The Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment (LIFE or Phobos LIFE) was an interplanetary mission developed by the Planetary Society. It consisted of sending selected microorganisms on a three-year interplanetary round-trip in a small capsule aboard the Russian Fobos-Grunt spacecraft in 2011, which was a failed sample-return mission to the Martian moon Phobos. The Fobos-Grunt mission failed to leave Earth orbit, and was destroyed.
The goal was to test whether selected organisms can survive a few years in deep space by flying them through interplanetary space. The experiment would have tested one aspect of transpermia, the hypothesis that life could survive space travel, if protected inside rocks blasted by impact off one planet to land on another.
Read more about Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment: Precursor, The Experiment, Mission Failure, Criticism, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words living, flight and/or experiment:
“Kittering’s brain. What we will he think when he resumes life in that body? Will he thank us for giving him a new lease on life? Or will he object to finding his ego living in that human junk heap?”
—W. Scott Darling, and Erle C. Kenton. Dr. Frankenstein (Sir Cedric Hardwicke)
“it pleaseth me when I see through the meadows
The tents and pavilions set up, and great joy have I
When I see o’er the campana knights armed and horses arrayed.
And it pleaseth me when the scouts set in flight the folk with
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And it pleaseth me when I see coming together after them an host of
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—Bertrans De Born (fl. 12th century)
“Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–370 B.C.)