History
In 1967, most of the world's nations ratified the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. The policy of protecting pristine celestial environments is accepted with virtual unanimity, and has been incorporated into positive international law. The treaty's planetary protection provisions stipulate that nations 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." The United Nations incorporated these provisions in its 1979 Moon Treaty governing the activities of states on the Moon and other celestial bodies, and in the Vienna Declaration of 1999.
Scientists are regularly discovering lifeforms on Earth in the most unexpected places (see: extremophile), so biological contamination risks need to be continuously reviewed in the light of new knowledge. For this reason, planetary protection recommendations are regularly updated, particularly at COSPAR’s (Committee on Space Research) scientific assembly convened every 2 years.
Read more about this topic: Planetary Protection
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)