How NASA will defend the Earth against plagues from outer space

Biological contamination goes both ways, mind you. Just as important as keeping extraterrestrial organisms from reaching the surface (aka “backward contamination”) is ensuring that our planetary probes carry as few microbial hitchhikers from Earth as possible (“forward contamination”). To that end, in 1958, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a decree urging “that …

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