Space archaeology

It also includes the applied field of cultural resource which evaluates the significance of space sites and objects in terms of national and international preservation laws.

[11] An unexpected ramification of this work is the development of techniques for detecting signs of life or technology on other planets, or extraterrestrial visitation on Earth.

This list includes: The complexities and ambiguities of international legal structures to deal with these sites as cultural resources leave them vulnerable to impacts in the near future by many varieties of space travel.

An outline of the legal situation was made by Harrison Schmitt and Neil Armstrong, two astronauts who walked on the Moon as part of the Apollo program.

[citation needed] A non-profit organization called For All Moonkind, Inc. is working to establish legal protections for archaeological sites in outer space.

During a graduate seminar at New Mexico State University in 1999, Ralph Gibson asked: "Does federal preservation law apply on the moon?"

[31] In June 2019, the Royal Astronomical Society announced a possible rediscovery of Snoopy, determining that small Earth-crossing asteroid 2018 AV2 is likely to be the spacecraft with "98%" certainty.

[32] The International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP), led by Justin Walsh and Alice Gorman, began in late 2015.

ISSAP is the first large-scale investigation of a space habitat from an archaeological perspective, not only documenting the ISS's material culture, but interpreting its social meaning and significance.

[36] On January 14, 2022, ISSAP announced that it had initiated the first archaeological documentation of in situ material culture in a space habitat, the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment, or SQuARE.