Earthly Life to be Sent to Martian Moon
Scientists want to check the idea that living things can travel through space between planets – say, on rocks ejected by cosmic collisions. If the little buggers return alive after three years in deep space, it will make those who say life could have come to Earth from other planets very happy indeed:
LIFE on Earth was all neatly packed up inside a pucklike container and ready to blast off on an unmanned Russian mission to a Martian moon this month.
After more than 10 months traveling through deep space, the Planetary Society’s Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment would land on the surface of the Martian moon Phobos with its cargo of voyagers from all three kingdoms of life, including tiny, extremely hardy animals called tardigrades.
Then, after a couple of weeks on the surface, the first Earthly life to have lived on another solar body would return to Earth. A tiny, robotic, interplanetary lander was going to spring off the base craft, fire off its rocket, and hurtle through space before crash landing in Kazakhstan.
They’ve run into technical problems, though, and will have to wait two years for the next launch window.
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