Download Marsbugs Vol. 12, No. 4

Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter
Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
Editor/Publisher: David J. Thomas, Ph.D., Science Division, Lyon College,
Batesville, Arkansas 72503-2317, USA. [email protected]
Marsbugs is published on a weekly to monthly basis as warranted by the number of articles and announcements. Copyright
of this compilation exists with the editor, but individual authors retain the copyright of specific articles. Opinions expressed
in this newsletter are those of the authors, and are not necessarily endorsed by the editor or by Lyon College. E-mail
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information to the editor.
This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows an impact crater in Chryse Planitia,
not too far from the Viking 1 lander site, that to seems to resemble a bug-eyed "alien" head. The two odd
depressions at the north end of the crater (the "eyes") may have formed by wind or water erosion. This region has
been modified by both processes, with water action occurring in the distant past via floods that poured across
western Chryse Planitia from Maja Valles, and wind action common occurrence in more recent history. This crater
is located near 22.5°N, 47.9°W. The 150 meter scale bar is about 164 yards long. Sunlight illuminates the scene
from the left/lower left. Image credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS. [http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/26/2005.01.26.M0204443.gif]
Page 9
THE SANDS OF MARS
By Trudy E. Bell and Tony Phillips
THEORY PROPOSES NEW VIEW OF SUN AND EARTH'S
CREATION
Arizona State University release
Page 10
RADIO FREE EARTH (INTERVIEW WITH NEIL
DEGRASSE TYSON, PART 3)
By Leslie Mullen
ASTROBIOLOGIST KEVIN HAND HELPS IMAX
DIRECTOR FILM ALIENS OF THE DEEP
By Kenneth M. Dixon
Announcements
Articles and News
Page 1
Page 3
Page 4
SIMILAR, BUT DIFFERENT: HUYGENS PROBE
UNLOCKS ANOTHER PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
By Cynthia Phillips
Page 4
WHY DO WE HAVE A SPACE PROGRAM ANYWAY?
By Richard Godwin
Page 4
"MOSS IN SPACE" PROJECT SHOWS HOW SOME
PLANTS GROW WITHOUT GRAVITY
By Holly Wagner
Page 11
EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL MARS SOCIETY
CONVENTION
Mars Society release
Page 13
NIAC STUDENT FELLOWS WANTED
By Robert Cassanova
Page 13
ARE WE EARTHLINGS ALONE?
SETI Institute release
Mission Reports
Page 6
UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR MIGHT BE NEEDED TO
UNDERSTAND ET
By Douglas Vakoch
Page 13
CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS FOR 20-26 JANUARY
2005
NASA/JPL release
Page 6
SICKENING SOLAR FLARES
By Tony Phillips
Page 14
NASA SENDS FIRST GENESIS EARLY-SCIENCE SAMPLE
TO RESEARCHERS
NASA release 05-030
Page 7
TITAN'S METHANE NOT PRODUCED BY LIFE,
SCIENTISTS SAY
By Melissa Eddy
Page 15
MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES
NASA/JPL/MSSS release
Page 15
MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES
NASA/JPL/ASU release
Page 7
TEMPLATING OURSELVES (INTERVIEW WITH NEIL
DEGRASSE TYSON, PART 2)
By Leslie Mullen
THEORY PROPOSES NEW VIEW OF SUN AND EARTH'S
CREATION
Arizona State University release
21 May 2004
new theory challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing instead that the Sun
formed in a violent nebular environment—a byproduct of the chaos wrought
by intense ultraviolet radiation and powerful explosions that accompany the
short but spectacular lives of massive, luminous stars.
[I realize that this article is somewhat old. Somehow I missed it when it was
originally released. DJT]
The new theory is described in a "Perspectives" article appearing in the May
21 issue of Science. The article was written by a group of Arizona State
University astronomers and meteorite researchers who cite recently
discovered isotopic evidence and accumulated astronomical observations to
argue for a history of development of the Sun, the Earth and our Solar System
that is significantly different from the traditionally accepted scenario. If borne
out by future work, this vision of our cosmic birth could have profound
implications for understanding everything from the size and shape of our solar
Like most creation stories, this one is dramatic: we began, not as a mere
glimmer buried in an obscure cloud, but instead amidst the glare and turmoil
of restless giants. Or so says a new theory, supported by stunning
astronomical images and hard chemical analysis. For years most astronomers
have imagined that the Sun and Solar System formed in relative isolation,
buried in a quiet, dark corner of a less-than-imposing interstellar cloud. The
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
system to the physical makeup of the Earth and the development of the
chemistry of life.
2
"There are two different sorts of environment where low-mass stars like the
Sun form," explained ASU astronomer Jeff Hester, the essay's lead author.
"In one kind of star-forming environment, you have a fairly quiescent process
in which an undisturbed molecular cloud slowly collapses, forming a star
here, a star there. The other type of environment in which Sun-like stars form
is radically different. These are more massive regions that form not only lowmass stars, but luminous high-mass stars, as well."
More massive regions are very different because once a high-mass star forms,
it begins pumping out huge amounts of energy that in turn completely changes
the way Sun-like stars form in the surrounding environment. "People have
long imagined that the Sun formed in the first, more quiescent type of
environment," Hester noted, "but we believe that we have compelling
evidence that this is not the case."
Critical to the team's argument is the recent discovery in meteorites of patterns
of isotopes that can only have been caused by the radioactive decay of iron60, an unstable isotope that has a half life of only a million and a half years.
Iron-60 can only be formed in the heart of a massive star and thus the
presence of live iron-60 in the young Solar System provides strong evidence
that when the Sun formed (4.5 billion years ago) a massive star was nearby.
Hester's coauthors on the Science essay include Steve Desch, Kevin Healy,
and Laurie Leshin. Leshin is a cosmochemist and director of Arizona State
University's Center for Meteorite Studies. "One of the exciting things about
the research is that it is truly transdisciplinary, drawing from both astrophysics
and the study of meteorites—rocks that you can pick up and hold in your
hand—to arrive at a new understanding of our origins," noted Leshin.
Annotated photo of the Trifid Nebula showing the formation of lowmass stars (YSO's—Young Solar Objects). Image credit: NASA/
Hubble Space Telescope/Jeff Hester.
The Eagle Nebula, as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
This famous photo, often known as "The Pillars of Creation," shows
giant nebular clouds being evaporated by the ferocious energy of
massive stars, exposing emerging solar systems, much like our own.
Image credit: NASA/HST/Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen.
When a massive star is born, its intense ultraviolet radiation forms an "HII
region"—a region of hot, ionized gas that pushes outward through interstellar
space. The Eagle Nebula, the Orion Nebula, and the Trifid Nebula are all
well-known examples of HII regions. A shock wave is driven in advance of
the expanding HII region, compressing surrounding gas and triggering the
formation of new low-mass stars. "We see triggered low-mass star formation
going on in HII regions today," said Healy, who recently completed a study of
radio observations of this process at work.
Illustration showing a high-mass star's effect on a nearby molecular
cloud, resulting in the formation of a low-mass star like our Sun. Image
credit: Jeff Hester.
The star does not have much time to get its act together, though. Within
100,000 years or so, the star and what is left of its small natal cloud will be
uncovered by the advancing boundary of the HII region and exposed directly
to the harsh ultraviolet radiation from the massive star. "We see such objects
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
emerging from the boundaries of HII regions," Hester said. "These are the
'evaporating gaseous globules' or 'EGGs' seen in the famous Hubble image of
the Eagle Nebula."
EGGs do not live forever either. Within about ten thousand years an EGG
evaporates, leaving behind only the low-mass star and its now-unprotected
protoplanetary disk to face the brunt of the massive star's wrath. Like a chip
of dry ice on a hot day, the disk itself now begins to evaporate, forming a
characteristic tear-drop-shaped structure like the "proplyds" seen in Hubble
images of the Orion Nebula. "Once we understood what we were looking at,
we realized that we had a number of images of EGGs caught just as they were
turning into proplyds," said Hester. "The evolutionary tie between these two
classes of objects is clear."
3
the young solar system, and could explain other peculiar effects such as
anomalies in the abundances of isotopes of oxygen in meteorites."
One of the most intriguing speculations is that the amount of radioactive
material injected into the young solar system by a supernova might have
profoundly influenced the habitability of Earth itself. Heat released by the
decay of this material may have been responsible for "baking out" the
planetesimals from which the earth formed, and in the process determining
how much water is on Earth today.
"It is kind of exciting to think that life on Earth may owe its existence to
exactly what sort of massive star triggered the formation of the Sun in the first
place, and exactly how close we happened to be to that star when it went
supernova," mused Hester. "One thing that is clear is that the traditional
boundaries between fields such as astrophysics, meteoritics, planetary science,
and astrobiology just got less clear-cut. This new scenario has a lot of
implications, and makes a lot of new predictions that we can test."
If it is accepted, the new theory may also be of use in looking for life in the
universe beyond. "We want to know how common Earth-like planets are.
The problem with answering that question is that if you don't know how
Earth-like planets are formed—if you don't understand their connection with
astrophysical environments—then all you can do is speculate," Hester said.
"We think that we're starting to see a very specific causal connection between
astrophysical environments and the things that have to be in place to make a
planet like ours."
Read the original news release at
http://www.asu.edu/asunews/research/sun_earth_creation.htm.
An additional article on this subject is available at
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1419.html.
ASTROBIOLOGIST KEVIN HAND HELPS IMAX DIRECTOR FILM
ALIENS OF THE DEEP
By Kenneth M. Dixon
Stanford University release
14 January 2005
The Trifid Nebula. Image credit: NASA/HST/Jeff Hester.
Within another ten thousand years or so the proplyd, too, is eroded away. All
that remains is the star itself, surrounded by the inner part of the disk
(comparable in size to our Solar System), which is able to withstand the
continuing onslaught of radiation. It is from this disk and in this environment
that planets may form. The process leaves a Sun-like star and its surrounding
disk sitting in the interior of a low density cavity with a massive star close at
hand.
Massive stars die young, exploding in violent events
called "supernovae". When a supernova explodes it peppers surrounding
infant planetary systems with newly synthesized chemical elements—
including short-lived radioactive isotopes such as iron-60.
Graduate student Kevin Hand explores the potential for life on Europa, an icy
moon of Jupiter, for his doctoral work with geological and environmental
sciences Associate Professor Christopher Chyba. Like most astrobiologists
and planetary scientists, Hand must do his research from afar. He can't ride a
rocket 365 million miles to Europa, drill into the ice-capped ocean and scuba
dive to find signs of life. Recently, however, film director and exploration
enthusiast James Cameron (Titanic, Aliens) gave Hand a chance to search for
"alien" life a bit closer to home—a mere 2 miles below the ocean surface—as
part of Cameron's IMAX documentary, Aliens of the Deep, which opens
January 28. The communities studied by Hand and presented in the film are
as close to alien as anything on Earth. "We can then begin to understand the
task ahead of us as we search for life beyond Earth," Hand says.
"This is where the meteorite data come in," said Hester. "When we look at
HII regions we see that they are filled with young, Sun-like stars, many of
which are known to be surrounded by protoplanetary disks. Once you ask the
question, 'what is going to happen when those massive stars go supernova?'
the answer is pretty obvious. Those young disks are going to get enriched
with a lot of freshly-made elements."
"When you then pick up a meteorite and find a mix of materials that can only
be easily explained by a nearby supernova, you realize that you are looking at
the answer to a very longstanding question in astronomy and planetary
science," Desch added.
"So from this we now know that if you could go back 4.5 billion years and
watch the Sun and Solar System forming, you would see the kind of
environment that you see today in the Eagle or Trifid nebulas," said Hester.
"There are many aspects of our Solar System that seem to make sense in light
of the new scenario," notes Leshin. "For example, this might be why the outer
part of the Solar System—the Kuiper Belt—seems to end abruptly.
Ultraviolet radiation would also have played a role in the organic chemistry of
Kevin Hand traveled to the bottom of the Atlantic in a submersible to
shoot Aliens of the Deep. Image credit: Kevin Hand.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
Funded and distributed by Disney, the film takes audiences to the ocean floor
for a glimpse at the bizarre creatures living near hydrothermal vents—gushing
underwater hot springs powered by the volcanic activity underlying midocean ridges. Working with a small crew of astrobiologists, marine biologists,
planetary scientists and geophysicists from NASA and other institutions, Hand
made eight trips in a submersible rover to six vent sites. Logging dives in
both the Pacific and the Atlantic to spots with names like "Lost City" and
"Snake Pit," he spent up to 15 hours at a time in the tiny vessel, slowly
descending toward the ocean floor to capture stunning images of 6-foot
tubeworms, blind white crabs and incredible masses of white shrimp that can
"see" heat.
But what do these curious creatures have to do with the search for
extraterrestrial life? In short, the harsh conditions near hydrothermal vents
mirror those found on other planets and moons, so life that exists at vents may
tell us what to look for in space.
"This perhaps reflects the most important lesson learned from the discovery of
the vents back in the late 1970s," explains Hand. The surprising existence of
life "caused the biological community to scratch its head and rethink things."
4
SIMILAR, BUT DIFFERENT: HUYGENS PROBE UNLOCKS
ANOTHER PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
By Cynthia Phillips
From The SETI Institute
20 January 2005
With the successful landing of the European Space Agency's Huygens probe
on Saturn's moon Titan, we can now bring the number of bodies in the solar
system that have been landed on by a spacecraft up to four (or five, if you
count the soft-crash-landing of the NEAR spacecraft on the asteroid Eros).
The Moon has been the most visited, with robotic landers from the former
Soviet Union and from NASA, as well as six successful landings with
astronauts in the late 1960's and 1970's. The planet Venus was visited by four
successful unmanned landers from the former Soviet Union in the 1970's, and
the planet Mars has been visited successfully by a variety of NASA robotic
landers starting in the 1970's with the two Viking landers, 1997's Mars
Pathfinder, and 2004's Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
So what have we learned from this planetary exploration? While orbiting
spacecraft can map the surfaces of planets, and provide big-picture geological
context, there's no substitute for actually landing on the surface of another
world to get an idea of what it's really like there. Especially for us humans,
it's much easier to picture ourselves on the ground of an alien world with
pictures taken from the surface than with pictures taken from orbit. You can
imagine that you're really there, and sometimes there's just no substitute,
scientifically, for a little pretended sightseeing.
Read the full article at
http://www.seti.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=194993&ct
=352221.
WHY DO WE HAVE A SPACE PROGRAM ANYWAY?
By Richard Godwin
From Ad Astra and Space.com
27 January 2005
Why do we have a space program anyway? Many people in the past have
asked this very same question. They usually continue on, "We should spend
the money fixing our problems here on Earth first."
A submersible rover is lowered into
the water during the Atlantic leg of
the expedition. Image credit: Kevin
Hand.
Scientists had assumed that nothing could live in the extreme environment,
where scorching 345 degree Celsius temperatures, strange water chemistry
and zero sunlight cannot support a typical ocean food web. Consider that a
cloudy black flare of iron, copper, zinc and hydrogen sulfide sustains the
ecosystem. It's an upside-down power plant where microbes eat scalding
exhaust. Will a similar or equally extraordinary system be discovered under
the Europan ocean or in the martian fossil record? If so, it will probably
resemble simple microbial life on Earth and nothing more, Hand says. But
these aliens of the deep prove it's always worth checking.
A National Geographic companion book and a guide for educators wishing to
incorporate the material into their curricula are available to accompany the
spectacular film footage. Says Hand, "The target audience is third graders,
though I think [James Cameron] and his team have done a nice job of making
it great for all ages."
Find out more about Aliens of the Deep at
http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/aliensofthedeep/.
Read the original news release at http://newsservice.stanford.edu/news/2005/january19/imax-011905.html.
Additional articles on this subject are available at:
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1420.html
http://cl.exct.net/?ffcd16-fe6615747565037d7211-fe28167073670175701c72
This is a good question and a reasonable assertion regarding where we spend
our science dollars. Some of the old answers such as "Because exploring is in
our souls," or "Because it is our destiny", seem a little trite to the concerned
taxpayer. So why do we go?
Exploring, in the past, has almost always delivered much more in economic or
scientific benefits than the original explorers could ever have imagined.
Think of Lewis or Clark standing in downtown Portland Oregon today, or
even better, Christopher Columbus standing in Times Square. It would be
beyond their imaginations. There would be the same feeling of amazement if
Neil Armstrong could look up at the enormous pressurized structures that will
probably exist on the moon in a hundred years time. Exploring really IS what
we do. If we hadn't pushed out from the plains of Africa those thousands of
years ago, we probably wouldn't have survived until now and we certainly
wouldn't have been as widespread and successful a species as we now are.
Space is just the next big step that we have to take if we are to survive and
develop as a species. To do otherwise will result in stagnation and our
eventual demise.
Read the full article at
http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_whyspace_050127.html.
"MOSS IN SPACE" PROJECT SHOWS HOW SOME PLANTS GROW
WITHOUT GRAVITY
By Holly Wagner
University of Ohio release
27 January 2005
Experiments on moss grown aboard two space shuttle Columbia missions
showed that the plants didn't behave as scientists expected them to in the nearabsence of gravity. The common roof moss (Ceratodon purpureus) grew in
striking, clockwise spirals, according to Fred Sack, the study's lead
investigator and a professor of plant cellular and molecular biology at Ohio
State University. He and his colleagues noted this even in moss cultures
grown aboard the second of the two space shuttle missions, STS-107, which
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
5
had disintegrated upon its reentry in early 2003. Most of the hardware that
contained the moss was later recovered on the ground, with some of the moss
cultures still intact. The researchers expected random, unorganized growth, as
seen with every other type of plant flown in space.
"We don't know why moss grew non-randomly in space, but we found distinct
spiral patterns," Sack said. He and his colleagues report their findings in the
current online edition of the journal, Planta.
An image of the common roof moss (Ceratodon purpureus) used in the
experiments aboard both Columbia missions. Image credit: Fred Sack.
The image above shows the the spiral formation of a moss culture
gown during the 2003 Space Shuttle missions. Researchers suspect
that those spirals resulted from a residual spacing mechanism
intended to control colony growth and the distribution of branches, a
mechanism that is normally suppressed by the stronger influence of
gravity on Earth. Image credit: Volker Kern.
Common roof moss is a relatively primitive plant in which certain cells, called
tip cells, are guided by gravity in their growth. This gravity response is only
seen when moss is kept in the dark, as light overrides gravity's effect. Moss
originates from chains of cells with growth only taking place in the tip-most
cell of a chain. When grown in the dark, the tip cells grow away from
gravity's pull this gets the cells out of the soil and into the light.
The way these tip cells respond to gravity is exceptional, Sack said. In most
plants, gravity guides the growth of roots or stems, which are made up of
many cells. But in moss it is just a single cell that both senses and responds to
gravity.
Common roof moss was grown in Petri dishes in lockers aboard two
Columbia shuttle missions the first in 1997 and the other in early 2003.
Although most of the experimental moss hardware from this mission was later
recovered on the ground, only 11 of the 87 recovered cultures grown on this
flight were usable.
Astronauts followed similar experimental procedures on both flights. The
astronauts chemically fixed the moss cultures before each mission reentered
Earth's atmosphere. This process stopped all growth in the moss.
Control studies conducted at Kennedy Space Center in Florida used hardware
and procedures similar to those used aboard each flight. However, these moss
cultures were either kept stationary or turned at a slow spin on a clinostat a
machine that resembles a record turntable placed on its edge, and is used to
negate the effects of gravity.
On earth gravity controls the direction of moss growth so thoroughly that it
grows straight away from the center of the earth, just like shoots in a field of
corn. In space, scientists expected the cells to grow erratically in all directions
since there was no gravity cue. Instead, the moss grew non-randomly in two
successive types of patterns. The first pattern resembled that of spokes in a
wheel, where the cells grew outward from where they were originally sown.
Moss grew in these canisters while in orbit. These particular canisters
were recovered by ground crews after the 2003 Space Shuttle
Columbia disintegrated upon reentry into Earth's orbit. Image credit:
David Reed.
Later, the tips of the filaments grew in arcs so that the entire culture showed
clockwise spirals. The same patterns were found when the moss was grown
on a clinostat on the ground. Even with the limited data from STS-107, 10 of
the 11 salvageable moss cultures showed this kind of strong radial growth and
spiraling. Ground controls grown in normal conditions of gravity grew as
moss normally would on earth.
The results are unusual, Sack said, as this is the first time researchers report
seeing this kind of plant growth response in space. "Unlike the ordered
response of moss cells in space, other types of plants grow randomly," he said.
"So in moss, gravity must normally mask a default growth pattern. This
pattern is only revealed when the gravity signal is lost or disrupted. The
fascinating question is why would moss have a backup growth response to
conditions it has never experienced on earth? Perhaps spirals are a vestigial
growth pattern, a pattern that later became masked when moss evolved the
ability to respond to gravity."
Sack conducted the study with Volker Kern, who is now at Kennedy Space
Center and was at Ohio State at the time of the study; David Reed, with
Bionetics Corporation based at Kennedy Space Center; with former Ohio
State colleagues Jeanette Nadeau, Jochen Schwuchow and Alexander
Skripnikov; and with Jessica Lucas, a graduate student in Sack's lab. Support
for this research came from the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate of
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
6
"proton storm". Here on Earth, no one suffered. Our planet's thick
atmosphere and magnetic field protects us from protons and other forms of
solar radiation. In fact, the storm was good. When the plodding coronal mass
ejection arrived 36 hours later and hit Earth's magnetic field, sky watchers in
Europe saw the brightest and prettiest auroras in years:
(http://www.spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery_01jan05_page4.htm).
The
Moon is a different story.
Mosses were grown inside the canisters in these small, square Petri
dish fixation units, which allowed for chemical fixation in microgravity.
Image credit: David Reed.
Contacts:
Fred Sack
Phone: 614-292-0896
E-mail: [email protected]
Holly Wagner
Phone: 614-292-8310
E-mail: [email protected]
Read the original news release at
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/spiragro.htm.
Additional articles on this subject are available at:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-05h.html
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/moss_grows_spiral.html
UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR MIGHT BE NEEDED TO
UNDERSTAND ET
By Douglas Vakoch
From Space.com
27 January 2005
Astronauts on the Moon are less protected against solar flare radiation
than we are on Earth. Image credit: NASA/Dennis Davidson.
"The Moon is totally exposed to solar flares," explains solar physicist David
Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. "It has no atmosphere or
magnetic field to deflect radiation." Protons rushing at the Moon simply hit
the ground—or whoever might be walking around outside.
The January 20th proton storm was by some measures the biggest since 1989.
It was particularly rich in high-speed protons packing more than 100 million
electron volts (100 MeV) of energy. Such protons can burrow through 11
centimeters of water. A thin-skinned spacesuit would have offered little
resistance.
Will we ever find a primer for decoding messages from extraterrestrials? Last
month, anthropologists who gathered for a major conference in Atlanta,
Georgia heard some news that will be sobering for SETI enthusiasts: it may be
much more difficult to understand extraterrestrials than many scientists have
thought before. Among the sessions held during December's annual meeting
of the American Anthropological Association was one called "Anthropology,
Archaeology, and Interstellar Communication: Science and the Knowledge of
Distant Worlds." The session included papers by scholars from such diverse
fields as astronomy, archaeology, anthropology, and psychology. Is there a
Cosmic Rosetta Stone, they asked, drawing parallels to Earth's own Rosetta
Stone, which provided the key to decoding Egyptian hieroglyphics? Will we
ever find a comparable primer for decrypting any messages we might receive
some day from extraterrestrials?
Read the full article at
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_translator_050127.html.
SICKENING SOLAR FLARES
By Tony Phillips
From NASA Science News
27 January 2005
NASA is returning to the Moon—not just robots, but people. In the decades
ahead we can expect to see habitats, greenhouses and power stations up there.
Astronauts will be out among the moondust and craters, exploring,
prospecting, building. Last week, though, there were no humans walking
around on the Moon—good thing.
On January 20th, 2005, a giant sunspot named "NOAA 720" exploded. The
blast sparked an X-class solar flare, the most powerful kind, and hurled a
billion-ton cloud of electrified gas (a "coronal mass ejection") into space.
Solar protons accelerated to nearly light speed by the explosion reached the
Earth-Moon system minutes after the flare—the beginning of a days-long
Giant sunspot 720 (and a passing airplane) photographed by amateur
astronomer Jan Koeman of the Netherlands on January 15, 2005.
"An astronaut caught outside when the storm hit would've gotten sick," says
Francis Cucinotta, NASA's radiation health officer at the Johnson Space
Center. At first, he'd feel fine, but a few days later symptoms of radiation
sickness would appear: vomiting, fatigue, low blood counts. These symptoms
might persist for days.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), by the way, were safe.
The ISS is heavily shielded, plus the station orbits Earth inside our planet's
protective magnetic field. "The crew probably absorbed no more than 1 rem,"
says Cucinotta.
One rem, short for Roentgen Equivalent Man, is the radiation dose that causes
the same injury to human tissue as 1 roentgen of x-rays. A typical diagnostic
CAT scan, the kind you might get to check for tumors, delivers about 1 rem.
So for the crew of the ISS, the January 20th proton storm was no worse than a
trip to the doctor on Earth.
On the Moon, Cucinotta estimates, an astronaut protected by no more than a
space suit would have absorbed about 50 rem of ionizing radiation. That's
enough to cause radiation sickness. "But it would not have been fatal," he
adds.
To die, you'd need to absorb, suddenly, 300 rem or more. The key word is
suddenly. You can get 300 rem spread out over a number of days or weeks
with little effect. Spreading the dose gives the body time to repair and replace
its own damaged cells. But if that 300 rem comes all at once... "we estimate
that 50% of people exposed would die within 60 days without medical care,"
says Cucinotta. Such doses from a solar flare are possible. To wit, the
legendary solar storm of August 1972.
It's legendary (at NASA) because it happened during the Apollo program
when astronauts were going back and forth to the Moon regularly. At the
time, the crew of Apollo 16 had just returned to Earth in April while the crew
of Apollo 17 was preparing for a moon-landing in December. Luckily,
everyone was safely on Earth when the sun went haywire.
"A large sunspot appeared on August 2, 1972, and for the next 10 days it
erupted again and again," recalls Hathaway. The spate of explosions caused,
"a proton storm much worse than the one we've just experienced," adds
Cucinotta. Researchers have been studying it ever since.
7
methane stems from living organisms. More than a week after the Huygens
probe plunged through Titan's atmosphere, researchers continue to pore over
data collected for clues to how the only celestial body known to have a
significant atmosphere other than Earth came to be and whether it can provide
clues to how life arose here.
Initial findings have revealed an abundance of methane on the surface of
Titan—the first moon other than Earth's to be explored-which is crucial to
supporting its thick atmosphere. But scientists are still puzzling over the
origin of the methane.
Read the full article at
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/ap_huygens_update_050127.html.
TEMPLATING OURSELVES (INTERVIEW WITH NEIL DEGRASSE
TYSON, PART 2)
By Leslie Mullen
From Astrobiology Magazine
31 January 2005
Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York, and also a Visiting
Research Scientist at Princeton University's Department of Astrophysics. He
writes a monthly column called "Universe" for Natural History magazine, and
is the author of several books, including One Universe: At Home in the
Cosmos and The Sky is Not the Limit: Adventures in an Urban Environment.
His most recent project is the NOVA four-part series, Origins. As host of the
PBS miniseries, Tyson guides viewers on a journey into the mysteries of the
universe and the origin of life itself. In this interview with Astrobiology
Magazine editor, Leslie Mullen, Tyson discusses the human tendency of being
self-centered, and how that can shape our reality and cloud our vision of the
truth.
Cucinotta estimates that a moonwalker caught in the August 1972 storm might
have absorbed 400 rem. Deadly? "Not necessarily," he says. A quick trip
back to Earth for medical care could have saved the hypothetical astronaut's
life.
Surely, though, no astronaut is going to walk around on the Moon when
there's a giant sunspot threatening to explode. "They're going to stay inside
their spaceship (or habitat)," says Cucinotta. An Apollo command module
with its aluminum hull would have attenuated the 1972 storm from 400 rem to
less than 35 rem at the astronaut's blood-forming organs. That's the difference
between needing a bone marrow transplant, or just a headache pill.
Modern spaceships are even safer. "We measure the shielding of our ships in
units of areal density—or grams per centimeter-squared," says Cucinotta. Big
numbers, which represent thick hulls, are better:
* The hull of an Apollo command module rated 7 to 8 g/cm2.
* A modern space shuttle has 10 to 11 g/cm2.
* The hull of the ISS, in its most heavily shielded areas, has 15 g/cm2.
* Future moon bases will have storm shelters made of polyethylene and
aluminum possibly exceeding 20 g/cm2.
A typical space suit, meanwhile, has only 0.25 g/cm2, offering little
protection. "That's why you want to be indoors when the proton storm hits,"
says Cucinotta.
But the Moon beckons and when explorers get there they're not going to want
to stay indoors. A simple precaution: like explorers on Earth, they can check
the weather forecast—the space weather forecast. Are there any big 'spots on
the sun? What's the chance of a proton storm? Is a coronal mass ejection
coming? All clear? It's time to step out.
Read the original article at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/27jan_solarflares.htm.
TITAN'S METHANE NOT PRODUCED BY LIFE, SCIENTISTS SAY
By Melissa Eddy
From Associated Press and Space.com
27 January 2005
Saturn's largest moon contains all the ingredients for life, but senior scientists
studying data from a European probe ruled out the possibility Titan's abundant
Left: If life does occur outside of earth, is it limited to single-celled
microbial life such as bacteria? Image credit: BioMEDIA. Right: "Life
might have originated in Europa early in the solar system's history (and
may live there still." —Peter Ward. Image credit: NASA.
Astrobiology Magazine (AM): One interesting point you make in the Origins
companion book is that while we are just a tiny part of the galaxy, UFO and
alien stories imply we are the center of attention in the universe. You also
note that, because of the vast interstellar distances between possible
civilizations, contact may never be possible. If that's true, then how would
our "self-centered" viewpoint be harmful? Just how bad is it that we're so
self-centered?
Neil deGrasse Tyson (NT): I think our big human ego can blind us from
making or accepting certain kinds of scientific discoveries. It's why it was
hard to accept the decentralization of our position in the cosmos: that the
Earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa. There's no reason why this
information should be hard to accept unless you have an ego or dogma that's
fighting it.
But I think a consequence of greater impact is in view around the world today.
So much of the world's problems come about because some people see
themselves as more important than others. The simple notion—"I'm more
important than you"—can lead to devastating political social consequences,
like war and other forms of bloodshed like civil unrest. An attitude of selfimportance can show up politically, culturally, religiously, spiritually, or in
whatever way people divide themselves. They choose up sides, one side
thinks they're better than the other, and go to war over it.
I don't know if I'm just a hopeless dreamer, but I'd like to believe that the
cosmic perspective, which is brought about by any kind of study of our
smallness in the universe, makes you vastly more humble as a citizen of the
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
planet. And from my reading, it makes you less likely to take up arms against
one another, or to invade another nation. The world might just be compelled
to live in greater peace when we're made aware of our statistical, temporal,
and spatial insignificance in the cosmos.
8
AM: Don't you think some would say that we're just limiting ourselves by
looking for life as we know it?
NT: Life probably exists in more ways then we can think of. Of all those
other ways, in an environment of limited funds, you want to start with what
you know has already worked—you start with life as we know it. Then, if
you're successful or not, you build up evidence for either finding it or not
finding it. You say, "OK, we were unsuccessful this way, or we were
successful this way, now let's see what other variations we can find." It's just
how to be efficient in this or any scientific investigation of the unknown.
But you're right, it could be limiting. We're looking for Earth-like planets
around sun-like stars, because we know there is life around at least one Earthlike planet around at least one sun-like star. You can't fault us for using
ourselves as a template. But like I said that's very different from saying we're
alone in the universe.
When the book, Rare Earth, was first
published several years ago, it
raised a great deal of controversy
among astrobiologists. Written by
Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee,
the book's hypothesis suggests that
complex life is rare in the universe,
and may even be unique to Earth.
Image credit: SETI League.
AM: Moving aside from the politics of it, do you think an Earth-centered
viewpoint could affect the direction of science? For instance, I know a lot of
people criticized Peter Ward's book, Rare Earth, for being too Earth-centered
in its thinking. Such a viewpoint may then limit our search for life by causing
us to only look for planets that are Earth-like.
NT: Yes, that's a good example. You end up writing books like Rare Earth
when you've convinced yourself of the idea that we are something special.
There's another book called Privileged Planet, but that one has a clearer
religious agenda.
AM: In Origins you mention the four elements necessary for life to appear
anywhere: a source of energy, a type of atom that can build complex
structures (in our case, carbon), a liquid solvent (in our case, water), and
enough time for life to appear and evolve. Since this describes elements
necessary for "life as we know it," do you think this list commits the crime of
being too Earth-centered in our thinking?
"Even though it's been three decades, there is a good chance that
hearty bacteria live and reproduce inside encapsulated small damp
places [on the moon] and survive the monthly cycles of heat and cold
as well as the effects of solar flares, ultraviolet light, and hard vacuum."
—Don Brownlee.
AM: My reading of Rare Earth was not that we're alone, but that you need all
these things on Earth that makes complex life possible, like tectonics, oxygen,
liquid water, iron—all these qualifications which need to come together. So
many qualifications, in fact, that while it could all come together somewhere
else, it's probably pretty rare.
NT: The arguments in Rare Earth are indeed compelling, and I'm not even
disagreeing with most of them. But throughout the history of writings on this
subject, if you read anyone's account of the rarity of life or even human life,
they all sounded compelling. Read Ptolemy. He said the sun, the other
planets, and the stars all go around the Earth. But that's wrong; we're going
around the sun, not vice-versa, and that fact undermines the entire foundation
of the argument, even though it read really well at the time.
"In places like Io (left) and Titan (right), we may find the first evidence
of other biochemistries that are beyond our powers of prediction."
—Frank Drake. Image credit: NASA.
NT: No. There's nothing wrong with that approach in the search for life "as
we know it." Rare Earth, on the other hand, is saying, "we are the only life as
we know it," which is a very different perspective.
Every time we think something is rare we find it to be common. For example,
there's the idea of a habitable zone around a host star. If you read the early
accounts of this, people would remark, "The planet's got to be just right!"
Then you learn there's a greenhouse effect, and you can have various levels of
greenhouse effect and surface reflectivity, which can make your planet either
colder or warmer than what the native temperature would be if it just sat there,
bare, at a given distance from the host star. All of a sudden, your habitable
zone is considerably broader than you had originally imagined it to be.
Then you read our early biology textbooks that said, "Life requires sunlight to
survive." But no, life simply requires energy. Out there on Europa we have
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
an energy source traceable in part to the tidal forces of Jupiter, rendering
liquid what would otherwise be completely frozen. So that net you use to
search for life has grown. And then you learn about the whole branch of life
called extremophiles, and how hardy life actually is. Bacteria and other
creatures living in the extremes of temperature, pressure, radiation and liking
it. So once again, your definitions are broader, not narrower, than what you
had originally imagined, because nature is cleverer than we are. In other
words, just because you haven't figured it out doesn't mean nature hasn't
figured it out. That is the history of these lines of reasoning.
9
designing industrial machinery to handle vast quantities of small solids—like
fine martian sand.
So I see Rare Earth-type books as the next attempts to try and make us all feel
special. If you want life exactly as you have it here on Earth, then it seems
like you'd have to produce all those series of events. But we haven't done the
experiment where you change some of those variables. What happens if
carbon isn't subducted down into the limestone with plate tectonics? Will life
find some other way to survive and thrive that we haven't yet even thought of?
Biologists, who revel in the diversity of life on Earth, at the end of the day,
confess to themselves that life on Earth has hardly any diversity at all. We all
have some amount of common DNA. If you want diversity, then find a life
form that started on another planet—life with no DNA in common, or perhaps
more likely, no DNA at all. Then you're talking "biodiversity". That would
imply that life doesn't need this long string of specific complicated events.
Then we can have a whole new kind of conversation.
AM: So when you cite these four things life needs, you see those as the bare
bones.
Explorers on Mars will have to contend with "soil" physics unlike that of
Earth. Image credit: NASA/John Frassanito and Associates.
NT: Bare bones! That's exactly it. You boil it down and say, "I don't know or
care about the tectonics, or the green zone, or this or that, just give these
fundamental ingredients, and let the chemistry take care of the rest.
The problem is, even here on Earth "industrial plants don't work very well
because we don't understand equations for granular materials as well as we
understand the equations for liquids and gases," says James T. Jenkins,
professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at Cornell University in Ithaca,
NY. "That's why coal-fired power plants operate at low efficiencies and have
higher failure rates compared to liquid-fuel or gas-fired power plants." So "do
we understand granular processing well enough to do it on Mars?" he asks.
AM: David Grinspoon said to me in an interview once that a planet and its life
forms co-evolve.
NT: Yes! Perfect way to say it! Whereas here you are looking at us, and you
look at the string of events, and you say, "Gosh, that'll never happen ever
again for the rest of all of the cosmos." Well, calm down, take a deep breath,
and look at what you haven't thought of.
So it's restricted creative thinking that allows people to ride their ego longer
than they ought to, and deeper than they ought to. It's the absence of creative
thinking that centralizes us. And by the way, I don't have any idea what life
would look like if it didn't have these "special conditions", but carbon
chemistry is remarkably fertile. Given the behavior of carbon in the universe,
I'm pretty sure life elsewhere will have carbon chemistry. As we remind the
reader in our Origins book, carbon can form more kinds of molecules that all
other kinds of molecules combined. So there are things we can bet on, like
the four conditions I outlined. As for the rest, I'm not impressed.
Let's start with excavation: "If you dig a trench on Mars, how steep can the
sides be and remain stable without caving in?" wonders Stein Sture, professor
of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering and associate dean at the
University of Colorado in Boulder. There's no definite answer, not yet. The
layering of dusty soils and rock on Mars isn't well enough known.
Some information about the mechanical composition of the top meter or so of
martian soils could be gained by ground-penetrating radar or other sounding
devices, Sture points out, but much deeper and you "probably need to take
core samples." NASA's Phoenix Mars lander (landing 2008) will be able to
dig trenches about a half-meter deep; the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory will
be able to cut out rock cores. Both missions will provide valuable new data.
Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1423.html.
THE SANDS OF MARS
By Trudy E. Bell and Tony Phillips
From NASA Science News
31 January 2005
Imagine this scenario. The year is 2030 or thereabouts. After voyaging six
months from Earth, you and several other astronauts are the first humans on
Mars. You're standing on an alien world, dusty red dirt beneath your feet,
looking around at a bunch of mining equipment deposited by previous robotic
landers.
Echoing in your ears are the final words from mission control: "Your mission,
should you care to accept it, is to return to Earth—if possible using fuel and
oxygen you mine from the sands of Mars. Good luck!"
It sounds simple enough, mining raw materials from a rocky, sandy planet.
We do it here on Earth, why not on Mars, too? But it's not as simple as it
sounds. Nothing about granular physics ever is. Granular physics is the
science of grains, everything from kernels of corn to grains of sand to grounds
of coffee. These are common everyday substances, but they can be vexingly
difficult to predict. One moment they behave like solids, the next like liquids.
Consider a dump truck full of gravel. When the truck begins to tilt, the gravel
remains in a solid pile, until at a certain angle it suddenly becomes a
thundering river of rock. Understanding granular physics is essential for
Mars-cranes might use vibrating buckets for excavation. Image credit:
Stein Sture.
To go even deeper, Sture (in connection with the University of Colorado's
Center for Space Construction) is developing innovative diggers whose
business ends vibrate into soils. Agitation helps break cohesive bonds holding
compacted soils together and can also help mitigate the risk of soils
collapsing. Machines like these might one day go to Mars, too.
Another problem is "hoppers"—the funnels miners use to guide sand and
gravel onto conveyor belts for processing. Knowledge of martian soils would
be vital in designing the most efficient and maintenance-free hoppers. "We
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10
don't understand why hoppers jam," Jenkins says. Jams are so frequent, in
fact, that "on Earth, every hopper has a hammer close by." Banging on the
hopper frees the jam. On Mars, where there would be only a few people
around to tend equipment, you'd want hoppers to work better than that.
Jenkins and colleagues are researching why granular flows jam.
And then there's transportation: The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity have
had little trouble driving miles around their landing sites since 2004. But
these rovers are only about the size of an average office desk and only about
as massive as an adult. They're go-carts compared to the massive vehicles
possibly needed for transporting tons of martian sand and rock. Bigger
vehicles are going to have a tougher time getting around.
An experimental Elastic Loop Mobility System that might work on
worlds with dusty soil like Mars and the Moon. Image credit: Stein
Sture.
Returning to Jenkins's big question, "do we understand granular processing
well enough to do it on Mars?" The unsettling answer is: we don't yet know.
Working with imperfect knowledge is okay on Earth because, usually, no one
suffers much from that ignorance. But on Mars, ignorance could mean
reduced efficiency or worse preventing the astronauts from mining enough
oxygen and hydrogen to breathe or use for fuel to return to Earth.
Granular physicists analyzing data from the Mars rovers, building new
digging machines, tinkering with equations, are doing their level best to find
the answers. It's all part of NASA's strategy to learn how to get to Mars, and
back again.
Read the original article at
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/31jan_sandsofmars.htm.
RADIO FREE EARTH (INTERVIEW WITH NEIL DEGRASSE
TYSON, PART 3)
By Leslie Mullen
From Astrobiology Magazine
2 February 2005
In this interview with Astrobiology Magazine editor, Leslie Mullen, Tyson
discusses the limits of radio searches for alien life.
Mars rover Spirit, an artist's rendition. Spirit and her twin Opportunity
have been roaming Mars since January 2004.
Image credit:
NASA/JPL/Maas.
Sture explains: As early as the 1960s when scientists were first studying
possible solar-powered rovers for negotiating loose sands on the Moon and
other planets, they calculated "that the maximum viable continuous pressure
for rolling contact pressure over martian soils is only 0.2 pounds per square
inch (psi)," especially when traveling up or down slopes. This low figure has
been confirmed by the behavior of Spirit and Opportunity.
Astrobiology Magazine (AM): You say in the Origins companion book that
the Earth's radio emission is now comparable to or stronger than the sun's. So
for aliens looking in the radio frequency, we should be the brightest spot in
the solar system. Do you think this indicates that SETI is futile—that we are
bright enough in radio that we should be a beacon to any aliens looking in our
direction, and they should have contacted us by now?
Neil deGrasse Tyson (NT): We're broadcasting in very specific frequencies.
So if you have a tunable receiver on another planet, we would be the loudest
source in any of those various frequencies. But all collected together, the sun
is a much brighter source than the Earth. It depends on how you measure.
There's a total energy, and then there's what we call a specific intensity, which
is in a given band. And in any given band, Earth dominates.
A rolling contact pressure of only 0.2 psi "means that a vehicle has to be lightweight or has to have a way of effectively distributing the load to many
wheels or tracks. Reducing contact pressure is crucial so the wheels don't dig
into soft soil or break through duricrusts [thin sheets of cemented soils, like
the thin crust on windblown snow on Earth] and get stuck."
That requirement implies that a vehicle for moving heavier loads—people,
habitats, equipment—might be "a huge Fellini-type thing with wheels 4 to 6
meters (12 to 18 feet) in diameter," says Sture, referring to the famous Italian
director of surreal films. Or it might have enormous open-mesh metal treads
like a cross between highway-construction backhoes on Earth and the lunar
rover used during the Apollo program on the Moon. Thus, tracked or belted
vehicles seem promising for carrying large payloads.
A final challenge facing granular physicists is to figure out how to keep
equipment operating through Mars' seasonal dust storms. Martian storms
whip fine dust through the air at velocities of 50 m/s (100+ mph), scouring
every exposed surface, sifting into every crevice, burying exposed structures
both natural and manmade, and reducing visibility to meters or less. Jenkins
and other investigators are studying the physics of aeolian [wind] transporting
of sand and dust on Earth, both to understand the formation and moving of
dunes on Mars, and also to ascertain what sites for eventual habitats might be
best protected from prevailing winds (for example, in the lee of large rocks).
Left to right: Arecibo, the world's largest dish telescope; Allen
telescope array (ATA); square kilometer array (SKA).
AM: So for the aliens, as they look toward us, the sun would still be brighter
to them because they're not looking in a particular band?
NT: Well, we're looking in particular bands. That's what SETI is. So why
wouldn't they?
AM: OK, well if we're so bright in every band, doesn't that argue that if they
are trying to contact us, they should have by now?
NT: Possibly, however the frontier of those broadcasts is only 60 or 70 light
years away. Most stars are farther away than that. So if they are looking in
our direction, we would be radio quiet until our radio broadcasts turn on in
time for them.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
11
Arctic Research Station, and the fourth season of the Mars Desert Research
Station. There will also be extensive political discussions and planning
meetings on how we can turn President Bush's announcement of a new space
policy into a real exploration initiative that can get humans to Mars in our
time. The agenda will include a wide assortment of panels and debates
concerning key issues bearing on Mars exploration and settlement, a banquet
with lots of fun entertainment, and plenary addresses from many prominent
leaders of the effort to get humans to Mars.
Prior conventions have drawn thousands of participants from all over the
world and received extensive press coverage in many leading international
media. This year's conference should be the most exciting event to date.
Conference sessions
SIM, scheduled for launch in 2009, will determine the positions and
distances of stars several hundred times more accurately than any
previous program. Image credit: NASA/JPL.
AM: What do you think of the idea that more advanced civilizations will be
radio silent, just as we are becoming more radio silent due to satellite
transmission and fiber optics and that sort of thing?
NT: That's correct. That's a scary, very realistic notion. Not only that, but our
TV waves aren't escaping Earth anymore because a growing number are
receiving their signals via cable. So the total broadcast universe is shrinking.
Also, if you communicate in a scrambled way, if you send a radio signal that
is decrypted, the more successfully encrypted it is, the less noticeable it is, the
less it rises above the background noise. And so if a civilization is so
advanced that it encrypts all of its radio transmissions, then while we were
observing that civilization, it would seem to just shut itself off.
AM: I had this idea that maybe they heard all our radio noise, but they said,
"Oh, they're still back there in the radio age, we've got to wait awhile before
we contact them."
NT: Yeah! They're just waiting for us to get more advanced before they even
deign to have a conversation with us. There's a lot of interesting speculation
that you can come up with about why they haven't contacted us. But it
presupposes that they exist at the same time that we do. Most of the time that
anyone would have contacted Earth, we wouldn't have had the technology to
know we were being contacted.
Suppose ancient Rome received radio signals from space. They would've
concluded there was no intelligent life on Earth. The technology has just
come so late in the history of civilization.
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The Search for Life on Mars
Latest Findings from the Mars Probes
Plans for the Missions of 2005, 2007 and 2009
The Cross Contamination Threat–myth or reality?
Concepts for Future Robotic Mars missions
Piloted Missions to Mars
Advanced Propulsion
Launch Vehicles for Mars Exploration
Long Range Mobility on Mars
Life Support technology
Biomedical and Human Factors Issues in Mars Exploration
Options for Producing Power on Mars
Methods of Martian Construction
In Situ Resource Utilization
Water on Mars—Accessing the Hydrosphere
Concepts for a Permanent Mars Base
Colonizing Mars
Terraforming—Creating an Ecology for Mars
Analog Studies Relating to Mars Exploration
The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station
The Mars Desert Research Station
The Mars Analog Rover project
The Translife Mars Gravity Mission
The Value of Mars Exploration to the Earth
Public Policy for Mars Exploration
Concepts for Privately Funded Mars Missions
International Cooperation in Mars Exploration
Law and Governance for Mars
Moonbase: Steppingstone or Stumbling Block?
The Significance of the Martian Frontier
Philosophical Implications of Mars Exploration.
Mars and Education
Mars and the Arts
Outreach Strategy for the Mars Society
Proposed Projects for the Mars Society
Open Mike Martian Literature Reading, Songfest, & Gallery
Call for papers
Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1425.html.
Eighth International Mars Society Convention
August 11-14, 2005
University of Colorado, Boulder
Presentations for the convention are invited dealing with all matters (science,
engineering, politics, economics, public policy, etc.) associated with the
exploration and settlement of Mars. Abstracts of no more than 300 words
should be sent by June 30, 2005 to:
The Mars Society
P. O. Box 273
Indian Hills, CO 80454
E-mail: [email protected] (e-mail submission preferred).
The Mars Society was founded to further the exploration and settlement of the
Red Planet. The International Mars Society convention presents a unique
opportunity for those interested in Mars to come together and discuss the
technology, science, social implications, philosophy and a multitude of other
aspects of Mars exploration.
Conference Registration Fees: $150 for MS members if paid before May 31st,
2005, $210 for non-members. After June 1, 2005: $210 for members, $270
for non-members. Students and Seniors: $40 for members, $75 for nonmembers before May 31st, $70 for members, $105 for non members after
June 1st 2005.
Highlights of the convention will include the latest results from the Spirit,
Opportunity, and Mars Express missions now exploring the Red planet, as
well as reports from the sixth field season of the Devon Island Flashline Mars
(The conference registration form follows.)
EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL MARS SOCIETY CONVENTION
Mars Society release
26 January 2005
—————————————————————————————————————
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
12
EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL MARS SOCIETY CONVENTION
August 11-14, 2005, University of Colorado, Boulder
Conference Registration Form
Name: ____________________________________________________________________
Address: _________________________________________________________________
City: _____________________ State: ________ Zip/Postal Code: _______
Country: __________________
E-mail address: __________________________
Will you be submitting an abstract?
______
Type of registration (circle amount):
Full conference registration before 5/31/05: $150 for Mars Society members, $210 for non-members
Full conference registration after 6/1/05: $210 for Mars Society members, $270 for non-members
Student/senior registration before 5/31/05: $40 for Mars Society members, $75 for non-members
Student/senior registration after 6/1/05: $70 for Mars Society members, $105 for non-members
Banquet is included in full conference registration fee. Students/Seniors can buy a banquet ticket by adding $50
to their fee (circle if banquet ticket purchase is desired).
If you are not a member, you can save money by joining now to obtain the reduced member conference fees.
Yes! Sign me up as a member! (circle one)
$50 regular
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Mail registration to: The Mars Society, P.O.
Box 273, Indian Hills, CO
80454, USA, or fax to 303-980-0753.
For further information and on-line
registration instructions, visit www.marssociety.org.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
13
Additional information is available at
http://www.lhs.berkeley.edu/exhibits/alienearths.html.
NIAC STUDENT FELLOWS WANTED
By Robert Cassanova
NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts release
27 January 2005
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts seeks to identify creative and
innovative students who possess an extraordinary potential for developing
advanced concepts in the fields of aeronautics, space and the sciences.
Through an open competition described in "NIAC Student Fellows Prize"
(http://www.niac.usra.edu/newsroom/announce.html), NIAC will select
students to become NIAC Student Fellows. Each Student Fellow will receive
a total of $9,000 for the Academic year 2005-2006.
CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS FOR 20-26 JANUARY 2005
NASA/JPL release
28 January 2005
The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired today from the Goldstone
tracking station. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is
operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the
Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm.
NIAC intends for these awards to benefit talented individuals who have
shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their academic pursuits and
a marked capacity for self-direction. We seek exceptional creativity, and the
promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant
accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent
creative work.
Please direct any questions you might have to our
www.niac.usra.edu, or e-mail us at [email protected].
web
site,
ARE WE EARTHLINGS ALONE?
SETI Institute release
30 January 2005
The world premiere on February 5 of the exhibit, Alien Earths, at UC
Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science invites visitors to join the search for
habitable worlds. In conjunction with the opening of the exhibit, Seth
Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, and Dana Backman,
Associate Director of SOFIA for Education and Public Outreach at the NASA
Ames Research Center will speak in the museum auditorium on Sunday,
February 6. SETI Institute Principal Investigator Emma Bakes will give a
presentation on Sunday, March 20.
Sunday, February 6, 2005, Lawrence Hall of Science Auditorium, UC
Berkeley
12:30 PM: Seth Shostak, The Hunt for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
1:30 PM: Dana Backman, The Search for Earth-Like Planets Around Other
Stars
Sunday, March 20, 2005, Lawrence Hall of Science Auditorium, UC Berkeley
2:30 PM: Emma Bakes
The exhibit, Alien Earths, was developed by the Space Science Institute in
Boulder, CO, with funding from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation. It is a handson exhibit that covers the search for life, as well as orients individuals to both
the possibilities and the obstacles that figure into exploring space.
The exhibit is divided into four areas:

Our Place in Space

Star and Planet Formation

Planet Quest

Search for Life
Interactive and multi-media presentations in the exhibit will allow visitors to:

Set planets in motion around a star and see what happens;

Experiment with an infra-red camera;

Listen to sounds from space;

Learn about microbes, the most abundant life form on Earth and
possibly elsewhere.
Alien Earths will be at Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) February 5 through
May 8. LHS is the public science center of UC Berkeley. It is located on
Centennial Drive below Grizzly Peak in the Berkeley Hills. The general
information number is 510-642-5132.
The web site is
http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org/. Admission is $8.50/adults; $6.50/
youth (5-18), full-time students, senior citizens, and the disabled;
$4.50/children 3-4; and free for children two and under. TeamSETI members
will be admitted free on Sunday, February 6 and Sunday, March 20. The
SETI Institute is a co-sponsor of Alien Earths at the Lawrence Hall of
Science.
The month of January is named for the mythical Roman god Janus,
who guarded the gate of heaven. Cassini spied the heavily cratered,
irregularly shaped moon of Saturn as it glided along in its orbit, about
11,000 kilometers (6,800 miles) beyond the bright core of the narrow F
ring. Only vague hints of the moon's surface morphology are visible
from this distance. Janus is 181 kilometers (113 miles) across. The
image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on January 22, 2005, at a distance of approximately 2.5
million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is
15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel. The image has been contrastenhanced and magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
14
Let's take a look at what Cassini will be doing for science this week. Looks
like the Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) instruments—Cassini
Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS), Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS),
Magnetometer Subsystem (MAG), Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument
(MIMI) and Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument—will be
continuing the magnetospheric boundary campaign. They will be looking at
boundaries on the dawn flank of the magnetosphere, including the bowshock,
magnetopause and associated boundary layers. These instruments will also be
monitoring the solar wind when outside the magnetosphere.
The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) will conduct a survey of
hydrogen in the interplanetary medium and the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA)
will monitor dust streams in or coming from Saturn's magnetosphere. The
sequence team leads finished uplinking the S08 background sequence today.
This view of the trailing hemisphere of Saturn's moon Rhea shows the
region's bright wispy markings, but also shows off the moon's craters in
great detail. Of particular interest to imaging scientists is the
distribution and orientation of the many craters with polygonal rims.
These are craters with rough, angular shapes, rather than smooth,
circular ones. Rhea is 1,528 kilometers (949 miles) across. This
image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on January 16, 2005, at a distance of approximately
500,000 kilometers (311,000 miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rheaspacecraft, or phase, angle of 35 degrees. Resolution in the original
image was about 3 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel. The image has been
rotated so that north on Rhea is up. Contrast was enhanced and the
image was magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility.
The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) team at JPL began
reconstructing meta-data for the earliest Cruise data to support reprocessing to
make a better set of cubes for final archiving. A design is now in place for
capturing this meta-data and migrating it into the cube labels.
The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired today from the Goldstone
tracking station. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and
all subsystems are operating normally. Don't forget to check out the Cassini
web site http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for the latest press releases and images.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington, DC. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.
NASA SENDS FIRST GENESIS EARLY-SCIENCE SAMPLE TO
RESEARCHERS
NASA release 05-030
27 January 2005
NASA scientists have sent to academic researchers an unprecedented piece of
the sun gathered by the Genesis spacecraft, enabling the start of studies to
achieve the mission's initial science objectives. Scientists at NASA's Johnson
Space Center (JSC) in Houston recently shipped a piece of the Genesis
polished aluminum collector to researchers at Washington University in St.
Louis. The shipment marked the first distribution of a Genesis scientific
sample from JSC since the science canister arrived on October 4, 2004.
Preliminary examination of the sample by researchers has confirmed it
contains solar ions, traces of the solar wind.
In a dazzling and dramatic portrait painted by the Sun, the long thin
shadows of Saturn's rings sweep across the planet's northern latitudes.
Within the shadows, bright bands represent areas where the ring
material is less dense, while dark strips and wave patterns reveal
areas of denser material. The shadow darkens sharply near upper
right, corresponding to the boundary of the thin C ring with the denser
B ring. The globe of Saturn's moon Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247
miles across) has wandered into view near the bottom of the frame. A
few of the large craters on this small moon are visible. The image was
taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on January 18,
2005, at a distance of 1.4 million kilometers (889,000 miles) from
Saturn using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered
at 752 nanometers. The image scale is 9 kilometers (5.5 miles) per
pixel.
Scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston have shipped
a piece of the Genesis polished aluminum collector, pictured prior to
shipment, to researchers at Washington University in St. Louis,
marking the first distribution of a Genesis scientific sample from JSC
since the science canister arrived there October 4, 2004. The sample,
the first to be allocated for Genesis early science analysis, may hold
important evidence about the overall composition of the sun. Several
important Genesis science objectives will be investigated as part of the
Early Science Return, including studies of noble gas isotopes in bulk
solar wind and nitrogen isotopes. During the mission, the collector
arrays on the Genesis spacecraft were exposed to the solar wind for
29 months. Image credit: NASA/JSC.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 12, Number 4, 2 February 2005
"Reaching this point in our work and being able to send out this first Genesis
scientific sample marks a milestone in recovery efforts, following the
spacecraft mishap upon re-entry last September," said Dr. Eileen Stansbery,
Deputy Director of JSC's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science
Directorate. "The team has done an outstanding job of curating these precious
samples, performing preliminary exams, investigating numerous techniques to
reduce or eliminate contamination that occurred upon impact, and preparing
the samples for distribution to researchers," she noted.
Dark Polar Dunes (Released 20 January 2005)
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/20/
Washington University researchers Charles Hohenberg and Alex Meshik will
study the sample to try to determine detailed information about the gases that
make up the sun. Although most of the solar wind is comprised of hydrogen,
Genesis' goal was to capture samples of all elements in the periodic table to
allow a detailed study of the sun's composition. The aluminum collector was
designed to capture solar wind samples that can be used to measure the
amounts of neon, argon, krypton and xenon, called the noble gases, the sun
contains.
Layers below Arsia (Released 23 January 2005)
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/23/
"Gaining a better understanding of the noble gas elements in the sun is one of
the 19 specific scientific measurement objectives originally proposed for the
Genesis mission," said Stansbery. "We are delighted to provide this sample to
our Washington University colleagues. We look forward to the results of the
research they are already conducting in this critical area, and we are
increasingly optimistic that even more science data will be obtained from
Genesis samples in the coming months," she added.
Chryse "Alien Head" (Released 26 January 2005)
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/26/
The Washington University study is the first of two scientific objectives that
make up the initial research program planned for Genesis. The other early
science objective involves studies of nitrogen from samples.
Genesis clean-room activities are now focused on preparing the second early
science sample, the gold foil, for distribution in the next few weeks to
researchers at the University of Minnesota. The gold foil collected bulk solar
wind and will be used to study nitrogen isotopes.
Genesis was launched August 8, 2001, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station in Florida on a mission to collect solar wind particles. The science
phase of the mission was completed on April 1, 2004, following the collection
of samples that began on December 5, 2001. Following an extensive recovery
effort since its September 8 impact at a Utah landing site, the first scientific
samples from the Genesis space probe arrived at JSC on October 4, 2004.
Still imagery of JSC curators preparing the polished aluminum sample for
distribution is available on the Internet at
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/genesis/multimedia/genesis_samples_shi
pped.html.
Information on the JSC Genesis Team is available at http://wwwcurator.jsc.nasa.gov/curator/genesis/.
For more information about the Genesis mission on the Internet, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/genesis.
Contacts:
Dolores Beasley
NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC
Phone: 202-358-1753
William Jeffs
NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
Phone: 281-483-5111
Susan Killenberg McGinn
Washington University, St. Louis, MO
Phone: 314-935-5254
Additional articles on this subject are available at:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/genesis-05a.html
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0501/27genesis/
Becquerel's Sediment (Released 21 January 2005)
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/21/
North Polar Dunes (Released 22 January 2005)
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/22/
Opportunity Rover as Seen from Orbit (Released 24 January 2005)
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/24/
Mars at Ls 145 Degrees (Released 25 January 2005)
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/01/25/
All of the Mars Global Surveyor images
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/index.html.
The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the
Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available.
are
archived
at
Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars
orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March
8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of
Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by
JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space
Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the
MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates
the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global
Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics,
from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO.
MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES
NASA/JPL/ASU release
24-28 January 2005
Ice Surfaces in False Color (Released 24 January 2005)
http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050124a.html
Polar Layers in False Color (Released 25 January 2005)
http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050125a.html
Dusty Crater in False Color (Released 26 January 2005)
http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050126a.html
Sand Sea in False Color (Released 27 January 2005)
http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050127a.html
A Frosty Rim in False Color (Released 28 January 2005)
http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050128a.html
All of the THEMIS images are archived at http://themis.la.asu.edu/latest.html.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission
for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The Thermal
Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State
University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote
Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at
Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the
prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter.
Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
End Marsbugs, Volume 12, Number 4.
MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES
NASA/JPL/MSSS release
20-26 January 2005
15