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Because there is no precedent for this situation throughout nearly 50 years of spaceflight, there are no USG guidelines or requirements for spacecraft visiting the areas of existing USG-owned lunar hardware regardless of condition or location. Fortunately, there are several lunar experts across NASA and the scientific, historical, legal, materials, and flight-planning communities who can provide some initial guidance for these lunar endeavors. NASA has performed recent propellant/plume and lunar regolith impingement analyses and initiated a science evaluation that examined the risks and concerns of damage to the heritage Apollo landing sites resulting from future spacecraft descent/landing and associated surface and low-altitude flight mobility. From a scientific perspective, many sites are still active (e.g., Apollo retro-reflectors), and continue to produce material, biological, and physical scientific data associated with long-term exposure of human-created systems (e.g., witness plates) to the lunar environment. NASA has also considered impacts to non-Apollo USG lunar artifacts. Until more formal USG guidance is developed and perhaps a multilateral approach is developed to reflect various nations' views on lunar hardware of scientific and historic value, NASA has assembled this document that contains the collected technical knowledge of its personnel – with advice from external experts and potential space-faring entities – and provides interim recommendations for lunar vehicle design and mission planning teams. As such, this document does not represent mandatory USG or international requirements; rather, it is offered to inform lunar spacecraft mission planners interested in helping preserve and protect lunar historic artifacts and potential science opportunities for future missions. These recommendations are intended to apply to USG artifacts on the lunar surface – these artifacts include: [list=A][*]Apollo lunar surface landing and roving hardware; [*]Unmanned lunar surface landing sites (e.g.,Surveyor sites); [*]Impact sites (e.g.,Ranger, S-IVB, LCROSS, lunar module [LM] ascent stage); [*]USG experiments left on the lunar surface, tools, equipment, miscellaneous EVA hardware; and [*]Specific indicators of U.S. human, human-robotic lunar presence, including footprints, rover tracks, etc., although not all anthropogenic indicators are protected as identified in the recommendations.[/list] Because of the relevance of these recommendations to current and future lunar elements deposited by other space-faring entities, NASA has begun engaging in dialogue with foreign space agencies, as appropriate.
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