Scientists have proposed building a lunar quarantine facility to examine samples returned from Mars and other celestial bodies before they ever reach Earth, arguing that the Moon could serve as a biological buffer against the unlikely but potentially catastrophic risk of extraterrestrial contamination.
The proposal appears in a peer-reviewed paper published in Ambio on 28 May 2026 by Frederick I. Moxley and Anthony Ricciardi, who argue that future sample-return missions should be treated as a planetary biosecurity challenge rather than solely an engineering exercise.
