NASA’s strategic objective in planetary science is to determine the content, origin, and evolution of the Solar System and the potential for life elsewhere (2014 NASA Science Plan). Astrobiology research […]
The Martian is a really good movie. It would be a good movie even if it was not set in outer space. But it does happen in space and does […]
Like surgeons in an operating room, the technicians work gowned and masked in ESA’s ultraclean microbiology laboratory, ensuring a high-tech sensor will not contaminate the Red Planet with terrestrial microbes. […]
NASA has posted a position in the Science Mission Directorate for the Planetary Protection Officer. It has a very short response time, with applications due by June 25, 2014. NOTE: […]
A new study supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute suggests that the possibility of life being transferred from the inner solar system to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, although […]
While astronauts might dream of discovering unknown life one day in their future career, ESA’s Planetary Protection Officer oversees activities that achieve it on a regular basis. As part of […]
A rare, recently discovered microbe that survives on very little to eat has been found in two places on Earth: spacecraft clean rooms in Florida and South America. Image: This […]
It sounds like science fiction, but the theory of panspermia, in which life can naturally transfer between planets, is considered a serious hypothesis by planetary scientists. The suggestion that life […]
Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, astrobiologists Alberto Fairen of Cornell University and Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University say the NASA Office of Planetary Protection’s “detailed and expensive” efforts […]
NPD 8020.7GEffective Date: February 19, 1999Expiration Date: February 19, 2018 Subject: Biological Contamination Control for Outbound and Inbound PlanetarySpacecraft (Revalidated 05/17/13 w/change 1)
