David Kipping

And so there's always a risk of introducing something.

I mean, to some extent, there is continuous exchange of material between these planets naturally on top of that as well.

And now we're sort of accelerating that process to some degree.

And so if you dig into Europa's surface, which probably is completely pristine, it's very unlikely there has been much exchange with the outside world for its subsurface ocean.

you are for the first time potentially introducing bacterial spores into that environment that may compete or may introduce spurious signatures for the life you're looking for.

And so it's almost an ethical question as to how to proceed with looking for life on those subsurface oceans.

And I don't think we've really...

have a good resolution for at this point.

Ethical.

I mean, we always worry about a space virus coming here or some kind of external source, and we would be the source of that potential contamination.

Yeah.

Possibly.

I mean, I'm sure that some people would be concerned about that.

I think...

We would hopefully have some containment procedures if we did sample return.

You don't even really need a sample return.

These days you can pretty much send a little micro-laboratory to the planet to do all the experiments in situ and then just send them back to your planet, the data.

I don't think it's necessary, especially for a case like that where you might have contamination concerns, that you have to bring samples back.

Although probably if you brought back Europa and sushi, it would probably sell for quite a bit with the billionaires in New York City.

Yeah, I mean, Curiosity has been leaving these little pods on the surface quite recently.