Like many people around the world, we here at JustSpace are excited and intrigued by the announcement of phosphine-- a proposed biosignature-- in the atmosphere of Venus. At the moment, it’s hard to know whether this detection means that microbial life exists there, or whether the presence of phosphine just means that some unknown chemistry (but not necessarily life) is at work, but one thing is for certain: This discovery should remind us that even the nearest neighbors in our solar system still hold mysteries and surprises.
However, as one of our co-founders writes in Slate this week, with this excitement comes some trepidation. As they stand, planetary protection guidelines-- the rules about how carefully one needs to clean spacecraft so as not to contaminate other worlds, or Earth-- provide only a technical framework for evaluating missions. As space enthusiasts everywhere rev up planning their Venus dirigibles (yes, there are dirigibles), we urge our community to speak up, and to pursue an ethical framework for planetary protection and exploration.
Towards that end, we want to highlight several excellent papers that have been submitted to the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey:
Ethical Exploration and the Role of Planetary Protection in Disrupting Colonial Practices, by Tavares et al.
Military Work by Space Exploration Organizations: A Barrier to Inclusion and Safe Workspaces for Marginalized Communities, by Khan et al.
Asteroid Resource Utilization: Ethical Concerns and Progress, by Rivkin et al.
In addition to the three we’ve listed here, there’s a full round-up of all the papers on topics of equity, inclusion, accessibility, and diversity available here!
If you’re not a professional space scientist, you might be thinking “the decadal what?”, which is fair! The decadal surveys are a process, carried out once a decade (hence the name!) where the astronomy and planetary science communities all write up what they think the top priorities for the next ten years should be. These go to committees, made up of fellow scientists, who then try to synthesize everyone’s thoughts into a report that ranks those priorities. Not everyone agrees with the final report, so it’s not exactly a consensus process, but it is a way for everyone to make their voices heard.
What do you think of the ideas in these papers? Let us know either by commenting here, or discussing with us on Twitter @JustSpaceOrg.
And if you haven’t yet, be sure to subscribe to this newsletter! We’ve been working on some cool, thought-provoking content for our followers, which will be rolling out over the next several months.
In solidarity to the stars!
PS: we love watching far-flung mission ideas like this too, but let’s just remember: the idea is NOT to wreak “havoc” on other worlds!