Moon seen as laboratory for life

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These aren't just one-way deals though, since data and equipment can be shared between all space agencies. The Chinese Chang'e 1 mission, Japan's Selene-Kaguya, and the United States' upcoming Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS Impactor will all provide valuable data.

"We are looking at ways where we could exchange information and carry some instruments from other countries on our platform," adds Foing. "Also, some of our European instruments can be carried onboard landers from international partners."

Foing's research takes him further afield than our natural satellite. He is involved in the ExoMars project, a mission that will be launched in 2013. "In the case of ExoMars, we are going to deploy instruments that will search for signs of extinct or extant life," he says. "It has a battery of organic sensors and life search instruments. We also have also a series of geophysical instruments like the camera system which I am involved with."

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Robots with instruments such as these are at the forefront of our exploration strategies, making it possible that if we do find alien organisms, the discovery will be made by a machine.

For Foing, the search for life on Mars is a key aspect of our investigations in space. "We believe that in the first billion years of its history, Mars had some habitable conditions," he says. "So maybe life developed there — a second genesis — or it may have been transported from Earth. Answering this very important question about life on Mars requires sensitive scientific instruments, because for the last three billion years, conditions there have not been hospitable on a cold and dry Mars."

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So if there is evidence for past life it may be difficult to find.

Foing also thinks our investigations should take us beyond our own solar system. Astronomers are now searching for the ingredients of life, such as amino acids, in the vast reaches of space. Eventually these far-flung elements reach the surfaces of planets throughout the universe, and increase the chances that life will arise there. In the next 15 years, he says, missions like the Darwin infrared interferometer will be able to search for such biomarkers on Earth-like planets around other stars.

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