Planetary Protection
The discipline of preventing contamination — protecting other worlds from Earth microbes carried by spacecraft (forward contamination), and protecting Earth from any material returned from them (backward contamination), so the search for life is not fooled and no harm is done.
In brief
Preventing biological cross-contamination.
In this discipline
- 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.
Knowledge connections
- Group includesForward Contamination
- Group includesBackward Contamination
- Group includesSample Handling & Curation
- Associated withPlanetary Protection Policy
- Associated withCOSPAR
- Associated withPlanetary Protection for Crewed Missions
Sources
The primary and reference sources this topic draws on.
- NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.