Contamination Control and Planetary Protection

The contamination control (CC) and planetary protection (PP) subtopic develops new technologies or supports new applications of existing technologies to measure, manage, and mitigate the presence and spread of undesired microbial, particulate, and molecular sources. The goal is to produce clean and characterized spacecraft, instrumentation, or hardware. Innovative solutions are sought for characterization, modeling and simulation, and mitigation of contamination induced by spacecraft, instruments, crew, and planetary environments. Understanding potential CC and PP contaminants and preventing the contamination of our spacecraft and instruments supports the integrity of NASA sample science and mitigates other potential impacts to spacecraft function. Novel approaches to measuring, managing, and mitigating microbial, particulate, and molecular (including water vapor) contamination sources support NASA's ability to produce compelling scientific results, ensure nominal hardware operations, and comply with planetary protection requirements to prevent forward contamination (the transfer of viable organisms from Earth to another planetary body) and backward contamination (the transfer of material from another planetary body that may pose a biological threat to Earth's biosphere). NASA's Moon-to-Mars architecture presents particularly pressing challenges for CC and PP: many current CC and PP methodologies are not applicable for crewed missions to destinations where extant life may exist. New technology gaps include methods to prevent both forward contamination and back contamination during crewed exploration of Mars, to maintain the fidelity of ongoing study of that environment and to prevent exposure of crew to environmental hazards.