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NASA Ball NASA
Procedural
Requirements
NPR 8715.24
Effective Date: September 24, 2021
Expiration Date: September 24, 2026
COMPLIANCE IS MANDATORY FOR NASA EMPLOYEES
Printable Format (PDF)

Subject: Planetary Protection Provisions for Robotic Extraterrestrial Missions

Responsible Office: Office of Safety and Mission Assurance


| TOC | Preface | Chapter1 | Chapter2 | Chapter3 | AppendixA | AppendixB | AppendixC | AppendixD | ALL |

Appendix A. Definitions

Accepted Standards. A body of standards either developed by NASA, other government agencies, or by industry to be utilized to identify technical requirements and implementation methods for planetary protection compliance.

Anomaly. An incident or event where observations, data, or analysis results are unexpected, not understood, or could be a potential threat to compliance with planetary protection requirements.

Assurance Case. A reasoned, auditable artefact that supports the contention that its top-level claim (or set of claims) is satisfied, including systematic argumentation and its underlying evidence and explicit assumptions that support the claim(s). Source: ISO/IEC/IEEE 15026-1:2019, Systems and software engineering – Systems and software assurance.

Bioactive Molecules. Biologically produced catalytic molecules that propagate by utilizing or altering terrestrial biological molecules, structures, or systems and could be a potential threat to the Earth’s biosphere, including prions, viruses, gene-transfer agents, and other non-cellular molecular entities.

Bioburden. Population of viable organisms on or in spacecraft materials. Analogous to application in ISO 11139:2018(E) for healthcare products and devices.

Biological Contamination. Unwanted presence of biologically produced molecules carried by spacecraft hardware, including instruments and experiments, that compromise understanding of extraterrestrial environments.

Break the Chain of Contact. Prevent the transfer to the Earth-Moon System of all materials from another habitable world that are not sterilized or contained to Earth’s biosphere.

Chemical Evolution. Process of transition from the initial state of the solar system to the present state, particularly with respect to the development of organic molecules and the formation of life.

Contamination. Unwanted material on the surface of a solid material, or incorporated into a solid, liquid, or gas.

Credible Off-Nominal Scenario. These scenarios cover cases where some condition could occur that results in the system performing in a way that is different from normal. This includes failures, low performance, unexpected environmental conditions, or operator errors that would affect compliance with the probabilistic constraints informed by COSPAR policy and guidelines.

Earth-Moon System. The Earth and the Moon (including artificial objects in orbit around either body) is considered as a single environment for planetary protection purposes in considering sample return from restricted sample return bodies (Mars, Europa, Enceladus, others to be determined) to protect the unrestricted travel within the system.

Earth's Biosphere. Habitable (inhabited or uninhabited) environments of the Earth.

Extraterrestrial Life. Propagating or metabolically active molecular system that is notionally carbon based and from outside the Earth’s biosphere.

Habitable. An environment where physico-chemical limits (availability of water and biomolecule building blocks, presence of an energy source/redox gradient, and permissive temperature and pH ranges) permit replication of carbon-based living organisms.

Harmful Contamination. Unwanted material on the surface of a solid material, or incorporated into a solid, liquid, or gas that damages the integrity of the study of chemical evolution and the origin of life, or that has negative consequences for humans and Earth’s biosphere.

Mission Operations. Any activity, experiment, or process performed by the spacecraft in its operational lifetime or anticipated after EOM.

Organic Materials. All carbon-containing compounds excluding carbides, carbonates, cyanides and simple oxides of carbon (i.e., CO and CO2).

Period of Biological Exploration. The period of time (decades to centuries) during which a solar system body is explored for signs of the origin of life and the history of prebiotic chemistry based on current scientific understanding consistent with COSPAR policy and guidelines.

Robust Containment. A strategy of utilizing dissimilar, redundant approaches to achieve an overall containment system that is minimally sensitive to engineering operations, stressful environmental conditions, and off-nominal scenarios in use from point-of-collection to containment in a receiving facility on Earth.

Sample. Any intentionally collected or unintentionally adhering physical material (including solids, liquids, and gases) that reach the spacecraft returning to the Earth-Moon system from other solar system bodies.

Solar System Body. A Solar System planet, moon or other exploration target for a spacecraft mission.

Terrestrial Organism. Self-propagating or metabolically active cellular system that is from the Earth’s biosphere.



| TOC | Preface | Chapter1 | Chapter2 | Chapter3 | AppendixA | AppendixB | AppendixC | AppendixD | ALL |
 
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