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from: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010530/sc/mars_preparations_1.html
Wednesday May 30 10:01 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) - While the first samples from Mars aren't expected to be returned to Earth for more than a decade, a panel of scientists urged that work begin soon on a quarantine facility for those materials.
The probability is low that the samples will contain any hazardous organisms, but ``prudence dictates that all material must be rigorously quarantined at first,'' a National Research Council (news - web sites) panel warned.
The council is a branch of the National Academy of Science.
Under current plans the first sampling mission to Mars could be launched in 2011, with samples being returned to Earth by 2014.
It will take years to plan and build a facility to quarantine the samples to safeguard the Earth from any potential hazards, the group said in a report released Tuesday.
When Moon samples were returned to Earth they were similarly quarantined, but the facility used for that is no longer available.
``Building this type of quarantine facility is a project of enormous complexity,'' said John Wood, chair of the committee. Wood is a senior scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
The facility will need biological containment to protect the Earth's environment from possible contamination as well as clean-room conditions to prevent Earth organisms from getting into the samples.
Those two needs can conflict, the committee noted, and extensive experimentation and testing will be needed to design a system of two-way protection.
The report suggested that the facility be located near, and be affiliated with, an existing containment center, such as those operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites) in Atlanta, the Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Ft. Detrick, Md., or the facility planned by the medical branch of the University of Texas at Galveston.
However, the panel added, NASA (news - web sites) should operate and be responsible for the quarantine facility.