Stanford professor warns Mars rock samples ‘could bring alien viruses to Earth’ and they ‘must be treated like Ebola’

A STANFORD professor is warning that new rock samples from Mars could bring new viruses to Earth.

Scott Hubbard, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, said that “planetary protection” for Earth has to be the most important thing when anyone or anything returns from Mars.

NASA

Scott Hubbard, a Stanford University professor, said he believes ‘the chance that rocks from Mars that are millions of years old will contain an active life form that could infect Earth is extremely low’[/caption]

“In my opinion, and that of the science community, the chance that rocks from Mars that are millions of years old will contain an active life form that could infect Earth is extremely low.”

He told the Stanford News: “But the [Mars] samples returned by [NASA] will be quarantined and treated as though they are the Ebola virus until proven safe.”

Last year, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency is working to get to Mars by the 2030s — in addition to heading back to the moon by 2024.

“We are working right now, in fact, to put together a comprehensive plan on how we would conduct a Mars mission using the technologies that we will be proving at the moon.”

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He added, however, that rock samples from Mars ‘will be quarantined and treated as though they are the Ebola virus until proven safe’[/caption]

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NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said last year that the agency is working to get to Mars by the 2030s[/caption]

Bridenstine said at the time: “I am not willing to rule out 2033 at all.”

This July, NASA will launch a new, unmanned Mars rover named Perseverance into the sky.

Hubbard co-authored a report published last month by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that reviews recommendations about “planetary protection.”

Those words, or “planetary quarantine,” mean the “safeguarding of Earth and other worlds from biological cross-contamination.”

The professor told the news outlet: “To control forward contamination, the hardware sent [to Mars] from Earth will be thoroughly cleaned.”

“The tubes that will contain the sample that are aboard Mars 2020 (Perseverance Rover) have been baked at a high temperature.”

“As for humans, the Apollo astronauts from the first few moon missions were quarantined to ensure they showed no signs of illness,” Hubbard said.

“Once it was found that the moon did not pose a risk, the quarantine was eliminated. Such a procedure will undoubtedly be followed for humans returning from Mars.”