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Russia's Mars Mission Raising Concerns
eldavojohn writes "Space.com has a blog on Russia's Phobos-Grunt project designed to explore the planet further. He voices concerns about part of this exploration that is dubbed LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment) and backed by The Planetary Society that involves sending several samples of Earth's hardiest microbes to see if they can survive the round trip voyage. Space.com's correspondent Leonard David did some legwork to ensure that The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was being upheld as it prevents cross-contamination between planets and receives some interesting responses from experts on this mission. The Phobos-Grunt mission will also deploy a Chinese sub-satellite 'Firefly-1,' which will attempt to figure out how water on Mars disappeared. Unfortunately, The United States is not taking part in Phobos-Grunt."
Is the red color on the title bar some kind of hidden Soviet Russia joke???
I don't know why we're so concerned about cross-contamination. The only potential downside to it that I can see is if it obscures evidence that life existed on other planets.
I just find it hard to care about balls of rock and their 'pristine environment'.
Dear Earthen brothers,
we are not concerned by the Russia Vodka delivery service. In fact, we ordered it via amazon.ms.
Obligatory Firefly reference and DMCA takedown bait:
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't comin' back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me
There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me...
I say, cross-contaminate! Send a Noah's ark of bacteria and fungi to Mars, see what happens. At the very least it'd be fun to watch them die. Of course you'd also need to send microscopes along to observe them. But I think at least something will survive. "Life will find a way". -martas
weinersmith
That's exactly why they are concerned. And to make sure that if there is life on some planet that our microbes don't kill it.
The Phobos-Grunt mission will also deploy a Chinese sub-satellite "Firefly-1" which will attempt to figure out how water on Mars disappeared while unfortunately The United States is not taking part in Phobos-Grunt.
Didn't we already conclude that the water was vaporized after Mars lost its atmosphere caused by intense solar winds?
I am the lawn!
I've long thought that crossing dandelions and cannabis would be the best way to terraform Mars. If for no other reason than to get McDonald's and Hostess to set up a presence there.
Yes!
Joss is back!!
Way to go browncoats!!.....wait...damn....
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
...if they find any leather goddesses.
The more I hear about Mars, the more the analogy between the 1400-1700s exploration of America seems fit.
Whereas previously it had seemed (at least within my worldview) that USA was the only entity even considering Martian missions. Now it seems that USA, China, Russia, the EU, and India are in the same sort of colonization race that England, Spain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands were in hundreds of year ago.
And what did that accomplish? Well, the host nations managed to spread their languages and gene pools to their "New World" destinations, but 300 years later the "mighty conquests" have all but melted into air as almost all of America's nations have attained independence.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
If we did discover native extra-terrestrial microbes it would answer a lot of interesting questions. If it had a similar DNA basis it would support the idea of panspermia - that life on earth may have been seeded by space. If it is totally different who knows what we might learn.
It would also be interesting to ask the young earth creationists on which day God created the Martian life and if Noah really had two of every species how did he get the samples form Mars.
Unfortunately, The United States is not taking part in Phobos-Grunt.
Why is that unfortunate? We get all of the results with none of the investment. Sounds great to me if other nations and organizations want to make the commitments independent from the US while still sharing the results.
Developers: We can use your help.
With a mission name like Phobos-Grunt, I was immediately tempted to add the 'leathergoddesses' tag. Now if only I could find my "T remover" device.
[
" The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was being upheld as it prevents cross-contamination between planets and receives some interesting responses from experts on this mission."
doesn't this make terraforming outlawed as well?
ensure that The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was being upheld
Such treaties are only meant to hogtie the United States.
OH NO THE RED PLANET HAS GONE RED!!!!!!! we must liberate it from its communist ways.
I think The Airplane, The Dead and Hendrix played at that gig.
Squirrel!
Read the Treaty Text. The original poster is a retard. The original purpose of the outer space treaty was essentially a deal to keep a great power from "taking over" space, made at a time, when the military importance of space was recognized but no leading nation was willing to bet its future on it winning the space race.
http://www.state.gov/t/ac/trt/5181.htm
There is absolutely nothing that precludes the deposit of life on other planets. Its legal to seed the moon, mars or any other body with life and to terraform it.
This is my sig.
Hey, wouldn't a successful transplant of an organism from one planet to another show that life is more possible?
No. Given that the laws of physics apply everywhere, we expect Earth life to live anywhere there are suitable conditions. We also have a pretty good of what are "suitable conditions". In other words, we know that successful transplant of an organism from one planet to another is possible. Actually doing it is much less useful as a result.
Well, no, because, if you put life on Mars, there would be extraterrestrial life, now, wouldn't it?
Nope. It'd be terrestrial life on another planet. The point remains. If something is living on Mars now that isn't something we dragged from Earth, then that is tremendously valuable, even if it turns out to be equivalent to primitive bacteria. If we put terrestrial life on Mars, we risk destroying this data.
I came across a news story about this project which mentioned that the hardware onboard this probe will be running under an embedded version of Ninnle Linux. It seems the Russian scientists and analysts involved view Ninnle as the most robust, most secure option of all the distributions they looked at. I should see if I can dig it up again.
Russia has a long record of acting irresponsibly in scientific endeavours.
Besides some of the insane stuff they've done on their own territory, there's the small case of their deliberate and senseless vandalism of Lake Vostok in the Antarctic. Despite a massive world outcry, they insisted of drilling into the deep, pressurised lake, contaminating it in the process.
Arrogance and stupidity is a bad combination.
I remember them! The OTHER failed state!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Unfortunately, The United States is not taking part in Phobos-Grunt."
What's unfortunate about this? Why should everyone participate in everything? As I see it competition remains the best form of cooperation. It is good that there are Mars missions that don't involve the US. That means that they can develope their own technology, procedures, etc without US contamination. We are more likely to see new innovations this way.
As the US is making plans to send a few kilos of bacteria(*) to Mars, I don't see why a few microbes should cause such concern.
* Estimate of around 2 kilos of bacteria in and on the average human body.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
If something is living on Mars now that isn't something we dragged from Earth, then that is tremendously valuable, even if it turns out to be equivalent to primitive bacteria.
I don't really see the "tremendous value" in that knowledge. Or, more accurately, I can't fathom why that knowledge would be more valuable than learning that we can successfully transplant living organisms and watch them thrive.
I don't really care where life came from, I want to know where it can go.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
the landers are very clean, but they're not that clean. Of course, whether or not they survived the trip is another question.
It should say that it ***attempts*** to prevent cross-contamination.
They talk about some day Mars supporting life, the only way that will happen is if they Terraform and bring life from Earth to mars, that means bacteria and all. eventually these probes will basically be a Noah's ark space capsule. It don't think here should be a problem, as long as they're not filling the planet will small pox, aids or something like that. I would think that in the future when we do start to inhabit mars (yes, it will happen) the first things to go there will be bacteria and small organisms to start creating the right gases for the atmosphere. A lot of CO2 to warm up the atmosphere, and start storms. I'm not much of a biologist (or whomever does this stuff) but I've seen a few discovery channel shows, and seeing monkeys fucks just tells me that life on mars is possible.
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
I don't really see the "tremendous value" in that knowledge. Or, more accurately, I can't fathom why that knowledge would be more valuable than learning that we can successfully transplant living organisms and watch them thrive.
What is the value of life in the first place? As I see it, it is the culmination of billions of years of evolution. The same goes for native life on Mars with one important exception. It is unlikely that there is any evolution in common with Earth (unless some of the panspermia theories are correct). New biological processes, new knowledge unlike anything seen on Earth. It might even be incorporated into terrestrial life at some point to improve survivability or other properties. That'd be valuable. And if we find evidence of panspermia. Then you have a huge puzzle bigger than merely figuring out how to spread life around.
I don't really care where life came from, I want to know where it can go.
It can go anywhere. So now that you know, can we get back to not erasing important data?
Its probably extremely important to know where life came from to understand where it can go. After all unless you can see the future, you only have the past and the now to go off of.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sure some people might not have seen the tremendous value in the mould gave us penicillin. Fortunately someone did.
Let's send some Australian Rabbits (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia) to Mars instead.
The idea of importing rabbits into Australia seems to have worked out ok.
And the soil of Australia is red, just like Mars.
This should work.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I find it funny that we are concerned with damaging an extraterrestrial biosphere but are completely ok with trashing our own. I bet those up in arms about some _potential_ mars bacteria being wiped out, give a shrug and a yawn when told of the countless Earth species on the brink of extinction. I'm not saying they aren't worth protecting, but rather, we need to get our priorities straight here on the ground too.
The 'real estate' value of Mars is always so totally overstated. NOBODY WILL EVER LIVE THERE. You want to know why?
1) Because it will make much more sense to live in free space (IE on an asteroid or space colony) where you avoid the huge energy cost of going up and down a gravity well.
2) Mars provides virtually nothing in the way of resources which are not available in places easier to get to.
3) The environment of Mars is actually MUCH harsher than the environment in space, and probably much harsher than the environment of the Moon. So why exactly would we so desire to live there?
4) If environments as harsh as Mars are desirable real estate for people to live on, then why aren't Antarctica and Green Land, and the Sahara Desert all chock full of people already? They are CERTAINLY much less harsh and much cheaper places to live. Good luck selling those Martian building lots...
5) Even speculating about Terraforming is pretty much beyond science. The time and energy inputs required are probably 1000's and maybe millions or billions of times anything we can deploy today. The time frame could easily range into the millions of years no matter how capable you are. There is certainly no sense at all in planning a space program based on a payoff that somehow relies on a technology that is no more than an idle dream which might exist in 200 or 1000 years, if ever.
This does all tie in to some extent to the OP, Mars' value is not ever going to be economic. Its value is purely scientific and there is no reasonable anticipation that it will ever be otherwise. Spoiling the pristine conditions on Mars would seriously degrade the value of exo-biology work done there in the future. So it IS a bad idea, and it would be a costly mistake.
Now, the question of the actual safety of Phobos-Grunt is a whole other thing. We'll just have to leave that to experts. At least they value the principle of avoiding contamination. Maybe they're a little biased, but the risk doesn't seem super excessive to me. OTOH it also sounds like the experiment itself is mostly a PR stunt, so on that basis I'd give it the thumbs down. Not worth making a huge stink about though.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
I don't really care where life came from, I want to know where it can go.
It can go anywhere.
Kind of. Except that usually when you move life out of its natural environment, it ceases to be "alive"...
Dahng rahn it's Chinese, the question is who's behind it? The Alliance? Blue Sun?
Don't put advice in your sig.
Life evolved on Mars first, because it reached geological stability sooner. Then it infected Earth via Martian meteorites. Dozens of meteorites from Mars have been found and that is probably only a tiny of percentage of those which have reached Earth.
some, like myself, believe that the first few set of ppl should be going on one way trips. To live there AT LEAST a decade. They should count on dying there. We would send supplies. If they survive, and we finally build a base there, then they can come back (why they would is another issue).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't really see the "tremendous value" in that knowledge. Or, more accurately, I can't fathom why that knowledge would be more valuable than learning that we can successfully transplant living organisms and watch them thrive.
If life happened to happen independently in the very same solar system then that says an enormous amount about the probability of life elsewhere in the galaxy.
I don't really care where life came from, I want to know where it can go"
To know where it can go, is it not great to know a SECOND where that it came from?
Assume that consciousness can develop in another structure of CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen...) arrangements.
(The assumption is pretty reasonable given the amount of human grey cells and time devoted to semiconductor-and-metal intelligence investigations)
This lesson comes to us from Mars only if we do not plant our microbes over there which might wipe out the local microbes which could have given us new formulae to develop our much-fantasized clones.
Now, we risk losing that alternate path of evolution. Remember, your current theory is right only until one proper example comes along to disprove it. Google for oobleck, for instance to see what strange semi-solid and gel compounds exist in the real world which you could not believe possible.
That and fluorescent rabbits - thought impossible.
And sulfur-based ecosystems which need no oxygen.
And room-temperature superconducting compounds.
And the theory of relativity.
And the round Earth.
And Galileo's experiment.
And so many more.
Natasha: "When do we kill Moose and Squirrel?" Boris: "When we find them on Mars, we will kill them and claim for Russia!"
Kind of. Except that usually when you move life out of its natural environment, it ceases to be "alive"...
Well, so what? Usually isn't always. I'm more interested in whether life exists on Mars now than whether we can get Earth life to live on Mars. The latter is a matter of some combination of adapting the life to Mars and vice versa. My take is that we'll determine after a few decades that there's no life on Mars and then we'll start terraforming.
and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination ...ha ha
I read that clause, and my lawyers would say that that doesn't say that you can't put life on another planet. I could well argue that putting life on a dead planet is not harmful to it, because you can't harm a planet that is dead. Since you have not proven there is life on Mars, I am entirely within my legal rights to put life on it.
In fact, your insistence on autoclaving your probes before you launch them actually harms the planet by removing the likelihood of a natural cleanup through bacteriological action.
This is my sig.
Nope. It'd be terrestrial life on another planet
How long would it take to evolve differently? Bacteria evolve pretty quickly. In a scarce few years the form of life would likely be alien to anything on the earth, just through natural selection.
Thus, my experience would actually be a resounding proof of evolution itself, and add valuable insight to biology as it would allow for entirely new avenues of study. Quite frankly, this understanding might someday pave the way for cures for cancer, multiple sclerosis, and clogged arteries. And you want to halt all that, to see if there are bacteria that natively grew on a planet that is already proved dead by the Viking Experiments?
I see...
This is my sig.
Finding a biological organism on Mars that didn't come from Earth could be very significant in the discussion about creationism.
If we did find life that had started and evolved independently of life on Earth, then how does Intelligent Design cope with it ?
As far as I remember (IANABS [Not a Bible Scholar]) God didn't mention creating life on other places. From what little I do know about the Bible, it seemed to be pretty explicit that God created life only on the Earth.
"Oh, yeah, we remember now ... He did create life in other places, but He didn't tell us because He wanted to make us feel special."
Ok, so you are saying ...
So what else didn't He tell us about ?
Is there a #3 or #4 where things worked even better and got as far as Vulcan, or Betazoid ?
Creationism and religion aside, it would also be fairly significant for projects like Seti and the search for habitable planets outside our solar system. Finding life on Mars increases the chances that it may have done so elsewhere in the universe too. Which may mean projects like Seti are taken more seriously and given more funding.
If we found life on Mars, where there is little if any liquid water, then NASA or ESA would be able to argue for a serious budget to send a lander to Europa.
They should get some of those russkies to bring a few viruses and let them free in the cabin to see if they get sick out in space, and how long it takes to recover from it .... maybe some ebola and the like...
Perhaps the best way to do this is via one of two options:
1) Extract a chunk of rock from the surface of Mars and ship it back to earth - or maybe just back to the ISS. Replicate the exact atnospheric conditions on Mars - air composition, tempurature, etc - on this chunk of rock within a chamber in a lab. If the bacteria grows there, we can be reasonably certain the exact same would occour on Mars. The upside is this removes any risk of contamination on Mars, however, we cannot replicate the gravity on Mars, which would be a key factor at least for the amount of TIME something might or might not survive.
2) Run the experimant on Mars, but run it within a containment system of some sort - a case built around a patch of land. Then either release a chemical to kill the bacteria when the test is finished, or simply detonate an explosive. The downside is that the chemical might also spread into the soil and risks killing native martian bacteria nearby, and the explosive has its own obvious problems, also with risks much worse than simply contaminating the planet with terran bacteria.
Either way, there are other ways to run this test. None will be exactly the same as how the test would work on Mars itself, but it can give us a fairly certain idea while also posing a lesser risk to ay existing Martian life. Perhaps the best option is to run the test here on earth, as I described in option 1, then, if it does succeed wildly beyond our expectations, send another rover that can run it in a manner like the second scenario. Obviously, if it fails outright with replicated conditions here on earth, odds are so slim that the result would be different on Mars from the gravity alone that it's not worth running it on Mars. If the test shows some promise on earth - for example, the bacteria start to grow but then are crushed by the greater gravity - then running the test on Mars itself may become a risk worth taking.
If you were trying to setup a project to "Boldly go places we haven't been before", then evidence of at least some form of life on other planets could be useful when writing the funding proposal.
is nowhere near as exciting as
which would probably qualify for defense funding, and could open up a whole range of interesting budget allocation and accounting methods not available to rock collectors.
You are correct:
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/seeding-the-universe/article_view?b_start:int=2&-C=
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
The 'real estate' value of Mars is simple. You'll weigh a third less without any actual loss of mass (or exercise).
We can tell from DNA if microbes were descendants of ones sent by Russia.
What would be really cool though is if they sent some gerbils up there, with there own rover and went and parked it beside one of ours.
I can just see us snapping all these pictures of gerbils. Millions of dollars in equipment to take pictures of gerbils.
Come on now taggers.. it is obvious that the prime directive does not apply to a lifeless planet.
The prime directive prohibits interference with pre-warp societies.
It does not even restrict action where non-sentient life exists.
Armadillo Aerospace?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
If we find DNA we can look at how much of it is similar to terrestrial organisms.
On earth all living things have DNA with certain similar sequences. For example, all cells use a similar transcriptase (OK, so there's Thermus Aquaticus -- but that's just a better mousetrap).
If we found DNA on other planets we could estimate when the DNA was isolated from earth (or vice versa), or (more exciting) discover that it was totally alien.
Why would the US want to participate in a skank, low class mission like this when we have an armada of successful spacecraft already operating on Mars and more advanced ones on the way? It would just lend prestige to the backward Russian and the Chinese effort.
an ill wind that blows no good
But just because nobody has YET solved the 'problem' of living in zero g doesn't mean it is insoluable. Doesn't even mean it is HARD to solve, just means we haven't figured it out yet. Not surprising, given the tiny amount of actual experience we have of humans living in zero g.
In fact, even the assertion that we can't live in zero g is open to serious question. Granted we know that people subjected to zero g for extended periods of time undergo certain physiological changes, none of those changes has yet proven to be life threatening. We don't know of any upper limit to the amount of time someone could live in zero g. In fact it would seem that if there is such a limit it must be at least several years.
I imagine between some type of exercise regimen, centripital gravity, and medication, it may well prove to be that people can live indefinitely in zero g without any serious problems, and quite possibly even reproduce successfully under those conditions.
Granted, this is all an unknown, but balanced against the HUGE excess cost of living on a planetary surface I think we'll be pretty motivated to find those answers if we ever do leave the Earth permanently. And if we CANNOT live indefinitely away from the surface of a planet? Then why would we not live on the surface of the Earth? With the resources of the whole Solar System at our disposal it would seem vastly less expensive and more pleasant than living on a cold, virtually airless low gravity world like Mars.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
...no, no I'm not going there.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
The first thing my mind saw was Commander Pavel Chekov talking about sterile planets and microbes.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The Russian drilling stopped 100 meter short of the water ice barrier.
To probe, without contamination, the waters of Lake Vostok for life, plans were initiated in 2001 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to start with a melter probe - the so-called "cryobot" - which melts down through the ice over Lake Vostok, unspooling a communications and power cable as it goes. The cryobot carries with it a small submersible, called a "hydrobot", which is deployed when the cryobot has melted to the ice-water interface. The hydrobot then swims off and "looks for life" with a camera and other instruments.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
If history is any lesson, Phobos-Grunt will have the same fate as two previous Phoboses - shot down by the Martians!!!!
I thought Mars' thin atmosphere had less to do with gravity and more to do with the fact that Mars has much less of a magnetic field, thus allowing the solar wind to blow away what atmosphere the planet has? In fact, there was an article or two not all that long ago wherein scientists had discovered that Mars' magnetic field sometimes even paunches out, forming loops that hasten the process of atmospheric erosion.
Lemme see... Okay, here's an older article talking about how Mars has a very weak magnetic field, with the planet therefore facing the full brunt of the solar wind. And here's the more recent one that I remember, describing how Martian magnetic fields loop far out from the planet in narrow columns, ultimately pinching off big blobs of atmospheric gases far above the surface where the gases then get blown away by the solar wind. Interesting reads, both of them.
So, in a nutshell, it seems to have much less to do with gravity, and much more to do with planetary magnetic fields. Mars is afforded much less protection by its magnetic field compared to the Earth.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Dark energy == Bogon flux. This is why scientists have been finding more evidence for dark energy and dark matter (condensed bogons) as educational standards have deteriorated and politicians have multiplied. In fact, we can all thank our failing edumacation systems and bloated governments for single-handedly (?) ensuring the Big Crunch, thereby saving us all from the heat death of the universe.
Whee.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
What is the value of life in the first place? As I see it, it is the culmination of billions of years of evolution.
Optimist. You assume there is life on Mars and that humans will develop to study it.
Earth is a single point of failure.
Ensuring life on both planets will protect life from cataclysmic events. This is more important than preserving (likely non-existent, mind you) native martian life.
I lost my sig.
Optimist. You assume there is life on Mars and that humans will develop to study it.
I'm making conditional statements. I don't assume there is life on Mars. The second condition is already true. Humans have developed to the point where they are studying Mars for signs of life.
Ensuring life on both planets will protect life from cataclysmic events. This is more important than preserving (likely non-existent, mind you) native martian life.
It doesn't protect Martian life. Further what cataclysmic events are you thinking of that would wipe out life altogether? A nuclear war, even one with cobalt seeded bombs couldn't eliminate life. Even a "gray goo" incident would leave a life form behind (the nanotech von Neumann machines and probably single celled organisms).
You're not a geologist, are you? You poor deluded^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H depraved^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H deprived fool, don't you know what pleasures you've been missing.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Am I the only geek who noticed this?
FIREFLY???
I agree, from what we know now it is probable that a fetus would not develop properly in zero g. Still, it hasn't been conclusively demonstrated, so I'd say the jury is out on that at least until someone sends some mice to the ISS and they determine what happens one way or the other.
Still, that problem doesn't really sound like too much of a deal breaker to me. Maybe mom has to spend some time in centripital gravity for a bit. Worst case you need a full 1g for the entire 9 months, which would be a hassle, but it could be as simple as a half hour a day for 3 weeks in .1 g. People would probably do that anyway for other reasons.
I still say the problems attendant with living on Mars, coupled with the utter lack of any good economic argument in favor of it, makes the idea of space colonies quite a bit more logical and appealing IMHO.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
So what is the big deal? Mars isn't going to be microbe-free for eternity.
If something is living on Mars now that isn't something we dragged from Earth, then that is tremendously valuable, even if it turns out to be equivalent to primitive bacteria. If we put terrestrial life on Mars, we risk destroying this data.
Do you seriously believe that if there is Martian life that has evolved in a Martian environment for billions of years, and that is presumably well-adapted to that Martian environment, then it will be threatened by competition from life that evolved on Earth and is adapted to an Earth environment?