Russian-Chinese Trip to Mars' Moon

Russia continues to move ahead with its Phobos-Grunt mission, which involves a spacecraft landing on Phobos, studying the moon's surface for a year, and returning samples to earth.  The mission is slated to launch this December.  The ambitious project will also involve the Chinese, who plan to add a sub-probe Yinghuo 1.  This subprobe represents China's first planetary mission.  So our moon is only one of many targets for the growing Chinese space program. 

The Russian mission will also include tiny passengers.  A Scientific American article notes that The Planetary Society along with the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have created the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE), which will include a variety of earth organisms:

The LIFE organisms were chosen with this danger in mind. Among the four bacteria to make the trip will be radiation-resistant Deinococcus radiodurans. Tardigrades, microscopic, eight-limbed invertebrates also known as water bears, were selected for their ability to repair DNA damage. Rounding out the group are three species of archaea—sometimes called "extremophiles" for their ability to thrive in conditions too harsh for other Earth life—along with yeast, plant seeds, and a soil sample collected from Israel's Negev Desert. Most of the samples will be freeze-dried and inert for the trip, to better resist the cold of space. 

And what does The Planetary Society hope to learn from this mission?  Here is the Society's own statement: 

Will some microbes survive the brutal space environment for this long? We will have to wait and see. If no microbes survive, this does not necessarily rule out the possibility of transpermia, but it certainly calls it into question more. But if some of the organisms do make it alive to Phobos and back, then at least we would know that some life could indeed survive an interplanetary journey over a 3-year period inside a rock. 

Surprisingly, this will be the first sample returned from another planet/moon since 1976.  I remember there was a fair amount of concern about bringing back samples from our moon when it was first proposed.  However, in addition to concerns about bringing Phobos sample back to earth, some have questioned the logic of bringing life to the Martian realm. 

The Planetary Society is saying the mission complies with the Committee on Space Research of the International Council for Science planetary protection guidelines aimed at preventing the contamination of Mars by introducing terrestrial life onto the surface of Mars.  Sadly, given the track record of past missions, the chance of a spacecraft failure and crash on the surface of Phobos is not so remote. 

Russia tried a similar mission to Phobos back in 1988 to no avail.  When you add in the fact that Russia last attempt at a Mars-related mission was in 1996, and this also ended in failure, one can understand Russia's need for a flawless mission. For the sake of life (or potential life) on both planets, I hope for a flawless mission as well.

Flying to Mars on the Cheap

Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, had some interesting ideas in a recent op-ed piece.  Zubrin believe SpaceX's Falcon-9 heavy rocket, in combination with its Dragon crew capsule, offers the key to returning to Mars within a decade at about half the cost of a single Space Shuttle flight.  A fascinating thought with the demise of the Shuttle program and hazy plans for the future.  Under his plan, three Falcon-9 heavy rockets would be all we need to accomplish a Mars mission:  one would place a Dragon in Mars orbit for a return trip, another would be place supplies and an ascent vehicle on the surface of Mars, and the third would carry a crew in a Dragon to the surface of Mars.  Under this scenario, the United States could have humans on the surface of Mars by 2016.  I hope someone in the White House is listening.  We need new thinking if we want to remain a space-faring people.  The possibilities are out there, so now the question is whether we will pursue them.  I can picture the Chinese eyeing the Falcon-9 heavy rockets for their own space program.