The Russian Federation Space Agency's GRUNT Project To The Martian Moon Phobos. (Earth, light)
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Later this month Russia will launch it's newest space probe to The Martian System with a return mission included in the plans......a first as far as I am aware.
Some scientists have speculated that Mars did and still may contain lifeforms; others contend that life on Earth may have arisen on Mars and been brought here by Asteroid impacts.
About One in 10 Million Mars to Earth asteroids arrive here in a year or less and upon reentry some organisms may survive the journey; since only the outer few millimeters of the asteroid are heated during atmospheric transit.
GRUNT will land on The Mars moon Phobos. It will not only take samples of the soil but will also be carrying Earth organisms and soil from Israel's Negev Desert within a sphere designed by The Planetary Society called THE LIVING INTERPLANETARY FLIGHT EXPERIMENT.
The probe not only will return to Earth a sample from Phobos but will test the ability of Earth organisms to survive the round trip to Phobos. The Earth lifeforms represent all 3 Domains of Earth life: Archaea; Bacteria and Eukaryotes.
The Eukaryotes stand little chance of survival but will be best represented by "Water Bears".....Tardigrades....and of course plant seeds will be included as well.
This should be a fascinating experiment on many levels...let's hope all goes well!!!!!
The United States is also launching the Mars Rover Curiosity this month as well...that was covered in another thread(s).....so it will be a busy month for Mars Missions.
The LIFE Organisms - What We Do | The Planetary Society (http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/innovative_technologies/life/organisms.html - broken link)
The Phobos-Grunt should be a pretty exciting. Hopefully, the samples will make it back safely to Earth. It should provide some interesting results about the Martian moons soil composition.
As for the MSL Curiousity rover, I think we're going to get to see some pretty spectacular features, as well as search to see if there's any indication that Mars may have been suitable for life in the past, or possibly still does. It's going to be quite a ride.
It's going to be a great few years on Mars and on Phobos...GRUNT is scheduled to return to Earth in 2014.
It will be interesting to not only analyze the soil from Phobos(on Earth) but maybe just as interesting to see what Earth organisms survive the round trip back to Earth....I expect some will.
And Curiosity, the first Martian nuclear powered rover, should give us new insight into the possibility of Martian life as well..... with it's added capabilities provided by increased and more dependable power.......lots to look forward to the next few years.
Some bad news.....Soviet officials have a problem and are trying to adjust the craft's trajectory....they have 3 days to fix the anomaly before the probe's batteries run low.
Some bad news.....Soviet officials have a problem and are trying to adjust the craft's trajectory....they have 3 days to fix the anomaly before the probe's batteries run low.
Hope they can get it fixed. They've had a quite a few problem in the past.
I agree. There's no question that the Russians have had plenty of failures with missions to Mars. I mentioned earlier about the Phobos-Grunt mission, that I hoped it would be successful. They don't have much time to recover, but I'm still hoping they'll pull through. It'd be a remarkable accomplishment and provide a lot of great science.
Tooting the horn for the "Confederacy" (I presumed was to mean the US) seemed to be omitting or overlooking it's own share of failures. I can think of at least at least one crash landing on the Red Planet, the Mars Polar Lander. Because of a number of failures in the past, these failures became known as "The Mars Curse". The crash site of the Mars Polar Lander is thought to have been spotted in 1995. HiRISE is looking for it with greater detail. It's not just Russia or the US. Other countries have had failures as well.
The thing is that sending probes and landers to Mars isn't an easy walk in the park. It's an extremely complicated task to do. The slightest miscalculation or construction error can potentially result in a failure. It really is remarkable when a mission succeeds as planned. The US has made many impressive and successful missions to Mars, but it's also had its share of expensive failures. Failures are a part of what goes along with the exploration of space.
Using HiRISE to Hunt for Missing Mars Landers - Explore the Cosmos | The Planetary Society (http://planetary.org/explore/topics/mars_reconnaissance_orbiter/hirise_lander_search.html#images - broken link)
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