Planetary protection policies aim to guard Solar System bodies from biological contamination from spacecraft. Costly efforts to sterilize Mars spacecraft need to be re-evaluated, as they are unnecessarily inhibiting a more ambitious agenda to search for extant life on Mars.
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Affiliations
Alberto G. Fairén is at the Department of Astronomy, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA
- Alberto G. Fairén
Dirk Schulze-Makuch is at the School of the Environment, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164, USA
- Dirk Schulze-Makuch
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Correspondence to Alberto G. Fairén.
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