Earth Microbes to be Sent to Mars Moon
Phobos– the largest and innermost moon of Mars. Note the large crater shown in the lower right, known as ‘Sickney’.
The proposed experiment is called LIFE -Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment–and will be placed aboard Phobos-Grunt, a joint Russian-American mission to Phobos, the largest (and innermost) of Mars’s two moons (the smaller being Deimos). If all goes according to plan, it will be the first time living creatures from Earth will be sent intentionally beyond our Earth - Moon system.
The samples to be sent include four species of bacteria: Deinococcus radiodurans (a radiation resistant bacterium), along with three species of Archea (ancient, bacterial, life forms also known as “extremophiles” due to their ability to thrive in ultra-harsh conditions), several tardigrades (”water bears” - tiny, eight-limbed invertebrates known for their ability to repair their DNA), numerous yeast spores, seeds from the mouse-eared, cress plant Arabidopsis thaliana, and a soil sample from Israel’s Negev desert.
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The purpose of the mission, according to Bruce Betts of The Planetary Society (which is collaborating with Roscosmos, the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences), is to buttress evidence in support of a theory known as transpermia, which holds that life on our planet could have originated elsewhere in the solar system (or galaxy) and been transported here (possibly via a Mars-ejected meteor, or an asteroid or comet). The disc and samples have already be tested and found to be capable of withstanding some 4000 g’s (4000 times the gravity of Earth at its surface) which is one hundred times more force than expected in the mission’s entire flight plan.
Some evidence supporting transpermia was found in the recent (2004) Stardust mission to the comet Wild-2 which collected comet trail dust and ice samples. Upon analysis, the cometary debris was found to have traces of glycine, an essential amino acid necessary for some protein synthesis. However, it is just as likely–if not more so–that life on Earth arose here on Earth first. The famous Miller-Urey bio-genesis experiments of 1953 (and repeated/confirmed in 2007) found that adenine molecules (one of the four nucleotide building blocks of DNA) “spontaneously self-organized” in a mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water–after receiving a jolt of electricity. This mixture was concocted to represent the likely conditions present on the early Earth. The Stardust discovery more likely indicates that proto-biotic molecules are relatively common throughout the galaxy
The LIFE microbe samples will not be “alive” in the typical sense of the word, as they will be freeze-dried for the duration of their projected, three-year flight (to and back) to resist the extreme cold of space. They will also be sealed in special vials and then further sealed in a titanium disc small enough to be held in the palm of your hand. Titanium is the lightest and strongest of elemental metals and many critical components of space craft, large and small, have been made from (or shielded with) the metal, as it offers excellent protection from radiation damage.
That is so not a good idea, we shouldnt do that until we are sure that there is no life on phobos or any other place they decide to send bacteria to… remember how back in the 1600 we helped rats(and other non-indigenous animals) spread all over the world and kill the the native species…