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Those samples could reveal how planets formed, and perhaps even whether life ever existed beyond Earth.<\/p>\n
But two researchers say there is another question we should answer first: What if one of those samples carries something alive?<\/p>\n
Instead of opening future space samples on Earth, they argue we should inspect them somewhere much safer: the moon.<\/p>\n
Earth\u2019s first line of defense<\/p>\n
What they propose sounds like science fiction. Build a sealed lab on the moon, run it mostly by robots, and route every space sample through it before anything reaches Earth.<\/p>\n
The argument comes from Frederick I. Moxley, who directs a private threat-analysis consultancy in Idaho, Strategic Threat Analysis and Research Laboratories. <\/p>\n
His co-author, Anthony Ricciardi, is a biologist at McGill University<\/a> who studies invasive species<\/a>.<\/p>\n Their name for it is a biocontainment lab, a barrier between Earth and anything alive riding home with a sample. <\/p>\n Moxley describes it as a firewall, one built to stop any dangerous living organism before it ever reaches the planet.<\/p>\n Learning from past invasions<\/p>\n Ricciardi has spent his career studying what happens when a living thing turns up where it never belonged. <\/p>\n Rats reaching remote islands wiped out native birds<\/a>, and mussels in ships\u2019 ballast water now clog rivers across North America.<\/p>\n The damage adds up fast. One study Ricciardi co-authored found that the worldwide cost of biological invasions now rivals the toll from natural disasters such as storms and floods.<\/p>\n Now apply that reasoning to a microbe from Mars or an icy moon. It would land somewhere with no natural checks on it, facing native life that never met anything like it. A clean slate.<\/p>\n Microbes don\u2019t quit easily<\/p>\n A common comfort says that anything born on Mars would simply die here, unable to handle our air and water. Earth\u2019s own microbes keep poking holes in that comfort.<\/p>\n Take the bacteria living aboard the International Space Station<\/a>. A paper tracking one species there found that its strains had changed into something genetically different from their relatives on the ground, seemingly pushed by the stresses of life in orbit.<\/p>\n That is not proof that life from another world could thrive here. No one has ever held an alien organism to test it. <\/p>\n But the claim that something could never survive here has been wrong before, and living things are stubborn.<\/p>\n The moon\u2019s big advantage<\/p>\n Here is where the moon earns its place in the plan. Even the most secure labs on Earth are not perfect, and history is full of slips. Plenty of them.<\/p>\n Forgotten vials of smallpox once turned up in a storage room at a U.S. lab. An explosion later tore through a Russian facility holding the same virus. A leak from a moon lab has nowhere to go.<\/p>\n The moon brings a rare mix of qualities. Close enough to reach within days. Empty of any native life to put at risk, and remote enough that an escape would have nowhere to spread. <\/p>\n Robots could do the dangerous work while people stay home.<\/p>\n Space quarantine isn\u2019t new<\/p>\n Quarantining the unknown from space is not a new instinct. When the Apollo astronauts<\/a> returned from the moon, NASA sealed them inside a converted trailer for weeks, half-expecting lunar germs that never showed.<\/p>\n A special building in Houston, the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, handled the first moon rocks behind sealed glass. <\/p>\n Scientists even floated orbiting and lunar quarantine stations decades ago, though no one ever built one.<\/p>\n What Moxley and Ricciardi add is timing, and a reason to act now. Two things have changed since those old plans gathered dust. <\/p>\n Robots can run a remote lab, and NASA is now preparing a permanent base on the moon.<\/p>\n Samples are already coming<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s Artemis<\/a> program aims to return astronauts to the moon and, before long, a base camp near the lunar south pole. That moon base is exactly where Moxley and Ricciardi want a containment lab.<\/p>\n The clock feels real because the samples are coming. Asteroid dust now sits in clean rooms on Earth. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, probes keep eyeing icy moons where one study found organic compounds \u2013 the chemical building blocks of life \u2013 spraying from what is likely an underground ocean.<\/p>\n The rules meant to govern all this, a field called planetary protection<\/a>, have not kept up. <\/p>\n More countries and private companies are racing to the moon and beyond. Many of their plans say little about screening what they bring back.<\/p>\n From proposal to reality<\/p>\n For now, it is just that: an argument in a journal rather than a blueprint with a budget. No alien microbe has ever been found, and the danger may prove imaginary \u2013 or not.<\/p>\n What the paper does is turn a vague worry into a concrete plan, pinned to a base already on the drawing board. <\/p>\n The study argues that the first line of defense belongs on the moon, and that decision should be settled before the rockets leave, not after.<\/p>\n If planners take the idea seriously, the consequences are concrete.<\/p>\n Samples from Mars or an asteroid might never touch Earth\u2019s open air until they have been checked a quarter-million miles away. A building meant to guard this planet, sitting on another one.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal Ambio<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spacecraft are no longer just visiting other worlds. They\u2019re starting to bring pieces of them home. 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