Hacker News Reader

I guess this means they're taking a "better to ask forgiveness than permission" attitude towards planetary protection? Musk is on the record as not being worried about contaminating Mars with Earth life, and it seems like a 2 year time frame wouldn't give them time to put together a JPL-style clean room operation. Is there anything that NASA could/would do to stop them from landing a 'dirty' Dragon on Mars?

View on HN

The article says they are doing this with NASA, carrying instrumentation of unspecified origin. My guess: SpaceX hands a Dragon to NASA which sterilizes and outfits it with instrumentation and then hands it, enclosed, back to SpaceX to launch.

Well, "SpaceX has entered into an agreement with NASA for a Dragon mission to Mars[...]" so it seems like if NASA had strong requirements for cleanliness they would request SpaceX follow them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com