Life to blast off for Mars moon Phobos

摘要

A ragtag group of rugged travellers is sent on a three-year round trip to a desolate moon that might be the site of a future human outpost in space.No, that's not a pitch for a reality show - it's a description of an experiment called LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment) that is scheduled to set off for the larger of Mars's two moons, Phobos, on 8 November, from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.The travellers are not celebrities, but some of Earth's toughest organisms, including the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans and water bearstiny invertebrates that can survive extreme temperatures and low Earth orbit.