The ICBC met shortly after the successful conclusion of Apollo 12 and decided that Apollo 13 would be the last time astronauts returning from the surface of the moon would have to stay in quarantine. However, the crew of Apollo 13 never landed on the moon because of a near catastrophic explosion in its service module. The next lunar mission, Apollo 14 would now have to endure quarantine.
Since the crew of Apollo 14 took deep lunar core samples some worried that there might have been the possibility that a microorganism may be living under the lunar surface. When Apollo 14 concluded, scientists found no hints that astronauts, hardware or lunar samples had brought back any kind of life with them.
Another 3 Apollo crews returned to the moon never showing the slightest hint of bringing back any life indigenous to the moon. By the conclusion of Apollo missions with Apollo 17, quarantine appears to have been nothing but a memory. A mere three years after the first men landed on the moon, the last of Apollo astronauts were leaving footprints that resonated a confidence and familiarity with the moon. After Apollo the moon was no longer a strange or foreign place. The quarantining of Apollo's 11, 12, and 14 could almost be remembered as an incident where people let their fears get the best of them. In looking at these events thirty years removed there seems to be an overriding sense that most involved expected the astronauts to not bring back any notion of alien life. However, the process of quarantine also reflects the pace at which man and his technology was moving at the time. Human beings could reach the moon, but they never let themselves forget that they were still capable of destroying earth at one of its greatest moments.
