09/27/2025

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By Dan Robitzski

Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.

A double standard about contamination is keeping us from verifying signs of Martian life

Scientists recently found the most compelling evidence yet of potential biosignatures on Mars — that is to say compounds that may have been but weren't necessarily produced by biological activity. But, as astrobiologist Chad Pozarycki, who worked at NASA Goddard on the sample analysis team for the Curiosity rover, wrote in a recent opinion article, a double standard over planetary protection is keeping the United States from getting those potential biosignatures into a lab on Earth where they could be studied in greater detail.

Planetary protection, Pozarycki argued, or the concern of bringing back dangerous microbes, is making Mars Sample Return more difficult and expensive than it needs to be when it comes to, as he wrote, "retrieving what could be the most valuable set of objects in the universe." The hypocrisy, Pozarycki wrote, is that crewed missions to Mars are not being asked to consider the same level of planetary protection as robotic missions, as doing so would drive up costs and mission difficulty.

"One final warning," Pozarycki wrote. "If we don't move quickly, someone else will. China's Tianwen-3 mission aims to launch in 2028 and return samples by 2031. If China succeeds first, it will claim the greatest scientific discovery of all time. We will be left explaining why we sat idle while Perseverance's tubes gathered dust."

You can read the full article here.

We're cluttering Earth's orbit at record speed. Who's going to clean it up?

The rules and regulations for orbital debris mitigation and management, such as a five-year post-mission disposal requirement, are more or less working as intended. But there is cause for concern and the need for more preemptive orbital debris considerations, space licensing attorney Will Lewis wrote in his recent opinion article.

As he put it, "we need to evolve the rules urgently," because "what we have now is a set of policies designed to avoid disaster — not to manage the scale, complexity and geopolitical volatility of today's space ecosystem."

Lewis offers some suggestions for how companies operating in low Earth orbit can serve as responsible stewards, such as assuming that conjunctions are inevitable, integrating propulsion into their satellites and getting involved in shaping policy.

"If you're a commercial operator today, your long-term viability depends on the sustainability of the space environment, and your ability to adapt to fast-changing policy, technical and geopolitical pressures," Lewis wrote. "I see too many companies that experience operations costs and constraints due to orbital debris compliance. The smart ones (the ones who'll win the next decade) are the ones who treat orbital sustainability as part of their business model."

Read the rest of the article here.

A "selfie" taken by the Perseverance Mars rover as it examines Cheyava Falls, an arrowhead-shaped rock in the center that contains potential biosignatures of past Martian life. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Redefining space diplomacy through nonprofits' humanitarian work

While massive international partnerships in space like the Artemis Accords and the International Lunar Research Station claim attention, significant diplomatic work in and involving space is being done at a smaller scale, Turkish space policy researcher Elif Yüksel wrote in an opinion article, thanks to state agencies, private firms and non-profit organizations.

She highlighted some recent success stories, like mobile clinics in Appalachia relying on Starlink connectivity to enhance the accessibility and quality of medical care in the region, and humanitarian groups relying on open-access Earth observation data to track and mitigate disease outbreaks. To keep the momentum going, Yüksel wrote, these organizations should be prioritized with international protection and funding, and the data and services they rely on should remain free and accessible.

You can read the full article here.

SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these opinion articles are solely those of the authors.

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