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."

Watch out for monoliths

[CambodiaSam (1153015)]

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...

Re:Watch out for monoliths

[plover (150551)]

Sure, the aliens tell us "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE", and which moon is the first one the Russians are heading for? Exactly.

At least they can't say they weren't warned.

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[infonography (566403)]

Like we should worry?, that second sun of theirs didn't seem to last so long now did it?

We should insist they take Roy Scheider [imdb.com]just because he's earned it.

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[Monkey (16966)]

It's a well documented fact that Soviet Russians do the reverse of any stated action.

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[LrdDimwit (1133419)]

So the moral of the story is ... keep mail order Russian brides away from talking snakes?

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[davidsyes (765062)]

My my, we've got some humorless wretches here. It's not as if I initially said they could do the Trotsky or something to that effect (or, even affect...).

But, if they (or whomever) can find life, they'd better hope it's not superior to us. Or, shit WILL really hit the fan.

I'm european and

[sveard (1076275)]

With a population of over 710 million, life is abundant in europe. There is however no strong evidence for intelligent life. I kid. ;)

Not sure how this fits...

[explosivejared (1186049)]

Hey go for it, we should all support going into space as this planet is screwed.

Everyone knows that in Soviet Russia, mother nature screws you... so that sort of environmentalist talk is uncalled for.

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[Opportunist (166417)]

Everyone knows that in Soviet Russia, mother nature screws you

Hmmm... didn't know Soviet Russians are that kinky.

Please think of the children

[Dutchmaan (442553)]

Someone needs to tell them that their new 2010 DVD is just a movie.

Nasa Needs Outside Competition

[StCredZero (169093)]

NASA needs outside competition. Otherwise, they just devolve to being a big pork-barrel project for Houston Texas and defense contractors. Outside competition got us to the moon. Maybe it will get us to Mars and Jupiter?

Re:Nasa Needs Outside Competition

[mathfeel (937008)]

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.

Re:Nasa Needs Outside Competition

[Opportunist (166417)]

Just claim you found life there, the males looking like tentacle monsters and the females like schoolgirls, and the Japanese will be ready to launch in less than 2 years. :)

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[Nyeerrmm (940927)]

I'd actually argue that the high profile competition with the Soviets caused the current state of the US space program. We rushed to the moon in a completely unsustainable way, and needed something to do afterwards that would be high profile but much cheaper, and most importantly involve men (eliminating the possibility of probes counting as high profile). This led to the technological budget monster that is the STS, which is fundamentally flawed (combining heavy lifter with person carrier), and is overly

Err, waitaminute...

[Penguinisto (415985)]

Wasn't there some sort of Internationally-recognized moratorium about landing on Europa, for fear of potential bacteriological contamination?

Forget the Arthur. C. Clarke meme... I'm speaking as in a for-real 'we ain't going there yet' agreement that space-faring nations had agreed to, at least until they can come up with some sort of exploration set-up that can search for life there without risk (or at least an acceptably minimized risk) of contaminating the underlying ocean with Earth-borne bacteria.

I could've sworn that there was something in place to that effect... sort of the same reason why the Russians held off from their efforts to drill all the way down to Lake Vostok [wikipedia.org] in Antarctica.

/P

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[solarlux (610904)]

"Chuck Norris understands the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey" (I couldn't resist when I saw Clarke's name mentioned)

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[by Anonymous Coward]

There have been a lot of concerns raised, but no exclusions. The spacecraft that discovered the oceans, Galileo, was burnt up in Jupiter's atmosphere to eliminate the small possibility that it crash into Europa and spread bacteria that it likely carried from earth, since it wasn't sterilized. You can bet that there will be ample pressure from inside the science community to clean any probe sent to a degree beyond even what the Mars landers are cleansed.

The concern is that biological contamination could t

Contamination

[hyades1 (1149581)]

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

[HappyHead (11389)]

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.

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[ArcherB (796902)]

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.

Never thought we'd be the I in ID.

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[idontgno (624372)]

We won't be. We don't qualify.

Now, if you want "Borderline-moronic design", humanity fits the bill just fine.

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[Opportunist (166417)]

Wouldn't it be kind of funny if "God" was just some alien space probe engineer who sneezed on the probe before launch?

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[houghi (78078)]

Argue with eachother? Most likely they will kill each other over it. Kill each other by the millions.

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[exp(pi*sqrt(163)) (613870)]

> The Russians are notorious for cutting corners

Yeah, Challenger and Columbia exploded because they used Russian parts, right?

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[Opportunist (166417)]

No, they exploded because there was no Russian to compete with. Or, rather, because NASA turned to Russian practices.

Challenger blew up because the launch was decided despite really, really bad conditions for a launch (to cold, too wet weather), because Reagan was about to hold a speech that night, and they wanted to be in it. This is about as Soviet Russian as can be.

Columbia was a matter of time and money. NASA engineers will tell you (of course not officially) that it was bound to happen sooner or later,

Re:Contamination

[bitrex (859228)]

You should really read physicist Richard Feynman's report on the Challenger disaster for an honest analysis of what lead to that orbiter's destruction. There's also a good list of myths about the disaster that's worth reading - for example the belief that Reagan's state of the union had anything to do with the disaster.

Launch officials clearly felt pressure to get the mission off after repeated delays, and they were embarrassed by repeated mockery on the television news of previous scrubs, but the driving factor in their minds seems to have been two shuttle-launched planetary probes. The first ever probes of this kind, they had an unmovable launch window just four months in the future. The persistent rumor that the White House had ordered the flight to proceed in order to spice up President Reagan's scheduled State of the Union address seems based on political motivations, not any direct testimony or other first-hand evidence. Feynman personally checked out the rumor and never found any substantiation. If Challenger's flight had gone according to plan, the crew would have been asleep at the time of Reagan's speech, and no communications links had been set up.

Feynman's Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident [ralentz.com]

7 myths about the Challenger shuttle disaster [msn.com]

Re:Contamination

[rilister (316428)]

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...

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[pv2b (231846)]

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".

Actually, pissing on the petri dish wouldn't be such a bad thing, since urine is sterile. :-)

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[RenderSeven (938535)]

They're ALL notorious for cutting corners, not just russians.

Thats not fair either... the Russians are famous for cutting costs even when they shouldnt. NASA is famous for not cutting costs even when they should. Both approaches have their benefits and their downfalls. But when it comes to decontaminating a interplanetary probe I'd have to trust NASA more on this one. Hey, if for no other reason than it *is* a pork barrel project.

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[hyades1 (1149581)]

Did you even read what I wrote? I said nothing about whether or not the Russians were good. I said they would cut corners. Cutting corners is what you do to save money, and the Russians are famous for it. They did it early on in the space program, and the only reason you didn't see how many of their projects screwed up is that they weren't exactly forthcoming about their failures. And FYI, they didn't send any "rovers" to Venus. Landers. Not rovers. There's a difference, and not an insignificant one

Finally someone is sane

[mattr (78516)]

And this is exactly what you get when you actually go out wanting to find life and look in the most obvious place. This is low-hanging fruit and hopefully a race will start to get some smart exploratory packages over there before we're dead.

Re:Finally someone is sane

[CheshireCatCO (185193)]

Actually, it's looking for fruit in a fruit tree where the fruits are *high*. Europa, while the best extra-terrestrial candidate for bearing life at present, requires some serious radiation shielding on any spacecraft going there, a fairly expensive landing, and a *lot* of work to bore through 1-10 km of literally-rock-hard ice. The probability of finding a viable ecosystem is balanced against the great difficulty to get to it.

As I recall, a recent NASA study said that they can't do it for under $1 billion (US); actually, I think that they found that they couldn't even do a decent orbiter for under $1.5 billion, let alone a lander or a submarine probe. (Warning! This is only my recollection from presentations 6 months ago.)

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[Mr2cents (323101)]

The article said they would melt a bit of ice, there was no mention of drilling through 10km of ice. I guess they just want to examine surface ice for fossils.

Still, it's an ambitious plan. But am I the only one who's beginning to get sceptical about Russian announcements? Weren't they going to do a sample return mission to Mars' moon Phobos? Weren't they going to do moon rovers? Weren't they going to build their own space station in 2015, when the ISS will be deorbited (not that I think it will be deobited

Am I the only one

[Cro Magnon (467622)]

who thought they were looking for life on Europe?

Overheard from the spacecraft....

[penguin_dance (536599)]

Damn...I thought they were sending us on vacation to Italy.

world largest oil producer hasbucks and smarts

[peter303 (12292)]

Russia has been the worlds largest producer for a couple years, producing nearly a billion dollars worth per day. They also have excellent scientists. Sounds like a great combination.

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[ajs318 (655362)]

How come it took *11* posts before someone mentioned this?

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[Tony Hoyle (11698)]

I counted 3 before someone mentioned it, and every second or third post thereafter.

The first few probably got modded offtopic by mods on a particular strong brand of crack.

How are you gentlemen !!

[BitwizeGHC (145393)]

All these world are belong to you, except Europa. You have no chance to land there make your time.

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[ettlz (639203)]

Use them together.
Use them in peace.

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[Pr0xY (526811)]

I've wondered this before. But then I read about the precautions they put in place to make sure this very thing doesn't happen. NASA actually does a very good job making sure to the best of there ability that we wouldn't bring anything with us (unintentionally) and more importantly, it puts even more effort into making sure nothing comes back ;).

After the moon landing, the astronauts were in quarantine for several days just to make sure they didn't accidentally bring back some crazy microbe from the moon :-

Re:NIH

[Kozar_The_Malignant (738483)]

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.

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[dintech (998802)]

Teehee, he said sperm. :P

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[syrinx (106469)]

Personally, I welcome our Soviet Russian overlords.

Shouldn't your Soviet Russian overlords welcome you?

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[kellyb9 (954229)]

did anyone RTFA? did anyone watch the video?

Hi, you must be new here. Welcome to /.

HG2G

[jcaldwel (935913)]

If you keep it up, you can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there are not usually many vacancies for non-Shouting and non-Pushing People About Officers, so I think you ought to stick to what you know.

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[Opportunist (166417)]

Yeah, Sibiria simply ain't what it used to be. Sending people there is soon like sending them to a Club Med, so we need something new.

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[curmudgeon99 (1040054)]

The hell it is European! You going to Europa on an Ariane? Not likely. This will be launched from Baikonaur using the large Energia boosters. This is 95% Russian and the Russkies deserve the credit. Anybody can make a little jacky rover to go look around. GETTING there is the problem.

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[Movi (1005625)]

You're late. They changed the name to URECTUM

you're uninformed

[nguy (1207026)]

free medical care and education for illegal aliens

It's usually the children of illegal immigrants that are receiving free education, and that's because they are usually US citizens. "Free medical care" doesn't exist per se in the US; what exists is emergency treatment, and that is provided to illegals not to encourage illegal migration, but because we don't want Americans to die in the emergency room because we can't establish whether they are citizens.

now our politicians are talking about amnesty

Talking a