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Solar System

NASA has a top-tier job opening for a Planetary Protection Officer, a position you've likely never heard of and that might, at first glance, sound like something of a joke. The position, yet, dates dorsum to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and NASA is one of only two space agencies to take a full-time position dedicated to the role (the ESA also has a full fourth dimension PPO).

So what does a PPO actually do? Here's how NASA'due south task posting describes the position, which pays from $124,400 to $187,000:

Planetary protection is concerned with the avoidance of organic-constituent and biological contamination in human and robotic space exploration. NASA maintains policies for planetary protection applicable to all space flight missions that may intentionally or unintentionally behave Earth organisms and organic constituents to the planets or other solar system bodies, and any mission employing spacecraft, which are [i]ntended to render to Earth and its biosphere with samples from extraterrestrial targets of exploration. This policy is based on federal requirements and international treaties and agreements.

In other words: The PPO makes sure that World is not contaminated past extraterrestrial life forms that might arrive via meteorite or be deliberately brought back to Earth for further analysis. At the same time, information technology ensures that the vehicles and satellites nosotros ship off-planet are as "clean" as possible, to limit the risk of introducing our own life forms into the ecosystem of some other planet. This ways the PPO is finer involved in many of the considerations that get into planning a remote exploratory mission, from ensuring that the vehicles on the launch pad accept been sterilized (or as close as is plausible) to planning the road the spacecraft volition have.

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This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Big Sky" site, where its drill collected the mission's fifth taste of Mount Sharp. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA has good reason to be careful. The final matter nosotros would want is to discover life somewhere in the solar system, only to observe that it was something from World that had managed to survive on a different moon or planet. This isn't particularly fanciful; there are microbes on our own planet that survive in conditions vastly different from those that typify Globe's surface. Information technology is therefore not crazy to think that some microbes from our own planet could have root and prosper if they encountered similar conditions elsewhere. Similarly, alien microbial life could potentially take root here (and some have argued that life on World was transplanted here from elsewhere, a theory known every bit panspermia).

If you lot've got the appropriate chops to employ for the position, it'due south linked above. NASA's FAQ about the mail service is here. It'due south a temporary office that's typically iii years long, with an choice for an additional 2 years.