Space exploration is one of the greatest achievements we have had as humanity.
More than six decades later, since space adventure began with the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik 1, we are today able to explore places millions of kilometers from our planet using advanced robotic laboratories.
(You may be interested: Mars 4k! Video of the planet’s surface in HD).
The latest exploration expeditions to Mars bring together a yearning for many years to find remnants of life outside our home.
But what if we found a fossil trace of that life? Or even more, if some microbe appears in front of the cameras and other measuring instruments that the Perseverance rover is equipped with.
Without a doubt, biology will be one of the areas of science that will broaden its boundaries the most, but many warn of the social and cultural implications of what is likely to be the most relevant discovery in human history.
All of these ideas are real fertile ground, and no better than saying them, for the myriad of new questions, which are now being gathered in what is known as the science of ethics.
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What are we going to do with this life? What are the implications of exploring an environment in which conditions will change, which in turn affect the extraterrestrial organisms in which they live? Will we restrict ourselves to our desire? Expansion If we find life on Mars, how will we behave when we colonize the red planet?
Although science fiction has a long history of showing confrontations with alien civilizations, it is another matter to ask as a society about the true implications associated with these ethical dilemmas.
If contact with new cultures has been in many cases painful, and even catastrophic, over the course of human history, would there be grounds to believe that this would be different when it comes to extraterrestrial cultures?
The Earth was the scene in which the colonial machine of humans began, and somehow the path of space exploration appears to be the next step for the historic conquests of lands, continents and countries. So it seems important not to make the same mistakes in the past.
(Read: This is Diana Trujillo, the Colombian behind the mission to persevere.)
Ethical problems related to the use of space, initially associated with militarization in the Cold War era, and even with the sale of parcels of land on the Moon by unscrupulous people, today include the ethics of extraterrestrial contact and manipulation of planet conditions beyond ours. Blue Marble.
It is good to think about how we should act if we have neighbors across the street.
Santiago Vargas
PhD. At the Astrophysical Observatory
Astronomer from the National University
