The flip side to worrying about us contaminating a planet is the opposite -- the planet contaminating us (Earth).
Which reminds me of an older syfy movie.
In the movie (cannot recall title of movie), they were able to go back in time (the dinosaur age) but they had to stay on a specific path, not to step off of it.
Of course, you always have that one dweeb who just loses his balance and steps off, all the while not telling anyone so he could be decontaminated before he came back into present time.
Long story short, the guy brings back plant life from millions of years ago on his shoes from when he stepped off the path and the ecosystem from that time period starts taking over and in a bad way.
So that could be another possibility to the "planetary protection" -- they do not want something being track back to Earth to mess up our ecosystem and way of life.
The contamination theory could be applied to both planets actually.
Damn, guess I need to make an appointment to get my spacecraft sterilized.
Would not want to accidentally start any interplanetary microbe colonies.
Which reminds me of an older syfy movie.
In the movie (cannot recall title of movie), they were able to go back in time (the dinosaur age) but they had to stay on a specific path, not to step off of it.
Of course, you always have that one dweeb who just loses his balance and steps off, all the while not telling anyone so he could be decontaminated before he came back into present time.
Long story short, the guy brings back plant life from millions of years ago on his shoes from when he stepped off the path and the ecosystem from that time period starts taking over and in a bad way.
So that could be another possibility to the "planetary protection" -- they do not want something being track back to Earth to mess up our ecosystem and way of life.
The contamination theory could be applied to both planets actually.
Damn, guess I need to make an appointment to get my spacecraft sterilized.
Would not want to accidentally start any interplanetary microbe colonies.