How does NASA plan to keep samples from Mars safe from contamination (and contaminating Earth)?

[Sky]

How does NASA plan to keep samples from Mars safe from contamination (and contaminating Earth)?

https://phys.org/news/2022-10-nasa-samp ... ation.html

NASA's Mars Sample Return Mission is inching closer and closer. The overall mission architecture just hit a new milestone when Perseverance collected the first sample that will be sent back. But what happens once that sample actually gets here? NASA and its partner, ESA, are still working on that, but recently they released a fact sheet that covers what will happen during the first stage of that process—returning to the ground.

That return will take place in the middle of the desert in the western USA, in an area called the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). While this may seem like an obscure place to land such an important mission, it does have several things going for it.

First, it's in the continental U.S. That gives it relatively easy access to advanced laboratory equipment available throughout the country. NASA is the most likely candidate to be able to marshal all the resources necessary to quarantine the sample to keep it separate from the wider Earth environment, which would help eliminate the (admittedly unlikely) event of a Martian superbug getting on the loose.

Secure containment is one of the reasons the agency is foregoing a water landing. Doing so would lessen the impact on the samples, but it also would have a slight chance that the capsule could sink into the ocean and the tiny bits of Mars within it could be lost to the sea. Avoiding that would be nice, so it's better to land on land.

But that land has to be isolated, another advantage of the UTTR. Not only is it not near any roads, but it is also already restricted air space, as it is the site of plenty of rocket and plane testing. Being isolated also means that the capsule is less likely to impact anything important if something goes wrong with the trajectory.

https://clui.org/ludb/site/utah-test-an ... range-uttr

The Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) is a vast military area in northern Utah, the nation's largest combined restricted land and closed "special use" airspace area. It consists of over 19,000 square miles of restricted airspace with 2,675 miles of ground space. On the ground, numerous target areas, radar and video facilities support around 20,000 training sorties and 1,000 test sorties annually. Missions are coordinated through Hill AFB, near Ogden, Utah, 40 miles away from the UTTR by air. The ground area of the UTTR includes a north and a south area, separated by the Interstate 80 corridor which runs east/west from Nevada to Salt Lake City. The south area includes the old Wendover Bombing and Gunnery Range, with over a million acres of secured land used since WWII. Also in the south area is Dugway Proving Ground, considered part of the UTTR, though it is also the Army's chemical and biological weapons testing area. Oasis is the primary on-site support facility for the UTTR, located in the North Range area, about 15 miles from Interstate 80. The 388,000 acre north area handles most of the testing activities, conducted by a test group out of Edwards Air Force Base, and others. According to an Air Force representative, "just about every munition out there has been tested at the UTTR." The north area also has a munitions disposal, and "open burn" area at Sedal Pass. Explosives of over 10-kiloton yield can be detonated here, currently the only facility in the country where such high yield ordnance disposal is permitted. Hundreds of Poseidon rocket motors (most of which, coincidentally, were made at the Hercules facility in nearby Magna), have been disposed of at the Thermal Treatment Unit (TTU), according to START treaty agreements.

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