What Islands Can Teach Us About Planetary Protection

As Charles Darwin explored the Galapagos Islands, he discovered how the different islands allowed for different species to thrive. This is very similar to our current exploration of the Solar System; individual worlds, separated by the vacuum of space. The similarities provide a new insight into predictin planetary contamination risks and improve protection methods. A new paper by Daniel J. Brener and Charlesg S. Cockell uses the spread of life to new islands as a powerful model for rethinking how we prevent Earth’s microbes from contaminating other worlds, shifting focus from probability calculations to whether microbes can actually survive in alien environments.