Comment by TheCraiggers
1 day ago
Sure, but you missed my entire point, which was we don't want to contaminate the samples.
The entire point is looking for evidence of life and organic material. Would be a shame to spend all those billions just to not be sure if the organic material we're looking at came from Earth or Mars.
Wouldn’t we be able to tell under an electron microscope?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Maybe, but it would take a lot of detailed study to be absolutely sure.