MARSBUGS:  
The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter 
Volume 3, Number 10, 16 September, 1996.

Editors:

David Thomas, Department of Biological Sciences, University of 
Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-3051, USA, thoma457@uidaho.edu.

Julian Hiscox, Microbiology Department, BBRB 17, Room 361, 
University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-2170, 
USA, Julian_hiscox@micro.microbio.uab.edu.

MARSBUGS is published on a weekly to quarterly basis as warranted 
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The purpose of this newsletter is to provide a channel of 
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them.  We, the editors, envision MARSBUGS as a medium in which 
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about exobiology, and announcements of upcoming events.  
Exobiology is still a relatively young field, and new ideas may 
come out of the most unexpected places.  Subjects may include,  
but are not limited to:  exobiology proper (life on other  
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INDEX

1)	NASA BRIEFING ON DISCOVERY OF POSSIBLE EARLY MARTIAN LIFE
	Press conference transcript

2)	SCIENTISTS DISCUSS EUROMIR 95 RESULTS
	ESA press release Nr 38-96

3)	OCEAN WINDS AND OZONE TO BE MEASURED BY U.S. INSTRUMENTS 
ABOARD JAPANESE EARTH OBSERVATION SATELLITE
	NASA release 96-165
-----------------------------------------------------------------

NASA BRIEFING ON DISCOVERY OF POSSIBLE EARLY MARTIAN LIFE
Provided by the Federation of American Scientists
(http://www.fas.org/mars/)
Spelling corrections made by David M. Seidel, JPL


A team of NASA and Stanford scientists discussed its findings 
showing strong circumstantial evidence of possible early Martian 
life, including microfossil remains found in a Martian meteorite, 
at a news conference at 1:00 p.m. EDT, August 7, at NASA 
Headquarters, 300 E. St. SW, Washington, DC. The team's findings 
will be published in the August 16 issue of Science magazine.

Panelists were:

-	Dr. Wesley Huntress, Jr., NASA Assoc. Administrator for 
Space Science, Washington, DC

-	Dr. David McKay, principal author, NASA Johnson Space Center 
(JSC), Houston, TX

-	Dr. Everett Gibson, NASA JSC, Houston, TX

-	Dr. Richard N. Zare, Professor of Chemistry, Stanford 
University, CA

-	Kathy Thomas-Keprta, Lockheed-Martin, JSC, Houston, TX

-	Dr. William Schopf, Professor, Department of Earth and Space 
Sciences, Univ. of California, Los Angeles

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

DAN GOLDIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR

I'd like to welcome everyone here today. It's an unbelievable 
day, its very, very exciting for me, and I hope you feel the same 
excitement that I feel.  First I want to congratulate the team 
members who brought these exciting results to the American public 
and the people of the world: Dr. McKay, Dr.  Gibson, Miss Thomas-
Keprta, Dr. Zare, and Mr. Valley, thank you all. I'm so proud of 
you, words can't describe it. I'd also like to introduce a 
numbers of the memberships of the leadership of NASA science. We 
have Dr. Neil Lane, the head of the National Science Foundation 
with us; Dr. Bruce Alberts, the head of the National Academy of 
Sciences; Dr. Snow, of the National Institutes of Health, 
representing Dr. Harold Varmis, who couldn't be with us today; 
and we have Dr. Jerry Soften, the scientist from the Viking 
mission, upon whose shoulders we all stand today. There are other 
scientists in the audience, and I'm sure you'll have a chance to 
talk to them later.  Their dedication, knowledge, and painstaking 
research have brought us to a day that may well go down in 
history for American science, for the American people, and 
indeed, humanity.

First, the results today are not conclusive, or there is not yet 
scientific consensus. We are not hereto establish as in a 
courtroom, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that life existed on Mars. 
But we are here today, to open the door, just a little bit, to 
provide exciting scientific findings, to tell us fascinating 
detective stories, and to lay out compelling clues that lead us 
the direction we think life might have existed at some point on 
Mars

As a scientist and engineer, and all of us, are skeptical but 
thrilled and humbled by this prospect. As a small boy, my father 
took me to the Hayden planetarium in New York City. And I'll 
never forget that first view of the heavens that was interpreted 
to me. And last night, I called my father in Florida, who isn't 
feeling too well lately. And when I told him what was about to 
happen today, I could hear the vibrancy in his voice. And if this 
meeting did anything, it helped my father feel better.

We are now on a doorstep to the heavens. What a time to be alive. 
In the last year we've discovered planets around nearby stars, 
we've probed to the depths of the universe, to see the formation 
and birth of galaxies. And today, we are on the threshold of 
establishing, is life unique to planet earth. I want to tell you 
it is privilege to lead this great agency and the wonderful 
people, and I thank the President of the United States for giving 
me this opportunity. And I really want to thank the people here 
for the work that they have done. And we may see the first 
evidence that life might have existed beyond the confines of this 
small planet, the third rock from the sun.

That could be a breathtaking conclusion, and I know the 
possibility of this took my breath away when I was with these 
scientists for two and a half hours; I gave them an unbelievable 
quiz personally, last week. In a few moments you'll hear the 
detective story. The scientists again are not here to say they 
found ultimate proof, or evidence--but the evidence they present 
will be exciting--but a chain of circumstantial events. And to 
man's further scientific investigation, we must investigate, 
evaluate, validate this discovery. And it is certain to create 
lively scientific debate and controversy to which the 
administrator says, outstanding, that's what makes American 
science and world science great--peer review. We want this to go 
through time and time again; we have skeptical optimism, and we 
hope to force to further research. And in fact today we invited 
Dr. William Schopf of UCLA, an eminent scientist in the field 
that is not part of this team, that doesn't share all the views 
of this team, to get a point-counterpoint on the day we opened 
the door.

We want these results investigated, and we are prepared to make 
samples of the rock available to meritorious proposals that go 
through the scientific process. We want to take the time to do 
this, and if it takes a year or two years, so be it. If the 
scientists tell us we have to restructure our program to get 
additional evidence, we will do it, but we will be government by 
scientific thought and principles, and not by emotion.

The president asked me to make sure the discovery is subjected to 
the methodical process. He also announced that the Vice President 
will call a space summit in November to address the over arching 
questions, and how this finding should be addressed, and all the 
other issues of the nation's space program, in the context of 
science, and the quest for knowledge and enriching life here on 
the planet. And finally, he repeated the commitment to an 
aggressive plan already in place for the robotic exploration of 
Mars.  I want to thank the president for his unwavering support 
of the nation's space program, his vision and his leadership. He 
asked us to do something hard: he didn't say let's give you extra 
money; he held NASA accountable to reshape our program within a 
tighter budget, and I think, with his leadership, we have been.

I want to thank the Congress for the consistent bipartisan 
support of this program. And yesterday I had the privilege of 
talking to the Congressional leadership to tell them what might 
happen today, and some of the members were almost childlike in 
their excitement about the possibilities, and very humbled about 
what they heard. And today I spoke to the world space leadership, 
and there's an unbelievable excitement around the world about the 
possibilities--I invited the world space leadership to work with 
us, to see if this is really the case.

We're going to develop a process--and I've asked Wes Huntress to 
provide the leadership--we're going to be concerned about how we 
take spacecraft to Mars, and not contaminate the samples there. 
We are going to be concerned about that contamination if we 
return samples to Earth. But we will be driven by a scientific 
process and not a rush to go to Mars. We will not do anything 
irresponsible. As you know, NASA's working on an origins program.  
We are asking fundamental questions about how did galaxies, 
stars, solar systems, planets and planetary bodies form and 
evolve, and is life unique--life, however low, carbon-based or 
not, is it unique to this planet.

We have a program that seeks to send an armada of small 
spacecraft to Mars and other planets in our solar system. There 
are over 10 spacecraft on the books right now, and in the next 
decade, within ten to 15 years, it is our objective to be able to 
directly detect earth-sized planets if they exist around stars 
within 50 to a hundred light years of earth, and to be able to 
remotely sense their environment to see what the makeup is, to 
see if there's oxygen and water vapor, and carbon dioxide, and 
perhaps even methane, so we can reach out even further. It's a 
bold, exciting program, and I know we'll have some knowledge, but 
I can't guarantee results.

But now, let's move today's exciting story, a detective story. 
The scientists will lay out for you how an ancient rock, found 
its way from Mars and it got to earth, after billions of years, 
to have this rock, tell the people of American and the world an 
amazing story.

Dr. Huntress?

HUNTRESS: Thank you very much Dan. I know you are all anxious to 
get right down to it, so my privilege this morning is really to 
introduce the team, and to let them kind of tell you their story. 
I mean, this is the result of over 2 1/2 years of very intensive, 
meticulous and difficult detective work on this particular 
meteorite, and most of what you are going to hear today has been 
peer-reviewed by the scientific community, and will appear in one 
of this nation's most science publications, Science Magazine, but 
we are also going to give you some new results, that have come 
out just recently, as well. So if I could introduce the team: 
first, the team leader is Dave McCay, to my immediate left, from 
the Johnson Space Center, he is a geochemist with over 27 years 
of work, in--particularly with lunar sample investigation. Next 
to him Everett Gibson, also of Johnson. He is also a geochemist 
with over 20 years of investigations in geochemistry and lunar 
sample work.

Next to Everett is Kathy Thomas-Keprta, she's also from JSC, and 
she's been studying meteorites and lunar samples with 
transmission electron microscopy, for about 12 years. Next to 
Kathy is profession Richard Zare, he's professor of Chemistry at 
Stanford University. He's also chairman of the National Science 
Board of the National Science Foundation; an expert in laser 
analysis--this is a guy who can detect single molecules.

Next to him is Bill Schopf, he's professor of paleobiology at 
UCLA. He's the discoverer of fossil evidence for the oldest life 
on this planet. He's not a member of the investigative team, as 
Dan told you, but he's here as an independent investigator to 
provide a balancing view on the data you are about to see.

Next to bill is Professor Hojitola Valley from McGill University 
in Montreal, one of the members of the investigative team. And we 
have two investigators, also in the audience over here, on the 
left, Dr. Simon Clement of Stanford University's department of 
Chemistry, and Dr. Chris Romanek of the University of Georgia.

And so at this point, I would like to turn it over to Dave McKay.

MCKAY: Thank you, Wes. What I would like to do this afternoon is 
lead you through our story, which is a bit of a detective story, 
on why we think we have found evidence for past life on Mars. Now 
I want to warn you, that this is a controversial story, and 
there'll be a lot of disagreement, but the team itself has spent 
two and a half years with this sample, and we're in consensus 
view that we're along--going along the right track.

What we've dealt with here is a single rock, and you can see a 
piece of this rock in front of me, and the first slide is on your 
screen, showing a picture of the rock, or will be on your screen 
soon, but this rock came from Mars, we argue, it was found in 
Antarctica, it was brought back to Houston, and some of it to the 
Smithsonian--this happens to be the Smithsonian chunk, which is 
170 grams--the total rock is about 4 and a half pounds, 1.9 
kilograms, and is about the size of a small potato. We couldn't 
bring the part that was in Houston, but this is a very good 
sample of the actual rock that we analyzed.

What I'm going to do, what our team is going to do is look at our 
data, and our data has 4 different lines of evidence, and these 
lines of evidence--each one of these lines of evidence can be 
interpreted in various ways.  However, we think that a reasonable 
interpretation for each one of these is that the evidence is 
pointing toward biologic activity in early Mars, and we'll tell 
you why.

The lines of evidence that we'll develop are that, first, the 
meteorite came from Mars, and contains carbonate--calcium 
carbonate, the same thing as found in limestone--which was formed 
on Mars, and it is within and associated with this calcium 
carbonate, that we see much of our evidence.  The mineralogy and 
the chemistry of the carbonate globules, we call them, we believe 
are compatible with a biologic origin.

That's our second line of evidence. The third line of evidence is 
that the rock contains organic compounds, organic material, which 
we believe comes from Mars, and we'll talk about that.

And our last bit of evidence, are pictures of strange structures 
within this rock, within the carbonate, some of which we have 
interpreted as micro-fossil forms, micro-fossil-like forms, and 
we'll show you those. This is perhaps the most controversial part 
of our presentation, but we'll show you those anyway.

Now, as I said, there are alternative explanations for each of 
the lines of evidence that we see, but taken it--when you look at 
them individually there are alternative explanations, but when 
you look at them all together, collectively, particularly in view 
that they all occur within a very small volume--every sand-sized 
chip has most of these kinds of evidence in it--we conclude that 
taken together, this is evidence for early life on Mars, and 
we'll tell you why. Now I want to turn the discussion over to Dr.  
Everett Gibson, who will show an overview of our story, its an 
animation, and he will walk through it and tell you what it 
means. This is an interpretation based on our data.

GIBSON: Thank you David. Let me explain to you a little bit of 
what you're going to see. We have placed--put together two and a 
half to three minutes of animation on the history of this sample. 
We feel this will assist you in understanding the evolution of 
this sample, the materials we are studying, and what we are 
looking at in particular. This information was gathered from a 
variety of colleagues, through the communities who made specific 
measurements, but we feel it all points to the important story 
that we are here to tell. If I can have the animation, we'll go 
through this.

Early in the history of the inner solar system, we knew the 
planets were solidifying in this period of time of 4 1/2 billion 
years ago. The sample which we have before us is 4 1/2 billion 
years in age. It appeared about 4 billion years, the inner solar 
system bodies were undergoing an intense bombardment, and the 
surface of Mars was no exception, it underwent this intense 
bombardment. And 4 billion years ago, we knew the surface was 
fractured, the planet was probably warmer and wetter. Water was 
more abundant, it filled these cracks and fractures, and as time 
evolved, we feel that the solutions may have resulted in the 
formation of these carbonate globules which we see within these 
fractures in this meteorite. And as these carbonate globules were 
growing, there was probably a presence of a microbiota?, what it 
exactly is, we do not know, but we see the forms which you'll see 
later today. And as these carbonates grew from these solutions 
and filled these fractures and voids in this sample, they begin 
to entrain these organisms which you'll see in the photography 
shown later,. So these carbonates were present on the surface of 
Mars and growing. We know this from the actual topic chemistry 
from these materials.

Then Mars went through a period when it became older and drier, 
and so up and from the 3.6 billion years age of the carbonates up 
to the interval of 16 million years ago, we know a large object 
slammed into the surface of mars, knocked material from the 
surface. This material traveled through space for 16 million 
years. Thirteen thousand years ago, it came under the influence 
of Earth's gravity, and fell on the Antarctic ice sheet. It was 
lying on the Antarctic ice sheet, it was resided there for 13,000 
years. A joint national science foundation field meteorite 
collecting program, which was supported by NASA and the 
Smithsonian Institution, this material was collected by the field 
team, and brought back to the Johnson Space Center, where it was 
cleaned and processed. You see the sample with the dark fusion?  
crust, which is the blighted surface as it came through the 
Earth's atmosphere, and you look in the interior and see the 
orthoperixine?  minerals. And highlighted, we see an area of 
weathering and alteration, and then we look into theses mall 
cracks above, you see another area where we have these orange-
brown globules. They are in the highlighted area in this film. To 
understand and see these a little better, we're showing an image 
from our colleague Monica Grady of the British Museum. And you 
see these 250 micron-sized carbonate globules with their black 
and white rims. These are approximately five times the diameter 
of a human hair. They are very small in size, but they are very 
unusual to be in a meteorite. And the study of these, and the 
chemistry that's going on in these rims of these globules, is 
basically the story which we have today, to tell you.

I'd like to pass the microphone to my colleague Kathy Thomas-
Keprta, and she'll explain the chemistry.

KEPRTA: Hi, if I could have the first slide please. What we're 
going to concentrate on now is taking a closer look at these 
carbonate globules that Everett just described. Now this is a 
cartoon, on your video, if you could back it up one please. Back 
up one slide please. Back to the cartoon. We'll have it for you 
in a moment. There we are. And what you're seeing--what Everett 
just showed you, he showed you the golden-colored carbonate 
globules. What we're looking at here is just an edge of one of 
the carbonates, in cartoon form. And you can see, as you saw in 
the previous picture, these globules contain black-white-black 
rims. We've been calling them our Oreo cookie rims. Anyway, as 
you approach the rim, if you see the tiny dark spots, the rims 
are composed of very fine grain minerals. One of the minerals is 
called magnetite, and its composed only of iron and oxygen.  The 
other one is composed of puritite, which is composed only of iron 
and sulfur. That's located in the rim area. Now in another area 
away from the rim, within the carbonate, we get a closer look at 
another region, which shows more smaller grains, the Magnetite, 
again, present--its composed of iron and oxygen--and supposed 
gregite, that is composed of iron and sulfur. Now, these 
particles, these metal grains are very, very tiny. And so what we 
had to use to image these is a transmission electron microscope, 
and we'll call that from now on a TEM. And we can take a very 
small area with the magnetite and puritite and zoom in on that. 
Next slide.

.. Dark splotchy regions are magnetite. Now let's get a closer 
look at the magnetite. Next slide. These magnetite--you can see 
one has a cubeoid shape, the other is in a teardrop shape--these 
magnetite are roughly about 40 to 50 nanometers wide. You can fit 
about a billion of these on the head of a pin, that's how small 
they are. So--and they have a very unique shapes. Next slide.

Now to determine--we can actually determine, based on the 
literature, based on three criteria, if this magnetite that we 
are seeing is biogenic or not--whether it has been produced by 
bacteria--based on the distinctive shape, based on the chemistry 
and based on the environment. Now these shapes--next slide--these 
shapes are very similar to magnetite that's produced from 
bacteria on the Earth. They are also very similar in size, they 
are the exact same composition, they have a very pure crystal 
structure, there are no defects, and both types of magnetite that 
are produced by microorganisms on the earth, and that that we 
find on mars, have been produced in a low-temperature, fluid 
environment. Next slide.

And these are magneto fossils found on earth, and as you can see, 
we can compare the shapes to what we saw previously. The one on 
the top left is a cubeoid shape, and the one on the bottom right 
is a teardrop shape--just exactly what we had seen from our 
Martian images. Next slide.

We can also take a closer look at some of the iron sulfides. The 
two images that you see on the left are rectangular, probable 
gregite particles from our Martial sample. The sample on the 
right is a terrestrial sample. Now these gregite samples--the 
gregite sulfides, are--they're very similar to what we see on 
earth as far as chemistry, as far as the shape, the surface 
morphology, and it is very common on earth for gregite to be 
produced by bacteria. Next slide.

Last we'll take a look at the puretite, which was also associated 
with the magnetite. And again you can see two different types of 
shapes for the puritite. This type of puritite, which again is an 
iron sulfite, can be produced inorganically. However, it can also 
be produced by certain types of microorganisms on earth.

In summary, we feel that even though there could be very 
complicated inorganic explanations for the presence of these 
mineral grains, the simplest explanation is that these are 
products from microorganisms that were produced on Mars. And now 
I will hand you off to Dr. Richard Zare, who will discuss the 
organic chemistry.

RICHARD ZARE: Thank you Kathy. Organic chemistry: by this I mean 
molecules that contain carbon. The Viking lander mission, two of 
them, went, looked, scooped up the surface of mars, looked with a 
mass spectrometer, and really came up a little empty handed, 
didn't really find the organics that one might have hoped to 
find. And there's been increasingly a feeling that grew, that 
somehow the planet was all dead. We can return later to examine 
that conclusion. What we've done is take pieces, fractures from 
this meteorite, and pop them in a high vacuum system. We then 
shine in a laser, a bunch of laser systems--pardon me? No audio. 
Let's try another, thank you.

So let me start again. We take these pieces of the meteorite 
sample, freshly cleaved, put them into our vacuum system in less 
than two minutes, high vacuum system, and analyze what type of 
organic molecules they have. We do this in a method that I will 
show you later, and if I might have the first slide, let me show 
you the results. We find certain types of hydrocarbons, things 
that contain carbon and hydrogen, this shows some peaks, these 
are so-called, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons--Pasha. PAHs are 
really a pretty common substance on earth. It's found, for 
example, in diesel exhaust, or in sooting of a flame, or it's 
found when you overcook steak on the barbecue, or it's found in 
such things as when you fossilize various organic matter, like in 
petroleum products and such. The PAHs can also be made in a 
purely inorganic manner, for example by somehow polymerizing 
acetylene. So finding PAHs in themselves doesn't tell you whether 
something is alive or dead--not in itself. The particular figure, 
though, that we have, if I could come back to showing you that 
slide, is unusual compared to other carbonaceous chondrites--
we've looked at other meteorites that have PAHs--this 
distribution is much simpler, and I could go on and explain in 
some detail how it's much simpler--it very much resembles what 
you'd expect when you have simple organic matter decay. We have 
indeed studied these PAHs and we've done them as a function of 
depth from the fusion crust inside the rock, we find them more 
inside of the rock than in the fusion crust. We believe that 
means that they're indigenous, they belong to the rock. If they 
came from a contamination--if they came through the rock while it 
was on earth, it would really expect to be more on the outside 
working its way in. It's completely backwards as to what we find.

If I could have the next slide. I'll show you that we're also 
able to make a map, and as you look at this, you'll see in the 
upper right-hand corner, this is the A, B, C, D, and each one, 
you'll find what I call "hot spots"--this is where there's a 
bigger signal, that's what I mean by hot spot. And of these 
different simple PAHs, they are not only correlated with each 
other, but they are correlated with the carbonate globules which 
you've already heard about.

Let me now explain how the method works by asking you to take a 
look at the animation that we've prepared for this setup. This is 
a system that has a very immense sensitivity. It is able to look 
at only a few thousand molecules of material. First we have an 
infrared laser, which we'll turn off, hit the sample shown below, 
heat it up, and cause it to evaporate. This will produce a plume 
of gas cloud. Here we go--there's the plume. Next the UV laser 
shines in, excites some molecules that can absorb it, produces 
ions, knocks on an electron to produce ions, and this electric 
field with a battery, they go and hit the detector. Now we move 
the laser around, hit another spot, fire it again, and we make a 
map, as we, indeed, make these ions. Notice there's two types of 
ions, those that are fat and those which are thin. It's like a 
race, and I'm sorry to tell you, the thin ones always beat the 
fat ones, and so by looking at the arrival time, we determine the 
weight of the molecule--that's the mass spectrum. And by this 
means, we've been able to look and see the first organic 
molecules that we believe come from Mars. Let me now turn this 
microphone back to Dave and hopefully we're going to see some 
pictures.

DAVID MCKAY: Okay, moving on, if I could have the first slide, 
please. This is simply the same picture you saw earlier of the 
carbonate globules with the black and white rims around them. 
This picture was provided to us by Monica Grady of the British 
National Museum, who took this very nice picture. Next slide 
please.

We're going to discuss now some of the features that we see in 
the scanning electron microscope, features which occur on the 
surface of those carbonate globules. This is a typical picture of 
an area rich in iron, it's one of the iron-rich rims. And we see 
that the scale is not on this, but the biggest object in this 
picture is about 500 nanometers across. That's roughly 1/500th 
the size of a human hair. We see that the carbonate globule is 
covered in areas with this kind of very fine-grained material--
and you can see that there's one rod shape, there's kind of a one 
with a dark line up the center of it--many of these are probably 
the magnetite iron-oxide crystals that we saw earlier--we're 
looking at them with a different technique now--and many of them 
are probably the iron-sulfide grains that we saw earlier. But 
some of these don't look like either magnetite or iron sulfite--
they may be something else. And we're not quite sure what that 
is. Next slide please.

Again, at very high magnification in the area of the carbonate 
globules we see this kind of feature. These are elongated forms, 
structural forms. We think that matrix that they appear to be 
eroding out of is probably a clay mineral. We're confirming that, 
but we do have indication now that there's a water-containing 
clay mineral in this area. The features that you see may be any 
number of things; for example, they could be dried-up parts of 
that clay, or they could be microfossils from Antarctica or 
microfossils from Mars. It is our interpretation, the one that we 
favor, is that these are, in fact, microfossil forms from Mars. 
But keep in mind that is an interpretation, we have no 
independent data that these are fossils, we don't have pictures 
showing cell walls, or internal material characteristic of cells. 
It's simply an interpretation at this point. Next slide, please

As we look in other areas of the carbonate, we see these forms 
which are elongated, they have rounded ends on them. Are these 
strange crystals? Are they dried-up mud? We believe, we interpret 
that these are indeed microfossils from Mars. They are extremely 
tiny, the longest one is about 200 nanometers, this is very high 
magnification. One of the techniques that we're using, by the 
way, is high-resolution scanning electron microscope.  We're 
looking at rocks and minerals at a scale that has really not been 
used before. These are extremely high-magnification, high-
resolution pictures.  Next slide please.

Just for comparison, these are some tiny bacteria, nano- bacteria 
on an Earth rock, on calcite, calcium carbonate, the same kind of 
material we're looking at on Mars, and the scale their shows 500 
nanometers. These are interpreted by the authors of this 
particular paper, which includes none of our team, they are 
interpreted to be nanobacteria. And these things are the same 
size and shape as many of the forms that we're seeing in the Mars 
sample. Next please.

As we move on, we see a few of these elongate forms, which appear 
to be segmented. This one is about a half a micrometer long, 
which is still about a 1/100th the diameter of a human hair, 
which is very tiny, but now we're getting up into the size range 
of a common terrestrial microbes and bacteria, and whether this 
is a microfossil or whether its a dried up mud crack, we can't 
really say because we have no data other than what you see, which 
is simply the photograph, but again, it is our interpretation 
that this and similar features have a high probability of being 
martial microfossils. Next, please.

Now, Dr. Valley of our group, and his laboratory in Canada, using 
a different technique, a totally different technique, took these 
pictures of the same rock, and he found very similar elongated, 
somewhat curved structural features, and again we don't know what 
these are, we don't have chemistry on these, but one possible 
interpretation is that they are similar kinds of Martian 
microfossils to what we saw in the scanning electron microscope. 
Next slide, please

And finally, I want to finish up with a slide of some real 
bacteria, that we know are bacteria, which turn out to be about 
the same size and about the same shape as the things that I've 
been showing you in the Mars sample.  These are from the Columbia 
River basalts from the state of Washington, and they're from 
volcanic rocks, and they're buried deep within the ground.  
They're a couple kilometers deep, these come from a drill core, 
and it turns out that within the samples from this drill core, 
there are subterranean, subsurface bacteria, and some of them--
there are larger ones--but some of them are these very small kind 
of bacteria.

So in conclusion then, in terms of the photography, we have a 
number of forms, which are--which it is very tempting for us to 
interpret as Martian micro-fossils. But, we have no confirming 
evidence, and you'll hear more about the pitfalls of identifying 
such things based on appearance alone. We don't have the 
chemistry of these, we don't know if they have cell walls or not-
-we will find that out, that will be part of our future work--but 
for now we have to use these images and interpret them the best 
way we can.  And so I want to finish up here by simply saying 
that we have these lines of evidence, and none of them in itself 
is definitive, but taken together, the simplest explanation to us 
is that they are the remains of Martian life. And Everett is 
going to sum it up in terms of a checklist of what you would look 
for if you were looking and trying to prove early Martian life.

EVERETT GIBSON: Thank you David. Very clearly, the only record we 
have, our criteria that we can use to judge our data against, is 
that of the own geologic record here on the earth. And what we 
have chosen to do is go into the literature and pull out those 
data points which other investigators have used to establish the 
criteria of the authenticity of microfossils here on the earth, 
they are evidence of early living systems here on the Earth.

And what are they? If I could have the next slide of view graph. 
We have essentially eight criteria for establishing credible 
evidence of past life within geologic column. One: do we know the 
origin of the sample? Do we know the age of the sample? Are there 
presence of microfossils in this sample?  Are there remains of 
potential colonies where these microfossils have begun to 
multiply or replicate? Are there biomineral markers present? Is 
there some organic material as a organic biomarker present? And 
then we turned to a technique of the stable isotope pattern, that 
may give us evidence, because we know from living systems the 
isotopes of carbon and other elements are fractionated[?], that 
we can use these as fingerprints to identify evidence of living 
systems. The last one is, are these features indigenous to the 
samples?

And lets go to the next slide, and look at our data, and review 
that again.  What is the origin of the sample? We know the sample 
is from Mars, we feel, from several lines of evidence, primarily, 
the oxygen isotopic composition is unique, for materials from 
Mars, because the materials were formed from a different 
reservoir.

What is the age of the sample? Three different independent 
geochronometry techniques have determined the age of this rock as 
3.5 billion years old--I mean, sorry, 4.5 billion years old, from 
the early crust of Mars. The age of the carbonates that are in 
this rock have been dated at 3.6 billion, this also may have a 
slightly younger age, but this is the age that's published, that 
we must go at.

Are there presence of microfossils? Yes, you've seen from the 
evidence that's presented, there are the ovoids, or the spherical 
objects, that down, in the range, of individual units. Some of 
these appear to be dividing, or they're doublets, or things of 
this type.

Are there any structural remains of colonies, or perhaps these 
carbonate globules are a larger colony there.

Are there any biomineral markers? Yes, we have the evidence, the 
magnetite, and the puritite, and possibly the gregite, which are 
suggestive of disequilibrium assemblages[?] that must be present 
within minerals to support the energy source for organisms to 
thrive.

Are there any organic biomarkers? The organic biomarkers we've 
seen from the organic chemistry of Dr. Zare shows that yes, there 
is evidence of organic material--and a reduced organic material 
carbon material, reduced carbon--within these samples from Mars.

Are there any unique stable isotope patterns which we use here on 
earth, this is an area where clearly we need more work in, but we 
saw from the initial discovery of the unusual carbon composition 
of these carbonates, there is another story there, which we have 
a lot to be done in this area.

And are the features indigenous to the sample? I think we can say 
yes, from what we've seen today, and the tests that we've done, 
these features appear to be indigenous to these samples.

So from the criteria we have, we come to the conclusion that we 
meet a large number, if not all, of these criteria which we use 
to establish evidence of past life in our own terrestrial 
geologic column, and perhaps they can be applied to this material 
believed to be from Mars. Thank you.

HUNTRESS: Okay, I think what you've seen here is a very 
compelling case for the possibility of life on early Mars, and 
it's been built on several lines of evidence: evidence involving 
the organic chemistry of this sample, mineralogical evidence, and 
even structural evidence of this sample and their close 
association together. I think you've also seen some pretty 
astounding imaging that is very, very suggestive of early life on 
Mars. The agency's attitude is, as Mr. Goldin suggested, and that 
is of skeptical fascination with this result, and the point is it 
is now time for this to move into the scientific community, and 
for the discussions to begin as to the conclusions that these 
investigators have come to as a result of having taken all this 
data, and so here to kind of represent and begin that debate, is 
Bill Schopf of UCLA.

BILL SCHOPF: Thank you. I would prefer to refer to my comments as 
part of a discussion rather than a debate. I would like to thank 
Mr. Goldin and NASA for inviting me to be here. I am not a member 
of this science team. I have been invited here to do a 
preliminary analysis, publicly, of the paper that is coming out 
in Science Magazine in about ten days. Mr. Goldin referred to me 
as the optimistic skeptic, or perhaps I'm a skeptical optimist, I 
really don't know. Could I have the first slide, please?

I do think this is a fine piece of work, and this is not easy 
science. This is multi-disciplinary science, these folks have 
tried to bring to bear on an important problem many different 
areas of the science, and to bring them into a coherent whole. I 
personally regard this as a preliminary report. I quote on this 
slide a quote attributed to Carl Sagan: "Extraordinary claims 
require extraordinary evidence," and I happen to regard the claim 
of life on Mars, present or past, as an extraordinary claim, and 
I think it is right for us to require extraordinary evidence in 
support of that claim. And so I guess my job here, principally, 
is to sound a note of caution.

If I could have the next slide, I have been involved in searching 
for ancient life on this planet for the past three decades. I 
wrote my first scientific paper in 1964, and so I have been in 
this game for a long time.  And during that period of time a set 
of seven criteria have evolved, and that is, those are the 
criteria we use to test such claims on earth, and those criteria, 
in my opinion, must be met on Mars as well. We want to know the 
source of the material--the age of the rock, the environment in 
which it was formed, and the history of that rock--has it been 
pressure cooked, for example. With regard to claims of organic 
matter, or of fossil-like objects in such ancient rocks, there 
are three tests: one, are they within the rock; two, are they as 
old as that rock, rather than having been introduced somewhat 
later; and thirdly and most importantly, are they demonstrably, 
assuredly, certainly biological?

Let us remember that the mere presence of organic matter by 
itself does not say it's part of life, because we know on this 
planet, prior to the origin of life, organic matter was 
synthesized non-biologically; we know that there are lots of--
there are meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites that contain 
large amounts of organic matter that is of non- biologic origin. 
So we want to know, is that organic matter demonstrably 
biological, and secondly, with regard to fossil-like objects, 
we'd like to know they are assuredly fossils, not mineralic 
pseudo-fossils, or what we used to call "foolers," things that 
fool you and you'd prefer they didn't.

So let me have the next slide and I'll show you the oldest 
evidence of life on this planet to give you an idea of the sort 
of thing that we're looking for elsewhere. These are microscopic 
fossils, 3.465 billion years in age, that is, nearly three and a 
half billion years in age--roughly three-quarters the age of the 
earth. They are demonstrably cellular, as you can see, and they 
are composed of organic material. Their cell walls are made of 
organic matter. On the next slide, at the far upper right-hand 
side of the--no, lets, this is another set of fossils from this 
deposit; they have conical end-cells, they have rounded end-
cells[?], they have demonstrable cells, and all that. These are 
demonstrably fossils. Now, up in this slide at the upper-right-
hand side, I want to draw your attention to a very minute strand. 
And that strand, at the upper right-hand side, is one-half of a 
micron in thickness. This is a bacterial strand, it's three and a 
half billion years in age, it comes from this Earth, and it is 
100 times larger than these microscopic objects that we have just 
seen from Mars. And that is one of the smallest, shown in the 
slide, one of the smallest fossils that has been found on Earth. 
Let me finish up now, by going to the last slide, which is a 
subjective confidence rating comparing evidence of life on Earth 
to evidence of life on Mars, as here presented. I want to 
emphasize this is subjective; it says "subjective"; it is 
italicized "subjective." It is my opinion. And I want to go 
through these seven lines of evidence and tell you what I think 
about them; I've been asked to do that and I'll be as honest and 
as rigorous as I can.

With regard to the geology: it seems to me that it is quite 
probable that this meteorite is from Mars. We should remember 
that there are only 12 such Martian, alleged Martian meteorites 
known, only two of them, to my knowledge, contain inclusions in 
which there is direct evidence that they are like the surface 
chemistry of the Martian atmosphere. Nevertheless, I give that a 
confidence rating of 9. The Olympics are just over, I'm using a 
one-to-ten scale--this is a 9.

The age, I think, is also pretty well established, the age of 
these carbonates at about 3.6 billion, that's a little more 
uncertain. I give that a confidence rating of 8. But I think 
that's pretty good stuff.

Now with regard to the environment and history it is only fair to 
point out that there is a debate, scientifically, regarding such 
matters. There was, in fact, a paper published in the July issue 
of Nature Magazine, by Ralph Harvey and Harry McSween, of Case 
Western Reserve and the University of Tennessee, respectively, in 
which they argue that these carbonate in the fractures in this 
Martian meteorite were not formed at low temperature, that in 
fact they argue that they were formed at 450 degrees Celsius; if 
that is true, there is no expectation of these things harboring 
life.

Similarly, there is a question as to the time the carbonate 
formed within this rock. One argument presented here is that this 
was before the body was lifted off the Martian surface. A second 
interpretation in the paper I just referred to was that those 
fractures were caused during the impact that lifted that off the 
Martian surface. If Harvey and McSween were correct and the NASA 
group were to be incorrect, I think those two interpretation 
would rule out the presence of life in the sample. Let me only 
point out, I am not taking sides in this matter, I am simply 
saying that this is not a resolved issue as yet in the minds of 
some people.

Finally: with regard to the organic matter and the fossil-like 
objects. I think that it has been established certainly to my 
satisfaction beyond any doubt that I have, that both the organic 
matter--that is, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons[?]--and the 
fossil- like structures are--occur within the rocks. I think it's 
very likely, that even though they occur in fractures, where 
ground water can introduce things, I think the data are good, I 
give it an 8 or 9 rating that, in fact, those things are a sold 
as the fractures in that rock.

With regard to the biology, however, I take a rather different 
view. With regard to the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, I note 
that such compounds are found in interstellar dust grains. I note 
that PAHs are found in interplanetary carbon grains. I note that 
PAHs are found in other sorts of meteorites, like carbonaceous 
chondrites. In none of those cases have they ever been 
interpreted as being biological. This is, after all, a meteorite, 
and so, the first approximation, I'd look at those PAHs and say, 
assuming that they're not contamination from industrial pollution 
on this planet, I'd say that the first guess would be that 
they're probably non-biological, just like PAHs that occur in 
other meteorites. The burden of proof is on those who claim that 
they are biological.

And secondly, with regard to these fossil-like objects, I note 
that they are 100 times smaller than such fossils that have been 
found on this planet. I note that there is no evidence of their 
composition. The best guess at this point would be that they are 
made of mineralic material. At least, there are no data--and it's 
because they are so small, there are no techniques at present to 
analyze their chemical composition--but there's no evidence that 
they're made out of carbonaceous material; we don't know that 
yet.

Thirdly, there's no evidence that there is a cavity within them, 
a compartment, a cell. Why do you need that? Well, that is where 
the juices of a living organism reside, that's where the 
chemistry that makes things live works. We've got to look inside 
these things--see if they have cell walls, see if they are 
compartmentalized, see if they are cellular, see if they are 
composed of organic material. There is no good evidence as yet of 
life cycles, or of cell division--tests that we also apply to, in 
the fossil record. So all I am saying is that there is additional 
work here to be done.  I give the biological interpretation at 
this point, I claim that in my opinion it's probably unlikely. 
But it's possible to do additional science, to answer these 
questions, to test this and move it up the confidence scale.

I finally come back to Sagan's, Carl Sagan's quotation, which I 
think is applicable: extraordinary claims require extraordinary 
evidence. We know the sort of evidence that we need to obtain 
regarding these samples. Personally I think that this is 
exciting, I think it's very interesting, I think they're pointing 
in the right direction. But I think a lot more, or a certain 
amount, of additional work needs to be done before we can have 
firm confidence that this report is of life on Mars. Thank you.

HUNTRESS: Well, I think you've seen that this is a result that is 
going to be very controversial. That's not a surprise to us at 
all. We've given you a kind of a taste of the scientific 
discussion and how this process will proceed. We'd like you to 
keep in mind that a fair amount of this has been peer-reviewed by 
the scientific community, although much more work needs to be 
done to confirm or deny this, as you just heard from Bill Schopf. 
But the agency certainly felt that it was very important to make 
the results of this work, the data, and the conclusions of these 
investigators, public. And so I now turn it over to Laurie Boeder 
to handle Q & A.

LAURIE BOEDER: Thank you all for your patience, we'll start with 
questions here at headquarters. Please wait for the microphone to 
reach you, and state your name and your news organizations-
affiliation. Questions please? Jim.

Q: Jim Slade for CNN and I guess the question is for Mr. Goldin, 
actually.  Mr. Goldin, what does this augur for, where does the 
agency go from here, what kind of additional investigation must 
be made, and in the long-range planning, does it change any of 
your objectives over the next ten to twenty years?

GOLDIN: Issue number one: I keep coming back to the basic issue. 
Let us let the scientific process work its way through to get the 
validation, the extraordinary validation of extraordinary claims. 
This is the most important thing that must be done. We're a very 
open agency, and I felt rather than holding this back in the 
innards of NASA, we needed to share this with the American 
people, we need to share with the world scientific community, 
that is our first major task.

Secondly, I think we have to listen to the scientific community. 
We have a program of roughly two missions to Mars every launch 
window--that's about every two years. The first set of missions 
comes up late this fall, November and December. We want the 
scientific community to overview those missions and the 
objectives, and see if we want to change some of the scientific 
objectives to help substantiate or refute this data. And in the 
discussion with the key scientists in this country, I believe 
we'll be on a path to doing that. One of the reasons I have asked 
the key scientific leadership of the nation to be here, I felt 
that it wasn't something that should be just within NASA, so 
we're going to need the help of the National Institute of Health, 
the National Academy of Science, the National Science 
Foundations.  That's the second part. Third, I think we are going 
to have to accelerate some activities. One of the key areas that 
we have to look at is the sample return. Initially with robots, 
and then ultimately, if we have reasons to do it, with human 
beings. Right now we are on a very slow time scale to getting a 
sample return; our plan is to go in 2005, after we select an 
appropriate landing site. We want to be science-driven, so we're 
going to ask the scientific community to work with us, to get 
experts like you see on this podium and to get other people to 
help shape that, and in the weeks and months and years ahead, we 
will do that.

Q: Do you foresee any of that leading to an amalgam of the world 
space agencies, coming together in order to put a mission 
together that would give you a landing and a sample return?

GOLDIN: I believe that it will be a worldwide mission, and that 
is why I spoke to the leadership of the world space community 
today, and I invited them not just to plan the missions, but to 
help us understand the results that we have. We're going to work 
together, we're working together on the space station. But I 
don't want to jump the gun; let us have the scientists establish 
the need, and the engineers and technologists will make it 
happen--but I'm cautiously optimistic we'll be on the right path 
to collect the data.

Q: Yeah, my name is Perila Shannon, I'm from Channel 9 Eyewitness 
News here.  If this is correct, if you have found microscopic 
life once existed on Mars, what does that do to your speculation 
about whether we're alone in the universe.

A: Let me try that. If in fact this result is confirmed, or we 
get some consensus in the science community that the probability 
is very high that these things actually do represent microfossils 
on Mars, then what it means, first of all, that life originated 
on a planet other than our own, in our own solar system, early in 
its history. In fact, we're finding on our own planet, that 
wherever we look where there's a source of chemical energy and 
liquid water, that we find life on this planet. We know that 
Mars, early in its history, from the Viking results, did have 
flowing water on its surface in about the time frame that these 
carbonates are dated to, and so the conditions seem to have been 
ripe for early life to perhaps have evolved on that planet. And 
so if in fact it did, then why wouldn't it have evolved also on 
other places in the early solar system where one might have had 
liquid water and sources of chemical energy. We can go look for 
those areas at other places in our solar system, and there are 
some potential sites.  Also, if it originated in this solar 
system, and on more than one planet in this solar system, then 
why wouldn't it originate on planets in other solar systems, and 
we are just beginning to learn that there are planets around 
other stars--we're just beginning to detect them--and we have a 
program that Dan Goldin mentioned called the Origins Program 
where we're going to go look for planets around other stars, 
other solar systems, and eventually to look at their atmospheres 
and see what kind of environments these planets might have had. 
So it raises the possibility that life may have actually arisen 
elsewhere than this solar system as well.

Q [missing]

A: ... this question that you ask about seeding. Who is to say 
that we are not all Martians, that Mars was the place where life 
first started; some people claim long ago it had a more hospital 
environment in terms of being warm and wet and so forth, than the 
Earth even? Or, how do we know that what we are seeing on Mars 
didn't first come from the Earth, through another asteroid impact 
that brought it to Mars--of course less likely because Mars has 
less gravity, less mass, less gravity than the Earth. But we are 
learning that there is a lot of interchange of matter between 
various planets. We even find in Antarctica, pieces of the moon. 
So there's all types of questions here, including the intriguing 
possibility that life independently started in both places. And 
we have lots to learn. Provided, it's life.

Q: I understand that the National Academy of Sciences has set up 
an oversight committee to ensure that any future NASA activities 
won't result in a back contamination of Earth with a Martian 
organism, and I was wondering if you could identify some of the 
members of the committee.

A: Yes, in fact, the idea of trying to prevent problems due to 
forward contamination of Mars by our sending spacecraft there, or 
back contamination of the Earth by bringing samples back from 
Mars, was something that got started in the early 1970s as we 
contemplated the first Viking mission, which was the first U.S. 
lander on Mars. And the agency does have a process, and it 
involves the Academy, by which we examine these issues, to make 
sure that we go through every step necessary, such that we do not 
either contaminate Mars, when we send our spacecraft there, or 
should we go and bring a sample back to this planet, that we 
don't do the reverse. There is a process, yes.

GOLDIN: Let me expand on that. It is the policy of this agency, 
that we would rather not have a mission go, until we are cleared 
to establish that there will be no forward and no back 
contamination, and that is non-negotiable.

Q: Yes, David Chandler from the Boston Globe. One of the three 
principal investigators of the Viking life-detection tests has 
maintained steadfastly for the twenty years since that experiment 
that his, that the labelled release experiment did, in fact, 
produce evidence of current life on Mars.  That claim has not 
received a lot of respect in the scientific community. In light 
of this evidence of past life on Mars, do you think there will be 
a reexamination of the results of that experiment, and perhaps a 
more receptive response to his proposal for a follow-on 
experiment that would resolve clearly the results of that 
experiment one way or another.

A: Okay, I think I'll handle that one. This result that you heard 
about today has only has something to say about the possibility 
of life early in the planet's history, not really about the 
existence of life of any sort on the planet today. And if in fact 
through the scientific process it's determined that in fact this 
is good evidence of early life on Mars, that's really all it is, 
but it would, in fact, raise the possibility that that life may 
have continued to evolve on the planet, and I'll ensure, at that 
point, that the scientific community would pass some judgment 
whether or not we should reopen the issue of the third experiment 
on the Viking lander.

Q: Barbara Rosewicz of the Wall Street Journal. Can you explain 
to us how far can you go in verifying your theory about life in 
past Mars by using the free samples that we've already gotten 
from Mars. For example, are there additional tests you can run on 
this particular meteorite that will clear up some of the 
ambiguities? Have you looked at the other chunks and do you find 
the same sort of microorganism and structures through and 
through? Have you looked at the other, although younger 
meteorites from Mars, yet, or is that an avenue you might use?

A: Yes, we plan to look at this meteorite in much more detail, we 
plan to concentrate on these micro-fossil objects and try to get 
additional data on them to understand their composition and 
structure. Additionally, there are a total of 12 of these Mars 
meteorites, and we would certainly like to look at some of the 
other ones, I'm sure some of the other teams will start to do 
that now. I think there's an incredible amount of information to 
be gained by doing the types of studies that we did here on the 
other Mars meteorites, and we hope that goes forward vigorously.

Q: Do you need a mission to Mars to be definitive, do you think, 
or can you find the answers in what we've got?

A: Very clearly, we would like to have a good sample from Mars, 
so that we can use it as ground truth, in addition to the 12 
samples which we have in our collections. And the sample we have 
from Mars, we have some ideas about where we'd like to go and 
look, and those very clearly would be entered in the discussions 
of the committees and things. But the thing that--keep in mind 
that the sample we are reporting on today is a very unique 
sample. It is four and a half billion years old. There are no 
other of the other 12, of the other 11 Mars meteorites, the 
oldest is only 1.2, 1.3 billion years, and then the others are 
around 170, 180 million years old. So this is a unique sample 
that allows us to go back in the window of opportunity and look 
at very early in the history of the planet. Yes, we'd love to 
have material from the surface of the planet, perhaps from depth.

A: There's of course this philosophy that you--in some cases that 
you don't have to go there you can wait until it comes to you or 
find it and it's already come. I think in science, consensus 
builds slowly, and you'll get consensus at one level, and then 
other people still won't be convinced, and ultimately, really, 
you'll want to go, further, if you care about this issue, and I 
do, a number of us do. So I don't think there's an end. But 
there's more tests to be done with the Martian meteorites we 
have. One of the projects we're setting up at Stanford University 
is to look now for amino acids. Even if we find it, that won't be 
an answer in itself. But these types of evidence, when you put 
them together--it's a bunch of lines of evidence--they reinforce 
each other, each time you end up in some sense with a maybe, but 
if you combine a whole bunch of maybes, you still have a maybe, 
but you're much more confident. That's what's going on.

A: And please remember that this meteorite is one of the cleanest 
samples we that we have--there is very little external 
contamination on this meteorite at all from Antarctica. So as far 
as sample return, this is as close as we get, and it's the best 
sample we have.

Q: This is John Wilford, New York Times. In the, regarding the 
two missions that are planned for launching late this year. Are 
the landing sites there appropriate for searching for any kind of 
evidence that might corroborate your findings? Is there any 
thought of changing the destination for those missions? Is there 
anything that you'd want to do that you hadn't been planning to 
do already?

A: In fact, the site that we've chosen for the Mars Pathfinder 
lander, which is launching this year, probably couldn't have been 
better, actually, if we'd have known about this result a long 
time ago, when we made this decision. We selected a site to land 
in that looks like it's at the mouth of a major runoff channel, 
which has brought a lot of different types of rocks and samples 
from a lot of different types of locations upstream, if you will, 
of this ancient stream bed. And in fact it may be itself an 
ancient lakebed. And so we're going to be looking at rocks, which 
is something we did not do with Viking--Viking only examined the 
soil. It had no, there was no mobility on the Viking mission. 
This mission will actually have a micro-rover on board which will 
deploy and it will find its way to various rocks and make some 
very simple chemical mineralogical characterizations of that 
rock. The mission was not designed to look for the kinds of 
things that we're talking about here today, but it was designed 
with the idea in mind that ultimately we're looking for places 
where we would search, at some time, for the potential of early 
life on this planet.

Q: Dr. Goldin, Elaine Douglas, Operation Right-to-Know forum. 
Regarding your assertion that you wanted to re-look at the 
priorities for the upcoming Mars mission? There's a group of 
scientists, headed by Dr. Sammy McDaniel, that has been asking 
NASA for some number of years now to re-photograph the Sidonia 
land forms at high resolution, and to make these re-photographing 
on the list of top priorities for photographing the Mars surface, 
and in view of the findings announced today, I'm wondering what 
you would be saying about this question of re- photographing the 
Sidonia land forms at high resolution, top priority, and in real 
time.

GOLDIN: There can only be so many top priorities, and if 
everything is number-one priority, we'll never get there. We have 
a much higher resolution capability with this mission, and I'll 
ask Wes to handle the details. We have the mission planned and 
targeted, and if we have an opportunity to get a picture of what 
some people think is a face on Mars and could have been prior, 
not single-cell life, but higher level of life, if we have a 
chance to get a higher-resolution picture to see what that is, we 
will do that. Let me ask Dr. Huntress to talk about our approach.

HUNTRESS: You have to remember that what we are talking about 
today, let me just repeat, is only potential evidence for early, 
very microbial life on this planet, not of higher-order forms of 
life later in the history of the planet. So there's no direct 
bearing on whether or not this formation is the result of 
civilizations on Mars, as some would like to believe--the great 
majority of the scientific community believes that's not the 
case. But in addition to the lander we're sending later this 
year, we're also sending an orbiter to begin the geological 
mapping of the planet, in order, in fact, to look for the best 
places on the planet where we would find evidence of early life 
on this planet. And we will, in fact, be getting some fairly 
high- resolution images of various portions of the planet. Now 
this region is not a particular target, but if there's an 
opportunity to re-photograph it, we certainly will. We're 
certainly going to get better pictures than we got last time.

Q: Hi, my name's Bill Cosmos, I'm with the Discovery Channel. Dr. 
Goldin and the people on the panel, do you think that these 
findings, which are quite, quite important, will regenerate the 
desire for a human mission to Mars in the closer future, which 
has somehow gone back to the sidelines?

GOLDIN: Let me say this: our missions should be driven by 
scientific potential and the potential for economic opportunity, 
and not be a feel-good mission to Mars. Now, Apollo was a 
wonderful mission, and we set out to get to the moon before the 
Russians, but after we got to the moon, the nation said, "Okay, 
we've arrived, now what are we going to do here?" I think the 
process we ought to undergo is the one you see here today, where 
we take a look at the scientific opportunities and say, is there 
a reason that a human being could go to find out the things we 
need to find out. Should we send a sample return much sooner? 
Maybe we should be sending a sample return mission as the third 
set instead of the fifth set. As we get material back, we should 
look at it. We also want to make sure that we can do it safely, 
and we can do it within a reasonable cost. I believe we have the 
potential as a nation, and working with other nations, to do it. 
But the thing I'd like to ask people to resist doing, is let's 
not have a reaction of saying, "let's get to Mars as fast as we 
can," get there, and not know why we're there. That is why I 
thought it was so important to have an open scientific 
discussion, and not have NASA sitting back on the data, and I 
welcome people with diverging views to help us focus on 
scientific issues, and I feel in my stomach, my guts, that we 
have a great potential to do it, and in the end we will probably 
do it--but with a reason.

ZARE: I'd like to add to that if I might. I wanted to add that 
science and technology work together; we're talking about 
exploration. It's very important to this country to really keep 
its sense of exploration, the pioneering spirit, the same thing 
that brought our forebears to the New World. And I think there 
are new worlds to explore in space and elsewhere, but we people 
must be willing to invest in them. When we turn inward, when we 
forget to make these investments, when we lose that will, such 
nations perish.

Q: Mark Careau[?], Houston Chronicle for Dr. McCay. Can you give 
us calendar and year when you got the sample, and calendar month 
and year when you began to suspect that you had this discovery, 
and sort of, what the feeling was like as you began to--what was 
the inner sense of what you had, and how did you begin to wonder 
about investigating this further.

MCKAY: Yes, we got the sample in August of 1994, and started 
looking at it in some detail. The first six months, we didn't 
really see anything exciting, and then we started using some of 
the new tools. You have to remember that the techniques that we 
used are really state- of-the-art, advanced tools that didn't 
even exist five years ago. And it wasn't until we started using 
these tools that we really got excited, and we really said 
there's something going on here that we don't understand. So I 
would say about a year ago is when we started to get really 
excited about this rock, and we--I won't say we convinced 
ourselves, but we became convinced that this was a very unusual 
sample, and I think the results of the past year have been just 
terribly exciting. I have spent many nights in the laboratory 
looking at this rock because I was just too excited to go home--
much to the concern of my wife and family. So I would say the 
past year is when it started to really develop.

Q: Stewart Shammer? from KTRK-ABC in Houston. My question is for 
Mr. Goldin.  Apologize for the business end of it, but we always 
seem to be talking money. Do you feel that these findings are 
going to have a position--a positive effect on Congress to help 
loosen the purse strings, and if you want to accelerate the 
missions you've got to have more money, but do you think it will 
influence Congress or possibly other space agencies around the 
world?

GOLDIN: Let's not think in the old-think that money is the magic 
ingredient. Let's be in a position where we have science define 
what we're going to do; let's make a meritorious case for that 
science; let's see what we have to do; and let's not just say 
we're going to do this brute force. I think that that would be 
the wrong approach. We are on a very focused, balanced-science 
approach. I think exploration is necessary, but let's not say, 
"we have found full evidence of low- level biological life on 
Mars, give us money, let's have a big mission." Let's go to a 
systematic process.  I don't think we're talking about decades, 
here. We're talking about a relatively short period of time. And 
when there's an appropriate point in time to state our case, 
let's state our case with the American people to the Congress. 
I'm confident that if we abide by this approach, we'll open up 
everyone's hearts and minds for the future.

Q: John Getter of KHU-TV. Dr. McCay touched on this, for Drs. 
Gibson or Thomas-Keprta. I respect and of course understand your 
scientific reserve and its necessity, and so on. But could you 
give us some hint as to what you felt and thought in your heart 
when it first dawned on you what you might well have your hands 
on here?

GIBSON: I guess it really came to a realization of Dave and 
myself, one evening when we were on the electron microscope 
looking around on this sample, and we came to this segmented 
structure, and that caught our attention, and we began to ask 
each other, is this for real? And I can honestly say that evening 
when I went home, I had difficulty sleeping because of the 
thoughts of what this could be, and I still wondered are we sure 
that this is a segmented structure, is it indigenous to the 
sample, and I've come to the conclusion yes it is, and there are 
other tests we want to do, and we're really excited about getting 
in this project, and it's undoubtedly the most exciting thing 
I've done in my 27 years as a scientist.  I have to admit it does 
beat Apollo in the excitement, and that was tough to do.

THOMAS-KEPRTA: Well, I think when Dave and Everett first brought 
me in, I have to say I was the doubting Thomas, and as time went 
on, I became more and more convinced, so I'm very pleased to be a 
part of this project.

Q: This is Mary Bedden with KPRC-TV in Houston. Because these 
appear to be an early life form, do you, or have you detected 
anything on Mars that would have interrupted the evolution of 
higher life; and secondly, how conducive, now, is the Mars 
atmosphere to sustaining some sort of higher life form.

MCKAY: Mars is a very unhospitable place right now, even for the 
kind of life forms that we think we see here. Such life forms 
could not exist on the surface. Mars lacks a atmosphere, except 
for about 7 millibars, a little bit of CO2 atmosphere, there's no 
water on the surface. At some point in Mars' history, things went 
bad. And we're not quite sure when that is, but it's some time 
after the time we're talking about here, when we think we see 
signs of life. Now, things went bad in the sense that the 
atmosphere mostly disappeared, either into space or it got locked 
up in carbonate rocks in the subsurface. And the water dried up, 
and some of that water went into space; some of it may still be 
there, as ice, as permafrost, or even as a groundwater system.

So the question is what happened to this early life when things 
went bad?  And it is one view that that early life retreated 
underground, and may still be there, just as I showed the picture 
of the bacteria living at several kilometers under the surface in 
the state of Washington, in a similar way, the kinds of things 
we're talking about may have retreated underground, and may get 
their energy from hot springs, and hydrothermal areas, and 
disequilibria from the atmosphere and rocks, and I think, though 
life cannot live on the surface, as we know it, there's still the 
possibility of this kind of life in the subsurface in Mars. 
That's an exciting question and we hope to have the answer to 
that and the only way we'll know is to go there.

Q: Mark Careau, the Houston Chronicle. What efforts should be 
extended to look in the Antarctic to look for more of these 
Martian meteorites and to examine them. Would that be fertile 
research?

A: One of the things which I think is very important is to 
realize is that the effort that is going on in the Antarctic 
field collection program is a very modest program, but its 
returns have been outstanding. You must remember until this 
program began in the 1970s, we only had around 2,500 meteorite 
samples to study in all the collections in the world. This 
program has brought over 10,000 addition samples for the 
laboratories to look at. We found samples from the moon; we now 
have 9 lunar samples discovered in the Antarctic; we have the 
Martian samples that have now been discovered in the Antarctic. 
For the cost that's being put into this program, versus the 
scientific return, the scientific return is enormous. To save the 
cost of a mission to go to Mars or the moon to return samples 
from other sites, to have it delivered to us, and brought--be 
collected by these small field parties. Perhaps these small field 
parties should be increased in their size and see to it that they 
go every year. Because there are concerns on the reduction of the 
budgets in the National Science Foundation, and the effects on 
the whole Antarctic program. But the scientific returns coming 
from this modest amount of money are enormous.

GOLDIN: This is an area where we have to do a better job across 
the government. And what we want to do is to make sure we answer 
scientific questions, and if NASA has to put some complimentary 
funds in this to assure that we're getting the right type of 
data, by God we will--this is why we need this interaction that 
I've been talking about, and there's the direction we want to go 
in.

Q: Seth Bornstein from the Orlando Sentinel for Mr. Goldin. How 
safe--it sounds like what might be best could be underground in 
the Martian surface.  How much of a priority is the search for 
the materials further below the surface, which seems to be 
needing some kind of humans to help guide that, and along with 
that is, how much are you going to increase in terms of the 
number of flights to Mars--robotic flights to Mars, how much 
would you like to see it increased.

GOLDIN: Well look, again, we want to rely upon the scientific 
thought process, and they ought to help us determine what 
fraction of the study ought to be on the surface or below the 
surface. Clearly, we're developing technology, and in fact, for 
one of our missions we're talking about going down two meters. If 
we have to go down deeper, we will go down deeper. I think what 
we want to do is carefully reflect on what we learned today, and 
in the months ahead, think about how we want to shape the 
missions we have going to Mars, especially in '96 and '98, but 
certainly by 2001 we may want to consider some very bold missions 
where we bore down real deep, and we bring back samples. This is 
the process we're going to talk about, and this is where the 
excitement comes in.

Q: This is Charlie Chin, Earth News, I guess we're last realizing 
that the last Mars pathfinder's mass spectrometer was made a 
couple of years ago and it's not a mass spectrometer--what might 
the Apex deal with the tube to help verify these results we've 
heard today.

A: If I understood that question correctly, it has to do with the 
composition instrument that's on the micro-rover that's on the 
Pathfinder mission that we're going to launch in December. It's a 
very simple instrument that's of a type that we sent to the moon, 
for example, earlier, on unmanned missions, before Apollo. And 
what this instrument does is to measure the elemental composition 
of the sample against which you place it, and this micro-rover 
has a little arm that it sticks up against the sides of different 
rocks to determine the elemental composition, from which we can 
infer what kinds of rocks they are, and something about their 
history. It's not a sophisticated instrument by any means like 
what these folks have used in their team, and it's not directed 
at finding evidence for life on Mars.  It is directed at finding 
something about the geology and geochemistry of these rock 
samples.

GOLDIN: This is an area where we want to have to decide will 
robots do the task adequately, or will we have to send human 
beings, paleontologists and geologists, to do sampling in areas 
where we have robots, and this is a discussion that we're going 
to have to have, and again, I think that there will be some 
incredible findings, all of which we won't be able to predict, 
but I really ask that we go at this in a systematic basis, but 
maybe we'll move a lot faster than we have in the past.

Q: Somebody on David's team or maybe even Bill. In 1985, Hans 
Dieder Fluge presented a paper on the possibility of fossilized 
microbacteria or something in a meteorite, even with left-hand 
DNA. Any thoughts about that and how this might either verify 
that, or might do the same thing as happened with him in that he 
had to back off and eventually nothing came of that. 

A: I am unfamiliar with the study you are talking about. I'm 
sorry.

A: Professor Fluge is at Geisen in Germany, and Hans Deider 
Fluge, and he's been involved in studies of ancient life, and of 
life-like forms in meteorites probably for 25 years. I would say 
with regard to the work of professor Fluge, and of many others, 
we ought to understand that over the years, going back into the 
mid-50s, various scientists around the world have reported what 
they thought might be microscopic fossils in meteorites, 
especially in carbonaceous chondrites, a particular type of 
meteorite that has perhaps three, four, as much as five percent 
organic carbon in them.  None of these reports--and there, not 
just Professor Fluge, but a great number of other scientists, 
maybe ten, 15, 20, over the past 30 or 40 years, have reported 
such things--none of them have held up to close scrutiny. So I 
would guess at this time that such reports do not seem to have 
any bearing on the report that we heard today on the Martian 
meteorite.

Q: This is Beth Bickey for Inside States for Mr. Goldin and Dr. 
Huntress.  You've mentioned this afternoon possibly modifying the 
scientific goals of the Mars Pathfinder based on the information 
you've released today. The Mars Pathfinder is a mere four months 
from launch. Could you talk a little bit in specifics about what 
you might chance on the probe, and is there really enough time to 
do that, and at what additional costs would NASA be prepared to 
refit the probe?

GOLDIN: I don't believe we were talking specifically about 
Pathfinder. We were talking about a range of 10 spacecraft going 
to Mars over the next decade. We could have very little impact on 
the Pathfinder mission leaving late this fall. So I'll ask Wes to 
talk about it, but I wouldn't expect great changes in that 
mission. We will recommend to the president and the Congress the 
appropriate funds to resolve the scientific issues, As I pointed 
out earlier in this conference, the President has asked the Vice 
President to have a Space Summit in November, a bipartisan Space 
Summit. At that time, NASA will be prepared to make appropriate 
recommendations, upon having time to reflect on what we've seen, 
talking to the scientific community, and seeing where we might 
prioritize our own expenditures. We may decide to not do some 
other things, in order to pay to do this work. I want to caution 
everyone, the nation has a major deficit to deal with; we're 
going to be very responsible in how we conduct our science, but 
if we believe more monies are required, we will then come forward 
and ask for those monies, but we will have real reasons for doing 
it.

HUNTRESS: Yes, I mean, we're not talking at all about modifying 
the Pathfinder mission. In fact, Pathfinder's being readied for 
shipments on a live down at KSC next week, if the schedule holds 
up, and so it's far too late to make any major changes to the 
Pathfinder or to the Mars level surveyor orbiter mission for 
launch this year.

Q: This is Stephan Okolidan for Aeronautica. In the summer of 
1976, the Viking I probe analysis seemed to indicate the 
production of some sort of gas from one of the soil samples 
collected by the probe. Now, the biological origin of that gas, 
if I remember correctly, was dismissed because no organic matter 
was found in the soil. Now, does this discovery mean that, 
indeed, in 1976 you may have had an indication of biological 
activity?

A: The instrument you're referring to is the gas chromatograph 
mass spectrometer that was on board the Viking landers for both 
of them, and they looked for, in addition to the composition of 
the atmosphere, they looked at the composition of the soil, and 
specifically to try to look for organic material in that soil, 
and it found none. You have to remember two things.  One is that 
the landers, the Viking landers landed in what would be more or 
less desert areas of Mars in order to find a very safe place in 
which to land, and so that kind of reduced the probability of 
finding organic material on the planet, should it be there. 
Secondly, the sensitivity of that spectrometer we sent there over 
20 years ago is far less than the sensitivities that we're 
talking about here that we're applying with our Earth-based 
techniques.

Q: Hi, this is Casey Gold from the LA Times. It seems like in 
order to determine whether or not this is really a microfossil 
it's very important to see whether it has an inside and an 
outside--in other words, to be able to look inside, and it also 
seems like you're not going to be getting another sample for 
quite a long time. So my question is what can you do with this 
sample to answer that question.

MCCAY: This is Dave McCay. Yes, that's a very important question, 
and what we plan to do, and what other groups may do, is make 
transmission electron microscope thin sections, and try to catch 
some of these microfossil-like forms in the thin section, and 
then with the transmission electron microscope, we will be able 
to see inside, and we will be able to see if there's a membrane, 
perhaps--we will be able to see if there's any remains of the 
original cell, machinery, left. Those are questions that can be 
answered with very careful, tedious transmission electron 
microscope work, and we will go in that direction, and we hope 
other groups do as well.

MCKAY: This is Dave McCay. Yes, that's a very important question, 
and what we plan to do, and what other groups may do, is make 
transmission electron microscope thin sections, and try to catch 
some of these microfossil-like forms in the thin section, and 
then with the transmission electron microscope, we will be able 
to see inside, and we will be able to see if there's a membrane, 
perhaps--we will be able to see if there's any remains of the 
original cell, machinery, left. Those are questions that can be 
answered with very careful, tedious transmission electron 
microscope work, and we will go in that direction, and we hope 
other groups do as well.

Q: This is a question--this is Dave Perlman at the San Francisco 
Chronicle--it's a question for Dr. Schopf. Could you amplify a 
little bit about the two factors to which you've given the lowest 
confidence rating, the lowest subjective confidence rating; that 
is to say the environment and history aspects of this meteorite 
examination.

SCHOPF: Thank you. That of course is an interesting question. The 
areas that I have suggested are open for further discussion have 
to do with the environment and the history of emplacement of the 
carbonate in these fractures. I simply point out that in Nature 
Magazine in July, these carbonate rocks, the carbonate minerals, 
were interpreted by one group of scientists as having been formed 
by hot, carbon-dioxide-rich fluids that permeated--percolated--up 
into them at temperatures of 450 degrees Celsius.

The alternative view, and certainly the one that is favored by 
the Johnson Spacecraft, NASA people, is that those same carbonate 
minerals were formed at temperatures below 80 degrees Celsius--so 
relatively cool. Now if they're relatively cool, life could live 
there. If it's 450 degrees, you're frying like a fried egg, you 
don't have any chance of life existing under those conditions--
carbon bonds break down.

So I simply point out that here's a paper in July, here's a paper 
in August, in two of the most prestigious scientific journals in 
the world. And to the satisfaction of those two groups, this 
matter has not yet been resolved, and I don't have an opinion--
although I think the guys here at NASA make pretty good 
arguments.

Secondly, with regard to the time of emplacement of the 
carbonates in those fractures. If there was a biota on Mars, and 
if that biota was associated with the carbonate in those 
fractures, and if that meteorite actually comes from Mars, the 
fracture has to be there before the thing gets lifted off and 
brought to earth. The alternative view is that the fractures were 
caused when a bolide, an impacting body, hit Mars and blasted it 
off. Well, if it hit, and blasted it off, there wouldn't be life 
living in that and the--at 450 degrees and so forth--the point is 
that there's another area that needs to be discussed, understood, 
clearly defined. On the one hand, it makes it reasonable for life 
to have been there, on the other hand, it suggests that it's 
absolutely impossible. I just simply point out that that's 
something that has to be looked at.

GIBSON: I feel that one of the things--the strongest bit of 
evidence that supports the low-temperature formation of these 
carbonates, comes from four lines of evidence. The first one is 
the oxygen isotopic data. That data from the oxygen 1816 ratio 
suggests the temperature formation between zero degrees and 
eighty degrees centigrade. This is very compelling evidence for a 
low-temperature formation.

The second data point, is within these carbonates, we have the 
presence of gregite. Gregite decomposes at 250 degrees C. If the 
temperature was above 250 degrees C, the gregite would not be 
present.

The third is the presence of these organic molecules that 
professor Zare has seen. If this organic molecules had been 
heated to above 400 degrees, they would have begun to degrade, 
and we would have seen the fragments of this, and we do not see 
any evidence of this in the spectrum--we seen nice clean spectrum 
which suggests there have been lower temperatures involved.

The fourth point is a mineralogical point, and if one had been 
subjected to high temperatures, in the carbonates, like in the 
metamorphic process, elevated temperatures, some of these 
minerals would have equilibrated and homogenized; we did not see 
this. We see these compositional variations in there.

So we feel from these four data points, that the temperature is 
very clearly established as low temperature, in the range that 
would support life. The second point that professor Schopf 
raised, has to do with the emplacement of the carbonates. There's 
evidence within the thin sections and also other data that shows 
that some of these carbonates have been fractured, and this 
fracturing could occur when the material was removed from the 
surface of Mars, that is the carbonates were emplaced already at 
the time of the shock event. Now alternative: it could have been 
it underwent a shock in space, as it traveled through space, but 
the evidence does not show there might have been a collision on 
this particular meteorite as it traveled through space prior to 
its coming into Earth.

David?

MCKAY: Also, the carbonates fill some of these fractures. The 
carbonates have been dated as 3.6 billion years old. So the 
fractures had to occur on Mars.

Q: This is Eller Woods from the Palo Alto weekly. Some of the 
panelists mentioned that organic molecules have been found in 
meteorites. Is this Martian rock the first evidence of life 
beyond earth?

A: The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that we have found--Simon 
Clemett, Rick Maechling, Xavier Chillier--really are the first 
organic molecules we believe that you can attribute to Mars. But 
as I've said before, finding organic molecules does not mean that 
they came from living things. That's not what our arguments are 
based on. Instead, our arguments are based on a combination of 
things whose best explanation, our simplest explanation, in our 
opinion, is to believe that there was some biogenic activity, 
long ago, on Mars.

Q: ... concise. Number one, I believe you mentioned at the 
beginning of this new data to add to the Science report. If so, 
what is that new data. Number two, you talked about some TEM 
tests that you'd like to do in the future; what are some of the 
other tests to come on these samples?

A: Most of the new data that we referred to that is not in the 
science paper are the photographs that you saw, the SEM 
photographs. Only one of those was published in the Science 
paper, or will be published in the Science paper.  Most of those 
were actually made since the review process of the Science paper. 
In terms of new work on the sample? I think that as I said we're 
going to do additional TEM work on it, I think we want to do some 
additional organic analysis, and we really think that there are 
parts of that sample that need to be investigated in much more 
detail, and we hope to do so.  Amino acids is one of the things 
that we're going to look for next.

Q: Yes, Jamie Shreve from Discover Magazine. I'd like to ask Dr. 
Schopf if he could characterize a smoking gun that could convince 
him that these microfossils are biological, and do we have the 
techniques available to confirm or deny that.

SCHOPF: Absolutely. Absolutely I can characterize the data that 
would be--I would characterize as a smoking gun, and absolutely 
it can be done. I would suggest the following, and understand 
that I'm assuming that the sort of life that these fossil-like 
objects might represent--I'm assuming that that type of life is 
like Earth life. If someone were to tell me that life on Mars was 
solid state chemistry, that life on Mars was indistinguishable 
from a quartz crystal, then I would say it looks to me like a 
quartz crystal. And somebody would have to say, well, it's alive 
for the following reasons, okay?

So I have to predicate it, my remarks, by saying I assume it's 
like life on Earth in its broadest sense: made out of carbon 
compounds, which we refer to as organic compounds--carbon, 
hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus - CHONPS. Now, 
I'm assuming it will be like that; I'm assuming that for it to be 
alive it must be separated from the exterior by a membrane, a 
wall, a layer--some definitive boundary that bounds the outside 
that is the environment, and the inside, where I must assume that 
aqueous chemistry, that is, water-based chemistry, must occur. 
Because all the chemistry of cells of living systems on this 
planet, do their chemistry in water--that's because we evolved in 
an aqueous environment, and so forth.

So give me those sort of three constraints, then you say how can 
they go ahead and nail this thing shut to my satisfaction? Well, 
what I would be delighted to see would be transmission electron 
micrographs that showed a cell wall that has an electron density 
like that of carbonaceous material.  This can be done; it's not 
hard to do, it's going to take some real manipulation to do this, 
but I can imagine how to do it and they have already imagined how 
to do it. That's number one.

Number two, I'd like to see some size data to show me that this 
is a population of organisms; that it is distinctly different 
from the mineralic material in which it is embedded. That's a 
characteristic of life; it's not like minerals, it's biological, 
okay. And I would like also--and I'd think it's not at all far-
fetched because we do it all the time in the Earth's fossil 
record--I'd like to see some evidence of cell division, I'd like 
to understand the life cycle of this fossil-like organism. You 
give me those three things, and I'd like to see data on a couple 
thousand individuals--no, you ask a lot; I can tell you, and you 
say, "oh, that sounds like a lot," in the Apex Chur[?], the 
oldest fossils on this planet, I have personally measured 1900 
cells, 1950 cells, that's what is required to nail this thing. 
Okay, give me 500--that's enough, that's enough. But if those 
sorts of things--they are doable, the techniques are available, 
and I'll bet you, as soon as these guys can get on a plane, 
they're going to shoot back down to Houston, and by golly, 
they're going to get another paper in Science, and I hope that 
they can nail this thing absolutely shut tight.

BOEDER: Thank you, and the last word will have to be from our 
outside skeptic. We've run out of time, and Mr. Goldin would like 
to make a closing statement to wrap up today's news conference.

GOLDIN: Again, let me remind everyone we are in the middle of a 
process, and we opened the door. We felt that NASA must share 
what it does with the American people, and we are prepared for 
the outcome either way, but the outcome will be the right outcome 
because it will be driven by science. Saying that on a rational 
level, on an emotional level, we are a very bold nation, and NASA 
reflects the excitement and the boldness of this nation. NASA 
will be ready to take the next step. If we have to go send sample 
return missions much sooner from Mars, we will do it. If we have 
to map the Martian surface from above, we will do it. If we have 
to dig down into the depths of Mars, we will do it. If we need 
people to perform these functions, we will use them. We will make 
it safe, and we will help America and the world understand who we 
are, and what we are, and how we relate to our universe. Thank 
you very much.

END OF NEWS CONFERENCE
-----------------------------------------------------------------

SCIENTISTS DISCUSS EUROMIR 95 RESULTS
ESA press release Nr 38-96

Exactly one year after the start of the highly successful EUROMIR 
95 mission, which saw ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter on board space 
station Mir for 180 days, a post-flight Investigators Working 
Group (IWG) meeting will take place on 3 and 4 September at ESA's 
European Astronaut Center (EAC) in Cologne.

Samples collected during the mission and a wealth of data were 
returned to Earth on board the Soyuz spacecraft at the end of the 
mission on 29 February 1996. A number of baseline data collection 
sessions have taken place since then, specifically for the 
scientists and researchers of the life sciences community. During 
these sessions, physical and physiological data concerning the 
EUROMIR 95 astronauts were measured at regular intervals.

In the light of the evaluation of these data, the Principal 
Investigators (the scientists whose experiments have flown on 
board Mir during the mission) have now been invited to present 
their preliminary findings and results at the September 
Investigators Working Group.

The Working Group meetings will cover two days: the first day 
will be devoted to life sciences results, whereas the second day 
will be shared between the results of technology and material 
sciences experiments and the results in the field of 
astrophysics.

The event will be attended by some 50 scientists and researchers 
mainly from Universities and Research institutes of the Member 
States who have contributed to the EUROMIR 95 programme (Belgium, 
Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, 
Switzerland, United Kingdom) and from the USA, and will be opened 
by J. Feustel-Bíechl, ESA Director of Manned Spaceflight and 
Microgravity.

Representatives of the press specialising in scientific 
disciplines wishing to attend the Working Group meeting are 
kindly requested to contact ESA/EAC, Public Relations, in Cologne 
(Germany) on tel. + 49 2203 60 01 for accreditation.
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OCEAN WINDS AND OZONE TO BE MEASURED BY U.S. INSTRUMENTS ABOARD 
JAPANESE EARTH OBSERVATION SATELLITE
NASA release 96-165

Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS) will carry 
U.S. instruments designed to measure global ocean surface winds 
and atmospheric ozone content as part of an international climate 
change research mission set to begin with a launch from 
Tanegashima Space Center in Japan on August 16.

The NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) and Total Ozone Mapping 
Spectrometer (TOMS) instruments aboard ADEOS will be launched by 
the fourth Japanese H-2 rocket.  The planned launch time is 9:29 
p.m. EDT (10:29 a.m. Japanese Standard Time on August
17)	Destined for a 497-mile high circular polar orbit above the 
Earth, ADEOS is due to begin day-to-day science operations in 
November.

"ADEOS is the first in a series of major collaborative efforts 
between NASA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan 
in the area of Earth remote-sensing," said William Townsend, 
Acting Associate Administrator for NASA's Office of Mission to 
Planet Earth.  "As such, it is a superb example of increasing 
international cooperation between the United States and other 
spacefaring nations of the world in generating a better 
understanding of our planet and its complex climate."

Taking advantage of the natural reflection, or "backscattering," 
of radar pulses by wind-driven ripples in ocean waves, NSCAT will 
make 190,000 measurements per day of the speed and direction of 
winds within about 1.5 inches of the ocean surface.  These winds 
directly affect the turbulent exchanges of heat, moisture and 
greenhouse gases between the atmosphere and the ocean.  These 
air-sea exchanges, in turn, help determine regional weather 
patterns and shape global climate.

"NASA researchers will use the data to understand the interface 
between the Earth's two great fluids: the oceans and the 
atmosphere," said Jim Graf, NSCAT project manager at NASA's Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.  "Understanding and 
characterizing this interface is critical to better scientific 
understanding of global warming, El Nino phenomenon, and other 
studies of the Earth as a total system.  In addition, seafaring 
organizations that transport goods and passengers across the 
oceans can use the data from NSCAT to steer their ships more 
safely and economically."

Covering more than 90 percent of the globe every two days, NSCAT 
will provide more than 100 times the amount of ocean wind 
information currently available from ship reports, according to 
Graf.  Since NSCAT is a radar instrument, it is capable of taking 
data day and night, regardless of sunlight or weather conditions.

The launch of a TOMS sensor aboard ADEOS will help extend the 
unique data set of global total column ozone measurements begun 
by a TOMS carried aboard NASA's Nimbus-7 satellite in 1978.

"TOMS/ADEOS will continue this global mapping, while the NASA 
TOMS Earth Probe satellite, launched into a lower orbit in July, 
will compensate for cloud-covered regions and provide higher-
resolution measurements of tropospheric aerosols and pollutants," 
said Phil Sabelhaus, manager of the Total Ozone Mapping 
Spectrometer Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, 
Greenbelt, MD.

Data from both NSCAT and TOMS/ADEOS "will be very valuable to the 
National Weather Service," said Susan Zevin, Deputy Director for 
the weather service, an agency of the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration.  The ocean surface wind measurements, 
used in numerical models, will help local weather forecasters 
more accurately predict the path and intensity of hurricanes, 
winter storms and other weather systems that form over the 
oceans.  The ozone data will be used by the National Weather 
Service to monitor volcanic ash in the atmosphere to improve 
aviation safety, and to help generate a daily forecast of 
ultraviolet exposure levels to help reduce peoples' overexposure 
to the Sun's rays.

Other science instruments on ADEOS provided by agencies in Japan 
and France will study ocean chlorophyll production and ocean 
temperature, land vegetation distribution, the vertical profile 
of atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and water 
vapor, and the polarization and direction of solar energy 
reflected by the Earth.

NSCAT and TOMS/ADEOS have been developed under NASA's strategic 
enterprise called Mission to Planet Earth, a comprehensive 
research effort to study Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere, ice 
and life as an interrelated system.
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End Marsbugs Vol. 3, No. 10