Lunar Customs: Why Some Scientists Want a Port of Entry on the Moon: Milky Way News

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—Everyone has heard of the man in the moon, but no one has heard of the biocontainment facility on the moon.

That’s because there isn’t one. Yet.

Research published in Ambio: a Journal of Environment and Society, makes a case for a facility on the moon that would protect Earth from potential biological threats, specifically from Mars and other ocean-harboring moons in our solar system.

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In the face of a new phase of the space age, where sample return missions have become more common, Dr. Anthony Ricciardi, one of the authors of the study, said bringing back samples from Mars and other celestial bodies in search of extraterrestrial life could pose a devastating invasion risk.

“Introducing a life form to which the Earth’s biosphere has no previous experience is the same as introducing a life form, let’s say, to a lake, or an island, or to some area of the world where that life form, and nothing like it, has ever existed,” Ricciardi, who has studied biological invasions for almost 35 years, told Milky Way News.

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Both Ricciardi and Dr. Frederick Moxley, the other author of the study, acknowledge that the probability of existing extraterrestrial life is small, but still greater than zero. The organisms they want to protect Earth against are not the big-headed, black-eyed, green guys from sci-fi movies past, and the invasions they imagine do not involve UFOs or abductions. Rather, the Martians are microbial, and the threat is one not unlike circumstances we have seen on this very planet.

The study cites cases of organisms unknowingly transported to extreme environments vastly different from the conditions where they originated, then adapting to survive for extended periods of time. Examples include black yeast fungus infecting mussels deep in the sea, and a type of moss and two types of microbial organisms that survived for months, even years, on the exterior of the International Space Station. Talk about endurance.

“If you can think of an extreme environment, there's probably a microbe that's already adapted to it,” said Ricciardi.

So if you weren’t worried about alien life on Earth because you thought it wouldn’t be able to survive on this planet—an argument that has been used to negate the necessity of protective measures—think again.

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However, it is not just potential Martian life brought to Earth, or back contamination, that poses a biological risk. There is the possibility of forward contamination (organisms brought to Mars from Earth), but also rebound contamination, which would involve organisms originally from Earth that arrived on Mars, evolved and mutated to fit the conditions, and then came back to Earth, potentially posing an unknown threat to our planet’s biosphere.

“Decades of research on invasive species warn us to guard against the possibility of releasing a novel life form into the Earth's biosphere,” Ricciardi said. “The risk of introduction may be small, but its occurrence should be considered unacceptable. That is why extreme precautionary measures are warranted.”

While the research in the study is based in reality and backed by real historical evidence, what first sparked Moxley’s interest in the subject was his own work of fiction.

“While in high school, I wrote a short sci-fi story involving spacefaring roboticists that would have to undergo examination for alien microbes via a lunar way station before being allowed to return to Earth,” Moxley told Milky Way News in an email. He never lost interest in the possibility of the concept, and while studying microbial defenses in graduate school in 2006, he published a paper titled, Better Safe Than Sorry: Building a Biocontainment Base on the Moon.

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Both Moxley and Ricciardi stress the importance of being safe rather than sorry, and they discuss in their study the preventive measures taken in infrastructure in the unlikely case of a major natural disaster, like an earthquake. According to them, this is no different. A biocontainment facility would act like a firewall, or a first line of defense, and the moon is the perfect location for it.

“Wherever humans can go, whether it's the deep sea, or a mountaintop, or Antarctica, wherever it is, we can bring other things with us,” said Ricciardi. If biological contamination follows humans wherever they go on Earth, according to him, space missions will not be any different.

There is no isolated place on Earth that can’t be contaminated, so the moon—which lacks a biosphere and has likely already been contaminated by previous space exploration missions—is the perfect candidate.

Besides protecting our planet, building this facility could become an international project, according to Moxley, and could help promote peace by uniting countries around a common goal.

The impact of invasive extraterrestrial species on Earth is unknown. But biological invasions on Earth have already destroyed habitats and driven species to extinction—which is why Ricciardi called the introduction of alien life an "unacceptable event” that demands learning from history and taking action.

“It is not pie in the sky,” Ricciardi said of the lunar base, although the moon is sometimes compared to a certain round, cheesy food. “...It is to prevent something whose occurrence should be considered unacceptable.”