Space viruses

I was curious about what NASA and ATS thinks about the possibility of bringing alien life back to earth without knowing it. Manned space missions are definitly in our future, but what if viruses did come from space and those astronaughts brought one back with them? It could be extreamly devistating, possibly even fatal to the entire human race if something like prions became widespread. (We couldn't fight them-because they wouldn't be "natural")

Sure they would be natural, just because of it is alien in the sense that it is not of this world does not mean it's not organic and could not be combatted. It would be similar to the emergence of a new virus such as SARS. Plus, I'm sure after returning from an alien world astronauts would be carefully quarentiened to prevent something like this from happening.

Cownose,
Sounds hauntingly familiar to The Andromeda Strain
by Michael Crichton.
I am sure that the world goverments have contingency plans already in place.
Book:
The Andromeda Strain

Movie:

Yes my idea was directly taken from The Andromeda Strain. A great book, I enjoy Micheal Crichton's work (although I hear his new book isn't so scientificly sound).

What I ment by "natural" is that it wouldn't be something that is normally on this earth that our bodies have developed to combat. It would be completely alien, and therefor possibly more dangerous. However an alien virus might not even effect humans because it wouldn't know how to attack us.

Anyways dealing with aliens is just so out there due to the fact that they are well, aliens. We really need to be EXTRA open minded with ETs, because they are not going to be anything like here. For example on one post someone said this aliens body was a child because it was so small. Thats in comparison to us humans.

But yes I agree if they are quarinteened then that seems like a reasonable defence against possible alien viruses.

What I ment by "natural" is that it wouldn't be something that is normally on this earth that our bodies have developed to combat. It would be completely alien, and therefor possibly more dangerous. However an alien virus might not even effect humans because it wouldn't know how to attack us.

Actually, this is happening nearly every day / year. That is one of the many reasons that there is not a cure for the "common cold". The flu vaccine that you take every year is different year to year depending on what WHO believes will be the major variant.

Now the instances listed above is only a very short list of "natural" mutations of viruses that have been around for millions of years.

Now also throw in the viruses that are man-made, the viruses that have been "dormant for years / eras and then you have a reason for concern.

We won't get any viruses because NASA is smart. They test for these things already, and have for ages. Everything up there is sterile, and everything back is sterile (space=3K, ain't no life). Landing on the moon or something is the only possibility, and they were very careful with that. Mars is next, and much more of an issue (possibly).

Yes, NASA is very carefull about this, in fact they found bacteria from earth survived a trip to the Moon and back.

In November, 1969, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft's microorganisms were recovered from inside its camera that was brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew.

The 50-100 organisms survived launch, space vacuum, 3 years of radiation exposure, deep-freeze at an average temperature of only 20 degrees above absolute zero, and no nutrient, water or energy source.

Earth microbes on the moon