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posted by martyb on Sunday July 12 2020, @01:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the cosmic-Kudzu dept.

NASA is updating its guidelines on how to prevent contamination of the Solar System:

After years of debate, NASA plans to update its guidelines for how much biological contamination of other worlds will be allowed while the agency explores the Solar System.

[...] For decades, NASA has followed fairly strict rules about how much biological contamination is considered acceptable whenever the agency sends probes — or people — to other planets. It's a concept known as planetary protection, and it has a legal basis in a treaty signed more than 50 years ago. Called the Outer Space Treaty, it challenges nations to explore other worlds "so as to avoid their harmful contamination" and to not bring back any alien microbes from other worlds that could cause harm to Earth.

A big goal of planetary protection has been to keep us from tracking microbes all over the Solar System. That way, if we were to come across some kind of life form on another world, we would know with certainty that it actually came from that world and that we didn't put it there on accident. Planetary protection is also focused on keeping humans safe, too. If a country does find life, we want to make sure it's not going to wipe us out if they bring it back to our planet.

[...] But now, NASA is particularly focused on sending humans into deep space once again. And whenever people go into space, we carry tons of bacteria with us, no matter how much we clean. With human exploration such a high priority, NASA now wants to rethink some of the more strict requirements for the Moon and Mars — otherwise human exploration would be too tough to pull off. Today, NASA released two new "interim directives" that lay out potential changes to the guidelines for exploring the Moon and Mars. It follows years of urging from the space community to update these rules.

"We need to relook at these policies because we can't go to Mars with humans if the principle that we're living by is that we can't have any microbial substances with us," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a webinar announcing the new proposed changes. "Because that's just not possible."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday July 12 2020, @04:38PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday July 12 2020, @04:38PM (#1019888) Journal

    We already put bags of poop on the Moon and probably quite a few microbes on Mars.

    Nobody cares if Venus or Jupiter gets "contaminated".

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:31PM (#1019947)

    I'm not worried about places where life from Earth can't survive.

    I'm worried about places where it can.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:40PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday July 12 2020, @06:40PM (#1019954) Journal

      Well, there is a push to put manned bases or colonies on Mars and the Moon. It doesn't seem like any Earth microbes are going to have a great time in Martian "soil" [wikipedia.org], but some people are worried about it. It's possible that Mars has underground lakes or oceans with life in them, but it could be difficult or impossible for Earth life to contaminate it without deliberate drilling.

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