Ethics and Astrobiology

When searching for life on potentially habitable worlds it is important to try to minimize the risk of severely disturbing the living systems that we want to study. Since the risk can never be zero we need to make a trade off between protection and research. If the extraterrestrial life also has moral status in its own right, this trade off will be different than if we only have to consider their value for science. The question will be even more complicated when the time comes to use habitable worlds for commercial purposes. In my talk I will try to set the stage for a constructive discussion by identifying potential conflicts between different interests, and indicating how philosophical reasoning can help dealing with them.