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Planetary Protection Considerations for Missions to Solar System Small Bodies Report Series—Committee on Planetary Protection (2023) / Chapter Skim
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5 Planetary Protection, Small Solar System Bodies, and Commercial Space Activities
Pages 34-38

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From page 34...
... 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.
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From page 35...
... 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 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.
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From page 36...
... 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.
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From page 37...
... 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)
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