The abiotic background as a central component of a Sample Safety Assessment Protocol for Mars Sample Return

Martian rock and regolith samples are being collected and cached by NASA’s Perseverance rover, with the goal of returning them to Earth as soon as the mid-2030s. Upon return, samples would be housed in a sample receiving facility under biological containment to prevent exposing Earth’s biosphere to any potential biohazards that might be present. Samples could be released from high containment for scientific investigations if they are found to be safe or are sterilized. The Sample Safety Assessment Protocol Tiger Team (SSAP-TT) was convened by the Sample Receiving Project between August 2023 and August 2024 and tasked with the development of a Sample Safety Assessment Protocol (SSAP). The result of this work is a proposed three-step protocol, supported by Bayesian statistical hypothesis testing, to assess the risk as to whether returned samples contain modern martian biology that could represent a biohazard. The proposed protocol outlines procedures to determine whether the samples could be safely released from high containment without sterilization or require a “hold and review” step. This article presents the central concept of the SSAP approach—comparing returned samples to the abiotic baseline. Organic molecules, which exist throughout the solar system, can have either biotic or abiotic origins. However, biotically produced organic molecules exhibit distinct complexity, distribution, and abundance characteristics that differentiate them from those formed through abiotic chemistry. The proposed protocol would examine the organic inventory of returned samples by using multiple techniques, including morphological and spectral assessments, to determine whether any signals exceed the abiotic baseline; that is, whether the organic molecular inventory could be explained solely by abiotic chemical synthesis. This approach provides a rigorous, yet feasible, safety assessment protocol by using modern techniques while minimizing sample consumption. We also identify key areas for future research and development, which include detection limits and further characterization of the martian abiotic background.