From Quarantine to Exploration: Space Agencies and the Ethical Challenge of Astrobiology

Abstract

Astrobiology, as its prefix suggests, is inextricably linked to space exploration. From the onset of the space age, space agencies discovered the need to take into account the question of protection: protection of planetary bodies; protection of the samples brought back from space; protection of spaceflight crews; and the extent to which spaceflight crew members should be treated as samples. Astrobiology also provides for the renaissance of space exploration and serves as a manner for our societies to confront a fundamental unknown of the cosmos: how we can prepare for encountering extraterrestrial life forms.

Notes

See, for example, “Astrobiology: Its Origins and Development,” NASA 50th Magazine. http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/astrobiology.html (accessed May 2012).

S.J. Dick and J.E. Strick, The Living Universe. NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 23.

S.J. Dick Plurality of Worlds. The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 37.

J. Lederberg and D.B. Cowie, “Moondust,” Science 127 (1958): 1473–75.

For the question of animals in space, see J. Arnould, “L'espace à l'épreuve de l'animalité. Préambule à une réflexion,” Natures Sciences Sociétés, 14 (2006): 293–96.

R. Girard, Le Bouc émissaire (Paris: Grasset, 1982), 63.