The Earth may need to be protected in connection with growing international and commercial competition in space exploration, as more and more actors are going on missions beyond Earth's orbit, according to several researchers at McGill University in Canada.
It also increases the risk of unwanted organisms being brought back to Earth with samples from various destinations in space.
The researchers are now proposing that the US space agency NASA build a quarantine facility on the moon with a robotic handling system for possible extraterrestrial life.
"Decades of research on invasive species have shown how an organism introduced to the wrong place at the wrong time can spread unchecked, with potentially devastating and irreversible long-term effects on ecosystems," they write in a press release .
The study is published in the journal Ambio.
