Understanding Martian Samples as Hazards and Resources - Usefulness for Future Planetary Exploration

One of the most surprising and most important discovery of the first human landings on the Moon was the discovery of a very fine layer of lunar dust covering the entire surface of Moon. We subsequently learned that this layer of dust had a very negative impact on the astronauts, their well-being, and their mission equipment and instrumentation. The United States is now planning a human mission to Mars, a very dusty planet with orders of magnitude more atmospheric dust than the Moon and Earth. For these missions, the design and operations of key hardware systems must take this dust into account, both for their effective use, as well as for the protection of the crew from both short-term and long-term adverse effects from exposure. Additionally, dust in the atmosphere of Mars has the potential of transporting Earth microorganisms inadvertently brought to Mars by the astronauts and their equipment (forward planetary contamination) and inadvertently transporting potential Mars microorganisms back to Earth with the returning astronauts (backward planetary contamination). It is well documented that that on Earth, atmospheric dust transports terrestrial microorganisms for thousands of miles through the atmosphere. This forward and backward planetary contamination clearly violates the United Nations Outer Space Treaty (1967) signed by all spacefaring nations. In this paper, we review the impact of lunar dust on the Apollo missions and identify several questions about dust in the atmosphere of Mars that may be answered by the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Mission and its returned Mars samples.