Since the 1980s, national and international planetary protection policies have sought to avoid contamination by terrestrial organisms that could compromise futu

Recent spacecraft and robotic probes to Mars have yielded data that are changing our understanding significantly about the possibility of existing or past life

An in-depth view of the panspermia hypothesis examined against the latest knowledge of planetary formation and related processes. Panspermia is the concept that

Protecting Earth's environment and other solar system bodies from harmful contamination has been an important principle throughout the history of space explorat

The goal of planetary protection is to control, to the degree possible, the biological cross-contamination of planetary bodies. Guidelines developed by the Comm