Sciency Words: Special Region

Today’s post is part of a special series here on Planet Pailly called Sciency Words. Each week, we take a closer look at an interesting science or science-related term to help us expand our scientific vocabularies together. Today’s term is:

SPECIAL REGION

It’s been several months now that I’ve been focusing almost all my research efforts on Mars. During that time, I’ve read a lot about those very special regions of Mars that might be home to alien life, but I didn’t realize until last week that “special region” is, in fact, a technical term.

Not only that, it’s a term whose precise definition has been and continues to be in dispute—exactly the kind of term most worthy of a Sciency Words post!

According to this paper from the journal Astrobiology, a special region is any region on Mars where “terrestrial organisms are likely to replicate” or where there is “a high potential for the existence of extant martian life forms.” By international agreement, NASA and other space agencies are not allowed to risk contaminating these special regions with our Earth germs. Since our current Mars rovers may not be 100% germfree, they’re all banned from exploring those areas.

But where are these regions, exactly? What are their boundary lines? This is where the definition of this term gets murky. We just don’t know enough about Mars to know which regions are special and which are not.

Initially I assumed it would be up to the International Astronomy Union (I.A.U.) to sort this out. They claim to be the sole authority on naming, categorizing, and defining space stuff. Even if you’ve never heard of the I.A.U. before, I can almost guarantee you’ve heard about at least one thing they did.

But in this case, I guess because this is a matter of international law, it’s a different organization that has to define what is or is not a special region. That organization is called COSPAR (Committee On SPAce Research), which is part of the International Council for Science. And COSPAR has been understandably reticent about setting any official definitions or drawing any official boundaries on a map. Like I said, we just don’t know enough about Mars yet.

Instead, COSPAR recommends evaluating potential landing sites on Mars on a case-by-case basis, keeping the latest scientific data in mind, to avoid contaminating any regions that might possibly someday turn out to be special (whenever we figure out what that means). According to this article from NASA, COSPAR reviews and updates the definition of “special region” every two years. Their next formal meeting is scheduled for July of 2018.

P.S.: Wait a second… who put that sign there? They better have decontaminated it first!