Prevention of backward contamination for Mars sample return missions: risks and challenges
- Paper number
IAC-06-A3.P.3.03
- Author
Dr. André Debus, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Year
2006
- Abstract
The exploration of the Solar System shall comply with planetary protection requirements, imposed by United Nations Treaties and handled presently by the Committee of Space Research (COSPAR). The goal of planetary protection is to protect celestial bodies from terrestrial contamination and also to protect the Earth environment from an eventual contamination carried by return samples or by space systems returning to the Earth. Mars is presently one of the main target at exobiology point of view, and a lot of missions are and will be designed in order to search for traces of present of past life. One main goal of these missions is also to prepare sample return missions. From the Planetary Protection point of view, if forward contamination prevention has to be ensured as it was done for a lot of previous missions, the prevention of back-contamination risks is one of the more important topic to consider now. Returning and analysing safely extraterrestrial samples on the Earth needs engineering studies, new technological developments and analysis. Returning samples as safely as possible has implications on the mission design (trajectories, aerocapture possibility, sample container return and release criteria), the space systems design (container, Earth return system) and the possibility to implement onboard specific means (hermeticity control and sterilization means particularly). Analysing safely samples needs a quarantine phase in a specific facility to be defined, designed and used, and in which analysis protocols shall be conducted in order to state with the highest possible degree of confidence. All critical aspects concerning a sample return mission have consequently to be identified and analysed in order to check the feasibility from the technical and scientific point of view.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-06-A3.P.3.03.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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