NASA offers six-figure salary for ‘planetary protection officer’ to defend Earth from aliens

American space agency NASA is offering a six-figure salary for a new ‘planetary protection officer’ to defend Earth from alien contamination.

The full-time role of “planetary protection officer” will involve ensuring that humans in space do not contaminate planets and moons, as well as alien matter infecting Earth.

The pay is a six-figure salary, as much as $187,000 (£141,000) a year plus benefits.

The job post reads: “Planetary protection is concerned with the avoidance of organic-constituent and biological contamination in human and robotic space exploration.”

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“Nasa maintains policies for planetary protection applicable to all space flight missions that may intentionally or unintentionally carry Earth organisms and organic constituents to the planets or other solar system bodies, and any mission employing spacecraft, which are intended to return to Earth and its biosphere with samples from extraterrestrial targets of exploration.”

The three-year position – with a chance to extend it to five years – was created after the US signed the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, vowing to “pursue studies of outer space 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.”

 

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