Planetary protection implementation on future Mars lander missions

Mathematics – Logic

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

Committee On Space Research, Environment Protection, Exobiology, International Law, Mars Landing, Policies, Bioassay, Biological Effects, Life Support Systems, Microorganisms, Space Exploration, Spacecraft Contamination, Viking Lander Spacecraft, Viking Mars Program

Scientific paper

A workshop was convened to discuss the subject of planetary protection implementation for Mars lander missions. It was sponsored and organized by the Exobiology Implementation Team of the U.S./Russian Joint Working Group on Space Biomedical and Life Support Systems. The objective of the workshop was to discuss planetary protection issues for the Russian Mars '94 mission, which is currently under development, as well as for additional future Mars lander missions including the planned Mars '96 and U.S. MESUR Pathfinder and Network missions. A series of invited presentations was made to ensure that workshop participants had access to information relevant to the planned discussions. The topics summarized in this report include exobiology science objectives for Mars exploration, current international policy on planetary protection, planetary protection requirements developed for earlier missions, mission plans and designs for future U.S. and Russian Mars landers, biological contamination of spacecraft components, and techniques for spacecraft bioload reduction. In addition, the recent recommendations of the U.S. Space Studies Board (SSB) on this subject were also summarized. Much of the discussion focused on the recommendations of the SSB. The SSB proposed relaxing the planetary protection requirements for those Mars lander missions that do not contain life detection experiments, but maintaining Viking-like requirements for those missions that do contain life detection experiments. The SSB recommendations were found to be acceptable as a guide for future missions, although many questions and concerns about interpretation were raised and are summarized. Significant among the concerns was the need for more quantitative guidelines to prevent misinterpretation by project offices and better access to and use of the Viking data base of bio-assays to specify microbial burden targets. Among the questions raised were how will the SSB recommendations be integrated with existing Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) policy and how will they apply to and affect Mars '94, Mars '96, MESUR Pathfinder, and MESUR Network missions? One additional topic briefly considered at the workshop was the identification of some issues related to planetary protection considerations for Mars sample return missions. These issues will form the basis for a follow-on joint U.S./Russian workshop on that subject.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Planetary protection implementation on future Mars lander missions does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Planetary protection implementation on future Mars lander missions, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Planetary protection implementation on future Mars lander missions will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1335724

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.