{"id":19024,"date":"2017-03-24T22:34:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T14:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/life-horror-movie-sparks-reality-check-on-procedures-for-studying-mars-samples\/"},"modified":"2017-03-24T22:34:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T14:34:53","slug":"life-horror-movie-sparks-reality-check-on-procedures-for-studying-mars-samples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/life-horror-movie-sparks-reality-check-on-procedures-for-studying-mars-samples\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Life\u2019 horror movie sparks reality check on procedures for studying Mars samples"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_319887\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-319887\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-319887\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-life-movie-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Planetary protection officer in &quot;Life&quot;\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-life-movie-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-life-movie-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-life-movie-1240x826.jpg 1240w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-life-movie.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-319887\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rebecca Ferguson plays Miranda North, a planetary protection officer aboard the International Space Station, in the movie \u201cLife.\u201d (Sony Pictures Digital Productions)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em><strong>Spoiler Alert!<\/strong> This article doesn\u2019t reveal any major plot twists, but wait to read it if you\u2019re trying to stay totally in the dark about the plot of the movie \u201cLife.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Let sleeping Martians&nbsp;lie, particularly if they have a strong grip: That\u2019s one of the lessons you could take away from \u201cLife,\u201d the first monster movie set on the International Space Station.<\/p>\n<h4 class=\"callout clearfix\"><strong>Previously:<\/strong> \u2018Life\u2019 draws upon real-life biology and worst-case space scenarios<\/h4>\n<p>The movie \u2013&nbsp;which opens today and stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds \u2013 blends the gory&nbsp;horror of \u201cAlien\u201d with the harrowing suspense of \u201cGravity.\u201d It\u2019s a tour de force of simulated zero-G acrobatics (done mostly with ropes and wires). And it\u2019s an orbital illustration of Murphy\u2019s Law: Anything that can go wrong with having an alien on board does go wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Purists may have questions about just how wrong it goes. Could a minuscule life form brought back from Mars really get that big that quickly? Is it really possible to combine neural, muscular and sensory functions in one cell? And just how easy is it for things to come loose (or <em>get<\/em> loose) on the space station?<\/p>\n<p>The deepest question may well be, does this nightmare have any chance of happening in real life?<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve seen lots of extraterrestrial takeovers on the big screen, ranging from \u201cThe Day of the Triffids\u201d and \u201cThe Andromeda Strain\u201d to \u201cThe War of the Worlds\u201d and the \u201cAlien\u201d series (which has a new installment coming out in May). Do we really want to be bringing samples back from Mars, as NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to do, perhaps in the 2020s?<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"LIFE Vignette - Quarantine (In Theaters March 24)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KV6ReF99MrQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>One of the characters in \u201cLife\u201d is a planetary protection officer, charged with guarding against alien contamination. (Spoiler alert: She won\u2019t be getting a good&nbsp;job review.)<\/p>\n<p>As strange as it sounds, real-life scientists&nbsp;have been thinking about these issues for decades. One of them is John Rummel, who served as NASA\u2019s planetary protection officer from 1998 to 2006 and is now a senior scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.<\/p>\n<p>The way Rummel and his colleagues see it, bringing Martian samples directly to Earth would be more sensible than keeping them on the space station \u2013 and just might&nbsp;head off the kinds of troubles that play out in the movie \u201cLife.\u201d Here\u2019s an edited Q&amp;A in which Rummel explains why:<\/p>\n<p><strong>GeekWire: If we ever get a sample back from Mars, what would happen to it? As far as I know, it\u2019s supposed to be brought back in&nbsp;a redundantly sealed container, sent down to a landing on Earth, and then taken&nbsp;to a containment facility. Any word on where that facility might be?<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_319889\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-319889\" style=\"width: 260px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-319889\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-rummel-260x300.jpg\" alt=\"John Rummel\" width=\"260\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-rummel-260x300.jpg 260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-rummel-200x231.jpg 200w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-rummel-87x100.jpg 87w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/170323-rummel.jpg 474w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 260px) 100vw, 260px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-319889\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">John Rummel (NASA Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Rummel:<\/strong> \u201cNo decisions have been made on the precise nature of the in-flight containment, the containment facility itself, or its location. &nbsp;Look for the National Environmental Policy Act review process to be employed by NASA to address those issues, when NASA is ready.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: In the movie, the alien organism is being studied on the space station to make sure it\u2019s kept&nbsp;far away from Earth. Why do the real-life scenarios call for Martian samples to be studied in a containment facility on Earth, rather than on a platform in space?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Rummel:<\/strong>&nbsp;\u201cThe central issue is that \u2018what goes up, will come down.\u2019 The ISS, and anything else in Earth orbit, will eventually crash on the planet. Thus, a controlled \u2018crash\u2019 of a spacecraft designed to do that, and a containment facility that doesn\u2019t lack material support, is preferred.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe issue of \u2018get-home-itis\u2019 is also there. Telling a research crew that they can\u2019t come back until they either 1) find life, or 2) show that the sample is free of it, could very well prejudice the outcome of the studies done there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: What sort of consultation would be done in the process of studying Martian samples? In the movie, the space station crew seems to be on its own \u2013 which leads to problems. Would planetary protection officers on Earth have veto power over particular experiments?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong>&nbsp;\u201cThis is another reason to do the work on Earth. It would be expected that several layers of expertise would be provided (from theoreticians to investigators to technicians to robotic-repair personnel \u2013&nbsp;plus journalists!), to ensure that the return-sample protocol is done correctly and that no clues are missed due to a lack of expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q:&nbsp;What provisions are there for responding if a Mars organism were to get out of containment?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> \u201cNone, at this moment. We have to catch one first! When we commit to a sample-return and biohazard containment facility, those questions would addressed both by NASA and by the regulatory agencies having authority over the importation of exotic organisms to the U.S. (and elsewhere on Earth).\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>For more about NASA\u2019s plans to protect our planet from aliens (and protect alien samples from earthly contamination), check out the website for NASA\u2019s Office of Planetary Protection and The New York Times\u2019 profile of NASA\u2019s current planetary protection officer, Catharine Conley.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rebecca Ferguson plays Miranda North, a planetary protection officer aboard the International Space Station, in the movie \u201cLife.\u201d (Sony Pictures Digital Productions) Spoiler Alert! This article doesn\u2019t reveal any major plot twists, but wait to read it if you\u2019re trying to stay totally in the dark about the plot of the movie \u201cLife.\u201d Let sleeping [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4409,1874,4903,717,367,4550],"class_list":["post-19024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aliens","tag-astrobiology","tag-geekwire-at-the-movies","tag-international-space-station","tag-mars","tag-movies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}