New NASA Interim Directives on Planetary Protection
NASA released a new interim directive on planetary protection of the Moon on Thursday.
Historically, the Moon has been classed a “Category II.” It will now default to Category I, with only certain areas (PSRs, historic Apollo sites) being Category II.
These NIDs are intended to respond to the recommendations from the Planetary Protection Independent Review Board in 2019. It was a short 3 month process. Non-NASA participants largely appear to be from industry. NASA participants are not listed directly).
Commercial operators
The emphasis on industry participation suggests there was a desire to address commercial actor requirements.
The NIDs themselves don’t directly address private missions, but leave an opening by saying the directives apply to “NASA-controlled missions, commercial missions sponsored by NASA, joint missions in which NASA participates, and NASA support of non-NASA missions to the extent specified or referenced in the applicable contracts, grants, or agreements.” (Emphasis added.)
On the webinar, it sounded as though there is not yet a proposed process for commercial missions to receive review. Contracts are one way this might be achieved, but not all commercial missions have NASA as a customer.
NASA also emphasized at the announcement that it doesn’t set policy for commercial missions.
My colleagues point out that the NIDs are directives, not regulation, so implementation details shouldn’t necessarily be expected in the directives themselves.
Directives that only apply to missions with a formal NASA relationship may set an example that future regulation of (US) commercial activities (through FAA and/or Department of Commerce) will have a precedent. And one could imagine that even if commercial missions aren’t directly subject to planetary protection requirements, NASA payloads could be subjected to them.
The Bi-annual CLPS missions are commercially operated, and form the bulk of upcoming activity at the lunar surface. So this is more than a edge case.
A natural place we might expect to see US commercial missions receive review is through the payload determination process. This is currently coordinated through the FAA, though the specifics of authority are a bit convoluted and are currently being streamlined. Will NASA or the FAA provide the payload determination for CLPS missions?
Historic sites.
PPIRB was chartered by the science mission directorate. As stated in the report, planetary protection does not “address historical site preservation or the implications of the human modification… for example for resource recovery.” But the interim directives specifically include “Apollo landing and other lunar historic sites,” by asserting their “historical and scientific value.”
Clearly these sites have a lot of sentimental value but I am curious if the science community feels that these sits raise to the same level of importance for planetary protection as the PSRs.
It’s nice that the language leaves open the possibility of considering other sites historic, beyond Apollo.
Are all elements of planetary protection area-based?
I am not arguing this, just contemplating it. From a biological contamination perspective, is there anything that could be transported through exospheric particle mixing or considerations at the level of “the environment” as a whole, when considered as an emergent planetary state? (In the same way that climate is a complex result of individual phenomena here on Earth).
Even so, forward-looking environmental protection is not the same thing as biological contamination from a science preservation perspective.
But the NID for Category I is written so as to include not just sites of scientific interest but areas where “exploration will not be jeopardized by terrestrial contamination.” Teasing that out could be quite interesting.
COSPAR
How do domestic US requirements relate to the international community?
COSPAR is the international forum where planetary protection has traditionally been discussed. NASA says it is taking its cues from their recommendations. Whether folks involved with the process agree with this I don’t know, but the reception does seem to be broadly positive (as evidence by #spacelaw Twitter and discussions on the lunar science mailing list, lunar-l).
NASA is setting domestic US directives here, so they are not obliged to seek permission or even technically to harmonize domestic policies with the international community, but since the NIDs are more permissive than the current international Category II standard, it raises an interesting question about what happens if there is disagreement with the characterization adopted by the US for certain domains of the Moon.
Could other parties to the OST claim harmful interference? No one knows: these have not ever been tested. There is no delegated conflict resolution mechanism adopted by states parties to the OST. Disagreements might be discussed within COSPAR, or eventually brought up at the UN COPUOS.
Hopefully we will see this topic at the next COSPAR meeting.
This impedance mismatch between domestic unilateral action highlights some of the challenges of making progress in this domain. On the one hand the US (or any country) may legitimately want to lead by example in adopting practical policies that they feel are genuine improvements, where formal multilateral processes are not keeping up. On the other hand, if domestic policies get out of sync, the effective category of any region on the Moon will become the most permissive category across all operators.
Reflections
I am not a lunar scientist, so I cannot comment on the appropriateness of the scope of the NID. Should other aspects of the Moon be considered Category II? Are these the right latitudes?
What stands out to me here is an approach that incorporates elements of “subsidiarity.” We don’t need to make the whole Moon one designation, it can be different designations in different areas. Subsidiarity is an important ingredient of heterogeneous environment that can offer many different activities and services, and these will be important aspects of maturing the lunar ecosystem.
To achieve this in a coherent way—for a polycentric order to be effective rather than chaotic—we don’t need global consensus on everything, but we do need open, global forums for discussion and transparency.
The United States is clearly operating under an assertive posture of efficiency and progress, over more traditional multilateralism and consultation. There are some positive elements of this: progress is needed and most folks agree that space policy is falling desperately behind capabilities. On the other hand, going too far in the unilateral direction does risk undermining coherence in a nascent domain.