Sentences with phrase «planetary protection»

Yet Musk's plans threaten to throw the rule book on planetary protection out the window.

International agreements govern planetary protection measures that must be taken by space agencies.

Of course I will try my hardest to share my strong beliefs about planetary protection, but I also realize that they need to come to that realization on their own.

Stray microbes from Earth could potentially harm not just Martian life, but also resources that human settlers may eventually want, such as aquifers, says John Rummel, who served as NASA's planetary protection officer for more than a decade.

He added that NASA's Office of Planetary Protection sterilizes spacecraft that will land on other planets to ensure our native bacteria doesn't interact with the organisms elsewhere.

But NASA's planetary protection office, charged with keeping earthly microbes from colonizing other bodies, has said it may nix a visit.

That means it's possible that SpaceX or another company will try to send humans to Mars before the reconnaissance missions necessary to write rules for planetary protection are even built.

As a private company SpaceX isn't directly bound by international planetary protection policies.

«Therefore, if we'd relax planetary protection concerns in a Viking - like mission today, we could add another low - budget mission to the space program.»

So argue two Mars scientists behind a controversial new push to relax planetary protection rules — a set of sterilisation procedures that Mars - bound spacecraft must undergo to avoid contaminating the planet with terrestrial microbes.

Do longer stays on Mars (500 days versus 30 days) mean more contamination, and do they require different planetary protection requirements than shorter stays?

They opened the already - sterilized bit box, a violation of planetary protection protocols that caused the office to downgrade Curiosity's sterility.

«If you're as clean as Viking, you can go anywhere on Mars,» says NASA planetary protection officer Catharine Conley.

Today, at a meeting in Washington, D.C., of NASA's planetary science advisory committee, the agency's new planetary protection officer raised the possibility of opening up a few of the planet's most promising regions to more aggressive exploration.

«This should greatly reduce planetary protection concerns as well as any concerns about infection of astronauts,» McKay explained.

These are scenarios that keep astrobiologists and planetary protection specialists awake at night.

«And this has large impact on different fields including, but not limited to, the theory of Panspermia and planetary protection issues.»

But the Office of Planetary Protection doesn't regulate spacecraft that plan to stay in orbit; since the Tesla was never intended to land, it wasn't cleaned before takeoff.

Whether NASA's policy might change won't be clear until a new planetary protection chief is installed, and after the National Academies panel and special regions workshop have weighed in.

Conley was appointed planetary protection officer in 2006.

Now that we know the moon is unlikely to harbor life, moon missions are held to a less stringent standard than trips to Mars, Europa, or Enceladus, but even moon shots require some basic planetary protection actions.

«What I didn't know at the time,» Conley says, «is the way the position is turned over: The current planetary protection officer finds somebody who's willing to come, brings them in, and then leaves.

Spacecraft going to other worlds must follow costly planetary protection protocols, such as sterilisation, to avoid contaminating their destination with Earth microbes, putting any native life at risk, or bringing potentially dangerous alien ones back.

Planetary Protection Racket As the first planet to form in our solar system, Jupiter helped to sculpt the rest [see «The Genesis of Planets»; SciAm, May 2008].

«We're still trying to figure out how to implement planetary protection,» says space law professor Joanne Gabrynowicz at the University of Mississippi.

There are mixed feelings: some have suggested treating Mars as a wildlife preserve, while others argue that existing planetary protection rules are too strict and could even hamper the hunt for life by making the most interesting destinations the hardest to explore.

Europa planetary protection for Juno Jupiter orbiter.

Fairen thinks that without the cost of cautious planetary protection measures, NASA could do even more to search for other organisms.

At NASA, this mandate evolved into an official planetary protection policy, a Sisyphean effort to shield the universe from the people exploring it.

Officially, he is the senior staff scientist of the biotechnology and planetary protection group.

So planetary protection would be taken very seriously,» he says.

Indeed, Schulze - Makuch speculates planetary protection may be a lost cause for Mars — or at least a misguided endeavor.

The trouble, he adds, is that too - stringent planetary protection rules may preclude getting the evidence necessary for that proof.

The presence of water raises the possibility that Ceres might harbor life, so NASA's Office of Planetary Protection insisted that Dawn stay at least 420 miles away to minimize the risk of contaminating a pristine world with earthly microbes.

«We have not demonstrated that we can integrate those functions to meet planetary protection requirements,» Allen says bluntly.

Planetary Protection Knowledge Gaps for Human Extraterrestrial Missions Workshop Report.

«When we landed the Huygens probe on Titan, we had no idea what we'd find on the surface, so it was really the discoveries of Huygens and Cassini that led to these new [planetary protection] requirements,» says Spilker.

Although planetary protection may conjure up thoughts of protecting Earth from marauding alien bugs, there is great effort put into protecting other worlds from our bacteria.

And with NASA's Mars 2020 rover planning to cache samples to one day return to Earth's labs, planetary protection also means making sure that our own world is safe from contamination by possible alien life.

Planetary protection works both ways: The probability of infecting another world with microbes from Earth can not ever be zero.

Why is planetary protection seen as a boondoggle, I asked?

Several media outlets claimed NASA wanted to hire planetary protection officers to defend Earth from an alien invasion, but the reality is far less glamorous and potentially harmful to the space agency's mission.

Microbial ecology of a crewed rover traverse in the arctic: Low microbial dispersal and implications for planetary protection on human Mars missions.

John Rummel, an astrobiologist at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and former NASA Planetary Protection Officer, told the room that he doesn't think there has to be a conflict.

These are scenarios that keep astrobiologists and planetary protection specialists awake at night,» writes Maynard.

That makes now the best time for scientists, legal experts and the public to start thinking about when and how we might relax planetary protection protocols if we decide another planet is lifeless, he says.

The researchers claim «the protocols and policies of planetary protection are unnecessarily restricting Mars exploration and need to be revised.»