{"id":14441,"date":"2017-08-03T20:11:13","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T12:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/planetary-protection-is-serious-business-at-nasa\/"},"modified":"2017-08-03T20:11:13","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T12:11:13","slug":"planetary-protection-is-serious-business-at-nasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/planetary-protection-is-serious-business-at-nasa\/","title":{"rendered":"Planetary protection is serious business at NASA"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
Narrow jets of gas and icy particles erupt from the south polar region of Enceladus, contributing to the moon\u2019s giant plume. A cycle of activity in these small-scale jets may be periodically lofting extra particles into space, causing the overall plume to brighten dramatically. Credits: NASA\/JPL\/Space Science Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A NASA post advertising an opening for a new Planetary Protection Officer provided a field day for headline writers who apparently couldn\u2019t resist having a bit of fun at the agency\u2019s expense by suggesting, in large type, that whoever filled the post would be defending Earth from aliens. And making good money to boot.<\/p>\n

While true in the broadest possible sense \u2014 the \u201caliens\u201d in question are microbes not sentient beings \u2014 one had to read the actual stories to find out the office is part of a long-standing program to make sure NASA spacecraft don\u2019t contaminate other planets with any earthly bugs and ensure that any samples returned to Earth are properly isolated and pose no threat to our ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Catharine \u201cCassie\u201d Conley is the outgoing Planetary Protection Officer, the seventh to hold the post. She came on board in 2006 and, like her predecessors, reports directly to the NASA administrator.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/planetaryprotection.nasa.gov\/overview<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the Planetary Protection Officer for NASA, I am responsible for ensuring that the United States complies with Article IX of The Outer Space Treaty,\u201d she said in a NASA interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cArticle IX specifies that planetary exploration should be carried out in a manner so as to avoid contamination of the bodies we are exploring throughout the solar system, and also to avoid any adverse effects to Earth if materials are brought back from outer space.<\/p>\n

As she told the New York Times in a 2015 interview, \u201cIf we\u2019re going to look for life on Mars, it would be really kind of lame to bring Earth life and find that instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter. NASA\u2019s search for the agency\u2019s eighth Planetary Protection Officer \u2014 and the advertised salary of up to $187,000 per year \u2014 were enough to trigger a flurry of stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cNASA has a job opening for someone to defend Earth from aliens \u2014 and it pays a 6-figure salary,\u201d Business Insider headlined its web story.<\/p>\n

The piece included a graphic from the movie \u201cIndependence Day\u201d showing a giant alien spaceship in the process of destroying New York City. The caption: \u201cA typical day in the office for a planetary protection officer isn\u2019t this exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Independent in the United Kingdom headlined its story: \u201cNASA offering six-figure salary for new \u2018planetary protection officer\u2019 to defend Earth from aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even former shuttle commander Mark Kelly got in on the fun, tweeting Thursday night \u201cI nominate Bruce Willis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Followers then suggested \u201cMen in Black\u201d star Will Smith, Matt Damon of \u201cMartian\u201d fame, Peter Cushing, the evil \u201cStar Wars\u201d general, Jodie Foster, who met aliens in the movie \u201cContact,\u201d Bill Pullman, who portrayed the president in \u201cIndependence Day,\u201d and even the fictional Jack Bauer of the long-running series \u201c24.\u201d<\/p>\n

But planetary protection is serious business at NASA, guiding how missions are designed and implemented. Consider the agency\u2019s Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn.<\/p>\n

Now at the end of a 20-year mission \u2014 the past 13 in orbit around Saturn \u2014 Cassini is virtually out of fuel and without propellant, NASA cannot control the probe\u2019s orientation or change its trajectory.<\/p>\n

Instead of simply letting the spacecraft die, leaving it at the mercy of unpredictable gravitational interactions, flight controllers earlier this year used most of the probe\u2019s remaining fuel to put it on a trajectory that will impact Saturn next month, ensuring its destruction.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because at least one of Saturn\u2019s moons \u2014 Enceladus \u2014 has a sub-surface ocean that could be an abode for life. If NASA simply let Cassini die, it eventually could crash into Enceladus, depositing microbes from Earth. And heat from the spacecraft\u2019s three plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs.<\/p>\n

The RTGs were built to withstand a launch pad explosion and all three likely would survive an impact on Enceladus where \u201cmore than likely (they would melt) through the ice shell, over time, and then you\u2019re in the sub surface,\u201d said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be laying there, and it\u2019s going to end up in the ocean.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that includes tens of thousands of microbes that hitched a ride to Saturn aboard Cassini.<\/p>\n

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Jim Green, director of NASA\u2019s planetary science division. Credit: U.S. State Department<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHuman microbes can withstand all kinds of things, but having the right environment where heat is available is really the way they could multiply and grow,\u201d Green said in an interview Wednesday. \u201cSo, having that system in the ocean is not good. Even though it might be a remote chance, it\u2019s not zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA ended the Galileo Jupiter probe the same way, crashing it into the giant planet\u2019s atmosphere in 1995 to make sure it could not one day hit Europa, another moon with a sub-surface ocean, or any others that might be habitable.<\/p>\n

The Juno probe currently in orbit around Jupiter faces the same fate when its mission ends as will the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft currently on the drawing board that will study the intriguing moon during multiple flybys in the 2020s.<\/p>\n

Mars, of course, is a major concern when it comes to planetary protection, the target of multiple satellites, landers and rovers over several decades. No one yet knows whether some form of microbial life might exist at the red planet, either on or below the surface, and NASA scientists want to find out, if possible, before humans make the trip.<\/p>\n

Once astronauts arrive, it\u2019s \u201cgame over,\u201d Green said. \u201cIt\u2019s then the clash of two potentially different ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me as a scientist, I want to get in there and I want to understand the environment before we bring our environment with us,\u201d he said. \u201cAnswering the question is Mars alive today, is there a living population, is actually something that\u2019s very important for us to try to pull off. And that\u2019s very hard to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Astronauts, of course, will live in isolated habitats, \u201calmost like they\u2019ll be quarantined,\u201d Green added. \u201cSo there will still be areas all over Mars that\u2019ll be very pristine and could maintain an ecosystem, you know, perhaps there\u2019s life in the aquifers, and it\u2019ll take maybe a couple of centuries before it\u2019s totally game over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the kind of thing we need to guard against, and getting in there and understanding the environment the best we can is the first thing we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Green and his fellow planetary scientists are equally concerned about making sure any Mars rocks returned to Earth are handled safely. When the Apollo astronauts brought rocks back from the moon, the samples \u2014 and the astronauts \u2014 were initially quarantined. Green said NASA is considering a variety of options to isolate Mars rocks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at either constructing or using an existing bio-level 4 facility,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a facility that would be used for the most extreme virus or bacteria or something that could sweep the world and kill the population. There are facilities like that (and) we\u2019re going to have to either develop our own or tag onto something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said some researchers don\u2019t believe life currently exists on Mars and \u201cthey\u2019d be delighted to just lift the top of every one of the rock tubes and that would make them publicly available if they didn\u2019t die the next day!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s not how it\u2019s going to work,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to bring them in and examine the heck out of them. (Even) if it had zero biological contamination associated with it, is going to be a number of years before anybody will be able to analyze the samples outside that facility.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Narrow jets of gas and icy particles erupt from the south polar region of Enceladus, contributing to the moon\u2019s giant plume. A cycle of activity in these small-scale jets may be periodically lofting extra particles into space, causing the overall plume to brighten dramatically. Credits: NASA\/JPL\/Space Science Institute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1874,3014,3232,1561],"class_list":["post-14441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astrobiology","tag-jim-green","tag-planetary-protection","tag-planetary-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}