Don't Go in the Water

With the existence of liquid water recently being confirmed on Mars, the question has probably been asked about whether or not one of the little robots trundling around the Martian surface could be sent to investigate.

The answer is, well, no. Some of the reasoning is practical. Curiosity is 30 miles away from the area where scientists believe liquid water exists on the Martian surface. Its top speed is something under one-tenth of a mile per hour, meaning that journey would take it almost two earth weeks with its figurative pedal pressed to the metal. And that's if the terrain between the rover and where it would be headed is smooth, flat and solid, which it isn't.

A more substantial obstacle is a 1967 treaty that forbids any Earth nation from sending any spacefarer or probe near an extraterrestrial source of water for fear of contaminating it. Microbes can be hardy little duffers and there is no guarantee a journey of 145 million miles through the vacuum and hard radiation of space has killed them all, especially since some of the vital rover components are shielded from the radiation and whatever might have remained alive in there would be as protected as the instruments.

The story at the Mental Floss link offers the interesting supposition that water might be studied by a future probe that is given the ability to 3-D print its own little probe minions, since those would be about as Earth-microbe free as could possibly be. That capability isn't a part of the upcoming rover missions scheduled for a 2020 launch, so it may be awhile before we get to see what's in a sample of real Martian mineral water.