Planetary protection technological needs for future Mars exobiological investigation

According to United Nations Outer Space Treaty and in line with COSPAR recommendations, the exploration of the solar system must be conducted in compliance with planetary protection constraints in order to avoid extraterrestrial bodies contamination, particularly biological contamination by terrestrial microorganisms. It is also required to protect Earth from an eventual contamination carried by return systems or samples. Endless, the search for life in extraterrestrial samples, in situ or in the frame of sample return missions, must be conducted in order to state with the maximum possible degree of confidence, because the discovery or the nondiscovery of life in sample has a direct impact on updatations of planetary protection specifications for future missions. This last requirement imposes consequently also implementations in order to preserve extra terrestrial samples properties. Mars is presently one of the main target at exobiology point of view, and a lot of missions are operating, on travel or scheduled for its exploration. Some of them include payload dedicated to the search of life or traces of life, and one of the goals of these missions is also to prepare sample return missions and as ultimate objectives to send there a crewed missions. These constraints impose to set up unusual requirements for project teams involved in such solar system exploration missions, requirements based on hardware sterilisation, sterile integration, organic cleanliness, microbiological and cleanliness control, the use of high reliability system in order to avoid crashs .... etc. Searching for life on Mars, in-situ or on Earth in returned samples, needs presently technological developments in order to comply with planetary protection requirements, based mainly on scientific considerations, and the main developments will be described here.