Meet the woman with the mission to protect space from Earth

Dr. Catharine A. Conley, NASA's Planetary Protection Officer. Credit: Paul Alers, NASA

Tuesday, October 6, 2015, 12:32 PM - The whole job description sounds a bit like Sci-Fi: One lone woman, with a mission to protect the universe... from Earth. Meet Catharine A. Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer.

Space is a hazardous place, hostile to life, but Conley has been charged with protecting it from us, or at least what we might send out into it. That's just what NASA's planetary protection officer does, and it's far more about science than science fiction.

Dr. Conley, who has her doctorate in plant biology, has been handling planetary protection since 2006, ensuring that NASA missions abide by the rules outlined in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

The Outer Space Treaty, aka the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, governs how we handle space as we venture out into it. It states, basically, that the exploration of space is to be freely available to all nations, done for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of all humankind, and that all nations must conduct themselves (both with people and objects) responsibly, must not lay claim to any part of space (including planetary bodies or portions of them), must not send nuclear weapons into space, and must avoid contaminating space or planetary bodies with life from Earth.

This last provision is of particular importance to Dr. Conley, especially when it comes to the planet Mars.

With the recent confirmation of liquid water flowing on Mars' surface, and what that means for the planet's habitability, avoiding contamination is key. This is one of the reasons why current Earth robots - Opportunity and Curiosity - won't be going to any of these flows anytime soon (distance being the other reason).

Jim Green, NASA's director of planetary science, said in last week's announcement that there already is life on Mars. We know this because we sent it there.

Therefore, when searching areas on Mars that are especially good for hosting life, it's crucial to avoid sending a robot that's covered in Earth microbes.

"If we’re going to look for life on Mars, it would be really kind of lame to bring Earth life and find that instead," Dr. Conley said in an interview with the New York Times.

When NASA sent the Viking landers to Mars in the 1970s, they weren't sure what they were going to find there. Thus, to avoid any contamination of the environment, the landers underwent a stringent process of sterilization.

In a Sept 2014 interview with Scientific American, Dr. Conley said:

"On the Viking missions, the landers were packaged and put inside a bioshield and baked in an oven to kill all organisms—a “full-system sterilization,” we call it. The landers remained in the bioshield until they got to Mars to prevent recontamination. It was the most stringent implementation of planetary protection that anyone has ever done because we needed to protect the life-detection instruments and protect the Mars environment in case it turned out to be habitable to Earth life."

After Viking experiments showed that Mars was (to the best of our knowledge) lifeless, the baking step was skipped on subsequent missions, which, according to Conley, saved $100 million on each. As a consequence of this cost-saving measure, some areas of the planet have been avoided, though.

The only mission that has received the sterilization treatment - at least in part - was the 2007-2008 Phoenix lander. Phoenix was sent to a region near Mars' northern polar cap, with the intent to dig down in search of water and potentially habitable environments beneath the surface layer of dust and dirt. As a result, its robotic arm was sterilized and secured during flight and landing, so that it would not contaminate that environment with anything from Earth.

The Phoenix lander site, with points of interest and dig sites. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University

For other landers and rovers, the harsh environment on Mars would most certainly kill many of the microorganisms that survived the journey, however there is the possibility that some may still cling to the surfaces of these robots.

Despite this, Dr. Conley has some good news.

"So far, Mars is still pretty clean," she told the New York Times.

Although some Earth bacteria are quite resilient - resistant to cold, heat and other extremes - Mars' lack of a planetary magnetic field and thin atmosphere mean that the surface is bombarded by a lethal combination of ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays. This would make survival extremely difficult for anything that evolved in the relative safety of Earth's environment. So, in a mostly dry, inhospitable place like Gale Crater, where the Curiosity rover conducts its science, survival is unlikely. However, send Curiosity to one of the saline "recurring slope lineae" discussed in these latest NASA studies, and the chances of producing a new colony of Earthlings there goes up.

The discovery of life on another planet - life that actually developed and survived there, rather than being transplanted from our own world - is expected to have a profound effect on our view of our universe and our place in it. Taking precautions during our search, and heeding the advice and restrictions imposed by experts like Dr. Conley, is really the best way to ensure we don't end up getting excited over nothing.

Sources: New York Times | Scientific American | United Nations | NASA

WATCH BELOW: NASA announces the confirmation of liquid water flowing on Mars. What does this mean for life on the Red Planet?