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Ethics in Solar System exploration

Nature Astronomy volume 6, pages 641–642 (2022)Cite this article

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As the population of Earth’s orbital environment and human exploration of space intensifies, it is critical to have a strong ethical framework in place so that mistakes of the past are learned from and not repeated.

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Fig. 1: The Human Landing System on the Moon as envisioned by NASA.

NASA/Moon to Mars.

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Acknowledgements

The land on which this meeting was held is located on the homelands of the Acjachemen and Tongva peoples who, in the face of on-going settler colonialism, continue to claim their place and act as stewards of their ancestral lands as they have for the past 8,000 years. The website Native Land helps identify the land of indigenous people from around the world, wherever you might be located. (This land acknowledgment is a modified version of that provided by University of California Irvine Libraries.)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Emily C. Martin

  2. JustSpace Alliance, Chicago, IL, USA

    Lucianne Walkowicz & Erika Nesvold

  3. The Adler Planetarium, Chicago, IL, USA

    Lucianne Walkowicz

  4. Department of Geological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Monica Vidaurri

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  1. Emily C. Martin
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  2. Lucianne Walkowicz
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  3. Erika Nesvold
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  4. Monica Vidaurri
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Correspondence to Emily C. Martin.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Martin, E.C., Walkowicz, L., Nesvold, E. et al. Ethics in Solar System exploration. Nat Astron 6, 641–642 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01712-0

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