Russia's Mars Mission Raising Concerns 245
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."
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
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'.
Well, the article cites fear of Forward-Contamination [wikipedia.org] which is
the contamination of other worlds with Earth microbes. The risk of forward-contamination is twofold: that human beings may accidentally seed a previously sterile world, thus creating "extraterrestrials" that are really of terrestrial origin (and which might even make it impossible to determine whether the life later found is terrestric or local); or that an actual alien biosphere could be devastated by Earth's bacteria.
So if these escape on Mars and we land later and find microbes how do we know that 1) they aren't really terrestrial or evolved descendants of our microbes and 2) they didn't inadvertently disrupt or destroy original organisms to the planet.
I think it's more so a caution but scientists and people interested in the idea of life forming independently on other planets care very much so.
A ridiculous interpretation of this treaty. (Score:4, Informative)
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 [state.gov]
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.
Re:Not really a downside. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)
" it is akin to worrying about flying sharks into the middle of the sahara desert and worrying they will wipe out all of the local lifeforms."
Or rabbits (or toads) in Australia. Is that your point?
Re:Spock cares! (Score:5, Informative)
That's just wrong. It's not the relative amount of carbon dioxide which is important. It's the absolute concentration of carbon dioxide which is important. Mars is so cold because its atmosphere is so thin. Adding a thicker atmosphere will cause Mars to become warmer.
Not gravity so much as weak magnetism, no? (Score:3, Informative)
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 [nasa.gov] 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 [nasa.gov] 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,