Latest news with #PlanetaryProtection
The Sun
26-07-2025
- Science
- The Sun
I was hired by NASA to protect Earth from aliens – here's what happens when they find us… & why it may spark disaster
AN EX-NASA chief has sensationally revealed plans for intelligent alien visitors. John Rummel was twice NASA's Planetary Protection Officer - from 1987 to 1993 and 1997 to 2006. 5 5 5 His objective was to prevent the contamination of other planets during exploratory missions, and also to ensure alien samples didn't contaminate Earth. But he also contemplated what he would do if intelligent aliens were to visit. And Rummel, now retired, has even outlined what could happen if there was a full-scale alien invasion. Rummel told The Sun: 'An alien visitor would provide mutual benefit. 'We could imagine standard microbial sampling, such as swabs and wipes for our part. 'Conceptually, it could be like the Danish film, The Visit, where we have somebody who is coming here but not invading, and they're interested in finding out more. 'I would insist we sample the visitor to make sure we have no microbial hitchhikers and also that we do not introduce anything to hurt the visitor. 'As for alien invasions, you could end up with the Martians being killed off by the first pathogenic bacteria, and the other way around. 'If we go to Mars, we become the Martians. We have to be careful that when we do get there we don't bring back unknowns that might otherwise be a problem. 'A lot of people go, oh well, we haven't found life on Mars so far, so it shouldn't be a problem. 'There are a lot of people with big enough egos to say 'trust me'. 'But that's not really a good idea. Ignorance is not bliss. Let's go ahead and take some data.' He added: 'We are just getting started in looking for signs of life. I will vote for aliens finding us first. 'We are otherwise in the 'selfie' stage of understanding what to look for, and where.' Rummel said there were no official NASA plans to prepare for an invasion, insisting his views are personal. But in that scenario, he says the agency would be unlikely to have any jurisdiction for a response. Rummel spoke after his successor, Catharine Conley, exclusively told The Sun she had been fired by NASA in 2013 for claiming its plan to return Mars samples to Earth was not safe, something Rummel agrees with. Conley said her job, like Rummel's, was to protect Earth from rogue alien life entering the atmosphere. But she believes that if there was an alien invasion, the response would be led by the US Air Force. 5 Mars facts Here's what you need to know about the red planet... Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun It is named after the Roman god of war The landmass of Mars is very similar to Earth, but due to the difference in gravity, you could jump three times higher there than you can here. Mars is mountainous and hosts the tallest mountain known in the Solar System called Olympus Mons, which is three times higher than Everest Mars is considered the second most habitable planet after Earth. It takes the planet 687 Earth days to orbit the Sun The planet has a diameter of 4,212 miles, and has an average distance from Earth of 140 million miles Martian temperatures can vary wildly, reaching as high as 70F/20C or as low as -225F/-153C She told The Sun: 'They would very much more likely be tiny little aliens. 'But if there were any intelligent ones, that would be the Air Force's problem, not NASA's, at least for the US. 'But again, we don't know what we're preparing for.' Rummel continued to work for NASA as a senior scientist at the Astrobiology Program after leaving his PPO role before retiring. He added: 'If somebody were to come in and land on the Earth, it's unlikely that they're going to cause a problem in my opinion. 'But I wouldn't trust my opinion on this because I don't have data. 'I believe that there's life out there but it wouldn't consider itself alien. Because they're out there and we're the aliens if we go out there. 'They're not the aliens themselves. I hope intelligent alien life is out there, and I certainly think it could be. We have a chance of seeing them in our lifetime. 'It changes all the time, but the search for extra terrestrial intelligence or technology has the potential to reveal if there's something else going on in the galaxy that's not us. 'At one point in time, I was the SETI program person at NASA headquarters. "And some very smart people are dedicated to seeing what's out there.' 5 NASA says on its website it hopes to send humans to Mars as early as the 2030s to explore signs of alien life. It was planning to return Mars samples before then as part of its Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. But that has been scrapped by Donald Trump's cuts, and NASA instead says it anticipates returning samples through lower-cost options. China remains on course with its own plans to return Mars samples through its Tianwen-3 Mars mission, set for launch in 2028 and bringing samples back by 2031. Rummel says he agrees with Catharine that NASA's current plans to bring samples back to Earth are not safe. But he says he'll be keeping an eager eye on the Chinese. He said: 'Mars sample return by robotic space vehicles is not currently funded by the US, so Catharine is right. 'It will be interesting to see the details of whatever the Chinese do.' He added: 'The bottom line is that we're looking for life on Mars and if we think there's a credible possibility of finding life on Mars, then it would be nice to know something about whether or not that life form was benign or whether or not it somehow might affect us.' 'You don't want it to go badly.' The Sun has approached NASA for a response to Rummel's comments. On questions surrounding the safety of samples returned to Mars, NASA previously said: "It is anticipated that future missions to Mars will return samples for study on Earth. "NASA will never compromise on safety." How long does it take to get to Mars? It's not that short of a trip... There's an immense distance between Earth and Mars, which means any trip to the red planet will take a very long time It's also made more complicated by the fact that the distance is constantly changing as the two planets rotate around the sun The closest that the Earth and Mars would ever be is a distance of 33.9million miles – that's 9,800 times the distance between London and New York That's really rare though: the more useful distance is the average, which is 140million miles Scientists on Earth have already launched a whole bunch of spacecraft to (or near) Mars, so we have a rough idea of how long it takes with current technology Historically, the trip has taken anywhere from 128 to 333 days – admittedly a huge length of time for humans to be on board a cramped spacecraft.
The Sun
20-07-2025
- Science
- The Sun
I was sacked by NASA for telling TRUTH about alien mission – now I fear Mars astronauts won't come home alive
A TOP scientist claims she was sacked by Nasa after raising concerns about alien life on Mars. Catharine Conley, the agency's Planetary Protection Officer from 2006 to 2017, also fears SpaceX astronauts won't come home alive. 10 10 10 Conley first accused officials at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California of failing to clean the Mars 2020 rover correctly before its launch. Mars 2020 is Nasa's mission sent to search for samples of the Red Planet to bring home and test for evidence of past or current alien life. The rover, Perseverance, is still crawling around the surface after landing in February 2021. Its job is to obtain the samples which will then be collected by a future Mars Sample Return Mission. But Conley feared any material eventually flown home could be contaminated - and the whole mission scuppered. She claims she was suddenly removed from the position after speaking out - and suspects it was to silence her concerns. Conley told The Sun: 'Nasa decided they didn't want to do the kind of work that I had been doing. 'They didn't want to continue with the kinds of implementation that they had been doing historically. 'That was not something I thought was a good idea, so they decided they needed someone else for the job. "This was basic planetary protection as it had been done for the prior 50 years or so." Mystery space rock blazing through solar system 'may be oldest comet ever seen' Conley, who now works as a researcher, added: 'The Mars 2020 rover was cleaned in a way that was not compatible with prior levels of cleanliness, in particular regarding the amount of contamination that was getting introduced into the samples that were being collected for return. 'I pointed out that having a 0.1% chance of contaminating any individual sample, when you have 40 samples in total, comes out to a 4 per cent chance of having Earth contamination in the samples you're looking at. 'That makes it fairly difficult to be confident that you can distinguish between Earth life and Mars life. 'That was not something that the people at headquarters management wanted to hear and they took the steps that they thought were appropriate.' 10 Conley claims she had been told of staff being careless when using gloves and protective equipment. She also claimed to have been told of staff bringing equipment into assembly rooms that was not properly cleaned, along with an 'attitude of skepticism I encountered regularly at JPL'. Nasa states on its website that Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover remains an active mission. It landed in February 2021 as part of Nasa's Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. In January the agency said it was hoping to announce plans for the returning of samples in the second half of 2026. But that has been thrown into doubt following Donald Trump's proposed cuts to Nasa, with MSR a casualty. 10 China is preparing to press ahead with their own plans to return Mars samples. It has scheduled the Tianwen-3 Mars mission for launch in 2028, collecting and bringing samples back by 2031. But Conley still fears the same problem. She said: 'The concerns are similar. I've been looking at some of the reports that have come out about the Chinese proposed missions, and they're saying all the right things to the extent that I can obtain information. 'But it is difficult to follow up on what they are actually saying they're doing. 'I certainly had experience within my duties at Nasa of engineers saying one thing and doing something else. 'So it's difficult to know. But if other space agencies are not doing anything more than Nasa did, then I would be surprised if their contamination levels are low enough that you could detect the Mars signal underneath the background from Earth.' Despite the cuts, Trump has proposed no savings on Nasa's plans to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s. Nasa's mission to Mars Nasa hopes to send astronauts to Mars as early as the 2030s. The space company has been working to advance its technologies in a bid to send a human crew to the Red Planet. It would take astronauts up to nine months to reach Mars - which even at its closest is 33.9 million miles away. Astronauts could then spend up to 500 days on the planet's surface before returning to Earth - which would take another nine months. The crew would spend their time on the planet collecting data and assessing the planetary alignment that would allow the spacecraft to land and depart from Mars on the same orbit. Last year, the agency completed a year-long simulated mission that saw four crew members out in a replica habitat in Houston, Texas. They logged 378 days in the 1,700-square-foot, 3D-printed habitat called Mars Dune Alpha. But Conley fears that doing so without a sample return mission means a gaping hole in knowledge for what astronauts will encounter. She also questions if astronauts will be allowed home if they fall sick. Conley added: 'Not doing a robotic sample return means we don't have detailed information about what kinds of materials the astronauts are likely to encounter, and possibly bring back to Earth, which could be quite problematic if there is something hazardous in Mars regolith, even if it's not biological. 10 10 'A question that didn't get answered during Apollo and certainly hasn't been addressed since is: if astronauts get sick after contacting Mars and we can't figure out why, should they be allowed to return? 'The fundamental problem, from my perspective, is overconfidence in thinking that we already know everything we need to know about what could happen, when we don't." Conley also warned of Elon Musk's plans to send a manned crew to Mars through his company, SpaceX. She added: 'SpaceX say they're planning to launch humans to Mars, but I have serious doubts about whether anyone would be alive when the spacecraft gets there since SpaceX doesn't seem to be developing long-term life support systems along with their rockets. 'Musk has made numerous claims about when he'll land humans on Mars that are distinctly implausible, at least if he wants the humans to be alive when they get there. 'Nasa is much more likely to be careful about preserving astronaut health but, ironically, seems not similarly concerned about protecting the Earth from possible Mars contamination.' The Sun has approached Nasa for a response to Conley's allegations.
