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New LIFE Update, October 15, 2008: LIFE Experiment Module Passes Vibration and Impact Tests, by Mark Gelfand

Bud carefully filled each of the 31 sample bio-capsules with a fluorescent test liquid, welding each shut with a homebrewed thermal welder.  This created an extra level of caution – and test hurdle to clear – since the actual samples used in the real experiment will be dry.  One by one, he placed the sealed capsules into a black Delrin carrier base, completing the titanium case assembly with shock pads, indium seal, Kapton tape, cleats, and safety wire.
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Can life naturally transfer from planet to planet? With a groundbreaking experiment on board a sample-return mission to the Martian moon Phobos, The Planetary Society is trying to find out!

In an ambitious new initiative, the Society will send a collection of living organisms on a three-year trip to the Martian moon Phobos and back to Earth. The experiment -- called LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment) -- will help scientists better understand the nature of life, its robustness, and its ability -- or not -- to move between planets.

The journey will be a test of one aspect of the "transpermia" hypothesis –- the possibility that life can travel from planet to planet inside rocks blasted off one planetary surface by impact, to land on another planetary surface. For example, if a rock on Earth contained life and were blasted off Earth, could it survive until it reached Mars? Or, if life existed on Mars, could it have been transported to Earth? The Planetary Society experiment will test the ability of life to survive the interplanetary voyage by flying organisms for several years through interplanetary space in a simulated meteoroid.

Here's how:

In 2009, the Russian space agency will launch a sample return mission nicknamed "Phobos-Grunt" to the Martian moon Phobos. According to plans, the spacecraft will land on Phobos, collect dirt and rocks from its surface, and then head back home. As it swoops by Earth in 2012, the spacecraft will release a capsule containing all the samples gathered on Phobos, to land on Earth.

Attached to the capsule for the entire 34 months of the journey will be a small, flat cylinder containing a collection of microbes carefully selected and sealed before launch. In its flight, the cylinder will be, in effect, a simulated space rock, subject to the same extreme conditions as a Martian meteoroid traveling to Earth. It is The Planetary Society's LIFE experiment.

Carefully packed and sealed with multiple seals, the LIFE samples will spend a full 34 months in space, before returning to Earth. Here it will be opened and its contents examined by waiting scientists.

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.

To learn more on the details of the project, check out our Frequently Asked Questions page.

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The Planetary Society is committed to following international planetary protection guidelines.