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Mars exploration and the debate about planetary protection

Could planetary protection considerations hinder our plans to send
humans to Mars?
Chris Carberry and Rick Zucker
March 20, 2023
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Illustration of a spacewalking astronaut covered in orange and green
spores representing the trillions of microorganisms humans take with
them wherever they go.
WE CONTAIN MULTITUDES NASA allows no more than 300,000 spores
(single-celled organisms) to accompany robotic missions that land on
Mars. Human bodies, in comparison, contain trillions of microorganisms.
Credit: SpaceNews Midjourney illustration
Chris Carberry is CEO of Explore Mars, Inc. and author of “Alcohol in
Space.” Rick Zucker is Explore Mars’ vice president for policy.

Planetary protection may sound like something from the realm of science
fiction or like the precautions taken to avert an alien invasion of
Earth. In fact, from a certain perspective, the latter is the better
analogy.

According to NASA, planetary protection is “the practice of protecting
solar system bodies from contamination by Earth life and protecting
Earth from possible life forms that may be returned from other solar
system bodies.”

However, the “possible life forms” referred to are almost certainly
microbial, not intelligent life. NASA even employs an individual with
the impressive title of Planetary Protection Officer, responsible for
assuring that precautions are taken not only to prevent Earth from being
contaminated by alien microbes (known as “backward contamination”) but
also to manage the exposure to other planetary bodies from Earth
microbes (“forward contamination”).

While it is not a well-known topic outside space exploration circles,
planetary protection is not a new area of study and concern. For many
decades, it has been a topic for space conferences, workshops, academic
papers, etc., but until recently, it was rarely considered an urgent
matter. After all, humanity was far from returning to the Moon, going on
to Mars, or even developing a viable plan to achieve such a goal.

This is no longer the case.

Government, commercial, and international human spaceflight plans are
accelerating. Humanity is poised to return to the Moon during the
present decade and land humans on Mars in the 2030s. For the first time
in history, private entities are also planning viable missions to land
vehicles on the lunar and Martian surfaces. Reality is swiftly catching
up with our dreams, but planetary protection policy is not moving
forward at the same pace. This could hinder human spaceflight plans
(government and commercial) over the next couple of decades unless
modifications and standards are agreed to and acted upon by all.

Under existing policies, no human mission would be allowed to venture to
the surface of Mars. NASA allows no more than 300,000 spores
(single-celled organisms) to accompany robotic missions that land on
Mars. Human bodies, in comparison, contain trillions of microorganisms.
It will be impossible for human missions to achieve the same level of
microbial cleanliness achieved for robotic landers.

What can be done to take reasonable planetary protection precautions,
but also enable a human presence on Mars and other interplanetary
destinations? Several years ago, NASA began to address this question. In
2018, the NASA Advisory Council, at the behest of its Regulatory and
Policy Committee, recommended that NASA review its planetary protection
policies, stating that the current rules, based on guidelines issued by
the Committee for Space Research (COSPAR), would exclude the prospect of
human exploration (specifically Mars) and some potential commercial
activities.

In response, NASA issued two Interim Directives regarding planetary
protection policy for the Moon and Mars. The lunar directive lowered the
contamination risk level of the Moon. Except for lunar Arctic regions
and Apollo landing sites, no planetary protection requirements would be
needed for human missions to the Moon since it is entirely exposed to
the vacuum of space.

As for Mars, the directive stated that “NASA will develop risk-informed
decision-making implementation strategies for human missions to Mars,
which account for and balance the needs of human space exploration,
science, commercial activities, and safety.” While NASA has issued
additional planetary protection policies since then, protocols for a
human presence on Mars are still not clearly defined.

Appropriate precautions to prevent the needless contamination of Mars
and other planetary bodies (as well as Earth) should certainly be taken,
but this must be accomplished sensibly. Protocols need to be developed
with the assumption that a human presence on Mars will begin no later
than the 2030s and that human explorers will need to gain access to
regions on Mars that are both scientifically interesting and have
potential access to in-situ resources. Specifically, this means
locations with potential access to water. This concern is articulated in
the report of the Ninth Community Workshop for Achievability and
Sustainability of Mars (AM IX) (Affording Mars | Explore Mars) which states:

“A well-crafted policy should be agreed to well before humans step
foot on Mars. Such agreement must entail a sensible balance between the
prevention of forward and backward contamination vs. maximizing the
value of scientists on the surface of Mars. It should be noted that a
human astrobiologist on the surface of Mars would be of great value not
only to determine the existence of past or present life, but also to
oversee planetary protection protocols.”

This could include setting up safe zones for human activities and
special regions where only robotic exploration is allowed, similar to
policies utilized in Antarctica.

A well-balanced planetary protection policy that not only allows a human
presence on Mars beginning in the 2030s but also takes reasonable
precautions to minimize microbial contamination of Mars needs to be
established soon. Moreover, actions should be taken to ensure that all
nations abide by planetary protection policies or, at the very least,
publicize that some nations are failing to comply with international
policies. If these actions are taken, we will be far more likely to
answer the age-old question: Is there – or has there ever been –
indigenous life on Mars?

The question of planetary protection will be discussed at the upcoming
Humans to Mars Summit taking place on May 16-18, 2023, at the National
Academy of Sciences Building in Washington.

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NASA weighing continuing VERITAS versus future Discovery mission

On 5/18/23 10:12, a425couple wrote:
> from
> https://spacenews.com/mars-exploration-and-the-debate-about-planetary-protection/
>
> Mars exploration and the debate about planetary protection
>
> Could planetary protection considerations hinder our plans to send
> humans to Mars?
>
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Curtis Quick
2 months ago
NASA adopting an aggressive planetary protection protocol will only
ensure that Americans will be the last humans to Mars. We might as well
pay to fly on Chinese ships to Mars, because surely they will not allow
such policies to slow them down.

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FYIGMO Curtis Quick
a month ago
And as NASA continues to plunge into wokeism, social justice, et al,
those fixations will also limit NASA's ability to explore the solar
system. It's a sad thing to go from looking proudly up at the Moon circa
1972 knowing U.S. astronauts were walking on the surface, to today where
I it's almost more agreeable if the Chinese were to return to the Moon
or reach Mars before NASA, just to give them the finger for their
politically correct agenda.

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Torbjörn Larsson
2 months ago
The overall policy is dubious.

First since Earth has potentially contaminated habitable environments
and reversely been contaminated at a significant frequency between us
and Saturn orbit by way of hyper velocity impact ejecta. Second since
any modern contamination has low likelihood for immediate spread due to
the requirement for evolution under established competition to happen.
And lastly because we can identify it among putative native traces in
case we are interested in the latter, most significant on the genetic
level but also likely on
metabolic products.

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TheRadicalModerate
2 months ago
I'm confident that most of the members of COSPAR understand that
significant reform is needed for human presence on Mars, and they'll
somehow get a policy in place in the nick of time.

I'm more worried about robotic Starship test missions.

So far, every vehicle that's landed on Mars--or even approached
Mars--was manufactured, decontaminated, processed, and encapsulated into
a fairing in accordance with Mars Class III or Class IV planetary
protection standards. The outside of the launcher and its fairing can be
as dirty as they want, because they never come anywhere close to Mars orbit.

But the Starship fairing is never discarded. Indeed, it's an essential
part of the EDL system upon arrival to Mars. That means that the thing
hitting the martian atmosphere and landing on the surface started its
journey sitting in the middle of a salt marsh in Texas or Florida.

Not only can an uncrewed Starship not land on Mars under the current
regulations, it can't even go into orbit because Class III flyby and
orbital missions need to guarantee that they have a less than 1%
probability of accidentally colliding with Mars in the first 50 years
after launch. Otherwise, they need to meet cleanliness standards that
are almost as stringent as those for surface missions. Since a Starship
that aerobrakes orbit can't guarantee that it won't collide with the
planet, that dirty ol' fairing becomes a problem yet again.

Michael Weidler TheRadicalModerate a month ago
1) NASA has paid for some Starship development. It could easily argue
that SpaceX is therefore subject to the PP regulations.
NASA is paying for a specialized derivative of Starship. That derivative
is not capable of landing on Mars. I think they would have some
difficulty making that argument stick.

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TheRadicalModerate Michael Weidler a month ago
NASA is also paying for some depot and tanker development. Those are
essential to landing on Mars.

It's not hard for the feds to hold up SpaceX for multiple years if they
try to play hardball. There are any number of ways the whole issue winds
up in court, and a court might easily rule that the feds had the power
to delay things indefinitely based on Article IX of the OST.

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Michael Weidler TheRadicalModerate a month ago
I posted this on another article where we were having a similar
discussion. This seems like a good place to put for those who read this
article in the future. The attached video is from the Mars Society
convention during COVID. The astrobiologists in it state that NASA
hasn't looked for extant life since the presumed false positive on
Viking. NASA has been looking for signs of PAST life - which doesn't get
us any closer to knowing whether there is life on Mars now. They also
talk about there being different protection zones as you mention above.

On Friday, May 19, 2023 at 3:14:22 AM UTC+10, a425couple wrote:
> from
> https://spacenews.com/mars-exploration-and-the-debate-about-planetary-protection/
>
> Mars exploration and the debate about planetary protection
>
> Could planetary protection considerations hinder our plans to send
> humans to Mars?
> Chris Carberry and Rick Zucker
> March 20, 2023
> Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on
> Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new
> window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to email a
> link to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to share on Clipboard (Opens
> in new window)
> Illustration of a spacewalking astronaut covered in orange and green
> spores representing the trillions of microorganisms humans take with
> them wherever they go.
> WE CONTAIN MULTITUDES NASA allows no more than 300,000 spores
> (single-celled organisms) to accompany robotic missions that land on
> Mars. Human bodies, in comparison, contain trillions of microorganisms.
.....

There seem to be many links between epidemics we see across the planet and various phenomena associated with space. E.g. it should come as no surprise to find that some of the biggest pandemics of the past 100+ years coincide with close approaches of Saturn. There also seem to be links between seasonal flu and "space weather" of various kinds.

But one thing I just noticed (based on very little data because -- surprise -- we havent up until now taken data collection very seriously) is a link between meteors and disease.

Using CDC data on US flu season excess deaths for the past 10-15 years (they keep changing the methodology so adding in data from other years is problematic) and fireballs reported in the famous NASA database everyone has been talking about lately shows a big NEGATIVE corr.

The years with more sightings of fireballs seem to correspond with years with lower flu deaths.

year #deaths1000 #fireballs Model
2010 36 37 33.5926
2012 37 43 32.8056*
2013 24 38 43.037
2015 45 23 26.5093
2016 33 38 35.9537
2018 39 28 31.2315
2019 42 25 28.8704

Model:
y = -0.787037*x + 61.9259
beta in -0.787037 +- 0.73119 (90% CI)
T-test: P(beta<0.000000) = 0.958875
Rank test:Spearman corr = -0.785714
reject null at 95% conf

So something is someone is spraying
us with some kind of nachl anti-virals.

This pattern is also seen specifically for covid.
(Apart from surges seen every 100d at Mercury close approaches).

--
The US government portrays itself as the world's preeminent
superpower, so to acknowledge that there are things in their
airspace, whatever they are, that are faster and more manoeuvrable
and run rings around fast jets doesn't play very well.
So there's the embarrassment factor, and maybe a little bit of
fear that either an adversary has made a quantum leap in
development, which has left the US in a poor second place, or, as
some believe, this really is extra terrestrial, in which case we're
not at the top of the food chain anymore.
-- Nick Pope, 02 May 2023