NASA Releases Guidelines To Protect Other Planets From Human Microbes

This month, NASA released the findings of its newly formed Planetary Protection Independent Review Board, which was chartered over the summer to revise agency's Planetary Protection policies as more human groups prepare for interplanetary space travel.

Developed by a group of twelve expert consultants from NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, disinfectant services cape town among others.

The major finding was that contamination considerations--both human microbes contaminating other planets, and alien microbes potentially being brought back to Earth as contaminants—be made 'integral to mission implementation' for both government-funded and private sector projects.

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A photomicrograph of what some suggest is a fossilized microorganism from Mars (pictured above), a reminder that space exploration will inevitably lead to a clash of terrestrial and extraterrestrial microbiomes


The Board also called for the standards of Planetary Protection be revised every five years to ensure they remain up-to-date.

They also recommended linking compliance with the board's recommendations to eligibility for NASA funding or support of private-sector space exploration projects.






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The Board admits previous missions to Mars likely exposed the planet to microbial matter and bacteria from Earth as there weren't adequate sterilization steps in places for earlier Mars probes.

This fall, another group of scientists called for sending microbe-laden spacecraft from Earth to Mars as a way of colonizing the planet and preparing it for future habitability.













Citing the near impossibility of fully sterilizing everything that makes contact with another planet, the researchers from Nova Southeastern University in Florida and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro said future space exploration should be driven from managed exposure instead of avoidance.

'We hypothesize the near impossibility of exploring new planets without carrying and/or delivering any microbial travellers,' the researchers argued.






Scientists can't guarantee NASA's Curiosity rover, which took the above picture, didn't contaminate the surface of Mars with microbes from Earth


'In addition, although we highlight the importance of controlling and tracking such contaminations—to explore the existence of extraterrestrial microorganisms—we also believe that we must discuss the role of microbes as primary colonists and assets, rather than serendipitous accidents, for future plans of extraterrestrial colonization.'

If humans are ready to dish it out, they will sooner or later have to be ready to take it.













It's still unclear if life of any kind exists on Mars, but researchers have theorized there may be microbial life half an inch beneath the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter's moon.

In 2013, Copenhagen Suborbitals, described as 'the world's only manned, amateur space program,' proposed sending a manned mission to Europa within the next 50 years.