It's Robert E Howard meets Edgar Rice Burroughs. Only on a much smaller scale...

<em>Scientists have picked the first crew of Earthlings to fly to another planet. Those chosen for a Mars mission to be launched in October include specimens of thale cress and brewer's yeast, and a microbe known as Conan the Bacterium.</em>

<em>Together with several other microscopic organisms, these representatives of earthly life will be carried in a package that will be flown on a Russian robot spacecraft and are scheduled to be returned to Earth in 2012. The experiment - Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or Life - is designed to show if living organisms can survive unprotected in space for long periods and thus support the theory of panspermia, which argues that simple organisms can survive for years as they float through space and that life on Earth could have been wafted here from another world.</em>

Full story at the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/12/mars-mission-conan-bacterium-russian" target="_blank">Guardian</a>

Thanks <a href="http://www.kenhollings.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Ken Hollings</a>!