Protecting the environment of Mars and the Moon, let alone other planets and their moons? You'd think we have plenty to worry about the environment here on Earth. Still, the space organizations NASA and ESA both have Planetary Protection Officers, whose sole job it is to make sure we don't mess up other celestial bodies.

Gerhard Kminek is ESA's PPO and he is our guest in this Space Cowboys Podcast. He'll explain what he does to prevent that the life we may eventually find elsewhere in the Solar System was brought there by us in the first place.

==LINKS==

Gerhard Kminek

Preventing microbes hitchhiking to space

Our news stories of the week:

Falcon Heavy launch lands three boosters, loses one

Geostationary Intelsat satellite in trouble, spectacular video

Medical report about the Kelly twins, one stayed in space a whole year, the other sayed home.

Israeli moon lander Beresheet crashed

Amazon wants to provide internet from space too

3D printed rockets

==VIDEO VERSION==

Look for our videos on our YT channel

==CREDITS==

Space Cowboys is made by Tyse Roes (https://yeah-science.net/) and Herbert Blankesteijn (https://blankesteijn.com/) in collaboration with BNR Nieuwsradio in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

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