>>11393824Calm your fucking tits. Moon's being classified as category 2 at most. Meaning there's no need for sterilization and all you have to do is include a cargo manifest. NASA wants to classify everywhere on the Moon outside of the polar regions as category 1, no planetary protection needed!
https://spacenews.com/report-calls-for-changes-in-planetary-protection-policies/>>Artemisthe contamination concerns for Artemis have to do with the science. Return to the Moon's cool and all, but if you're just sending astronauts with different genitals it's just a publicity stunt. Artemis is going to a permanently shadowed crater so we can see if it has volatiles. Permanently dark craters are some of the coldest places in the solar system. We may have detected surface ice in them and they may have even accumulated organic molecules from cometary impacts. When we blew one up we saw some really weird spectra suggesting silver or mercury. The comet material could have prebiotic compounds, which could help us understand how life emerged. Doing very detailed analysis of frozen volatiles might also help us understand the geology better so we can find more. This is useful for ISRU. If we contaminate this stuff with volatiles we bring then it's hard to do science. So far all this means is that the rover the astronauts take can't be pressurized, that's it really. Also probably don't land in the dark crater, and astronauts should probably use shiny stainless tools for taking samples. Might also be a good idea to air out the rover and suits before going into the dark crater. Hell, a convertible cybertruck might actually make a good moon rover, because it's mostly stainless steel and that doesn't outgas much. But so far NASA's only wants rovers that aren't pressurized, they don't seem to care about outgassing.
