How NASA Plans To Protect Planets Against An Alien Invasion

[Ichingcarpenter]

ITS A TRICK HEADLINE CAUSE THE ALIENS ARE US


Anyway...

NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection. Its purpose is not to protect Earth from invasion by some green skinned monsters, but rather to protect the rest of the Universe from us. With the recent evidence of liquid water on Mars , the possibility of life on the red planet has become a bit more possible, and protecting potential martians from an alien threat is a real challenge.

While Earth is the only planet for which the presence of life is certain, we know that living things can be extraordinarily hardy. We’ve seen organisms thrive in areas of extreme temperature and acid environments. Tardigrades (also known as water bears) have survived the cold vacuum of space, and bacteria have been found within nuclear waste. So it’s not unreasonable to imagine a terrestrial organism hitching a ride on a spacecraft. If that spacecraft comes into contact with a potentially habitable environment they could become an invasive species on another world.


To protect against such an event, NASA has defined different levels of risk, each requiring a different level of spacecraft decontamination. These categories are part of the Outer Space Treaty, which is in international agreement of space faring nations. Under the agreement there are four broad categories:


snip



Because of these subcategories the Curiosity rover currently active on Mars is forbidden to study a region with liquid water, even though it’s less than 30 miles away from one of them. NASA’s next generation of Mars rovers scheduled to launch in 2020 cannot study the regions, since they won’t meet the most stringent of sterilization levels.

snip

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2015/10/04/protecting-planets-against-an-alien-invasion/

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Sounds like a rip-off of the Prime Directive. nt

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

2. Can you imagine a bacterium that eats chlorophyll?

Can you imagine what it would do to life on Earth? That's the sort of thing they are concerned about/

[progressoid]

3. The Andromeda Strain...!