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

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.

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.