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Journal of Science Policy & Governance | Volume 16, Issue 02 | May 27, 2020

Policy Memo: ​The Case for Stimulating a Planetary Protection Framework for Emerging Private Space Activities

George Profitiliotis

​Unit of Environmental Science and Technology, School of Chemical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece
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https://doi.org/10.38126/JSPG160206
Keywords: planetary protection, forward contamination, backward contamination, space commercialization
Executive Summary: The emergence of private space activities is pushing the boundaries of the space industry with technological innovations that may soon enable the targeting of the novel market segments of space research and exploration, space resources utilization, and human access to space. Planetary protection is defined as a set of guidelines that aim to prevent the forward contamination of celestial bodies with biological material from Earth and the backward contamination of the terrestrial biosphere with extraterrestrial biological material. Significant questions are expected to be raised in the future with respect to potential forward and backward contamination issues of emerging private space activities. Unfortunately, the jurisdiction over and the enforcement of forward and backward contamination prevention measures to private space endeavors are currently facing policy and regulatory gaps and ambiguities. The key challenges with the current planetary protection policy landscape indicate that these contamination issues of private space activities can indeed have lasting negative impacts on social, economic, and environmental equity, sustainable development on Earth, and the sustainable exploration and development of other celestial bodies.
 
Drawing on its multidisciplinary expertise, the UN system is favorably positioned to play a key role in stimulating a novel planetary protection framework for emerging private space activities. Firstly, it can provide an international forum for the harmonization and agreement on such a framework. Secondly, it can create a financing mechanism to fund international research and development consortia of public and private organizations under a pre-competitive collaboration scheme for planetary protection technologies. Thirdly, it can establish a process of civic engagement to promote the meaningful participation of the civil society in the formulation of this framework. A prudent consideration of this matter may not only counteract the inequitable distribution of any unintended negative consequences, but may also facilitate economic development in a respectful, sustainable, and responsible manner.

I. Emerging private activities in research, exploration, and human access to space

The emergence of private space activities is pushing the boundaries of the space industry with technological innovations that may soon enable the targeting of the novel market segments of space research, science (González 2017), exploration, space resources utilization, and human access to space (Vernile 2018). Naturally, relevant business cases will first be pursued in suborbital space and in low earth orbit, via, for example, the operation of internal and external commercial service platforms aboard the International Space Station (KIWI 2019; Space Applications Services NV/SA 2019; ISS U.S. National Laboratory 2019; Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2019). It can be expected that, in the future, relevant business cases might also involve venturing into even farther destinations such as the Moon and Mars.
 
Indeed, in 2019, NASA selected fourteen American companies that will be able to bid for delivery services to the lunar surface through Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contracts, thus paving the way for commercial missions to the Moon (NASA 2020). Two of those companies have already stated that their proposed commercial cargo landers will be able to be used in sample return missions. These include the McCandless Lunar Lander by Lockheed Martin (Lockheed Martin Corporation 2018) and the MX-9 Frontier Class Explorer by Moon Express (Moon Express 2020a).
 
Moon Express is planning the first commercial lunar sample return mission as part of its 2020 Harvest Moon expedition. The collected lunar samples “will be the only privately owned Moon materials on Earth, and will be used to benefit science as well as commercial purposes” (Moon Express 2020b). Moreover, the Moon Express landers are currently marketed as both lunar and deep space exploration platforms, especially the MX-9 that can support lunar sample return missions (Moon Express 2020a).
 
These statements might indicate a long-term vision of a future value proposition of commercial sample return from Mars. The utilization of emerging commercial capabilities for Mars sample return within the framework of a governmental mission has also been investigated in a past feasibility study (Gonzales and Stoker 2016). Another work has proposed the business case of the commercial return of highly valuable Martian regolith and samples as one of the most straightforward candidates for a source of income for private Mars settlements during initial missions (Entrena Utrilla and Welch 2017).
 
In addition, the success of NASA’s Mars Cube One (MarCO) CubeSats in the first interplanetary mission to use such devices has proven the concept of using miniaturized spacecraft for the unmanned exploration of Mars, thus opening up the path for potential future private CubeSat missions to Mars (NASA/JPL 2019). Lastly, the market segment of human access to space seems also to be a desired long-term goal of some private enterprises. These private endeavors include commercial manned suborbital flights (Blue Origin 2019; Virgin Galactic 2019), tourism in Low Earth Orbit (Axiom Space 2019; Forbes.com 2018), human-rated lunar landers (Blue Origin 2019), lunar passenger flights (SpaceX 2017), and human-rated bases around Mars (Lockheed Martin Corporation 2019) and on its surface (SpaceX 2017).

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George Profitiliotis is currently employed as a Foresight Expert at the UNESCO Chair on Futures Research and the Foresight & Tools Unit of PRAXI Network, a unit of the Foundation for Research & Technology - Hellas (FORTH) in Greece. In parallel, he is also a final-year PhD candidate at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), researching the application of an environmental economics & policy approach to the Planetary Protection issues that may arise in the future, especially in light of upcoming private space activities on Mars. He graduated as an Electrical & Computer Engineer from the NTUA and he holds an interdisciplinary MSc in “Environment and Development” offered by the same university. He is also a graduate of the interdisciplinary educational program “Tech MiniMBA: Leading Strategic Innovation” offered by the Athens Information Technology institute and he has conducted voluntary internships at the Hellenic Space Technologies and Applications Cluster (si-Cluster) of the Corallia Clusters Initiative and at the Hellenic National Bioethics Commission, the latter on the research topic of the “Bioethics of Bioastronautics”.
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