Explore Planetary Protection

This video reviews the probability of impact of a spacecraft and the body of interest and how that relates to a mission's compliance with Planetary Protection requirements. 

This video takes a closer look at how spacecraft must have a higher level of cleanliness when exploring worlds that may hold clues to the origin of life and how that impacts design and categorization.

NASA defines ocean worlds as bodies with liquid water oceans below a solid, icy crust. Learn more in this video.

This video reviews what happens to spacecraft hardware and components when a mission comes to an end and how Planetary Protection requirements account for this.

This video reviews the primary goal of Planetary Protection: to prevent cross-contamination of solar system bodies during space exploration.

 The video provides an introduction to Planetary Protection concepts. 

NASA assembles spacecraft hardware such as orbiters, landers and rovers in cleanrooms. The cleanroom environment controls the amount of particulate, molecular and biological contamination to specific requirements. So, how is spacecraft hardware built and kept biologically clean?

 The video and associated exercise, both named "Just How Small Is a Spore?" provide a visualization of spacecraft contamination.

How NASA ensures its rovers don't contaminate Mars.

Before we examine what spores are, it’s helpful to understand why we care when it comes to Planetary Protection.

Before embarking on missions in space, NASA spacecraft and rovers are assembled in special facilities called cleanrooms. Cleanrooms are designed to be pristine. Cleanroom conditions control particulate, molecular, and biological contamination of hardware destined for exploration beyond Earth. 

Ground Support Equipment (GSE) is critical to spacecraft build. The equipment can be quite large, including hardware rotation fixtures, cranes, hardware used in specialized lifts and moves, shipping crates, and tall ballymores and ladders. This type of GSE is complex and extremely large. GSE also includes electrical cables, tools, vacuum hoses, computers, phones, tables, benches, chairs and any other non-flight equipment used to support the assembly activities.