How does any sort of Europa/Enceledus tunneling bot work when we cannot actually steralize anything completely.
Even the Perseverance sample collection tubes (cleanest things ever made by mankind) might have bacteria on/in them. Its a VERY low level amount of it, but its not 100% life free. They were measuring to a threashold of detection (must be below x number of particles). However, the number was not zero.
Drilling into water under an moon would require a 100% clean device. A single bacteria getting in would be enough to contaminate the entire moon.
"Complete sterilization" is not a requirement. You should look up COSPAR's planetary protection guidelines, which NASA has largely adopted. The requirements are specified in it.
Thats my point. They have set a requirement. For mars that is good enough. However, for a warm watery place, the current COSPAR requirements are not good enough. Not even close. Any mission we do right now would have a 100% chance of contaminating enceladus/europa with earth life.
Wrong. By several orders of magnitude.
In an analogous way that you're not getting a disease by catching a single virus, you're not even remotely close to 100% chance here.
You cannot compare infectious dose for a disease with contaimination. They are vastly different things. A living creature has an immune system, so it takes a certain threshold amount of bacteria/viruses/ect to establish.
For example, a single mold spore is all thats needed to start a mold colony, because there isn't an immune system destroying the mold.