Preventing the Forward Contamination of Mars

Committee on Preventing the Forward Contamination of Mars, National Research Council

• 1 Front Matter; 2 Executive Summary; 3 1 Introduction; 4 2 Policies and Practices in Planetary Protection; 5 3 Future Mars Exploration: The Rolling Wave; 6 4 Environments on Mars Relative to Life; 7 5 Expanding Our Knowledge of the Limits of Life on Earth; 8 6 Advances in Technologies for Life Detection and Bioburden Reduction; 9 7 Assessing Non-Living Contaminants of Concern; 10 8 A Path Forward for Planetary Protection in the 21st Century; 11 9 Transition Process and Time Line; 12 Appendix A Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff; 13 Appendix B Recommendations from Two Previous NRC Reports on Forward Contamination; 14 Appendix C Summary of Procedures Currently Used to Assess Bioburden in Spacecraft Assembly Clean Rooms and on Spacecraft; 15 Appendix D History of Recommended Values for Probability of Growth; 16 Appendix E Approaches to Bioburden Reduction for Lander Missions to Mars; 17 Appendix F Ambiguities in Geomorphic Interpretation: Martian Gullies; 18 Appendix G Spacecraft Propellant and By-Products as Potential Contaminants; 19 Appendix H Acronyms and Abbreviations