Protect Earth From Aliens With This Job At NASA

Oh, yeah you heard it right. I’ve done all the pinching for you.

You can now free yourself from that earth-bound cubicle. NASA has a top-tier job opening for a Planetary Protection Officer, a position you’ve likely never heard of and that might, at first glance, sound like something of a joke.

The position, however, dates back to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and NASA is one of just two space agencies to have a full-time position dedicated to the role (the ESA also has a full time PPO).

The PPO makes certain that Earth is not contaminated by extraterrestrial life forms that might arrive via meteorite or be deliberately brought back to Earth for further analysis. At the same time, it ensures that the vehicles and satellites we send off-planet are as “clean” as possible, to limit the chance of introducing our own life forms into the ecosystem of another planet.

If an earthly organism got loose in an otherwise pristine place, two problematic things could happen: The contamination would make it impossible to know for sure if any organism you detected was native to the planet or a stowaway. Worse, if alien life did exist, Earth bugs

could contaminate its environment and perhaps even prove to be lethal.
In-bound contamination — the space-to-Earth variety — has, of course, always been what worries us more. Therefore, the NASA has good reason to be careful.

The last thing we would want is to detect life somewhere in the solar system, only to find that it was something from Earth that had managed to survive on a different moon or planet. This isn’t particularly fanciful; there are microbes on our own planet that survive in conditions vastly different from those that typify Earth’s surface. It is therefore not crazy to think that some microbes from our own planet could take root and prosper if they encountered similar conditions elsewhere. Similarly, alien microbial life could potentially take root here.

Although detailed later in the article, in a nutshell, this job will primarily have you ensure that there is no kind of bio-leak not only when humans come back from alien worlds, but when robot probes do too.

If you’ve got the appropriate chops to apply for the position, below are more details and we would redirect you to https://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/about for further action.

Position: Planetary protection officer

Security clearance: Secret

Issued on joining: High quality lightsaber and dark ray-ban sunglasses

Job description: Candidate has to be available to travel frequently, which may or may not include trips into outer space to check up on Earth from afar. The position is most definitely a full-time job because protecting the Earth is serious business.

Salary: The defender of Earth pay starts at $124,406 (a very specific number there) all the way up to $187,000 a year.

Responsibilities: Responsible for the leadership of NASA’s planetary protection policies, and oversight of their implementation by NASA’s space flight missions.

Skills required: Advanced knowledge of Planetary Protection, experience overseeing nationally significant space programs and have demonstrated skills in diplomacy that resulted in win-win solutions during extremely difficult and complex multilateral discussions. It isn’t clear at this time if advanced knowledge in Klingon language and culture will be a part of the deal, but maybe start studying up just in case because you never know. In regards to the aforementioned flight missions, candidates are expected to employ spacecraft, which are intended to return to Earth and its biosphere with samples from extraterrestrial targets of exploration.

Purpose: Promote the responsible exploration of the solar system by implementing and developing efforts that protect the science, explored environments, and the Earth.