LIFE on Mars?

The theory of panspermia (more broadly and properly named exogenesis) is that life might spread throughout the universe via microorganisms – bacteria, for example – that are stuck to meteors that move between planets. Some people think this might even explain how life came to start here: it was transferred from elsewhere.

There’s no evidence for or against exogenesis, but one stumbling block has always been doubts about whether microorganisms could survive the vacuum, temperature and especially hard radiation of space. But in recent years we’ve found microbes that can survive in environmental extremes that would kill any other living thing.

The US Planetary Society is therefore setting out an experiment called Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE) to see if living organisms can survive unprotected in space for long periods. They’re riding along with a Russian robot mission to Phobos, a moon of Mars, which is collecting soil samples. The LIFE module will go along and back and be exposed to the rigours of space.

Some of the tiny life samples they’ll send on the return trip will be brewer’s yeast and a microbe that’s already proven so resistant to radiation that it’s nicknamed Conan the Bacterium.

Whether any of these organisms survive the trip will be a bit of evidence for whether life can actually hop around the universe in this way.

Deinococcus radiodurans: "To crush your enemies, multiply inside their cytosols, and to hear the fixation of their nitrogen."