[FPSPACE] Japanese Tanpopo experiment for ISS to test panspermia

[LARRY KLAES]

>From: Centauri Dreams <gilster at mindspring.com>
>Reply-To: Centauri Dreams <gilster at mindspring.com>
>To: ljk4 at msn.com
>Subject: Centauri Dreams
>Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 14:03:28 -0500 (CDT)
>
>Centauri Dreams
>
>///////////////////////////////////////////

>Scattering Life Through the Cosmos
>
>Posted: 01 May 2008 01:53 PM CDT

>http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1852
>
>
>Olaf Stapledons Last and First Men (1930), amongst other wonders, pictures 
>our descendants millions of years hence moving from world to world as they 
>attempt to save the species. The Moon approaches the Earth, an imminent 
>peril the Fifth Men escape by terraforming Venus, unfortunately destroying 
>indigenous life forms there. Later, the Fifth Men move on to Neptune, and 
>when their existence there is endangered, they make an attempt to save 
>themselves as a species by seeding their cells among the stars. 
>Interestingly enough, Francis Crick (famed as a co-discoverer of the 
>structure of DNA) suggested in 1973 that life could have been intentionally 
>sent from elsewhere in the universe with the express purpose of finding a 
>new home, an idea that made the later work of Fred Hoyle and Chandra 
>Wickramasinghe seem positively tame.
>
>Were talking panspermia, the idea that life can survive long journeys 
>through space to seed other planets (a notion Hoyle addressed in 1982s 
>Evolution from Space). The apotheosis of the concept is in the realms 
>between the stars, as Stapledon and Hoyle both assumed. We already know 
>that materials, though not necessarily life, can move between planets in 
>our own Solar System, as shown by compelling evidence for Martian 
>meteorites. But interstellar journeys are of another order, the distances 
>so vast that the question of survival dominates the debate.
>
>
>
>Yet comets could be interesting places for microbes to thrive, and its not 
>beyond the bounds of possibility that an ejected comet might make its way 
>between the stars, finally encountering another stellar companion and 
>making a spectacular arrival upon a warm, rocky planet. There is no way at 
>this juncture to prove whether or not life began on Earth this way, but its 
>a concept that demands study. One way to investigate it is to work with 
>microbes in near-Earth orbit, as a Japanese team now proposes to do aboard 
>the International Space Station in an experiment called Tanpopo.
>
>Image: Is panspermia a viable option for moving life not only between 
>planets but also between the stars? Credit: Jess Johnson/UC Santa Cruz.
>
>The discovery of microbes in space would hardly prove the concept of 
>panspermia, for any materials at these altitudes could well have come from 
>Earth. But a positive result could tell us more about how life manages to 
>persist in the most hostile environments. The Tanpopo (dandelion) 
>experiment will examine tiny particles captured onto an aerogel, returning 
>them to Earth for study of their makeup and possible microbes. Survival at 
>ISS altitudes would definitely give panspermia advocates a boost while 
>forcing us to contemplate the possibility that life began elsewhere.
>
>After all, infalling material reaching Earths surface from space amounts to 
>tens of thousands of tons on a yearly basis. Tanpopo is unlikely to show us 
>any extraterrestrial microbes, but the researchers do plan, as a second 
>part of the experiment, to expose Earth microbes to space on metal plates 
>placed outside the ISS, as this story in New Scientist explains. The 
>microbes will remain outside the station for periods of one to five years. 
>some protected by clay minerals, some openly exposed to the rigors of the 
>vacuum.
>
>The experiment is slated to begin in 2011, offering a useful follow-up to 
>work performed in 2002 by an ESA team using the Russian Foton satellite. 
>Those remote controlled experiments exposed 50 million unprotected spores 
>of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis to space, mixing another set of 50 
>million with particles of clay, red sandstone and other materials. The 
>unprotected spores died quickly, but the protected ones produced numerous 
>survivors, particularly those in the red sandstone mix. An exchange of 
>biological materials between planets could not be ruled out by this 
>experiment.
>
>So well see what Tanpopo comes up with as it goes to work on a highly 
>resistant microbe called Deinococcus radiodurans, known to fend off 
>ultraviolet and gamma radiation and to survive extreme dryness and vacuum. 
>The project, which was presented at the recent Astrobiology Science 
>Conference in Santa Clara CA, may offer yet more proof of lifes survival in 
>hostile environments, but it will surely leave the question of the origin 
>of that life open to further debate. Backing out to the big picture, it may 
>be a long time before we identify microbes within a comet, but finding such 
>evidence would keep interstellar panspermia in the picture, with obvious 
>repercussions for lifes chances around other stars.
>
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