I can imagine how this could become a big bureaucracy with thousands of employees. Careers in astrobiology!!
https://sma.nasa.gov/news/articles/newsitem/2018/12/18/planetary-protection-welcomes-new-deputy-officer
NASA keeps the public thinking about alien life in space, and yet denies that they are expecting to defend from intelligent aliens, just space microbes.
Getting church people to emotionally defend the perspective of earth as just an insignificant planet in a vast universe teeming with intelligent life was a great victory for atheism.