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[i]Scientists have various schools of thought on hauling Mars samples back to our planet, John Rummel, a senior scientist at the SETI Institute in California and NASA's planetary protection officer from 1986 to 1993 and 1997 to 2006, said. But the planned, precautionary approach, based on strict containment and testing for life and biohazards, is compatible with the potential to discover life in a sample, or elsewhere on Mars by other means, as it would still allow for a sample to be returned. "If one finds life in the sample, one has a good chance of being able to study it in containment," Rummel said. "The downside of this approach is that it is more expensive [in terms of establishing the containment facility], up-front, than ignoring life on Mars." As the recent report to NASA from the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board stated, this approach requires that a sample-handling facility dedicated to analyzing and testing Martian samples be developed up-front. Rummel said that, if something like the coronavirus situation pops up, then any other containment facility may not be available in a timely way, and may not be able to meet the cleanliness requirements that will ensure that any organisms discovered in the sample came from Mars, and not from Earth after the sample arrives.[/i]
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