life with no evolutionary link to that of Earth) on both ethical and scientific grounds. A recent article in Scientific American<\/i><\/a> emphasizes the potential for harm, both to existing life and to the ecosystem as a whole, with the arrival of humans. \u201cHuman exploration has led to many extraordinary new discoveries,\u201d author Nicholas Dirks writes, \u201cbut it has also led inexorably to the appropriation and exploitation of natural as well as human resources.\u201d He advises us to be wary of defining \u201clife\u201d based solely on an Earthly perspective. In other words, we do not know what we do not know, and acting based on incomplete information could have unforeseen consequences.<\/p>\n

Humanity\u2019s next steps in space have the potential to expand our horizons, but we must take those steps carefully. As space ethicists James S. J. Schwartz and Tony Milligan wrote<\/a>, asking the often-tough questions about what we can and what we should do in space helps us make more informed decisions about our future beyond Earth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Source. In Episode Five of the popular television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), entitled \u201cBlues for a Red Planet,\u201d astronomer … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLife on Mars: the ethics of space exploration - Speaking of STEM<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/speaking-of-stem\/life-on-mars-the-ethics-of-space-exploration\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Life on Mars: the ethics of space exploration - Speaking of STEM\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Image of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 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