Lithopanspermia theory on test

It started with the image of the brown bolder (see left insert) in the Popular Science magazine at the health club and it keeps me going already for a few days: How can the surrogate meteorite Foton-M3 help to test the lithopanspermia theory that is around for several hundred years and still has not changed our understanding of the origin of life on earth? This theory assumes that life was "inoculated" on earth by means of meteorites carrying life forms from outer space to earth from which point it started to evolve to the myriads of forms we know about today. So the theory does not - as often misstated - question the evolution theory, but it defines a different, more advanced starting point for evolution on our planet. The transport of life forms through space and to the surface of Earth through surrounding atmosphere pose difficult questions for the lithopanspermia believers. The radiation in outer space and the immense heat when travelling through the atmosphere are not particularly life-supporting conditions. So has the collaborative space mission between NASA, ES and Russia in 2007 dubbed 'Foton-M3' provided for experimental test opportunities to expose cyanobacteria and lichens to those fierce conditions. The unmanned spacecraft orbited the Earth 12 times last September before it dove into its fall back to a field in Kazakhstan. The hitchhiking life forms were recovered and are under investigation. Different to reports you may have seen in other blogs, the results are still confidential since they have not yet been published in a scientific journal. ESA's coordinator Rene Demets told me in an email yesterday "that the lichens fully survived just as they did in 2005". By this he refers to a 2005 experiment published in a 2007 paper (Sancho et al., Astrobiology 7(3)) where lichens proved to recover their full metabolic activity within 24 hours after return to Earth from a 16-day space mission. As soo as I learn mora about the results of the FOTON-M3 mission, I will share them with you so we can speculate some more about the merits of the lithopanspermia theory. Image credits: ESA, BBC, and Rene Demets.