Interplanetary Spaceflight Regulatory Environment – Planetary Protection

Abstract

“Planetary Protection” or “Planetary Quarantine” refers to the practice of reducing or eliminating the potential for biological and organic-chemical interchange between Earth and other bodies of the solar system. This practice is essential to the protection of the scientific exploration of space, especially for astrobiological science, and represents simple prudence with respect to the protection of the Earth from possible life elsewhere. As such, planetary protection is a facet of protecting other solar system bodies from “harmful contamination” and of protecting against “adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter” under the UN Space Treaty of 1967. In meeting these treaty obligations, space agencies have developed a variety of implementation techniques that depend on the nature of the mission and target solar-system body, and the requirements for each body/mission type are maintained as an international consensus by COSPAR, the Committee on Space Research of the International Council for Science. Bodies requiring careful control of biological contamination, in both directions, include both Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa, whereas other bodies (including the Earth's moon) may only require control on organic contamination. Other bodies, such as small, rocky asteroids, may not require any controls on organic or biological contamination at all. This chapter describes the development of these requirements, and their implementation on a variety of spaceflight missions. Keywords: solar system exploration; planets; spaceflight missions; contamination control; microbe; extraterrestrial; quarantine; life detection; astrobiology