6 | NewScientist | 11 February 2012

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THE Antarctic quest, 12 years in the making, is about to hit its climax. Will a Russian team find life in Lake Vostok? It may be more exciting if they don’t.

As New Scientist went to press, news outlets around the world were speculating on whether the Russian Antarctic Expedition had finally drilled into Lake Vostok. It sits beneath 3.5 kilometres of Antarctic ice and has been cut off from the surface for millions of years, raising hopes it might be home to bizarre life forms.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the expedition told New Scientist that the drill made contact with water late last week and then automatically withdrew

up the borehole, as planned. The team were checking their data to confirm that the water was from the lake and not a pocket of water in the ice above it.

Deep below the ice Even if they have made it to the lake, the Russians will still need to wait a year until the next field season to sample its secrets. Meanwhile, debate is already raging over whether bacteria found in ice sampled from above the lake are the result of contamination. Some argue the lake itself will contain toxic levels of oxygen and hydrogen peroxide, rendering it completely sterile.

That could be just as interesting. If Lake Vostok turns out to be dead, it will be the only known place on Earth where there is water but no life.

Seeking Soyuz subA LEAK in the Russian Soyuz capsule has delayed flights to the International Space Station. How ready are commercial space taxis to pick up the slack?

Russia’s space agency Roscosmos reported last week that the Soyuz capsule scheduled to take astronauts to the ISS on 30 March sprang a leak when its air pressure was accidentally pumped too high during a test. A replacement won’t be ready until 15 May.

That’s focused attention on commercial spacecraft, long touted

as the ultimate replacement vehicles for such missions. But recent progress has been mixed.

California-based SpaceX planned to send its Dragon capsule to dock with the ISS in March, but last week NASA said the mission would likely be delayed till early April. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Virginia, due to fly cargo to the station, is scheduled to launch a demo mission in April or May but will probably also be delayed.

Things are looking up for Armadillo Aerospace of Texas, however, which made its highest flight yet on 28 January.

Astronaut dreamsTIGHT budgets, spacecraft failures and an uncertain future can’t keep some dreams grounded. Would-be US astronauts seem as keen as ever to make it into space.

Despite retiring its shuttle last year, NASA still sends astronauts to the International Space Station: right now, it uses the Russian Soyuz capsule though in future it may use commercial spacecraft (see “Seeking Soyuz sub”, above). The agency reported this week

–New forms of warfare to come–

–This is the life–

Mind wars of the futureWARS of the future might be decided through manipulation of people’s minds, concludes a report this week from the UK’s Royal Society. It warns that the potential military applications of neuroscience breakthroughs need to be regulated more closely.

“New imaging technology will allow new targets in the brain to be identified, and while some will be vital for medicine, others might be used to incapacitate people,” says Rod Flower of Queen Mary, University of London, who chairs the panel that wrote the report.

The report describes how such technology is allowing organisations like the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to test ways of improving soldiers’ mental alertness and capabilities. It may also

allow soldiers to operate weaponry remotely through mind-machine interfaces, the report says.

Other research could be used to design gases and electronics that temporarily disable enemy forces. This potentially violates human rights, through interference with thought processes, and opens up the threat of indiscriminate killing. The panel highlights the time that Russian security forces ended a hostage siege in a Moscow theatre in 2002 by filling the venue with fentanyl, an anaesthetic gas. Along with the perpetrators, 125 hostages died.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is vague about whether such incapacitants are legal. Ambiguities like this must be ironed out, say the panellists.

“If Lake Vostok turns out to be dead, it will be the only place on Earth where there is water but no life”

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