Exploration of space is a fascinating and developing area. People from all walks of life generally support exploration of our solar system and beyond because it satisfies the innate human curiosity about planets other than our own. While the majority of our efforts are directed towards making it possible for both objects and humans to live in safety on other planets and moons, it is also necessary to safeguard other ecosystems from us. Both a practical and an ethical issue, the possible contamination and extinction of other worlds and other species is a concern.
According to Rummel (2001), contamination can either move ahead or move backward. Backward contamination, which is normally not a big deal, is when compounds that have been on other bodies in the solar system get up on Earth. There aren’t many spacecraft that we send to other planets or moons that come back, and no additional life or transferable dangers have been discovered. On the other hand, forward contamination has been a problem ever since the Viking spacecraft made its first trips to Mars in 1976 (Rummel, 2001). Forward contamination occurs when Earth contaminates distant planets and any possible native life. The record of invasive species and viruses wreaking havoc on native species on Earth makes it impossible for us to predict what impact Earth-based life may have on extraterrestrial life.
The International Council of Science’s Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the NASA Office of Planetary Protection are just two of the organisations that have been established to create policies and regulations for preventing forward contamination. These organisations have established a number of regulations for the sterilisation of tools and spacecraft that are transported to other planets since the 1960s, with a special focus on Mars and Europa, two of the most promising and reachable potential habitats for extraterrestrial life. Unfortunately, their recommendations frequently depend on arbitrary, theoretical, or out-of-date estimates of the likelihood of contamination and harm to foreign ecosystems and species (Greenberg & Tufts, 2001). Furthermore, it is impossible to properly sanitise spaceships before they depart from Earth. Contamination is almost certain when people fly in those spacecraft (McKay, 2009). Beyond pollution, ethical issues also need to be taken into account.
Depending on the circumstance, the theoretical ethics of planetary protection could take numerous forms. Here, two possible scenarios of pollution and human involvement will be compared. Small amounts of microbial life are discovered on Mars in the first scenario. Given that meteorite contact between Earth and Mars has been very frequent throughout the solar system’s history, these bacteria may actually be Earth-born (McKay, 2009). In this situation, Martian life may be weak and highly likely to go extinct. Cold and unprotected from deadly UV rays, Mars is a hostile environment (McKay, 2009). Would it be necessary for humans to change Mars into a more hospitable environment in order to protect life that originated on Earth?
Humans love life and strive to preserve it, but in this instance, doing so could require permanently changing the abiotic Martian environment. Some might find it immoral to interfere with Martian development, while others would counter that it would be worse to do nothing and let a rare type of life to go extinct. Of course, this is presuming that involvement with good intentions wouldn’t lead to lethal contamination, which is nearly hard to avoid. What is the distinction between life introduced by a spacecraft and life introduced by a meteorite that originated on Earth? When does that life genuinely transition to Martian life?
A trip to Europa, a Jovian moon with a high likelihood of liquid oceans that might support life, in a radically different scenario leads to the finding of a complex and advanced ecosystem of living things. According to many scientists, the solar system’s most likely candidate for extraterrestrial life is Europa (Greenberg & Tufts, 2001). The moral dilemma here is not whether or not to preserve this existence, but rather whether or not to observe it. In general, it is believed to be both unproblematic and even important for the advancement of humans to explore the universe and learn more about it. A dilemma arises when examining extraterrestrial life, though.
Without any knowledge about the subject being examined, it is difficult to know how to prevent injury, and scientists can only learn about something by researching it. Researchers would run the danger of killing an entire ecosystem by using non-sterile equipment in an effort to understand how Europan life would be susceptible to Earth viruses. Think about how diseases that seemed harmless to Europeans completely wiped off the native populations in the Americas. This ethical quandary stems from our inability to predict how our acts, no matter how well-intentioned, can affect those who are fundamentally different from us.
Clearly, protecting the planet against contamination is only a small part of the issue. We will need rules and regulations to guide us as we explore additional worlds and move farther away from Earth. This will allow us to discover more about the cosmos in an ethical manner. Sending just robots and not sending humans is one method to safeguard other ecosystems. The efficiency of sterilisation for robots is so much better than it is for humans that this may be the only moral method to continue exploration, which may be frustrating to individuals who had aspirations of walking on an alien world.
Furthermore, understanding our own past and errors on Earth may help us develop wise and preventative policies. The two aforementioned instances show that it is challenging to create policies that cover the large range of potential situations in which other planets need to be protected from humans. It is crucial that we have these conversations and that individuals from all walks of life and around the world have a role in creating standards for space exploration, notwithstanding the challenge of the undertaking. There might be a set of protocols that minimise destruction and allow us to keep pursuing knowledge somewhere in between the extremes of exploring without regard for contamination or other harm and ceasing all space travel.
