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Projects: LIFE Experiment: Phobos

With Only Months to Delivery, Work on LIFE Experiment Enters Home Stretch

Send this story to a friend or share it at Slashdot - Digg this - Reddit - Del.icio.us - Newsvine - NowPublic Click to enlarge > Model of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft Displayed at the 2007 Paris Air Show at Le Bourget. Credit: Paolo Ulivi

With less than four months to go before we are due to deliver the LIFE experiment to the Phobos-Grunt engineers, work on the project is moving along with ever-increasing intensity.

During the summer, the LIFE team successfully built an engineering test model of the experiment's flight canister and handed it over to the mission's project scientist, Sasha Zakharov of IKI – the Russian Academy's Space Research Institute.

The model is nearly identical to the version that will fly on board the spacecraft, with the exception that it does not contain living organisms or radiation and temperature sensors. The mission engineers will use this model to finalize the experiment's placement on the Phobos-Grunt.

We are now pressing forward toward our December 31, 2008 delivery deadline for the final flight unit. You can help us reach our goal! For a limited time, your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar, thanks to a generous challenge grant.

Even while this is going on, team members Bud Fraze and Tomas Svitek at Stellar Explorations Inc. are continuing to subject our own engineering model to severe tests, to ensure that the experiment will survive its arduous voyage structurally intact. We are also conducting a series of random vibration tests, shaking the experiment canister to simulate launch conditions and other rough portions of LIFE's long journey. Stay tuned for the results of our tests!

Once all the testing is completed, the final details of the canister's design finalized, we will move on to build the actual flight unit. Unlike the test canister, the flight module will contain passive radiation and temperature monitors that were not included in the engineering model. Their job will be to record the extreme conditions inside the canister during the long journey through space.

Click to enlarge > The LIFE module This sealed module was used in tests of the experiment's strength and resiliency. It is identical to the module that will fly to Phobos Credit: The Planetary Society

While our collaborators at Stellar Explorations are concentrating on the physical integrity of the module, our colleagues at ATCC (the American Type Culture Collection) are working on the biological side of the experiment. They are testing different organisms and methods by which to pack them into the canister's sample tubes. The microbes they are working on are the hardiest of species, known to survive in the most extreme conditions. After all, if we want to find out if living things can survive a long journey through space, we should try out the toughest ones first. If anything can survive the brutally hostile conditions of space, it will be these organisms.

Less than four months are left before the scheduled delivery of the fully functional LIFE experiment. In this time we still need to decide the final details of the canister's physical structure, and settle all remaining issues relating to the experiment's biological content. And then we need to build the experiment, load it with its precious biological cargo, seal it, and deliver it to the mission engineers.

True, much work remains to be done. But we are sure of this much: We will be ready.

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