Design tools for cost-effective implementation of planetary protection requirements

Since the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s, accounting for the costs associated with planetary protection implementation has not been done systematically during early project formulation phases, leading to unanticipated costs during subsequent implementation phases of flight projects. In the intervening period, more rigorous planetary protection requirements, resulting from new knowledge about the limits of life on Earth, have been developed. This, together with current plans to conduct life-detection experiments on a number of different solar system target bodies have motivated a systematic approach to integrating planetary protection requirements and mission design. A current development effort at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is aimed at integrating planetary protection requirements more fully into the early phases of mission architecture formulation and at developing tools to more rigorously predict associated cost and schedule impacts of architecture options chosen to meet planetary protection requirements.