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."

Comments

RED

[rodrigoandrade]

Is the red color on the title bar some kind of hidden Soviet Russia joke???

Re:Spock cares!

[denis-The-menace]

The idea or sending Asteroids towards Mars is a good idea but some might see it as too scary.

What if it misses Mars, loops around the sun and then hits the earth or another planet?

Re:Which is part of why....

[pleappleappleap]

Some, like me, believe that capitalization, punctuation, and proper spelling are valuable.