Washington: The concerns at Nasa headquarters are extraterrestrial, quite literally. The space agency is looking to hire someone who can defend Earth from alien contamination and ensure that humans in space do not contaminate planets.
The full-time job of “planetary protection officer”, with a salary of up to $187,000 (Rs 1,19,04,438) a year, plus benefits, will be for three to five years.
While candidates will be required to travel frequently — to space centers around the world and analyze planet-bound robots, there will be a significant amount of emails, proposals and other reading.
The job was created after the US signed and ratified the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 whereby it has to ensure that space missions have less than a 1-in-10,000 chance of contaminating an alien world.
It will be the planetary protection officer’s job to ensure that humans don’t accidentally contaminate a pristine world that a probe is landing on or, more often, is zooming by and taking pictures of.
The concern also works the other way, most imminently for Mars. The red planet is a frequent target for Nasa’s sample return missions because it’s oddly similar to Earth and may have once been covered in water.
While the expectation is not to scoop up freeze-dried Martian microbes — only — there’s always the chance of active contamination once those samples hit earthbound labs.
This is where the planetary protection officer comes in: They help establish the equipment, protocols, and procedures to reduce such risks.
