Informing Planetary Protection Policies for the Future Exploration of Ceres: State of Understanding after the Dawn Mission

We review the state of understanding of Ceres as it relates to planetary protection policy for future landed missions, including for sample return, to the dwarf planet. The Dawn mission found Ceres to be an intriguing mission target, with evidence for the presence of regional, possibly extensive liquid at depth, and local expressions of recent and potentially ongoing activity. The Dawn mission also found a high abundance of carbon in the regolith, interpreted as a mix of carbonates and amorphous carbon, as well as locally high concentrations of organic matter. Key findings from this review are: (a) outside of the region of Occator crater, Ceres shows no geological evidence for conduits from the surface to the interior; (b) considering the biological potential of Ceres’ deep interior, a surface sample return mission should be considered Category V restricted, unless it can be demonstrated that evaporites sourced from Ceres’ deep brine region and recently exposed in Occator crater have not been scattered to the rest of Ceres’ surface; in that case, the probability of returning an unsterilized particle to an acceptably low value is to be determined by a future study.