Russia to Search For Life on Europa

porkpickle writes "Russia plans to participate in a European mission to investigate Jupiter's moon Europa and search for simple life forms. The head of the Space Research Institute, Lev Zelyony, said a project to explore the giant gaseous planet Jupiter would shortly be included in the program of the European Space Agency (ESA) for the years 2015 to 2025."

Comments

All these worlds are yours...

[Lucas123]

except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

Re:NIH

[Pr0xY]

I've wondered this before. But then I read about the precautions they put in place to make sure this very thing doesn't happen. NASA actually does a very good job making sure to the best of there ability that we wouldn't bring anything with us (unintentionally) and more importantly, it puts even more effort into making sure nothing comes back ;).

After the moon landing, the astronauts were in quarantine for several days just to make sure they didn't accidentally bring back some crazy microbe from the moon :-P.

All in all, I think that if something is found, it'll be pretty clear cut that it isn't from earth for several reasons.

Re:NIH

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

If they some day find life, how do they know they haven't brought it from here on their missions?

If the life is based on DNA/RNA replication using L-amino acids you might think of contamination or panspermia. On the other hand, if it is based on a completely different chemistry from anything on Earth, you can be pretty sure it's alien. On the gripping hand, if it's somewhere in between, you have to consider all the possibilities including convergent evolution.

Finally someone is sane

[mattr]

And this is exactly what you get when you actually go out wanting to find life and look in the most obvious place. This is low-hanging fruit and hopefully a race will start to get some smart exploratory packages over there before we're dead.

Re:Contamination

[RenderSeven]

They're ALL notorious for cutting corners, not just russians.

Thats not fair either... the Russians are famous for cutting costs even when they shouldnt. NASA is famous for not cutting costs even when they should. Both approaches have their benefits and their downfalls. But when it comes to decontaminating a interplanetary probe I'd have to trust NASA more on this one. Hey, if for no other reason than it *is* a pork barrel project.

Re:Contamination

[HappyHead]

Yes, but you realize that this means one important thing:
Even if there wasn't life on Europa before they look for it, there will be once they've found it.
And 10 million years from now, the Europan flibbity-wumpus people will argue with eachother over whether life arose there spontaneously, or was "seeded" from space.

Re:Nasa Needs Outside Competition

[mathfeel]

I say, let them land. This country needs another Sputnik to remind us that the rest of the world's S&T will still go forward while we "debate" such items as ID v.s. evolution.