Wanted: Tough Guys For Mars Mission

(Click to enlarge)Clearly a bit bored with sitting around and waiting for more than methanous expulsions to demonstrate the existence of life on Mars, the Russians seem to have decided to cut out the middle man altogether and put some there themselves. And together with the US-based Planetary Society, they have been hunting for the most hard-bitten, tenacious, toughest and resilient Earthlings for the job.

So, who or what has been selected to perform this toughest of tough challenges? Steven Seagal perhaps? Chuck Norris? Pah! For this mission, only the best of the best of the best is good enough. After a gruelling selection process, the winners were some bacteria, spores, crustaceans, insects, seeds and, erm, something called a woolly bear.

OK, so they won't out perfrom old Chuck but they do have other skills going for them. Bacteria, for example, are known to be able to survive just about anywhere and even a mosquito can survives a few days in the vacuum of space, which makes them perfect for understanding how life deals with long-term space travel. [During a recent Russian experiment, a mosquito was popped into an unprotected tin can and attached to the side of the International Space Station. The mosquito was subjected to temperatures ranging from 60 degrees C (140 degrees F) in sunlight to a chilly -150 degrees C (-238 degrees F) in the shade. The African mosquito, though short-lived, has the ability to enter suspended animation during times of drought by converting the water molecules in its body into sugars. This allows the mosquito to survive until the next period of rainfall or, as it turns out, 18 months in the vacuum of space.]

Should humans ever make it to Mars, it will be essential to understand not only how they are affected by the rigours of nine months in space but also how the food they will want to grow is affected - it's no use making it all the way there only to find the wheat you took along has mutated into a useless yield-free piece of grass.

Obviously, no one is going to let even the Russians throw terrestrial life around the Red Planet willy-nilly - that would violate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which prohibits deliberate forward contamination of this kind - so they will be going to Mars's closest moon, Phobos, instead.

Set to be carried on board Russia's Phobos-Grunt space craft, the US part of the experiment consists of a small capsule filled with ten different species including tardigrades (water bears), seeds and bacteria. Not to be outdone, the Russians are sending a small zoo including crustaceans, mosquito larvae and fungi. The experiment will also test the panspermia hypothesis, a theory that suggests that life travels from planet to planet onboard chunks of planetary material.

Phobos-Grunt is designed to land on the Martian moon, take soil samples and then return back to Earth to enable scientists to test the effects the journey has had on the zoo when it gets back.

Although the final selection has been made, it might be worth suggesting Mr Seagal go along anyway - and if you have to ask why, then you clearly haven't seen the movie On Deadly Ground.

Metro, 17 April 2009, pp18-19.