Earth life headed for Mars moon

Preliminary passenger list
On the other hand, there are some other aspects of this that still ring an alarm bell in some quarters. For example:

Since it's a Russian launch vehicle, and not going to the surface of Mars per se, the concerns about planetary protection are less stringent. However, if an out-of-control spacecraft impacts on the planet, that would be bad. How would NASA respond if it were a U.S. launch vehicle with the same experiment? Okay, let's hope they are successful. Even so, if the experimental organisms make it back alive, it says that organisms are hardy (there's a high duh factor!) and if they die, there's no way to interpret the data in a useful way.

The Phobos-Grunt mission intends to meet orbital lifetime requirements, so by COSPAR policy there is no official limit on the number of organisms the spacecraft may carry. However, I've been advised that neither the COSPAR nor NASA planetary protection officials think that sending organisms so close to Mars is a good idea, given the trouble the U.S. normally goes through to ensure that Mars spacecraft are very clean.

A critical question involves the specific organisms that will be transported. Both The Planetary Society and the Russian National Academy have been advised to send only "pure cultures of organisms" that could not possibly survive on Mars, selected so that they would pose a minimal contamination hazard. By the way, most organisms relevant to human exploration, such as well-studied human commensal microbes and food organisms, meet this criterion. A preliminary passenger list on the LIFE experiment included a section of tundra taken from the Russian far north.

Of all locations on Earth that could possibly contain organisms capable of adapting to Martian conditions, this is one of the most likely. However, The Planetary Society Web site indicates that the final passenger list is not yet in place. But the description still states that "a natural soil colony of microbes" will be included. What's up here, and what's really up and going? At the end of the day, will the Russians comply with the spirit or letter of the COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy when analyzing the potential for harm? And in not doing this, would they undercut COSPAR policy?

Native tundra samples

I also contacted Catharine Conley, the acting Planetary Protection Officer at NASA Headquarters about this mission.

"The Phobos-Grunt mission intends to meet orbital lifetime requirements, so by COSPAR policy there is no official limit on the number of organisms the spacecraft may carry," Conley advised. Sending pure cultures of organisms that could not possibly survive on Mars, she added, would pose a minimal contamination hazard, and this includes most organisms relevant to human exploration. 

"However, I am uncomfortable with sending native tundra samples so close to Mars, because this is a location on Earth that could possibly contain organisms capable of adapting to Martian conditions," and to do so "seems ill-advised," Conley told SPACE.com.

For another sanity check, I asked John Rummel, Director of the Institute for Coastal Science & Policy at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina for his thoughts. He's also COSPAR Planetary Protection Panel Chair.

"The Planetary Society, as a public space advocacy group, is looking for a publicly noticeable way to demonstrate that live organisms can make the journey from Earth to Mars and return. Scientifically, however, I think that the hypothesis has already been sufficiently supported by previous work on Earth and in near-Earth space," Rummel told SPACE.com.

"As the COSPAR Planetary Protection Panel Chair, I would judge that the threat of contaminating Mars is negligible - but I would emphasize that the Russian Academy of Sciences is the organization that should be making that determination for a Russian-launched payload, judging both the potential for contaminating Mars and the safety of returning samples of Phobos to Earth."

So space fans: Is the Phobos-Grunt mission something to groan about?

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