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Any responsible space-faring civilization wants to avoid infecting other worlds with their microbes. But are we too careful? It’s time to update the rules. That’s the conclusion of a panel that examined NASA’s rules for planetary protection. It was smart, at the dawn of the space age, to think about how we might inadvertently pollute other worlds with Earthly microbes as we explore the Solar System. But now that we know a lot more than we did back then, the rules don’t fit.
The Planetary Protection Office (PPO) handles these rules and how they apply to spacecraft. Not just for NASA, but for other partner nations too. The Planetary Protection Independent Review Board (PPIRB) produced this new report. The PPIRB was chaired by Alan Stern, a well-known American planetary scientist, and the principal investigator for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Whenever humans send a spacecraft to another body, there’s a risk of contaminating that body with microbes from Earth. Eliminating or lowering that risk is the only way to guarantee integrity in the search for life. Great pains are taken to sterilize spacecraft, but the risk is never zero. Spacecraft are prepared in sterile clean rooms before launch, and back in the 1970s, the Viking landers were sterilized in huge ovens built just for that purpose. Conversely, we need to protect Earth from any unwanted visitors that might come back to visit us on one of our spacecraft. It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but since we don’t yet know what microbes might exist on Mars, Enceladus, or some other world, we have to protect against contaminating Earth...
According to this new report, with more and more space exploration, and with more and more countries and commercial players involved, the old set of rules may need to be updated. “The landscape for planetary protection is moving very fast. It’s exciting now that for the first time, many different players are able to contemplate missions of both commercial and scientific interest to bodies in our solar system,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “We want to be prepared in this new environment with thoughtful and practical policies that enable scientific discoveries and preserve the integrity of our planet and the places we’re visiting.” Many of the standards were put in place during the ’60s and ’70s. Our knowledge of the Moon and Mars, the most frequently visited bodies, has grown since then. The entire lunar surface was initially classified as important to the study of the origins of life. But that hasn’t held up, and now not many scientists think of the Moon as very significant in that study. At least not all of it.
The Moon, and the Lunar Gateway, are likely staging points for future missions to Mars. Is there some risk of cross-contamination between the two? What about when spacecraft return samples to Earth, as the Mars 2020 rover will? The reality is that material from Mars has been carried to Earth in orders of magnitude greater than any sampling humans can ever do. There’s been a natural flow of Martian material to Earth over billions of years, as meteors strike Mars and send debris into space. Some of that debris has landed on Earth. The PPIRB said the overall risk of contaminating Earth with Martian material should be reviewed.....
Full NASA report available at:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/planetary_protection_board_report_20191018.pdf
