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sterlingphoenix t1_iyet0j6 wrote

It's important if the spaceship is going to another planet or anything else that could possibly sustain life of any kind (e.g., Jupiter's moon Europa). This is because we want to make sure we're not dumping some of our own life forms on that celestial body.

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Target880 t1_iyetq69 wrote

The same for trips to Mars. If we have an experiment that tries to detect life on anybody we do not what contamination from the earth can give a false positive.

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Persist_and_Resist t1_iyfclfa wrote

And if you are talking about the ISS or other potential future long-term manned missions, it is important to make sure you don't carry up any microbes that could potentially screw up a biosystem that is already going to be really hard to maintain.

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