Water on Mars

Recently, NASA has confirmed that during the Martian summer melt water runs on the planet. The presence of running water means that life could have developed on Mars and may still exist there today. We need to find out.

So far Space agencies have made considerable efforts to ensure that Mars and other planets and satellites have not been contaminated by microbes or other life forms from Earth. They need to redouble their efforts.

If a base is established on Mars, which exploits Martian resources, then the spacefarers will need to be ultra careful not introduce alien species. Mars should be protected for scientific research at all costs.

If life is discovered on Mars it must not be contaminated as it will be the most important discovery ever made: we will know that we are not "alone" in the Universe. It will be essential to know what are the differences between life on Earth and life on Mars. This knowledge will help us to survive and prosper on Earth.

There will be no excuses to develop Mars industrially or to exploit its resources. The human species has done so much damage to the Earth's environment because we have been unable to control or regulate ourselves. We need to suppress the desire to exploit our neighbour.

There are many who express the opinion that Mars should be populated by humans as part of a "Noah's Ark"  project to ensure the survival of the human species against the threat of environmental collapse of even asteroid strikes. These opinions are disingenuous and I aver that they are an attempt to scare the the human population into taking unneeded action.

If we look after our planet we can ensure our survival for the foreseeable future and we could even survive long enough to evolve into a different species. The chances of the Earth being hit by a completely destructive meteorite or asteroid are low and we are unlikely to be hit in the near future. There is probably much more chance of our environment being seriously damaged by man-made climate change or war or both. Man-made threats could quite easily be regulated or even eliminated if we learn how control ourselves. Scientific research of the Martian environment will help show us how to preserve our own planet; but only if we are certain that our neighbouring planet has not been artificially contaminated.

There is little that we can do about the threat of a massive asteroid hitting us and we just have to learn to live with this fact. It is after all part of the natural evolution of the solar system.

Our future could be assured without he need to populate Mars just to create man-made climate change and environmental damage there.

An asteroid threat exists no matter which planet we live on and Mars is closer to the asteroid belt than the Earth, so we might be better off staying where we are.