"The Earth Strain": Could Our Space Missions Infect the Cosmos?

A Mars mission to be launched in October on a Russian robot spacecraft will include specimens of thale cress; tiny water creature tardigrade - or water bear - which can also survive extraordinary extremes of temperature and pressure; samples of brewer's yeast; and permafrost from the Siberian Arctic.

Together with several other microscopic organisms, these representatives of Earth life will be carried in a package that will be flown to Mars and are scheduled to be returned to Earth in 2012.

The experiment - Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or Life - is designed to show if living organisms can survive unprotected in space for long periods and thus support the theory of panspermia, which argues that simple organisms can survive for years as they float through space and that life on Earth could have been wafted here from another world.

The Phobos-Grunt mission will last for 34 months and will carry its samples of life forms in a three-inch-diameter titanium case, including the bacterium deinococcus radiodurans, whose ability to survive intense radiation has earned it the nickname "Conan the Bacterium".

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