Some
researchers study infectious diseases and effective treatments. Others ensure
that drugs, food, vehicles, or consumer products live up to their claims and don't
harm anyone.
But the
concerns over at NASA headquarters are, quite literally, extraterrestrial —
which is why the space agency now has a job opening for
"planetary protection officer."
The gig?
Help defend planet Earth from alien contamination, and also help Earth not contaminate alien worlds that
it's trying to explore.
The pay? A
six-figure salary ranging from $124,406 to $187,000 per year, plus benefits,
for three to five years.
A rare and cosmically important position
While many
space agencies hire planetary protection officers, they're often shared or
part-time roles.
In fact,
only two such full-time roles exist in the world: One at NASA and the other at
the European Space Agency.
That's
according to Catharine A. Conley, NASA's current and sole planetary protection
officer, whom Business Insider has interviewed a couple of times, most recently in March. (Conley and NASA did not immediately respond to our
latest questions about her employment status and the open position.)
The job was
created after the US signed and ratified the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and it
specifically relates to article IX of
the document:
"States
Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon
and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid
their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the
Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter and, where
necessary, shall adopt appropriate measures for this purpose."
As part of
the international agreement's creation, its makers decided that any space
mission must have less than a 1-in-10,000 chance of contaminating an alien
world.
"It's a
moderate level," Conley previously said. "It's not extremely careful,
but it's not extremely lax."
This is why
NASA's planetary protection officer occasionally gets to travel to space
centers around the world and analyze planet-bound robots. The officer helps
ensure that we don't accidentally contaminate a pristine world that a probe is
landing on or, more often, is zooming by and taking pictures of.
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