When Biospheres Collide: A History of NASA's Planetary Protection Programs
When Biospheres Collide: A History of NASA's Planetary Protection Programs

Author: Michael Meltzer

Publisher: Government Printing Office

Published: 2012-01-27

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 0160897459

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PRINT FORMAT ONLY NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT- OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price This new book from the NASA History Series tackles an interesting duo of biological problems that will be familiar to anybody who has seen photos of Apollo astronauts quarantined after their return to Earth. Namely, how do we avoid contaminating celestial bodies with Earthly germs when we send spacecraft to study these bodies, and how do we avoid spreading foreign biological matter from space when our robotic and human spacefarers return to Earth? Biological matter from an external system could potentially cause an unchecked epidemic either on Earth or in space so strict precautions are necessary. Each time a space vehicle visits another world it runs the risk of forever changing that extraterrestrial environment. We are surrounded on Earth by a mélange of different microorganisms, and if some of these hitchhike onboard a space mission, they could contaminate and start colonies on a different planet. Such an occurrence would irrevocably alter the nature of that world, compromise all future scientific exploration of the body, and possibly damage any extant life on it. By inadvertently carrying exotic organisms back to Earth on our spacecraft, we also risk the release of biohazardous materials into our own ecosystem. Such concerns were recognized by scientists even before the 1957 launch of Sputnik. This book presents the history of planetary protection by tracing the responses to the above concerns on NASA’s missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and many smaller bodies of our solar system. The book relates the extensive efforts put forth by NASA to plan operations and prepare space vehicles that return exemplary science without contaminating the biospheres of other worlds or our own. To protect irreplaceable environments, NASA has committed to conducting space exploration in a manner that is protective of the bodies visited, as well as of our own planet.

When Biospheres Collide
When Biospheres Collide

Author: Michael Meltzer

Publisher: U. S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13:

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NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT- OVERSTOCK SALE-- Significantly reduced list price This new book from the NASA History Series tackles an interesting duo of biological problems that will be familiar to anybody who has seen photos of Apollo astronauts quarantined after their return to Earth.Namely, how do we avoid contaminating celestial bodies with Earthly germs when we send spacecraft to study these bodies, and how do we avoid spreading foreign biological matter from space when our robotic and human spacefarers return to Earth?Biological matter from an external system could potentially cause an unchecked epidemic either on Earth or in space so strict precautions are necessary. Each time a space vehicle visits another world it runs the risk of forever changing that extraterrestrial environment. We are surrounded on Earth by a melange of different microorganisms, and if some of these hitchhike onboard a space mission, they could contaminate and start colonies on a different planet. Such an occurrence would irrevocably alter the nature of that world, compromise all future scientific exploration of the body, and possibly damage any extant life on it.By inadvertently carrying exotic organisms back to Earth on our spacecraft, we also risk the release of biohazardous materials into our own ecosystem. Such concerns were recognized by scientists even before the 1957 launch of Sputnik. This book presents the history of planetary protection by tracing the responses to the above concerns on NASA s missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and many smaller bodies of our solar system. The book relates the extensive efforts put forth by NASA to plan operations and prepare space vehicles that return exemplary science without contaminating the biospheres of other worlds or our own. To protect irreplaceable environments, NASA has committed to conducting space exploration in a manner that is protective of the bodies visited, as well as of our own planet."

Planetary Health Humanities and Pandemics
Planetary Health Humanities and Pandemics

Author: Heike Härting

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-03-29

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1003853331

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This volume explores the variable meanings and discourses of historical and contemporary pandemics to rethink theories and practices of planetary health. Rather than conflating the planetary with anthropogenic climate change, planetary geo-engineering, or the "global," the volume elaborates a version of planetary health humanities that invites decolonial, creative, and pluridisciplinary modes of thinking and sees "health" as a complex non-anthropocentric process that moves within the multiple scales of the planetary. The volume offers new historical trajectories as it considers an eighteenth-century woman author’s readings of plague, intersecting narratives of nineteenth-century lactation and vaccination, and the forgotten biopolitics of NASA’s Planetary Quarantine Program. It offers accounts of decolonial and oracular planetary health, insists that the role of literature in the health humanities is not merely instrumental, explores viral and planetary co-inhabitations, and scrutinizes inequities faced by global health workers. The volume also includes discussions of cybernetic addiction and the complex entanglements of humans, microbes, and bees. Its concluding interview addresses the concrete impact of current planetary transformations on individual and collective health. Bringing together multiple disciplines, the volume will be of interest to students and scholars in health humanities, literary studies, postcolonial studies, medical history, and narrative medicine.

Until Proven Safe
Until Proven Safe

Author: Nicola Twilley

Publisher: MCD

Published: 2021-07-20

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0374715335

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Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley have been researching quarantine since long before the COVID-19 pandemic. With Until Proven Safe, they bring us a book as compelling as it is definitive, not only urgent reading for social-distanced times but also an up-to-the-minute investigation of the interplay of forces–––biological, political, technological––that shape our modern world. Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. Until Proven Safe tracks the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space—from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC to closed-door simulations where pharmaceutical execs and epidemiologists prepare for the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. But the story of quarantine ranges far beyond the history of medical isolation. In Until Proven Safe, the authors tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world’s wheat supply, and meet NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections. They also introduce us to the corporate tech giants hoping to revolutionize quarantine through surveillance and algorithmic prediction. We live in a disorienting historical moment that can feel both unprecedented and inevitable; Until Proven Safe helps us make sense of our new reality through a thrillingly reported, thought-provoking exploration of the meaning of freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility.