A team of researchers is advocating to use the moon as a secure site for biocontainment of extraterrestrial samples, particularly those from Mars, but also from other potential worlds like Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.
The researchers contend that our moon offers a naturally sterile and isolated environment that can act as humanity’s first line of biological defense against organisms perhaps harmful to Earth and its life.
Making the case for a laboratory planted on the moon — perhaps tended robotically — is Frederick Moxley, director of the Strategic Threat Analysis and Research (STAR) Laboratories, a technical consultancy located in Star, Idaho, along with Anthony Ricciardi of McGill University in Canada. Moxley and Ricciardi caution that the introduction of any novel form of life to the Earth’s biosphere would pose “unpredictable ecological consequences.” They detail their concerns in a newly published paper in Ambio, a journal of environment and society.
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