Deal: Get the Moto X4 for just $299 with Amazon Prime

An already great deal is now even better.

There’s no shortage of solid mid-range offerings in the Android space right now, and with devices like the Moto E4 and G5S Plus, Motorola is leading the charge for phones between $200 and $400. Amazon recently cut the price of its Prime Exclusive Version of the Moto X4, and this now makes the phone something of a no-brainer for Prime subscribers.

The Prime Exclusive Moto X4 typically sells for $329 on Amazon, but if you buy the phone right now, you can pick it up for just $299. A savings of $30 might not be huge, but considering that the regular X4 sells for $399, that’s a fantastic price.

You will have to put up with pre-installed Amazon apps and advertisements on the lock screen since this is the Prime Exclusive variant, but for $299, it’s hard to complain about this. For that price, you’re getting a 5.2-inch 1080p Full HD display, Snapdragon 630 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, dual cameras, IP67 dust and water resistance, and a metal+glass construction.

There’s no word as to how long you’ll be able to pick up the Moto X4 for $299, but should you buy it, you’ll be able to use it on AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon (as well as any of their respective MVNOs, such as Cricket Wireless, Boost Mobile, MetroPCS, etc).

See at Amazon

Tech incubator Y Combinator severs ties with Peter Thiel

It’s safe to say that Peter Thiel’s relationship with the tech industry has been… contentious. His wealth and willingness to invest have made him highly influential, but his eagerness to stifle media criticism and (at least for a time) support President Trump have put him at odds with a Silicon Valley culture that values things like immigration and renewable energy. However, it looks like he won’t play as large a role as he once did. Gab and BuzzFeed News have discovered that Y Combinator, the primarily tech-focused startup incubator, quietly cut ties with Peter Thiel. His 2015 introductory post at Y Combinator now includes a message saying Thiel is “no longer affiliated” with the accelerator. It’s not certain when this happened, but modifications to the post’s web code last took place on October 30th.

The BuzzFeed sources raise the possibility that his exit could have come sooner. They say that Y Combinator ended its part-time partner program (in which Thiel was involved) sometime in 2016. Other partners moved to an “expert” program to advise startups, but Thiel didn’t follow them.

It’s not clear why the relationship is over. Both Thiel and Y Combinator president Sam Altman have declined to comment. However, it’s not as simple as assuming that his political affiliations led to his departure, as Gab speculated. Altman was vocal in defending Thiel’s involvement, arguing that diversity of ideas was “painful but critical to the health of a democratic society.” And he’s not alone in Silicon Valley — Facebook defended keeping Thiel on its board for similar reasons. As it stands, Thiel himself has partly distanced himself from Trump, warning that his presidency might end “in disaster.” This doesn’t rule out a political motivation, but it could also be a simple business decision.

Whatever the reason, the move partly defuses some of the tension created by keeping Thiel involved in Y Combinator. The venture capital firm can spend less time grappling with political questions and more time backing fledgling tech companies.

Via: The Verge

Source: Y Combinator, Gab (Twitter), BuzzFeed News

The best GPS trackers for cats and dogs

By Nick Guy

This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter, reviews for the real world. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here.

A GPS pet tracker can save your cat’s or dog’s life if it ever escapes home. After spending more than 25 hours researching and testing four trackers, including having Wirecutter staffers take them all on a trip around Manhattan and a 35-mile bike ride, we’ve found the Whistle 3 GPS Pet Tracker & Activity Monitor to be the best tracker for most pet owners. Not only is the Whistle 3 as quick and accurate at tracking as any other model we tested, but it also has the longest-lasting battery by far.

Who this is for

A GPS pet tracker, like most emergency gear, is something you hope you never have to use. The device uses an embedded GPS transponder as well as cellular data signals to communicate your pet’s location at a given time. The idea is that if your pet escapes, you’ll receive a notification via an app, have the ability to track its location in real time, and be safely reunited.

How we picked and tested

The GPS pet trackers we tested. Photo: Michael Hession

A good pet tracker should be easy to set up and must stay on your pet, so we started by evaluating the hardware itself. We looked at each tracker’s size and how securely it attaches to a collar. We also examined any power controls present on the collars and tested battery life in both the “safe zone” and in the real world. In the safe zone, the collar’s GPS radio is deactivated, significantly saving battery life. The safe zone is determined by maintaining a connection to a particular Wi-Fi network or base station, or by staying within a defined area.

To track accuracy, we sent the trackers on a 35-mile bike ride in upstate New York, periodically checking the trackers’ status and reported location. We also visited five locations in Manhattan to test both how accurate each tracker’s reported locations were and how quickly each tracker’s companion smartphone app updated. To read more about our test procedures, please see our full guide.

Our pick

Photo: Nick Guy

If you’re concerned about your pet getting away and you want a tool to help you more easily find it, the best option is the Whistle 3 GPS Pet Tracker & Activity Monitor. This tracker is as accurate as any model we tested, quickly transmitting its GPS signal back to our phone. It lasts longer on a charge than any of the other contenders we tried, its hardware design is the best by far, and its smartphone software is equally well-thought-out.

Throughout our tests, we were able to get the Whistle 3’s location in a matter of seconds, and that reported location was always close enough to the actual location that we’d be able to find our pet easily. We like that the Whistle 3’s smartphone app shows you not only where the tracker is but also where you are in relation to it, which is handy if you’re trying to find your pet in an unfamiliar area. The app also has a button to refresh the location manually, something other trackers’ apps lack.

Where the Whistle 3 most sets itself apart from other models is in battery life. When left undisturbed inside a home Wi-Fi safe zone, it didn’t just last longer than any other tracker—it even surpassed the amount of time we allotted for the test. Thirteen days into the test, and six days after the next-longest battery gave out, the Whistle 3’s battery was still at 69 percent.

The Whistle 3 won’t come off unless you hold down a spring-loaded button and twist a quarter turn, an action your opposable-thumb-lacking companion is unlikely to purposefully or accidentally take. The Whistle 3 is also rated IP67, meaning it’s dust-tight and can survive being immersed in up to a meter of water.

Like most competing trackers, the Whistle 3 requires a 3G service plan. You can choose to pay $10 a month with no commitment, or save by paying for a year ($100) or even two ($170) in advance.

Runner-up

Photo: Nick Guy

We think you should go with the Whistle 3, but if for some reason you can’t, the Paby 3G GPS Pet Tracker & Activity Monitor is the next-best alternative. It updated faster and was more accurate in our tests than other trackers, and we greatly appreciate that its companion smartphone app indicates when it last updated the tracker’s location, so you know if you have current information. The hardware also feels more secure on a pet’s collar than other models do. But compared with the Whistle, the battery doesn’t last as long, and the charger isn’t nearly as good.

Vaguely shaped like a bow tie, the Paby tracker is small enough that it fits on most dog or cat collars, attaching with a strong band. You have to use a tiny screwdriver to replace the band if it ever breaks, but the tool is included in the box. And by “box,” we mean the collapsible water bowl the tracker comes packaged in—a very cool and wholly practical design choice.

The Paby’s charger is its biggest failure. The magnetic pad has an extremely weak magnet, and it rests right up against the aforementioned rubber band, so the charger can too easily pop off, resulting in an uncharged tracker. That’s especially a problem with this tracker because it has pretty poor battery life: It lasted only four days in our safe-zone test, and was down to 53 percent at the end of our bike-ride test.

This guide may have been updated by Wirecutter. To see the current recommendation, please go here.

Note from Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

Scientists hope their latest alien invitation won’t trigger an invasion of Earth

Scientists have sent a message to a star system 70 trillion miles away, inviting any alien civilization living there to swipe right and send us a message back. Some people (basically anyone who’s seen Independence Day) are concerned that such a transmission may trigger an unpredictable response instead.

The project is known as METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and it actively seeks to send greetings to any alien civilizations out there, as opposed to SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) which passively looks for signs of life beyond our solar system. It’s a controversial program, to say the least. Physicist Stephen Hawking, one of its most vociferous opponents, has famously warned against such an endeavor: “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”

In an interview with Newsweek, the president of METI, Douglas Vakoch, tried to assuage the concerns raised about the program. “Any civilization that could travel to Earth to do us harm could already pick up our leakage television and radio signals,” he said. “So there’s no increased risk of alerting them of our existence.”

Dan Werthimer, a SETI researcher at Berkeley, told New Scientist: “It’s like shouting in a forest before you know if there are tigers, lions, and bears or other dangerous animals there.”

The system that’s the target of the message is a red dwarf designated GJ273, also known as Luyten’s Star in the Canis Minor constellation, with an exoplanet GJ273b that could possibly support life. It’s 12.4 light years away, and in the message researchers said they’d be looking for a response 25 years in the future.

Then there’s the question of exactly how we communicate with aliens. The Voyager missions famously carried a golden record that was filled with the sounds of Earth, as well as an interstellar map that might lead aliens back to our planet.

“Extraterrestrials won’t speak English or Spanish or Swahili,” said Vakoch. “Our message is written in the language of math and science. Over the centuries, scientists and mathematicians have repeatedly taken a vote on the most essential concepts needed to explain the nature of the universe.”

The message was beamed three times to the system, on October 16, 17, and 18. Each transmission took 11 minutes. The invite also includes a cosmic clock, indicating how much time has passed between transmissions. It’s hoped that the aliens can decipher the message and send back a reply. Another message is planned to the same star, which will include the date we’re expecting a reply.

So, set your calendars for June 21, 2043. It could be a big day for humanity.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Weekly Rewind: Driverless pizza delivery, defusing volcanos, a 707hp Jeep
• You can now listen to Voyager’s Golden Record, Earth’s greeting to alien civilizations
• Satellite data from NASA could be the key to predicting malaria outbreaks
• NASA put together a playlist of spooky space sounds for Halloween
• Weekly Rewind: The new Moto, a 12-year-old’s lead-detection invention, and more

Bluewave Get Hi-Fi Wireless Headphone Amp review

You’ve no doubt noticed that smartphone makers are now truly at war with the headphone jack. It’s a battle that few of us appreciate, as it takes away a useful port and offers nothing in return. The result? Many of us must now choose: Do we want to continue using our wired headphones (some of which are worth many hundreds of dollars, thank you very much) through a sad little dongle, or, do we bite the bullet and invest yet more money into a decent set of Bluetooth cans?

To this situation, a new Canadian startup is saying, “Just, no.” Instead, Montreal-based Bluewave Audio is offering the minimally-named Bluewave Get, a tiny, Bluetooth headphone amp, assembled in Canada, that aims to let you keep using your favorite cans and even improve how they sound, for $99. In our Bluewave Get review, we let you know just how high wireless sound can fly for under a Benjamin.

Getting it right

At first glance, most people who look at the Bluewave Get have the same reaction: Isn’t it just like every other Bluetooth audio receiver on the market? Can’t you buy these things on Amazon for $20? It’s a reaction Bluewave founders Stephane Lepage and Pierre Lelievre are used to, but they still cringe at it.

Lelievre, the engineering talent behind the Get, claims those others devices might be Bluetooth receivers, but they aren’t “true amplifiers.” This, he claims, puts the Get into a very small category of devices — currently occupied only by the excellent $150 Astell & Kern XB10 — in that it combines the latest Bluetooth 5.0 codecs including AptX HD, for full compatibility with 24-bit high-resolution audio formats like FLAC, WAV and DSD, and streaming AAC for iPhone users (who are still waiting for Apple to join the AptX bandwagon), with a dedicated amplifier. Lelievre also claims the Get outperforms the XB10 in two ways: The Get’s amp is four times more powerful, and it has a fully analog volume control, which allows for a magnitude of levels far exceeding the incremental steps of most button-based volume systems. Let’s not forget, it’s also $50 cheaper.

You definitely sense the “warmth” that’s often used to characterize the sound of a quality amp.

The Get’s internal 200 mAh Li-Po battery is good for six hours of continuous use, and takes two hours to fully charge from empty. It also sports a MEMS microphone for taking calls or interacting with voice assistants. Better yet, its micro USB port, which is typically used for charging the Get, can also be used with a PC or Mac as an external DAC.

Did we mention it’s tiny? Weighing just 30 grams and fitting somewhere between an iPod Shuffle and an iPod Nano in size, once you attach it to your shirt or backpack with the included clip, you’ll barely know it’s there. There are three physical buttons for play/pause/calling, skip forward, and skip back.

True-blue tunes

Bluewave likes to say that the Get will take any set of headphones and make them sound better. To test the claim, we listened to a variety of source material (both hi-res and some not-so-high-res) on a variety of devices, including an iPhone 6 and a Google Pixel XL. After plugging in everything from Apple EarPods to a pair of AudioTechnica ATH-M50x monitors, we can verify that this claim is true. But, of course, your mileage may vary.

It can be tough to quantify and qualify sound improvements at the best of times, but we think most people will hear a difference when swapping their preferred headphones between their normal device, and that device paired with the Get. On a set of inexpensive buds like Apple’s AirPods, the difference will be subtle — a slight increase in fullness of the sound, and a reduction in harshness as you hit the higher volume levels.

Move up to a set of full-size, over-ear cans like the ATH-M50x, however, and you start to appreciate more nuance — individual instruments have greater separation, tonality is improved across the board, and you definitely sense that “warmth” which is so often used to characterize audio that has been piped through a quality amp.

We don’t want to over-promise — these improvements, though noticeable, are not night-and-day. The fact is, your smartphone is never going to sound as good as your dedicated home audio gear, and the Bluewave Get can’t magically make it so. However, we think that for its price, you won’t find a device on the market that can do what the Get can do, in such a small, and versatile form factor.

Extras

Yes, you can use the Bluewave Get as an external DAC for your PC or Mac, via the included micro USB cable. Unfortunately, the benefits of doing so are limited: The Get can only deliver two-channel, 16-bit conversion at 48 kHz, which means if you don’t hear an improvement in sound thanks to the Get’s amp, you may as well stick with your computer’s existing headphone output.

Unlike some other Bluetooth audio receivers, the Get can be used while charging. It also lets you know via the small LED indicator what kind of connection you’re using: Green for USB/charging, blue for a regular Bluetooth connection, purple for an AptX HD connection, and red for low battery.

The small metal clip is removable, and can be replaced or swapped with a slightly beefier clip designed to mount the Get directly to the side of a large set of headphones for a tangle free setup. This larger clip ($12) also comes with a shorty headphone cord for use with cans that have detachable cords.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Can wireless audio quality finally match wired? We tested the latest, AptX HD
• JBL E55BT review
• Sennheiser HD1 Wireless review
• Buy Audio-Technica ATH-AD1000X headphones for $70 off, and get free $60 gift card
• How some of the best wireless headphones were almost never made

Skyrim VR review: A clumsy, hilarious trip through a familiar world

This is probably not what it feels like to be Dragonborn.

From the moment Bethesda announced the seemingly immortal Skyrim would be getting a VR version, there have been a lot of questions. Building a game for VR and building a game for 2D screens require a lot of very different tools and design concepts, but the folks at Bethesda are no strangers to VR concepts. This is the first of several huge VR titles planned over the next couple of months, and with the addition of multiple DLC from the original game included in this version the amount of time players could spend in this game is orders of magnitude greater than your average VR game.

So is it better to have a ton of content to play with or flawless immersion in VR? This is an important question to ask yourself when considering Skyrim VR for your library, because in this situation you are not going to get both.

Read more at VRHeads!

From the Editor’s Desk: How far can OnePlus go with community-driven software and hardware?

It’s always a tough balance between listening to customers and having a central vision.

OnePlus held its first ever in-person launch event in New York City this past week. The OnePlus 5T clearly wasn’t a groundbreaking product deserving of a launch event in itself, but OnePlus used this gathering more so as an opportunity to talk directly to fans and curious onlookers alike. Presenters took an inordinate amount of time talking about things the company had already done. Talking about the history of how OnePlus phones are made, and how OxygenOS was born out of user feedback. The core of the presentation focused on the philosophy inside OnePlus that the customer comes first — not just in how they’re treated when buying the phone, but how the phones are made from the start.

If OnePlus wants to grow beyond the enthusiast community, does it have to start being a bit more opinionated?

OnePlus says that development of OxygenOS begins and ends with community engagement, coming up with new features that are fed to beta testers who give feedback that is directly integrated into the future builds. Tweaks and changes to amazingly mundane things like interface colors, animations and boot sequences all have hundreds of community members chiming in with strong opinions. The name “OxygenOS” itself was chosen as a suggestion from a OnePlus forum member. And OnePlus isn’t shy about the fact that it listens to the same community when it comes to making hardware decisions on its phones. It’s the reason why the OnePlus 5T has 8GB of RAM, a headphone jack, a physical mute switch and the like.

For an enthusiast-driven company like OnePlus, it makes sense to lean on the very fanatics buying your phones for input on what those products should be. The feedback loop can be powerful, and it almost guarantees sales up to a certain point. But the question is, if OnePlus wants to grow beyond this enthusiast group, does it need to start being a bit more opinionated again?

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei said that the company learned a big lesson with the OnePlus 2. After seeing wonderful success with the OnePlus One, the company “got cocky” according to Pei — this led to some questionable decisions, like the ever-frustrating set of hoops to jump through to get the phone, and odd hardware choices like the removal of something as simple as NFC. OnePlus has certainly swung back in the other direction now, with wide open sales, much-improved customer service, and phones that don’t skimp on the necessities.

OnePlus has completely changed how it treats users, but now it needs to move forward.

Now with that equilibrium achieved, I think it’s time for OnePlus to take the reins once again. Looking at the progression from OnePlus 3 to the OnePlus 5T, I just don’t see enough innovation happening. Some 85% (or thereabouts) of the phone experience is identical over the course of 18 months. That’s a nod to how good of a phone the OnePlus 3 still is today, but also a point of realization that OnePlus needs to step up the innovation a bit. The OnePlus 5T is a good, solid phone for a really great price in a world of ever-more-expensive flagships — but it sure isn’t innovative, new, exciting or important in the market in any respect.

OnePlus has worked out the kinks, got things running smoothly and most importantly shaken (most of) the bad blood the public has from past poor decisions. So now, I’m looking for OnePlus to do something truly new, fresh and exciting. There’s a fine line between consistency and complacency, and that’s precisely where OnePlus is walking right now.

And with that, a few more lingering thoughts on the week:

• In reviewing the OnePlus 5T, I’ve taken a break from writing about the Pixel Buds. Rest assured a proper “review” will be landing soon, though.
• Google got many things right with the Pixel Buds, including the comfort, battery life, and sound quality. But they’re very expensive, and the advanced features leave something to be desired.
• I’m initially quite satisfied with the Pixel 2 XL’s display after the latest software update to improve the tuning via a “saturated” display mode.
• It still isn’t a drop-dead gorgeous panel, but it sure is above average. The display stands in the way of the Pixel 2 XL being a truly great phone, but I don’t find it a big enough issue to stop me from recommending it at this point.
• You’ll notice that after initially pausing our recommendation of the Pixel 2 XL in our review, we’ve moved back to recommending it as originally found in the first testing period.
• All that being said, I still like the smaller Pixel 2 more. I’m a sucker for a “small” phone, and it’s just a much more compelling device with its much lower price.

Have a great week, everyone — particularly those of us in the U.S. who are likely to spend some time with family for the long Thanksgiving weekend.

-Andrew

OnePlus 5T and OnePlus 5

• OnePlus 5T hands-on preview: Relentless iteration
• OnePlus 5T specs
• All of the latest OnePlus 5T news
• Join the discussion in the forums

OnePlus
Amazon

The Nvidia Shield TV streaming media player is down to $170

Stream your favorite shows and play your favorite games all with one device.

The Nvidia Shield TV with game controller is down to $169.99 on Amazon. This price matches a deal we saw more than a week ago during Best Buy’s early Black Friday sales, and you can find this price at Best Buy this time, too.

In fact, if you don’t want the game controller (you should, but that’s none of my business), you can get the Nvidia Shield TV with just the remote for $150 at Best Buy.

The Nvidia Shield TV has improved over previous iterations. Heck, this one gives you access to Amazon Prime Video, which is a step-up by itself. Sure, the Shield is more expensive than a Roku but the Shield is a gaming console, too, and a decent one at that.

Features include:

• Connected Google Life – Access all your Google content and smart home features with Google Assistant, share your Google Photos in 4K, and cast your favorite apps to your TV with Chromecast 4K.
• 4K HDR Powerhouse – Watch Netflix and Amazon Video in crisp 4K HDR, and YouTube, Google Play Movies & TV, and VUDU in 4K. Apps like HBO Now, Spotify, and ESPN meet all your entertainment needs.
• NVIDIA-Powered Gaming – Cast games from your GeForce-powered PC to your TV in 4K HDR at 60 FPS. Get NVIDIA-powered cloud gaming on demand with GeForce NOW. And enjoy exclusive Android games only on SHIELD.
• Smart Home Ready – Google Assistant lets you control your entertainment and smart home with your voice. Add SmartThings Link to wirelessly connect lights, speakers, thermostats, and much more.
• Get YouTube Red for 3 months free – $29.97 in value. Explore uninterrupted music, ad-free videos, and exclusive original movies and shows from your favorite YouTube creators. Limited-time offer ends 12/31.

The Nvidia Shield has 4.3 stars based on 927 user reviews.

See at Amazon

After Math: On the road again

Tesla had quite the week. Not only did the upstart carmaker get to show off its new semi and roadster, it also unveiled its multi-station Supercharger rest stop and managed to get itself onto the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit alleging pervasive racism throughout its ranks. Numbers, because how else will you know how many times this week your supervisors have greeted you with an n-bomb?

1.9 seconds: That’s how quickly Telsa’s new roadster will get to 60 MPH from a standing start — the only production car on the planet to do it under 2 seconds — once it debuts in 2020. Suck on that, Porsche 918 Spyders.

500 miles: That’s how far Tesla’s new fully-electric, semi-autonomous tractor will travel on a single charge. Rather disappointed it doesn’t include the gullwing doors, though.

2: That’s how many of Tesla’s Supercharger rest stops have opened for business — one between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the other between LA and Las Vegas. But what are you supposed to do for the 30 minutes while your battery recharges?

100: That’s how many Tesla employees need to sign on to Marcus Vaughn’s racial harassment lawsuit in order for the courts to treat it as a class action.

1,101.2 miles: That’s how far Mercedes’ all-electric “Citaro” busses will be able to travel between chargings once they enter service by the end of next year. What, you thought Tesla was the only electric vehicle game in town?

2,000,000: That’s how many electric and hybrid cars are expected to be zipping along China’s roadways by the end of 2019. To account for this gasless trend, Toyota and Mazda have teamed up to build a $1.6 billion assembly plant here in the US that will eventually produce 300,000 EVs each year.

10 minutes: That’s how long a trip from Boulder to downtown Denver, Colorado will take aboard the city’s proposed Hyperloop-like transportation system, Arrivo.

How NASA will defend the Earth against plagues from outer space

In the summer of 1957, the Earth stood witness as a meteorite cratered in rural Pennsylvania, bringing with it a people-eating plague never seen: an alien amoeba with the taste for human flesh. While we had Steve McQueen around for the first invasion, humanity is now defended against microbial marauders from outer space by NASA and its international counterparts.

Biological contamination goes both ways, mind you. Just as important as keeping extraterrestrial organisms from reaching the surface (aka “backward contamination”) is ensuring that our planetary probes carry as few microbial hitchhikers from Earth as possible (“forward contamination”). To that end, in 1958, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a decree urging “that scientists plan lunar and planetary studies with great care and deep concern so that initial operations do not compromise and make impossible forever after critical scientific experiments.”

The following year, the newly formed Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) argued “that all practical steps should be taken to ensure that Mars be not biologically contaminated” until an exhaustive search for life on the planet had been undertaken. These recommendations became law in 1967 when the US, the USSR and the UK all signed onto the United Nations Outer Space Treaty.

“Part of our thinking about planetary protection is that we want to make sure that we safeguard to any future human exploration,” Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at Adler Planetarium and the Astrobiology Chair at the Library of Congress, told Engadget. “When we bring spacecraft to other worlds (or eventually human beings), we want to make sure that we understand that environment. That means being relatively cautious about contaminating it.”

However, not every extraterrestrial target of human interest requires the same degree of caution. Places like the Sun or Mercury, which are almost assuredly devoid of biological organisms, don’t require the same level of protection as, say, Mars or the Moon, which are just heavily irradiated and desperately cold. In fact, COSPAR has developed a 5-category system which space agencies must abide by when they’re developing their planetary probes:

• Category I covers places with little chance of finding even basic forms of life, like Mercury.

• Category II includes places that might be explored for the origins of life but where the chances of contamination by Earthly microbes is remote. Think Venus or the Moon.

• Category III regulates flyby and orbiter missions where the chances of contamination are moderate, like Mars or Europa. This is why Cassini was thrown into Saturn: we couldn’t have it falling into Enceladus or Titan.

• Category IV regulates lander or probe missions to the same places as category III, though it is further divided into a series of subclasses based on specific regions of the planet’s surface and what the lander is actually looking for.

• Category V is what happens if there’s a good chance we’ll pick up a Blob in space. It demands “absolute prohibition of destructive impact upon return, containment of all returned hardware which directly contacted the target body, and containment of any unsterilized sample returned to Earth.”

“I think they’re good for us as a working framework,” Walkowicz said. “They certainly have served us well in the history of exploration and our solar system thus far.”

It’s extremely important that space agencies understand the categorical protection requirements of their mission, explains Dr. John Rummel, Senior Scientist at the SETI Institute and former NASA Planetary Protection Officer. “If you tell someone at the last minute they going to do something they had never been planning on, well, they may have to re-engineer entire spacecraft,” he told Engadget. “If, on the other hand, they anticipate these requirements from the beginning… then it’s not that big of a deal.”

This planetary protection scheme is designed to minimize the damage from both forward and backward contamination. “We really want to safeguard our own planet’s biosphere we have all these wonderful living things here,” Walkowicz said. “We want to make sure that we can explore and bring back the samples and use the benefits of our Earthly labs without endangering the world.”

Dr. Rummel, however, is not particularly concerned. “In my opinion, there is a reasonable possibility that nothing we could do with a sample return done robotically would bring back anything that’s alive,” he said.

Rummel argues that any microorganisms hitching a ride from Mars aboard a material sample would be woefully ill-equipped to handle the rigors of interplanetary flight. “We don’t know what those organisms require so the chance that we get lucky and bring them back alive is small.”

That said, Rummel acknowledges the value in assuming the worst. “The National Research Council and Space Studies Board have always maintained that we will contain [returned samples] as if they’re the most hazardous thing on Earth until we prove that it’s safe,” he continued. “There’s no upside in cutting corners.”

To ensure that outbound spacecraft remain sterile until they’re launched, the OPP has traditionally relied on a process known as Dry Heat Microbial Reduction (DHMR). This involves baking individual spacecraft components at temperatures of 110 degrees Celsius for 47 hours or 125C for 5 hours with zero relative humidity.

First utilized for the Viking missions, “it’s a very handy technology,” Walkowicz explained. “It’s very effective on surfaces, but also between surfaces or even within materials, which is why it has widespread adoption.”

There are limitations to this method, however. It cannot sterilize an entire spacecraft, for example, as everything from electronic components to structural adhesives and landing parachutes would be destroyed by the heat. As such, NASA has been researching alternative methods to augment the DHMR process, many of which hail from existing medical technologies.

Of particular interest for Mars exploration is supercritical carbon dioxide cleaning. Carbon dioxide is held under extremely low temperature and at extremely high pressure so it exhibits qualities of both a gas and a liquid. When mixed with peracetic acid (PAA), it can be used to sterilize materials. What’s more, Walkowicz said, given the planet’s high CO2 content “maybe there would be a way to develop technology that could use Mars’s atmosphere in some way to create a local bioburden reducing technology… and do that in situ.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is also developing a technique dubbed vapor phase hydrogen peroxide (VHP) sterilization, which is generated from a solution of liquid H2O2 and water. When concentrated between 140 ppm and 1400 ppm, it acts as an antimicrobial agent. However, “the limitation there is that it’s never been used at a systemic level — like the whole spacecraft level — so you could do it on smaller components but not necessarily the entire craft,” Walkowicz said. There’s also the danger of it becoming too concentrated. If VHP levels reach 75 ppm, it becomes toxic to humans.

There is also work being done with ethylene oxide as a sterilizer, though Walkowicz points out that ethylene oxide is “kind of explosive.” Ionizing radiation techniques are also being explored. The parachute for the Beagle 2 mission, for example, could not withstand DHMR, so NASA scientists subjected it to radioactive sterilization instead. Beyond that, the NASA Mars Exploration Program has examined leveraging electron beam sterilization, which is already utilized in food processing, as a means of cleaning spacecraft.

Of course, there is also the chance that we’re overthinking this whole issue, at least as it applies to Mars exploration. Rummel hypothesizes that there was a natural interchange of biology between Mars and Earth some 4 billion years ago that potentially renders our efforts moot:

Imagine that life originated on Mars. Life was knocked off of Mars by a large impact event which made Mars rocks eventually come to Earth. The Earth, without any life, is seeded by Mars rocks and then all of a sudden you have all these Mars organisms living on the Earth… the natural response of Earth and Mars together would be the evolution of animals, plants and whatnot. So we could all be Martians and that is as bad as it gets, I think.

Whether we need the protection or not, there are a number of ways that future interplanetary explorers might avoid the biological pitfalls of Mars. “We tend to think of it as being robotic exploration or human exploration,” Walkowicz said. “In reality we see humans and robots cooperate all the time in exploration on Earth” such as the Fukushima power plant cleanup or subsea exploration in Antarctica.

“We often send robotic probes and I think that that’s something that we’re likely to see in some of those early explorations of Mars that involves a human component,” she continued. Essentially, astronauts would either remain in orbit or sequestered in a planet-side bunker and remotely control robotic rovers who would do the legwork on our behalf. “The other possibility is, instead of worrying about cleaning your spacecraft off afterwards, you construct it as cleanly as you possibly can” from the start.

In the end, Walkowicz argues, planetary protection requirements should not be viewed as a hindrance to space exploration, but rather, an asset. “If we want to answer some of those difficult questions about the origin of life, if we really want to understand Mars or Europa or any of these worlds as astrobiological resources, we have to fold planetary protection into our thinking,” she said. “It enables the science that we want to be able to do.”

Or, as Rummel points out, “To paraphrase Franklin Roosevelt, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’” Well, that and the space plague.

Images: United Nations (Outer Space Treaty signing); NASA (clean room and Carl Sagan with Voyager 1)