Scientific exploration of space is dramatically changing as a result of increasing participation by commercial and private space industries. Missions utilizing SmallSats and CubeSats for exploration are proliferating, and crewed missions to the Moon and Mars are anticipated in the near future. In 2020, NASA will release revisions to policy documents governing planetary protection to reflect the new multi-stakeholder community. These policy documents establish the foundation for practices to control forward contamination during exploration of extraterrestrial solar system bodies and to prevent backward contamination of the Earth/Moon system when extraterrestrial samples are returned to Earth for study. This paper will inform contamination control and planetary protection practitioners about these policy changes, which will clarify planetary protection standards and streamline implementation and verification processes throughout mission life cycles.
NASA’s planetary protection policies revised in response to changes in space exploration
Systems Contamination: Prediction, Control, and Performance 2020 ; 2020 ; Online Only,California,United States
Proc. SPIE ; 11489
2020-08-24
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
NASA's planetary protection policies revised in response to changes in space exploration
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2020
|NASA's planetary protection policies revised in response to changes in space exploration
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2020
|