ODDBALL: Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, will soon receive microbial visitors, if all goes according to plan.
Image: NASA
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In Mars exploration, of course, it's the Red Planet itself that gets top billing. But there are some good reasons to keep tabs on Phobos, the innermost and larger of Mars' two diminutive moons, which the Russian space agency plans to study with a probe set for launch next month on board a Zenit rocket. Called Phobos Grunt, the three-year mission is to land a spacecraft on the distant moon, scoop up soil samples for analysis and launch one of them back to Earth for further inspection. The probe's name means "Phobos's soil" in Russian.
If successful, Phobos Grunt would represent something of a coup for the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). Russia has long struggled to reach Mars and has not carried out a successful interplanetary mission in decades. The nation launched Mars 96 in 1996 to explore the Red Planet, but a rocket failure occurred in Earth orbit. Phobos Grunt would also mark the first sample returned from a planetary surface since the U.S.S.R.'s Luna 24 in 1976.
As moons go, Phobos is strange. Shaped like a potato, it measures only 27 kilometers across at its widest point and orbits Mars at a distance of only about 6,000 kilometers. Researchers think Phobos and its even smaller companion Deimos started out as asteroids that were gravitationally pulled into Mars's orbit. Space agencies would like to know whether the moons' porous interiors harbor water that could be exploited by future visitors to Mars.
Russia attempted to reach Phobos before. Computer glitches sidelined the Phobos 1 and 2 craft, both launched in July 1988, before they could complete their missions. Now, for the past several months, Phobos Grunt has been subject to rumors that Roscosmos would likely have to delay the launch until 2011 at the earliest, when the flight window opens again.
Such a delay could give researchers time to get their heads around a tantalizing add-on to the probe's payload. The Planetary Society, a California-based space exploration and advocacy group, working with the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has arranged for Phobos Grunt to carry with it the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), a group of samples of Earth life that will fly to Phobos and back in the Russian craft.
The goal, says Bruce Betts, the manager of the experiment for the Planetary Society, is to seek evidence for transpermia, the idea that life could have arisen on one body in the solar system and been transported via meteorites to seed life on another. For example, he says, "Could life have evolved first on Mars, been ejected off Mars, and then come to Earth?"
Although LIFE cannot test such a detailed scenario, Betts says the results will build on those of similar experiments flown on spacecraft. Bacteria have survived in low Earth orbit for up to six years but have only rarely, and briefly, left the protection of Earth's magnetosphere, which deflects the damaging cosmic rays that penetrate deep space. (When Apollo 12 returned to Earth in 1969 with the camera from the unmanned Surveyor 3 lander, which had spent more than two years on the lunar surface, scientists found Streptococcus mitis, a possible stowaway from before the probe was launched. But the bacterium's provenance is unclear, and some suspect the camera was contaminated after its return to Earth.)
The LIFE organisms were chosen with this danger in mind. Among the four bacteria to make the trip will be radiation-resistant Deinococcus radiodurans. Tardigrades, microscopic, eight-limbed invertebrates also known as water bears, were selected for their ability to repair DNA damage. Rounding out the group are three species of archaea—sometimes called "extremophiles" for their ability to thrive in conditions too harsh for other Earth life—along with yeast, plant seeds, and a soil sample collected from Israel's Negev Desert. Most of the samples will be freeze-dried and inert for the trip, to better resist the cold of space.
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34 Comments
Add CommentUhm, excuse me? You're sending MICROBES? And are these infectious? Do you NOT know, there are lifeforms already there? I guess not. The beat of ignorance just goes on . . .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article lists several lifeforms being sent, why don't you look them up before accusing. Besides we're talking about Phobos here. Are we really that worried about "infecting" a 24 mile piece of rock?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article lists several lifeforms being sent, why don't you look them up before accusing. Besides we're talking about Phobos here. Are we really that worried about "infecting" a 24 mile piece of rock?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, we are. Every photo I have seen of Phobos reveals, when you scrape off the dust, life there already. Our "Science" is so arrogantly ignorant, it's amazing to see barbaric ignorance displayed like this. All planetary probes must be sterile, if we are to maintain integrity as planetary discoverers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEmily,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat are you talking about? What photos have you seen that indicates life is already there? That's just an absolute lie. For god's sake, if it were that simply we wouldn't be spending billions to send probes to the surface of Mars to try and detect life!
While I agree that we should NOT contaminate other planets purposely, your claims are ridiculously outrageous.
I have thousands of NASA Mars photos showing human life settled and in place. THOUSANDS OF THEM! NASA hides the details in their photos, that's what! All their photos are distorted! Every planet in this Solar System is settled and populated! But that doesn't work with NSA secrecy policy--as we all suspected. Email me emicra8@aol.com and I'll send you as many prints as you want, freebie! NASA lies!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.holyconservancy.org
Emily, I really hope you (and that "interesting") website are joking. Otherwise, I see signs of serious mental illness...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@EmilyCragg, wow! Have you heard of a non-falsifiable hypothesis? It is one in which there is no way to prove it is untrue. A valid hypothesis must be falsifiable. A conspiracy theory is a non-falsifiable hypothesis because it implies that a lack of proof is proof of a conspiracy to hide the proof, i.e. evidence is proof, no evidence is also proof. I realize I'm talking to a brick wall here because you are clearly off your nut but I couldn't help myself. I hope you get better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I understand scientific curiosity, now that we have established there is no life or at least nothing more than vestiges of microbial life on Mars, surely we should bombard the planet with a variety of the hardiest earth organisms in the hope of establishing some form of extra-terrestrial ecosystem?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisphobosphobics: Earthly microbes on phobos nead to survive Martian reentry heating after being jolted out of orbit by a killer satellite. Let's track and disinfect all asteroids that threaten to land elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObvious troll is obvious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is another (alarming) case of misguided scientists doing something just because they can, when the question is SHOULD they? You cannot stop such activity, only be aware that there WILL be consequences.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is another (disturbing) instance of misguided scientists doing something just because they can without answering the real question, "Should they?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou should all reread the article. The microbes are not being released on the planet or moon. They being taken there, in a container, and being returned to Earth, again in a container. This is an absolutely basic test to see if they survive. If they do, it could be a jumping off point for more panspermia experiments. If they all die, and we can determine why, then it's a good experiment on the road to disproving panspermia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, there's a chance the probe could crash and release these microbes on a lifeless rock that can't sustain them, but there's also a chance they could get out now here on Earth and kill every living thing, so better they're "out there"...like Emily.
Hi, this is Dr. David Warmflash, principal investigator for the U.S. component of the Phobos-LIFE experiment. I'll be happy to engage all of your questions on Twitter, where I tweet as Cosmic_Owl I can address Dan Glavin's concern as well. Hope to see you there. Follow @Cosmic_Owl
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHi, this is Dr. David Warmflash, principal investigator for the U.S. component of the Phobos-LIFE experiment. I'll be happy to engage all of your questions on Twitter, where I tweet as Cosmic_Owl I can address Dan Glavin's concern as well. Hope to see you there. Follow @Cosmic_Owl
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDrPhysics,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEmily has apparently read the Russian report regarding their Phobos 1 & 11 probes (1989?) that photographed construction lines eminating out from the large hole in Phobos, and measured a reduction in the moon's weight. Also the photograph of a cigar shaped object that arose from Mars to strike the Phobos 1 craft and knock it out of comission.
The double posting above was unintentional. If there is an editor for this blog, would you please fix it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks!
David
Hi
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuestion, according to NASA's planetary protection information for the Mars Rovers "complied with requirements to carry a total of no more than 300,000 bacterial spores on any surface from which the spores could get into the martian environment." Link: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/is_planetary_protection.html, hasn't Mars already been contaminated?
Questions, what protocols did the Soviets use on their surface Mars missions? What protocols is the US using on the orbiters?
Emily, I think I'm actually dumber for having visited that holycrap website.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere we go again reinventing the wheel. Both authors Zecharia Sitchin and Richard C. Hoagland have written books that describe Mars from the perspective of the Nephifilm of the old biblical testament , one from the Sumerian clay tablets, and the other from the pictures and videos taken by NASA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually both NASA and SETI are in the same boat in regards to finding other intelligent life. NASA on Earth's and the Mar's
moons, and SETI on receiving radio transmissions from beyond earth.
Emily has NASA (thousands of them) that are distorted , but she/it can detect life on Mars and everywhere in the Solar System.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYet another conspiracy by NASA, to conceal the truth, just like that Apollo 11 mission (and all the other missions).
There is always interesting and informative on Scientific American.
Life does not "contaminate" lifeless places when it arrives, because life is not evil. It is highly unlikely that microbes from Earth would be able to out-compete pre-existing Martian microbes (if any) because the Martian microbes have a billion year head start in adapting to the Mars environment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, humans have a responsibility to the miracle of life to spread it just as far and as thoroughly as we can, for life seems to be an extraordinarily rare achievement in this universe and it would be a crying shame for it all to die out just because some major disaster happens to our little planet.
It is about time that Scientific American get an editor for the comments section and remove the flakey and ignorant crap that often surfaces like scum on a pond or at least, AT LEAST answer the extremophiles who write blather at this site regarding various articles. There are good examples of this right in this section. It is enough to give one a headache to know that some of the readers have the intellect of some of the microbes to be sent on Phobos Grunt.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article and the debate around it point out another problem that I haven't seen addressed (though I'm sure that it has, somewhere): How can we even think about sending human beings to Mars prior to an EXTENSIVE robotic search for life. As soon as humans arrive on Mars the surface will be irretrievably contaminated. There is no way that we can keep earth-life from being released into that environment once we arrive on the scene. It seems strange that we worry about bacterial spores when we're talking about sending humans (the old "straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel" thought).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow sad that Emily has never heard of Photoshop. I imagine that the happy mushrooms she eats interfere with her higher brain functions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPS. That web site she listed is loaded with malware.
I personally would prefer we not contaminate Phobos. Given that it's speculated that it's a captured asteroid, I'd rather have it remain as pristine as possible so as not to distort what we may be able to learn about it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou're an idiot (thosands of photos that show life on mars!! wow!! and all hidden by the .. ahh, our government agencies! ... Get a clue, stupid!).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisits a rock for ...'s sake ... they are many thousands more around to study or... whatever! besides, the samples are to come back (if all well) - to see if they could survive the trip was the object, not to see if they survive if left on a rock in space!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you insane? dont you ever send some microbes in another planet! Earth is dying of some illnesses that has no clue what is it all about. Dont ever make some step that mars would be a next victim.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou people. .always think for what's best in you. .Think of what will happen to God's creation! God created this entire universe not for experiment norenjoyment, but for people to take good care of His creation! Think a million times for this!
Where is Emily? Why did she stop responding?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to hear from Emily, please
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat would be anecdotal evidence that extended use of an EmilyCragg comment increases the risk of brain damage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for the entertainment, but this is a science web site.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this