Health
Cosmic Luck: NASA’s Apollo 11 Moon Quarantine Broke Down
When the astronauts of Apollo 11 went to the moon in July 1969, NASA was worried about their safety during the complex flight. The agency was also worried about what the spacefarers might bring back with them.
For years before Apollo 11, officials had been concerned that the moon might harbor microorganisms. What if moon microbes survived the return trip and caused lunar fever on Earth?
To manage the possibility, NASA planned to quarantine the people, instruments, samples and space vehicles that had come into contact with lunar material.
But in a paper published this month in the science history journal Isis, Dagomar Degroot, an environmental historian at Georgetown University, demonstrates that these “planetary protection” efforts were inadequate, to a degree not widely known before.
“The quarantine protocol looked like a success,” Dr. Degroot concludes in the study, “only because it was not needed.”
Dr. Degroot’s archival work also shows NASA officials knew that lunar germs could pose an existential (if low-probability) threat and that their lunar quarantine probably wouldn’t keep Earth safe if such a threat did exist. They oversold their ability to neutralize that threat anyway.
This space age narrative, Dr. Degroot’s paper claims, is an example of the tendency in scientific projects to downplay existential risks, which are unlikely and difficult to deal with, in favor of focusing on smaller, likelier problems. It also offers useful lessons as NASA and other space agencies prepare to collect samples from Mars and other worlds in the solar system for study on Earth.
In the 1960s, no one knew whether the moon harbored life. But scientists were concerned enough that the National Academy of Sciences held a high-level conference in 1964 to discuss moon-Earth contamination. “They agreed that the risk was real and that the consequences could be profound,” Dr. Degroot said.
The scientists also agreed that quarantine for anything returning from the moon was both necessary and futile: Humans would probably fail to contain a microscopic threat. The best earthlings could do was slow the microbes’ release until scientists developed a countermeasure.
Despite those conclusions, NASA publicly maintained that it could protect the planet. It spent tens of millions of dollars on a sophisticated quarantine facility, the Lunar Receiving Laboratory. “But in spite of all this beautiful complexity, there were just basic, fundamental mistakes,” Dr. Degroot said.
NASA officials were well aware that the lab wasn’t perfect. Dr. Degroot’s paper details many of the findings from inspections and tests that revealed gloveboxes and sterilizing autoclaves that cracked, leaked or flooded.
In the weeks after the Apollo 11 crew returned, 24 workers were exposed to the lunar material that the facility’s infrastructure was supposed to protect them from; they had to be quarantined. The failures of containment were “largely hidden from the public,” Dr. Degroot wrote.
Emergency procedures for the lab — like what to do in the case of fire or medical troubles — also involved breaking isolation.
“This ended up being an example of planetary protection security theater,” said Jordan Bimm, a historian of science at the University of Chicago who was not involved in Dr. Degroot’s research.
The Apollo 11 astronauts’ very return to Earth also put the planet at risk. Their vehicle, for instance, was designed to vent itself on the way down, and the astronauts were to open their hatch in the ocean.
In a 1965 memo, a NASA official stated that the agency was morally obligated to prevent potential contamination, even if it meant changing the mission’s weight, cost or schedule. But four years later, on return to Earth, the spacecraft vented anyway, and the capsule’s interior met the Pacific.
“If lunar organisms capable of reproducing in the Earth’s ocean had been present, we would have been toast,” said John Rummel, who served two terms as NASA’s planetary protection officer.
The likelihood that such organisms did exist was very small. But the consequences if they did were huge — and the Apollo program essentially accepted them on behalf of the planet.
This tendency to downplay existential risk — instead prioritizing likelier threats with lower consequences — shows up in fields like climate change, nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence, Dr. Degroot said.
In the Apollo mission, officials were not just downplaying the risks; they were not transparent about them.
“Failure is part of learning,” Dr. Bimm said of the inadequate quarantine.
Understanding what didn’t work will be important as NASA prepares to bring samples back from Mars, a place much more likely than the moon to harbor life, in the 2030s.
NASA has learned a lot about planetary protection since Apollo, said Nick Benardini, the agency’s current planetary protection officer. It is building in protections from the start and holding workshops to understand scientific gaps, and it is already working on a Mars sample laboratory.
The agency also plans to be straight with the public. “Risk communications and communication as a whole is highly important,” Dr. Benardini said. After all, he noted, “what’s at stake is Earth’s biosphere.”
It’s hard to imagine the biosphere at risk from alien organisms, but the chances are not zero. “Low-likelihood and high-consequence risks really matter,” Dr. Degroot said. “Mitigating them is one of the most important things that governments can do.”
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Ivanka Trump, the daughter of incoming President Donald Trump, has been known to lead an active life.
As the mother of three kids and a lover of outdoor sports, the 43-year-old is always on the move, recently adding jiu-jitsu to her mix of physical activity.
In a recent appearance on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast, Trump shared how her daughter, Arabella, expressed interest in learning self-defense when she was 11.
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“I’m just so in awe of [her],” Trump said about her daughter. “She came to me and said, ‘As a woman, I feel like I need to know how to defend myself, and I don’t have a confidence level yet that I can do that.’”
Ivanka Trump plays with her daughter, Arabella Rose Kushner, in the Rose Garden during a Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House in June 2017. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Trump responded, “At 11 … I was not thinking about how to physically defend myself, and I thought it was the coolest thing.”
After researching self-defense options, Trump enrolled Arabella, now 13, in jiu-jitsu (martial arts) classes with the Valente Brothers in Miami, Florida – and soon the whole family joined in.
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“[Arabella] started asking me to join – I joined,” she said. “Then my two sons wanted to do what their older sister was doing. Then my husband joined … It is good for everyone.”
“It’s almost like a moving meditation.”
Trump, who is now a blue belt in jiu-jitsu, described that she likes how the sport “meshes physical movement.”
“It’s almost like a moving meditation because the movements are so micro,” she said. “It’s like three-dimensional chess.”
“There’s like a real spiritualism to it … The grounding in sort of samurai tradition and culture and wisdom.”
During President Trump’s first term in the White House, Ivanka Trump noted that she had very little focus on fitness, only taking weekly runs with husband Jared Kushner and “chasing the kids around the house.”
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Trump shared that she was “never a gym person,” but always loved sports, which still holds true today.
She said she enjoys skiing, surfing and racquet sports like padel tennis (a hybrid of tennis and squash) and pickle ball, which she described as “fun and social.”
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are seen out for a walk with their children on Dec. 10, 2022, in Miami, Florida. (MEGA/GC Images)
‘Elevating awareness’
On the podcast, Trump said she was drawn to jiu-jitsu because it combines physical fitness and philosophy.
It also focuses more on how to extract yourself from a dangerous situation before having to harm someone who’s a threat, she noted.
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“Having these skills makes you less likely to get into a fight, not more likely to,” Trump went on.
“Once you have the confidence that you can sort of move out of a situation, there’s a real focus on elevating awareness.”
Ivanka Trump waves as she arrives at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for US President Donald Trump’s departure on Jan. 20, 2021. (ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images)
In a previous interview with Fox News Digital, Rener Gracie, head instructor of jiu-jitsu at Gracie University in California, stressed that the only truly reliable skills are those that have been “mastered into muscle memory.”
This occurs through extensively practicing self-defense methods like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which are “leverage-based and don’t rely on you having a physical advantage over the subject,” he noted.
“Having these skills makes you less likely to get into a fight, not more likely to.”
“And by that, I mean strength, speed, power and size — because in almost every case, the attacker is going to target someone who they feel is physically inferior to them.”
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Gracie, whose family created Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship), shared that jiu-jitsu is “highly sought after” because it only takes weeks or months for someone to “develop the core skills that could keep them safe in a violent physical encounter.”
‘Transformative’ strength training
In addition to mastering self-defense skills, Ivanka Trump recently revealed a shift in her fitness routine to include weightlifting and resistance training.
On Instagram, Trump posted a video displaying different exercises with various equipment in the gym, noting in the caption that she used to focus primarily on cardio, yoga and Pilates.
“Since moving to Miami, I have shifted my focus to weightlifting and resistance training, and it has been transformative in helping me build muscle and shift my body composition in ways I hadn’t imagined,” she wrote.
“I believe in a strength training approach built on foundational, time-tested and simple movements – squats, deadlifts, hinges, pushes and pulls. These are the cornerstones of my workout, emphasizing functional strength for life.”
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Trump added that prioritizing form is “essential” to ensure results before adding on weight.
“This ensures a safe and steady progression while maintaining the integrity of each movement,” she continued. “I incorporate mobility work within my sessions to enhance range of motion.”
“I believe in a strength training approach built on foundational, time-tested and simple movements – squats, deadlifts, hinges, pushes and pulls,” Ivanka Trump wrote in an October Instagram post. (Ivanka Trump/Instagram)
“Weightlifting has enhanced not just my strength but my overall athleticism and resilience,” she added.
Trump said she dedicates three to four days a week to strength training, including two solo sessions and two with a personal trainer.
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She also said that increasing her protein intake has also been “critical” to her progress.
“I now consume between 30 and 50 grams of protein a meal,” she said. “It works … I’ve never been stronger!”
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are seen arriving at the beachside eatery on May 2, 2024, in Miami Beach, Florida. (MEGA/GC Images)
Trump also still enjoys weekly yoga sessions, spending time outdoors with her children and playing sports with friends, she said.
“I also incorporate a couple of short (10-minute), high-intensity interval training sessions (such as sprints) each week to keep my cardiovascular fitness sharp and dynamic,” she noted.
“This balanced approach has infused new energy into my fitness routine and yielded great results.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Ivanka Trump for comment.
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