NASA Wants To Protect Moon And Mars From Human Germs

NASA has two big missions planned for Earth’s neighbouring celestial bodies. Its Artemis program intends to set up a human base on the moon while its Perseverance rover flight to Mars this month will work to eventually set up the basis of a manned mission to Mars.?

Both the cases can potentially lead to a biological contamination of extraterrestrial landscapes.

This artist's concept shows an astronaut on Mars, as viewed through the window of a spacecraft. (Image: NASA/ JPL-Caltech)

And precisely for that reason,?NASA?wants to control it and to make sure such contamination does not take place, the US space agency has released two?NASA Interim Directives (NIDs). One focuses on the robotic and human missions to the Earth’s Moon, while the other is meant for future human missions to Mars.?

NASA's policy on protecting space

To be ensured by NASA’s Office of Planetary Protection, the first directive of the two addresses the “control of forward terrestrial biological contamination” that can be associated with all NASA and NASA-affiliated missions on or around the Moon.

The second NID works towards reworking the previous policies that would have “constructively prohibited the human exploration of Mars.” NASA claims that the NID shows a path forward for manned missions to Mars based on the knowledge gained from the “International Space Station, Gateway, lunar surface operations, as well as robotic missions to Mars.”

In itself, the directive is a bold confirmation of the US space agency’s plan to send humans to Mars. The possibility has been resonating with the agency since 2017 when US President Donald Trump signed the directive for America’s return to the moon, only to “establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars.”

Within the directives, NASA makes sure to prevent harmful forward and backward harmful biological contamination on both Moon and Mars.

"We are enabling our important goal of sustainable exploration of the Moon while simultaneously safeguarding future science in the permanently shadowed regions," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. "These sites have immense scientific value in shaping our understanding of the history of our planet, the Moon and the solar system."

Protecting moon missions from human contamination

NASA Artemis Mission (Image: NASA)

Through the first directive - NID 8715.128, NASA has reclassified parts of the Moon into sensitive locations and those that can be visited easily, thus lowering restrictions for human missions to the Moon. In the directive, the space agency has marked Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs), Apollo landing and other lunar historic sites as sensitive locations.

While the former are claimed to have “scientific value in the study of the history of the solar system,” the latter are classified as having “both historical and scientific value.”

Missions to all other regions on the Moon will be granted a NASA Mission Planetary Protection Category I-L classification as per the directive. Under this category “no protection of such regions is warranted.”

Ensuring humanity's safe visit to Mars

NASA Perseverance Mars Rover (Image: NASA)

The second directive titled NID 8715.129 focuses on controlling the biological contamination of Mars as well as the Earth-Moon system through any human missions to Mars. In accordance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the directive paves a safe way for the hunt of alien life on celestial bodies.

It intends to do so through two-way monitoring - control contamination of other worlds in order to “support the integrity of the search and study of extraterrestrial life, if it exists,” and prevent backward contamination of Earth by extraterrestrial life and bioactive molecules in returned samples from habitable worlds.

The directives aim to make tracking of any unearthly microbes easier. If any alien life is found in a pristine environment, it can be an assured native of the place. If contamination takes place in cross-world missions, it will be difficult to track the native place of any life form.

As much as they work to prevent biological contamination, the new directives also open up more avenues for the space agency’s future missions to both Mars and Moon. A task for later, NASA is currently busy with sending the Perseverance rover to the moon and will be devoting all its time to that, thanks to a strict deadline.