[bluGill]

Particularly when we don't even know have reason to believe there are samples. If/when we detect life elsewhere we can talk about leaving it alone, but there are plenty of rocks in the universe with no life that we can work with.

[ianstallings]

We can still explore them. It's the contamination of them that is at question.

[bluGill]

Why is contamination a question? there are millions of rocks scattered around that are not contaminated or explored. There is more to learn by contaminating a few and seeing what happens than to leave them all uncontaminated.