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Preface

Science is awesome. Well, actually, it’s not the science that’s awesome. It’s the natural world that science helps uncover, expose, reveal. My friend and Nobel Prize winning physicist, the late Charles Townes, once averred to some students visiting in our home, “science is a form of revelation.”

In this sense, astrobiology is awesome. Among the revelations over the last quarter century are exoplanets, more than 4,000 confirmed with thousands more waiting in line for confirmation. Our space spectroscopists are watching and our SETI scientists are listening for biosignatures that could reveal extraterrestrial intelligence. Meanwhile, our solar system spelunkers energetically mine the subsurface of Titan and the atmosphere of Venus, looking for possible microbial neighbors closer to home. Astrobiology offers video game adventure for grown-ups.

Astrobiology provides one component to the more comprehensive matrix of science and technology that comprise space research. Just standing in awe at the numinosity of the cosmos is only part of the picture. Funding launch and orbital technology in the midst of geopolitical competition and tension occupy private entrepreneurs and governmental leaders alike. A competition has arisen between stockholders investing in off-Earth mining, on the one hand, and scientists wishing to maintain pristine off-Earth laboratories for their research, on the other hand.

This competition provides honest work for philosophers who then ask: would critters living in an off-Earth biosphere have intrinsic value? And, if so, would the imputation of intrinsic value protect them from terrestrial profiteering? Regardless of how we respond to these ethical quandaries, the answers should rise to the level of public policy formulation to guide the next generation of space explorers.

We need a book. We need a book that looks at Astrobiology: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy. You are now reading this book. Yet, as we delve into the details of reading this book with our eyes focused on the pages, we dare not forget the awesome beauty of the cosmos that can be glimpsed only when we turn to look in the direction of the stars.

Let me alert you to some subtleties of vocabulary. With the term, astrobiology, we work with standard definitions summarized as: Astrobiology is the scientific study of the origin and evolution of life on Earth and beyond Earth that draws upon a host of disciplines such as astronomy, physics, planetary science, geology, chemistry, biology.

What about ethics? In general, the term, ethics, refers to the theoretical work undergirding standards of value and moral responsibility. Be alert to overlaps and distinctions in various chapters. The panoptic terms, astroethics and space ethics, are inclusive. They include reflection on the broad scope of ethical concerns arising from concrete procedures in space exploration as well as speculations regarding extraterrestrial life. A more focused term is astrobioethics, which concentrates on matters having to do specifically with bios, life. Astrobioethics, you will read in Octavio Chon-Torres’ chapter, is a branch of philosophy and astrobiology that studies the moral implications of the search for life in space.

The construction of future public policy can be built on a solid foundation laid already in 1958 and 1967. As Jacques Arnould at France’s Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) reminds us, the United Nations Committee on Space Research was established in 1958 on the occasion of the International Geophysical Year. The result is a perduring UN mandate to develop recommendations that form the basis of what is now known as planetary protection.

To this foundational principle of planetary protection was added some superstructure in the 1967 UN Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. This prescient document stipulated:

Ҥ 1. The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.

§ 2. Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.”

In many quarters, this moral foundation for public policy has been forgotten. New debates have broken out over weaponization of space, selling off-Earth real estate, competition for planting national flags, establishing colonies, and property rights for yet-to-be-discovered precious resources.

When we remind ourselves of the foundation laid in 1958 and 1967, we are inspired to see how the awesome magnificence of outer space revealed by the astro-sciences has been bolted to steel moral girders, one of which is to support the notion of a single Earthly society of moral deliberation. When we turn from staring at the stars and look back to Earth, we can perceive a oneness that might have been overlooked in previous centuries. The space sciences reveal something about the cosmos, and something about ourselves as well.

Ted Peters Berkeley, California, USA January 1, 2021