October 2018
Looking for life on Enceladus with IceMole
... for hosting microbial life in the solar system One of the most challenging problems of astrobiological planetary exploration is planetary protection, i.e. the need to not contaminate any possible habitable environments with microbial life from Earth...
January 2017
Elon Musk and Mars - looking for a snowball effect
... Space Treaty, any Martian colonists would be regarded as “squatters, or pirates”. Other commentators raised questions of planetary protection, fearing speculative worst-case scenarios in which terrestrial micro-organisms caused a mass extinction...
September 2016
Life in the extremes: confessions of an astrobiologist
..., rovers and spacecraft are prepared prior to being launched into space. It is in these rooms that the greatest planetary protection efforts are put in place in order to make sure that only a very minimal amount of microorganisms and other...
January 2018
Shielding the human genome
.... We are in a new age of discovery driven by genomics and the leveraging of novel biology JPL’s Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group (BPPG) and Liberty soon began to work on optimising analytical and bioinformatics sensing mechanisms required...
July 2020
Pandemic in space – are we ready?
...on how to respond to a viral contagion that may affect a wider population. The closest may be the Planetary Protection Policy of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), although this instrument is restricted to interplanetary biological and organic...
December 2021
All for one and one for all – recommendations for a sustainable future in lunar exploration
...up-to-date understanding of all risk factors on the lunar surface, and protection of the shared lunar resource pool are indisputable priorities. With respect... the issue of planetary protection, particularly in the context of the private space sector.
