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

Watch out for monoliths

[CambodiaSam]

Aren't they a bit behind schedule? I thought this was going to happen in a couple years.

Oh wait, that wasn't a documentary was it...

Contamination

[hyades1]

Everything I've seen so far indicates it will be incredibly difficult and expensive to thoroughly decontaminate a spacecraft in order to ensure that Earth-based organisms don't "piss on the Petri Dish". The Russians are notorious for cutting corners, and their prime motivation for this exercise is political. The chance that they'll spend the extra millions of dollars to ensure the sterility of a Europa lander is non-existent.

I see a serious potential for compromising what appears to be one of the better spots in the solar system to look for extraterrestrial life.

Re:Contamination

[rilister]

whoah there! 'fraid you've been misled by the lousy headline. If you'd got to the story synopsis, you'd see it was a *European* mission, which Russia is contributing to. It's called 'Laplace' (a curiously French name for a 'Russian mission', huh?) and will be launched by the ESA - European Space Agency in 2015ish.

Now how much you trust those dirty Europeans is a different matter...

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.