Ethical challenges of humanity’s expansion into space: from astrobioethics to astrobiocentrism

The question of whether life exists in the universe, along with humanity’s expansion beyond Earth, calls for an array of disciplines ranging from the natural sciences to the humanities. This is because the issues at stake extend beyond biology or astronomy to encompass political dimensions, governance, and ethical considerations. For instance, when we discuss long-term human presence in space, a broad debate emerges regarding which institutional arrangements are legitimate for administering specific domains under conditions of isolation, scarcity, and high technological dependence. Likewise, in a scenario involving a potential discovery of life, the question arises as to which protocols or procedures should guide and accompany astrobiological research. These problems therefore require insights drawn from science, philosophy, and the social sciences. To clarify the practical scope of astrobiocentrism, this article treats it not merely as a general ethical orientation, but as a criterion for evaluating concrete cases in which human activity may affect actual, possible, or scientifically significant forms of life beyond Earth. These include, for example, the risk of forward contamination in missions to Mars or icy moons, the use of celestial environments for resource extraction before astrobiological baselines have been established, and the public communication of ambiguous astronomical phenomena that may be misrepresented as evidence of extraterrestrial life. In each case, astrobiocentrism differs from a merely anthropocentric or technocentric approach because it asks whether the activity preserves the possibility of recognizing, protecting, and responsibly interpreting life as a cosmic phenomenon, rather than treating space only as an extension of human interests. For this reason, a transdisciplinary perspective is necessary, as it enables the development of an astrobiocentric outlook. To move toward that goal, astrobioethics can provide a pathway through its core axes: legal, moral, and social. Within this framework, this research assesses the ethical challenges associated with human activity in space from an astrobioethical perspective, with the aim of grounding an astrobiocentric approach to inform criteria for action and governance.