Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
C
Report of NASA’s Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations
For ease of reference, the findings and recommendations contained in the report of NASA’s Planetary Protection Independent Review Board (PPIRB)1 have been numbered sequentially and are referred to in brackets throughout the report. Please note that the findings and recommendations are presented in the PPIRB report in bold type and some, but not all, are accompanied by supporting text in normal type. For compactness, the findings and recommendations are shown below in normal type, and the supporting text is in italic.
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [1] | Major Finding: With the advent of private sector robotic and human planetary missions, as well as new ultra-low cost (e.g., CubeSat-class) planetary missions, the context in which PP is conducted is profoundly and rapidly changing. |
| [2] | Major Finding: For planetary missions involving locations of high astrobiological potential, it is essential that forward and backward contamination consideration be integral to mission implementation. This applies to both government and private sector missions. |
| [3] | Supporting Finding: The PPIRB did not assess planetary exploration historical site preservation or the implications of the human modification of celestial bodies in the Solar System, for example, for resource recovery. |
| [4] | Supporting Finding: The scope of Planetary Protection landscape is complex, broad, nuanced, and sometimes politically charged. The PPIRB could only evaluate it at a top level in the time and resources allocated for our review. |
| [5] | Major Recommendation: Because of advances in knowledge and technologies since the Viking era, NASA’s PP policies and implementation procedures should be reassessed. PP technology and relevant science disciplines are progressing rapidly; thus, the PPO should refresh its knowledge of the state of the art in PP science and technology, and apply this knowledge to advance, and where feasible, simplify PP implementation. This likely requires additional PPO funding to be effective. |
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1 Planetary Protection Independent Review Board, NASA Planetary Protection Independent Review Board (PPIRB): Report to NASA/SMD: Final Report, NASA, Washington, D.C., 2019, https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/planetary_protection_board_report_20191018.pdf.
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [6] | Major Recommendation: Owing to the changing PP context and the rapid advancement of scientific, technological, and private sector planetary mission capabilities, NASA should reassess its PP guidelines at least twice per decade with an IRB-like body that includes representatives of all major stakeholder communities. The PPIRB findings and recommendations presented in this report apply to the current era and generally are made with a 35 year horizon in mind. |
| [7] | Major Recommendation: NASA should establish a standing forum for the discussion and resolution of emergent PP issues that includes input from government, private sector, and perhaps even non-U.S. private sector enterprises. |
| [8] | Major Finding: The PPIRB applauds SMD’s and OSMA’s recent revamping of the PPO and the work of the new PP Officer, which has increased communication, clarity, and responsiveness to community needs and concerns. |
| [9] | Major Recommendation: NASA should establish explicit processes such as an ongoing process of independent review to ensure that PPO policies and procedures are consistently applied regardless of specific PPO personnel. |
| [10] | Major Finding: There is a general lack of clarity concerning PP requirements and implementation processes, particularly for non-NASA missions; this impedes the development of private sector planetary exploration. |
| [11] | Major Recommendation: NASA should clarify its policy for exercising PP authority over primarily non-NASA space activities that have some level of NASA involvement. |
| [12] | Major Recommendation: To further encourage the development of private sector planetary activities, NASA should offer a greater degree of PP expertise and tools to new and emerging actors in planetary exploration. |
| [13] | Major Finding: The late addition of PP requirements to some projects has been costly and inefficient to implement. |
| [14] | Major Recommendation: To reduce project inefficiencies, PP requirements should be finalized early in mission formulation and should avoid past practices of adding new or unexpected PP requirements, including in categorization letters. |
| [15] | Major Recommendation: PP requirements on missions should be written to define PP intent, rather than detailed implementation methods, thereby allowing projects to select and/or develop implementations most suitable to meet their PP requirements from a systems standpoint. |
| [16] | Major Finding: Although NASA is not a regulatory agency, the Agency can likely affect control over non-NASA U.S. missions by linking PP compliance to eligibility for current or future NASA business or NASA support. However, overreaching application of such control could result in reduced opportunities for collaboration with private sector missions. |
| [17] | Supporting Recommendation: Policy regarding such application of Agency authority to affect PP implementation should be carefully reviewed above the PPO level. |
| [18] | Supporting Finding: COSPAR PP guidelines have evolved to be an internationally recognized, voluntary standard for protection of scientific interests in celestial bodies. Adherence to the COSPAR guidelines has been considered an acceptable mechanism for establishing a State party’s compliance with the harmful contamination aspects in Article IX of the OST. Adherence to COSPAR PP guidelines have constituted one type of mechanism for establishing compliance with Article IX, but this is not the only such compliance mechanism; other mechanisms that may be more appropriate also exist. |
| [19] | Supporting Finding: For many of NASA’s scientifically driven planetary exploration missions to astrobiologically relevant targets, scientific cleanliness requirements often exceed PP bioburden requirements. |
| [20] | Supporting Finding: Anachronistic, and sometimes unrealistic, PP requirements (e.g., delivery of <1 viable organism to Europan liquid water for Europa Clipper) have driven a great deal of costly and sometimes questionable effort, often involving requirements or implementation waivers. |
| [21] | Supporting Finding: The PPIRB applauds and encourages flexible ways to address PP intent using novel methods. |
| [22] | Supporting Recommendation: The PPO should exploit new discoveries and new technologies to better categorize exploration targets, create better forward and backward PP implementation protocols, and lower PP cost and schedule impacts on projects. |
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [23] | Supporting Recommendation: For forward contamination, NASA PP policy should move beyond exclusive adherence to spore counts, which is an outdated legacy of the 1970s Viking era. PP policy should encourage the use of proven modern techniques and well-established genomic tools for monitoring and characterization of bioburden of cleanroom facilities and flight hardware. NASA should also encourage the broader use of probabilistic models of the risk of “harmful” forward contamination based on likely scenarios and acceptable risk outcomes. |
| [24] | Supporting Recommendation: For both forward and backward contamination requirements, NASA should continue to allow novel approaches, such as crediting for time spent in the harsh space environment or on harsh planetary surfaces (e.g., UV, radiation, temperature extremes, lack of liquid water). To enable this, NASA should support quantitative laboratory studies of such approaches to demonstrate quantitative PP credits. |
| [25] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA’s PP requirements should be completely specified in NASA Procedural Requirements (NPRs)/NASA Policy Directives (NPDs) so that projects subject to NASA PP requirements know what to expect and can better plan in advance to a known, fixed set of project requirements. |
| [26] | Supporting Recommendation: The PPO should implement both well-documented and transparent PP requirements and requirements waiver processes for all missions with NASA involvement. |
| [27] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA should provide external stakeholders with clear information and better insight and outreach on its PP standards and processes. This should include a rollout plan for new PP processes, followed by regular stakeholder engagement opportunities to ensure widespread awareness and understanding of PP standards and processes. |
| [28] | Supporting Finding: Without further changes to streamline low-cost mission PP implementation, ultra-low cost planetary missions (e.g., CubeSats) will likely have a PP implementation cost burden that is a larger percentage of their total budget than larger missions, which in turn could threaten their low cost, particularly for those missions beyond PP Category II. |
| [29] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA should assess how to streamline PP implementation for ultra-low cost planetary missions. |
| [30] | Supporting Finding: It is impractical for launch providers or satellite hosts to definitively determine the biological content of every payload. Biological materials intentionally added by a bad actor are especially challenging for launch providers to monitor or report, as they can be further obscured by falsified verification or inaccurate documentation. The recent experience in which a launch customer placed tardigrades and other biological samples on the SpaceIL Beresheet lunar lander is illustrative. By the Moon’s Category II PP designation, it is likely that a payload license would have been readily granted had the bioload been selfreported; however, the lack of such reporting created new issues relating to launch licensing. |
| [31] | Supporting Recommendation: Breaches of PP reporting or other requirements should be handled via sanctions that hold the root perpetrator accountable, rather than increasing the verification and regulatory burden on all actors. |
| [32] | Supporting Finding: Space Act Agreements and some NASA contracts require NASA 8020.12 PP compliance, which in turn invokes COSPAR policy/guidelines. |
| [33] | Supporting Recommendation: These contractual requirements should be reviewed by NASA to simplify compliance where possible and to avoid overconstraining the means of meeting NASA intent. |
| [34] | Supporting Recommendation: Whenever updating U.S. PP policy and implementation practices, the U.S. government should work with the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) to communicate new U.S. PP approaches to the international community, share best practices, and encourage the international community to address such issues. |
| [35] | Major Finding: As more is learned about each celestial body, more detailed and tailored approaches to forward contamination become advisable. These include variable categorization based on surface/subsurface location, where and how many times past missions have investigated the body, and the survivability and propagation of terrestrial organisms in the body’s environments. |
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [36] | Major Recommendation: NASA should study how much of the Moon’s surface and subsurface could be designated PP Category I versus Category II. Establishing different categories for different locations on the Moon could significantly simplify and enhance exploration opportunities for both the civil and private sectors. An object that has “no direct interest for understanding the process of chemical evolution or the origin of life” is designated Category I. The Moon is currently classified Category II—of “significant” interest to origins of life questions but with “low risk” that contamination will compromise future science. In general, however, scientific interest in the Moon is not focused on the origin of life or its building blocks. Other than locations where ice is known to exist near the lunar poles (which could remain Category II), most locations on and inside the Moon are not relevant to questions of the chemical evolution leading to or the origin of life itself. |
| [37] | Major Recommendation: NASA should reconsider how much of the Martian surface and subsurface could be Category II versus IV by revisiting assumptions and performing new analysis of transport, survival and amplification in order to reassess the risk of survival and propagation of terrestrial biota on Mars. All past U.S. landed missions have been treated as though there is a “significant” chance that terrestrial organisms can survive and be transported to areas where life or biosignature detection experiments would be performed. Rummel et al. (2014) have shown that many areas of the surface are not locations of PP concern. Similarly, although there may be subsurface regions that continue to warrant additional special PP consideration, this need not be the case for all subsurface regions. NASA should revisit the categorization of areas that are not considered to be “Special Regions” and determine limits on terrestrial bioload transport and amplification from current landing sites. |
| [38] | Major Recommendation: NASA should consider establishing (i) high priority astrobiology zones, i.e., regions considered to be of high scientific priority for identifying extinct or extant life, and (ii) human exploration zones, i.e., regions where the larger amounts of biological contamination inevitably associated with human exploration missions, as compared to robotic scientific missions, will be acceptable. |
| [39] | Supporting Recommendation: In cases of missions to Solar System destinations where there is a large population of similar Category I and II objects (e.g., comets, asteroids, Kuiper Belt Objects), NASA should allow classification of individual objects as Category I to simplify missions to them. Just as the lunar and Martian surfaces in their entirety do not need to bear the same PP classification, in the case of small bodies where there are numerous potential targets, the contamination of any individual does not cause significant contamination to the class as a whole. If chemical evolution or origin of life experiments are planned for such objects, there are myriad to choose from that will not have been previously visited by robotic probes. |
| [40] | Supporting Finding: Various scientific studies2,3,4,5 suggest that the survival and amplification of terrestrial biota are unlikely on the Martian surface, which would support classification of much of the Martian surface as Category II. |
| [41] | Major Finding: Human missions to Mars will create new opportunities for science and exploration. The presence of humans is likely to enable exploration and science on Mars at a pace previously unachievable by robotic missions, and should enable more complex surface activities than have previously been possible robotically. |
| [42] | Major Finding: PP planning for human missions to Mars and the communication of those plans to the public are presently immature. |
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [43] | Major Recommendation: NASA should expeditiously develop PP guidelines for human missions to Mars, whether those missions are conducted by NASA, other international agencies, or private entities. We note that the title of NPD 8020.12 includes the phrase “For Robotic Extraterrestrial Missions,” acknowledging the implicit need for a future PP policy addressing nonrobotic missions. A subset of future Mars missions are expected to be neither crewed missions nor traditional scientific robotic missions, but missions of other types that could involve crew or crewsupport vehicles (e.g., habitat placement, prestaged cargo emplacement, test flights of human vehicles). Explicit clarification is needed as to which policies apply to each type of Mars mission, including such uncrewed, non or notprimarily sciencedriven activities. |
| [44] | Major Recommendation: NASA should begin planning for the public communication of all aspects of PP planning for human missions to Mars sooner rather than later, and should pay special attention to public PP concerns, similarly to NASA’s proactive treatment of NASA missions involving radioisotope power systems. |
| [45] | Major Finding: Human missions to Mars will inevitably introduce orders of magnitude more terrestrial microorganisms to Mars than robotic missions have done or will do. This is especially true when taking into account highly probable offnominal events during human exploration (e.g., inadvertent venting or leaks, offnominal landings). |
| [46] | Major Finding: NASA’s current policies for robotic Category V Restricted Earth Return from Mars appear to be unachievable for human missions returning from Mars. Specifically, requirements such as “No uncontained hardware that contacted Mars, directly or indirectly, may be returned to Earth unless sterilized” and “The mission and the spacecraft design shall provide a method to ‘break the chain of contact’ with Mars” appear to drive towards implementation approaches that are difficult, if not impossible, for human missions and their hardware to achieve. |
| [47] | Major Recommendation: Regarding the return of humans and equipment from Mars, NASA should invest in developing more informed, backward contamination PP criteria, considering protection of Earth’s biosphere, the feasibility of mission implementation, and the potential for in situ hazard characterization on Mars. As discussed for robotic Mars sample return below, these policies should take into consideration current understanding of the ongoing natural transport of material from Mars to Earth since the formation of the planets ~4.5 billion years ago. |
| [48] | Major Recommendation: Special attention should be paid to assess how astrobiological research can be carried out in the presence of human activities. Lessons can be learned from similar activities conducted in locales such as Antarctica and the Atacama Desert. Examples could include pristine subsampling, extracted from within larger samples whose exterior surfaces may be contaminated, and the ability to perform subsurface sampling without introducing contamination. This activity should take into account other findings and recommendations in this report related to the application of different categorizations to different portions of the Martian surface and subsurface and the application of modern PP techniques. NASA should engage appropriate international groups such as COSPAR and the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) to engage in similar planning. |
| [49] | Supporting Recommendation: In considering crew return from Mars, NASA should assess the acceptability of the multi-month return trajectory as a PP quarantine and evaluation period, potentially simplifying terrestrial quarantine scenarios, requirements, and timescales. |
| [50] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA should review COSPAR’s humans to Mars principles and guidelines to assess which should be followed, discarded, or updated for NASA’s first human Mars expedition. |
| [51] | Supporting Finding: Terrestrial biology has been transported to Mars by previous robotic missions at discrete locations, although at low levels as compared to what is likely on future crewed and crew-related missions. The impact that these already transported organisms have had on any global Mars ecosystem is unknown but is likely to be minimal. Since it is impractical to completely sterilize all spacecraft materials, it is likely that terrestrial biota, in the form of bacteria, spores, etc., survived the transit to Mars on past robotic missions. Further study and experiments would be needed to address whether or not terrestrial biota have been able to survive on Mars, replicate, or be transported beyond the constrained locations where these spacecraft landed or crashed on the surface of Mars. |
| [52] | Major Finding: In addition to NASA’s world-leading civil space exploration capabilities, the United States now has a vibrant, highly capable private space sector. Through rapid innovation and cutting-edge technology, this space sector is expanding access to space for both private and government users, unleashing new robotic and crewed exploration opportunities in the Solar System. |
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [53] | Major Finding: Through existing authorization mechanisms under current Federal regulatory frameworks, the U.S. Government licenses the launch and re-entry of private space vehicles, including those for beyond Earth orbit activities. Regarding PP, these licensing mechanisms could be improved to relieve administrative burdens and address misperceptions of legal uncertainty for private sector space activities, including private sector robotic and human planetary missions that do not have significant NASA involvement. |
| [54] | Major Recommendation: In addition to balancing the needs of science and exploration, PP policy should also recognize that it is both a NASA and a national objective to encourage private sector space initiatives and commercial robotic and human planetary missions. The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, as amended, explicitly states that one of NASA’s functions is to “seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.”6Additionally, the 2010 National Space Policy expressly directs Federal agencies to “minimize, as much as possible, the regulatory burden for commercial space activities” and to “refrain from conducting United States Government space activities that preclude, discourage, or compete with U.S. commercial space activities.”7 |
| [55] | Major Recommendation: PP–related authorization and supervision across the U.S. government should be implemented in a transparent, timely, and predictable manner, minimizing costs and burdens on private sector activities where possible. |
| [56] | Major Recommendation: Regarding PP, NASA should work in support of the Administration’s efforts, and as appropriate with the Congress and private sector stakeholders, to enable private sector space initiatives that do not have significant NASA involvement. |
| [57] | Supporting Finding: Several private space companies are rapidly advancing technologies and plans for robotic and human planetary missions, including plans to land cargo and humans on the surface of the Moon and Mars. These developments provide important considerations for updating NASA and other U.S. government PP policy. |
| [58] | Supporting Recommendation: For space activities without significant NASA involvement (including private sector robotic and human planetary missions), NASA should work with the Administration, the Congress, and private sector space stakeholders to identify the appropriate U.S. Government agency to implement a PP regulatory framework. This regulatory framework should take into account the nation’s exploration, scientific, commercial, and national security interests, and should provide external stakeholders with clear information, including better insight and outreach on PP standards and processes. |
| [59] | Supporting Recommendation: The U.S. should continue to encourage international PP forums to include private sector stakeholder participation. |
| [60] | Major Finding: Martian material has been naturally transported to Earth for billions of years.8,9Current Mars Sample Return (MSR) requirements do not take the natural transport and survival of Mars material into account. Further, quantitative PP risk requirements, which are based on engineering requirements, lack a fully rational basis considering this history. In contrast, the National Academies’ Consensus Study Report on Planetary Protection Classification of Sample Return Missions from the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) took into account the natural flux of Martian material to Earth in their recommendation that MMX samples returned from the Martian moons be designated as unrestricted. That report noted that the natural flux of material from Mars to Earth is orders of magnitude greater than the flux from any conceivable robotic sample return. |
| [61] | Major Recommendation: NASA’s MSR PP approach should take into account the findings of the recent National Academies’ Consensus Study Report on sample return from the Martian moons. In particular, the risk of adverse effects Martian material poses to the terrestrial biosphere should be reevaluated in light of the ongoing, established, natural transport of Martian material to Earth. |
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [62] | Major Finding: As the first restricted Earth return since Apollo, MSR will be a uniquely high profile mission. Significant effort is being put into the MSR architectures to ensure there will be no harmful interference with Earth’s biosphere. This includes NASA work (alongside international partners) to “break the chain of contact” with the Mars environment during sample collection procedures on Mars 2020, the Sample Retrieval Lander and return procedures with the Earth Return Orbiter. |
| [63] | Major Recommendation: Planning for a Mars Sample Receiving Facility (MSRF) should be accelerated, or at least maintained on schedule, and should also be kept as pragmatic and streamlined as possible so that it does not unduly drive the schedule or cost of MSR. |
| [64] | Major Recommendation: NASA should begin work with other government agencies to develop a MSR PP public outreach, communications, and engagement plan. Government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration have significant experience in crafting public communications policies that could be beneficial to NASA in educating the public about the realities of MSR missions. |
| [65] | Supporting Finding: Significant work is being done to study the MSRF and whether an entirely new facility should be built, and where, or whether the MSRF should be an add-on to an existing Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility. |
| [66] | Supporting Finding: Some types of sterilization of Mars samples are antagonistic to many important types of scientific measurements. |
| [67] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA should carefully trade the implications of the degree and types of PP sterilization techniques for Mars samples with the implications for various types of science measurements. |
| [68] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA should continue to engage experts from the medical, pharmaceutical, and personal care industries to advise on effective sterilization protocols. Such engagement provides meaningful insights from adjacent fields, demonstrates NASA’s due diligence to the public, and offers lessons on effective communication to nonexperts regarding safety for both robotic sample return and for future human missions to Mars. |
| [69] | Major Finding: The fraction of terrestrial microorganisms in spacecraft bioburdens that has the potential to survive and amplify in ocean worlds is likely to be extremely small.10,11 Further, any putative indigenous life in subsurface oceans on Europa, Enceladus, or Titan is highly unlikely to have a common origin with terrestrial life. Any such life would be readily distinguishable from terrestrial microorganisms using modern biochemical techniques. As a consequence of these findings, the current bioburden requirements for Europa and Enceladus missions (i.e., <1 viable microorganism) appear to be unnecessarily conservative. |
| [70] | Major Recommendation: The PP requirements for ocean worlds exploration should be reassessed in light of this finding. |
| [71] | Supporting Finding: Category IV is currently assigned to landed ocean world missions when there is a significant probability of contamination of the liquid interior oceans. However, the situation for each ocean world environment is very different and limited information exists for each of these worlds regarding ice shell composition and thickness, ocean composition and habitability, interfaces/communication between the surface and ocean, and any transport of material across the surface. For example, the differences between the environments of Enceladus, Europa and Titan are significant. The subsurface ocean within Enceladus is considered by many scientists to be habitable, and fractures at its South Pole provide direct access to its ocean. In contrast, Europa’s ice shell is thought to vary from a few km to ~tens of km thick; in some regions, liquid lenses may be present within the ice shell, produced by local heating and melting. Titan’s ocean, by contrast, lies below an organiccovered ice shell ~100 km thick and is thus largely inaccessible. Impacts into Titan’s icy crust can generate melt, creating a transient liquid water environment in which the liquid water can mix with Titan’s surface organics; previously melted deposits are expected near Dragonfly’s ultimate target, Selk Crater. |
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
| Reference Number Assigned by Committee | Finding or Recommendation in the PPIRB Report |
|---|---|
| [72] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA should study transport, survival and amplification mechanisms of contamination individually for each ocean world. Such studies should include transport both laterally and vertically, through the ice shell and/or cracks into the ocean and/or subsurface pockets of liquid water, to assess the risk that Earthbased biology could be transported to a liquid water zone of an ocean world and reproduce. For example, the current metric guiding Europa Lander PP is the requirement of <1 viable organism delivered to a liquid body. These stringent numerical limits force requirements that can be unattainable, do not use the current best practices in industry of a probabilistic approach to contamination and risk mitigation, and have the potential to drive mission cost and schedule increases. Studies that examine transport, survival and amplification of relevant forward organic contaminants will inform whether contamination at one lander site provides a significant risk to future science conducted at other locations on the surface or subsurface. |
| [73] | Major Finding: There is a lack of consensus as to how and when the Outer Space Treaty has legal relevance to non-governmental entities. |
| [74] | Major Finding: The process for incorporating recommendations from this report that NASA accepts into COSPAR guidelines is not well defined. The PPIRB has made a number of recommendations to modernize and clarify PP guidelines. For example, it has recommended a focus on identification of the toplevel forward contamination requirements rather than specification of specific engineering implementations to be taken, as well as encouraging the use of modern molecular biological approaches to PP, such as metagenomic analyses of cleanroom samples. We also recommended revision or elimination of obsolete or unnecessarily conservative PP guidelines. Similarly, clarification and streamlining of COSPAR PP guidelines will encourage planetary mission activities by all, including nontraditional entities in other nations. |
| [75] | Supporting Finding: The term “Planetary Protection” has been used by different communities to include a variety of topics. This has caused confusion with respect to the primary responsibility of governmental PP oversight and the intent of past practices. “Planetary Protection” has been used in different contexts including bioload guidelines for spacecraft, the search for life beyond Earth, scientific studies focused on the survivability of microbes in space, philosophical positions related to the implications of the possibility of a separate origin of life within our Solar System and potential harm to putative nonterrestrial life forms or ecosystems, and contamination concerns for specific astrobiological investigations. Misunderstanding about the intent of the past PP guidelines has caused some parties to assume that COSPAR PP is intended to protect possible extraterrestrial life from competition from Earth’s microbiota. This has, in turn, resulted in an incorrect assumption by some that future human exploration is at odds with original COSPAR intent. |
| [76] | Supporting Recommendation: NASA should broadly communicate that its PP policy is consistent with COSPAR history, and is specifically focused on reducing biological forward contamination that could interfere with future astrobiological investigations and backward contamination that might have adverse impacts on Earth’s biosphere. |
| [77] | Supporting Recommendation: To reduce confusion, NASA should develop and then use a standard glossary of PP related terminology, including for example “spacecraft cleanliness,” “forward biological transport,” and “backward biological transport.” |
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix C: Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board: Findings and Recommendations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Assessment of the Report of NASA's Planetary Protection Independent Review Board. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25773.
×
