5
Planetary Protection, Small Solar System Bodies, and Commercial Space Activities
COMMERCIAL SPACE INTEREST IN SMALL SOLAR SYSTEM BODIES
The concept of mining asteroids to extract their valuable elements and provide Earth with resources, in a future where terrestrial resources are depleted or extraction of them is not economically viable, has been around for more than 100 years.1 Following these objectives, a few companies in the early 2010s announced their intentions to extract valuable metals from asteroids to bring them back to Earth for commercial purposes. While these early proposals have not been realized, renewed interest in mining small bodies by the private sector has lately been mostly focused on the extraction of basic elements such as water and carbon for production of propellants in space.
Water and carbon dioxide could be cold trapped after being extracted using a variety of heating techniques. After a separation and refining process, water could be then directly used for steam propulsion, heated to high temperatures to produce a plasma for electric propulsion, electrolyzed to obtain hydrogen and oxygen as propellants, or reacted with carbon dioxide to produce methane fuel. Thus, while a few companies are still interested in the extraction of metals to be sold on Earth (such as platinum group metals from M-type asteroids or iron and nickel from S-type bodies), most business plans focus on the use of asteroidal resources in space to fuel spacecraft bound for various destinations, rather than following the costly, energy-intensive practice of bringing all propellant from Earth. These plans include transport of extraterrestrial materials to Earth orbit (or cis-lunar space) rather than to the surface of Earth.
Based on this living-off-the-land approach, the main targets of many asteroid mining companies are C-complex near-Earth objects (NEOs) because of their carbon content and water bound in hydrated minerals (up to 20 percent in some spectral types). Other advantages include their close proximity (as compared to more numerous, but distant Main Belt asteroids), low in-flight propulsion requirements to access them (many with lower trajectory adjustment requirements than the Moon), and the better probability to detect them and evaluate their resource potential with ground or orbital observatories.
Extracting these valuable volatile elements may require accessing and processing the regolith or rocky surface by docking and anchoring spacecraft to the NEO. Alternatively, to avoid the complexity of landing on an ultra-low-gravity body, remote heating techniques using focused solar radiation to drill, extract, and trap volatiles have been proposed. In these techniques, concentrated solar energy thermally fractures the rock, constantly exposing new material, while fracturing of the body into finer particles is also caused by spalling, as water ice and other volatiles sublimate during the heating process. Cold traps or bags would be used to collect the extracted volatiles. These elements would then be processed in situ or taken to orbital depots to be refined and stored as propellants.
In terms of planetary protection implications, given the potential of finding prebiotic organic compounds on C-complex small bodies, Category II would apply to missions intended to access and remove volatile material from them (see Finding 3). For missions aimed at accessing and removing metals, volatiles, and other materials from S- or M-type bodies, Category I would apply.
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1 K. Tsiolkovsky, 1961, “Beyond the Planet Earth,” The Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society 65(612):846, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0368393100076100. Translated from Russian by Kenneth Syers.
COMMERCIAL SECTOR AWARENESS OF, AND COMPLIANCE WITH, PLANETARY PROTECTION REQUIREMENTS
Past reports on planetary protection policies identified persistent misperceptions, confusion, and uncertainty among actors in the commercial space industry about planetary protection requirements for missions to different solar system bodies.2,3,4 In conducting this study on small bodies, the committee encountered misperceptions that planetary protection requirements for missions to small solar system bodies are more stringent and burdensome than, in fact, they are. This problem might arise because media coverage of planetary protection predominantly focuses on missions to Mars for which planetary protection requirements are more extensive.
However, as discussed above, commercial sector interest in small solar systems bodies is, for the foreseeable future, focused on NEOs that might contain exploitable water or mineral resources. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) policies currently categorize missions to such asteroids as Category II and require the provision of information as outlined in Chapter 4. Category II does not impose any requirements for spacecraft cleanliness, information about organics carried by spacecraft, or data about what the mission does or discovers on the small body.
The committee also found that there seem to be misperceptions in the science community about current cleanliness requirements for missions to small bodies, with the misunderstanding (among many) that current planetary protection policies for missions to small bodies include some level of protection against contamination. As the committee has emphasized in this report, all missions to small bodies are currently Category I or Category II, thus imposing no cleanliness requirements. As stated in Finding 4, the committee endorses future reassessment in order to update the requirements and categorization for some small-bodies missions as necessary, as more is learned.
In briefing the committee, NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, J. Nick Benardini,5 acknowledged that NASA is aware of commercial sector misperceptions about planetary protection policies and is making efforts to close knowledge gaps. Benardini described NASA plans to (1) update its planetary protection requirements, website, and mission planning tools; (2) establish a Planetary Protection Community of Practice; and (3) support and contribute to peer-reviewed planetary protection literature on planning and implementing planetary protection policies for missions. NASA also seeks to ensure that the commercial space industry understands that NASA’s approach to planetary protection is a flexible, risk management approach to meeting planetary protection requirements. The committee supports NASA’s efforts to clarify the commercial sector’s understanding of NASA and COSPAR planetary protection policies.
Similarly, the committee encountered another problem identified repeatedly by previous reports on planetary protection—namely, whether and how planetary protection policies apply to commercial sector
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2 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2018, Review and Assessment of Planetary Protection Policy Development Processes, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/25172, p. 88. (Hereinafter NASEM 2018 Report.)
3 Planetary Protection Independent Review Board (PPIRB), 2019, NASA Planetary Protection Independent Review Board (PPIRB): Report to NASA/SMD: Final Report, Washington, DC: NASA, p. 4. (Hereinafter PPIRB Report.)
4 NASEM, 2020, Assessment of the Report of NASA’s Planetary Protection Independent Review Board, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/26029. (Hereinafter NASEM 2020 Report.)
5 J.N. Benardini and E. Seasly, 2021, “NASA Planetary Protection Status and Response to Previous CoPP Reports,” Presentation to the Committee on Planetary Protection, November 30, Washington, DC: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/11-30-2021/docs/DF146D240CFD1BBB5517B2CD845E7343CE816A11CB18.
space activities in which NASA has no involvement.6 In 2018, a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) found that a “regulatory gap exists in U.S. federal law and poses a problem for U.S. compliance with the OST’s obligations on planetary protection with regard to private sector enterprises.”7 It recommended that “Congress should address the regulatory gap by promulgating legislation that grants jurisdiction to an appropriate federal regulatory agency to authorize and supervise private-sector space activities that raise planetary protection issues.”8
In 2019, NASA’s Planetary Protection Independent Review Board noted a “lack of clarity concerning PP [planetary protection] requirements and implementation processes, particularly for non-NASA missions”9 and recommended that “NASA should work with the Administration, the Congress, and the private sector space stakeholders to identify the appropriate U.S. Government agency to implement a PP regulatory framework.”10
In 2020, a follow-up study by the National Academies’ Committee to Review the Report of the NASA Planetary Protection Independent Review Board addressed the “regulatory gap” problem as follows:
Problems persist with whether and how U.S. federal law regulates private-sector space activities for planetary protection purposes concerning launch, on-orbit, and re-entry activities. These problems create challenges for U.S. compliance with the Outer Space Treaty’s obligations concerning the authorization and continual supervision of activities of non-governmental entities. The problems also undermine the private sector’s need for a transparent and efficient legal and regulatory framework to support expanding private-sector exploration and uses of space.11
In response to that identified problem, the report goes on to provide the following recommendation:
Recommendation: NASA should work with other agencies of the U.S. government, especially the Federal Aviation Administration, to produce a legal and regulatory guide for private-sector actors planning space activities that implicate planetary protection but that do not involve NASA participation. The guide should clearly identify where legal authority for making decisions about planetary protection issues resides, how the United States translates its obligations under the Outer Space Treaty into planetary protection requirements for non-governmental missions, what legal rules apply to private-sector actors planning missions with planetary protection issues, and what authoritative sources of information are available to private-sector actors that want more guidance on legal and regulatory questions.12
Also in 2020, the U.S. government issued its first-ever National Strategy for Planetary Protection, and the strategy stated that “the processes for approving and supervising private-sector space missions are currently unclear with regard to planetary protection.”13 Similarly, NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy convened a roundtable in 2021 to gather input from the commercial space
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6 For missions in which NASA is involved, NPR 8715.24 states that any partner, including both government agencies and private entities, to which NASA “may provide hardware, services, data, funding, deep-space communication, and other resources to non-NASA missions,” should use “reasonable efforts to implement planetary protection measures generally consistent with the COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy and Guidelines or the planetary protection measures NASA would take for like missions.”
7 NASEM 2018 Report, p. 88.
8 Ibid.
9 PPIRB Report, p. 10.
10 PPIRB Report, p. 18.
11 NASEM 2020 Report, p. 6.
12 Ibid.
13 National Space Council, 2020, National Strategy for Planetary Protection, Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/National-Strategy-for-Planetary-Protection.pdf, pp. 2–3.
industry on planetary protection. At this roundtable, private-sector representatives “sought clarification on which department or agency would enforce planetary protection requirements” and “suggested that a regulating agency may be necessary to enforce commercial mission requirements.”14
The regulatory gap problem again arose in briefings to the committee by the NASA Planetary Protection Officer and a representative from the Federal Aviation Administration.15 The longstanding and continuing confusion about the U.S. government’s authority to apply and enforce planetary protection policies concerning commercial space activities prompted the committee to hold an open session with representatives from the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government to discuss the problem.16 For the committee, the session highlighted that the findings and recommendations in previous planetary protection reports on the regulatory gap problem have not been adopted.
Finding 8: The application of planetary protection policies to private-sector space activities targeting small solar system bodies remains compromised by (1) misperceptions in the private sector about planetary protection requirements; and (2) confusion about the U.S. government’s ability to apply and enforce planetary protection policies concerning nongovernmental space activities.
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14 Office of Science and Technology Policy/NASA Industry Roundtable for Planetary Protection Summary, 2021.
15 Federal Aviation Administration and AST Commercial Space Transportation, 2022, “Go for Launch,” presentation to the Committee on Planetary Protection, https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-19-2022/docs/D0D62386491A8B40C4AA5F7B4842F2A3ED2A338B821B.
16 Roundtable Discussion on Regulatory Gap for Planetary Protection, Committee on Planetary Protection Meeting, Space Science Week 2022, March 23, 2022.
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