What makes you say this? The potential to contaminate other planets with life from Earth has been a concern ever since we started planning to put something on a

What makes you say this? The potential to contaminate other planets with life from Earth has been a concern ever since we started planning to put something on a different planet or the moon. This originally got its start in 1958 with the draft of a Planetary Protection Policy [1]. This was prior to the first landing of anything on a body in outer space with Luna 2 in 1959 [2]. This was by the USSR and granted there is not great documentation for anything they actually did, the USSR said they took precautions to prevent biological contamination. For NASA they have been using the planetary protection guidelines since the first lunar lander which was the Ranger mission [3]. Every NASA mission that goes to another planet is required to undergo sterilization using the "Dry Heat Microbial Reduction" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Space_Research#Planetary_Protection_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Space_Research#Pl... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_2#Payload https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_2#Payload [3] https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/planetary-protection# https://sma.nasa.gov/sma-disciplines/planetary-protection# Edit: Spelling