Planetary Protection
Preventing contamination in both directions — protecting other worlds from Earth life, and Earth from returned samples.
- Backward ContaminationPlanetary protection
The risk of bringing potentially hazardous material back to Earth in a returned sample. Sample-return missions are designed to contain their cargo as strictly as the most dangerous pathogens, so nothing escapes before it is shown to be safe.
- Forward ContaminationPlanetary protection
The risk of carrying Earth microbes to another world on a spacecraft, which could harm any native biosphere or, worse, be mistaken for alien life. Missions to Mars and the ocean worlds are cleaned and sterilised to strict standards to prevent it.
- Sample Handling & CurationPlanetary protection
The careful containment, quarantine, and curation of returned samples in specialised facilities — keeping them pristine for science while keeping Earth safe, and preserving them for study by instruments not yet invented.