MARSBUGS: The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter Volume 4, Number 1, 16 January, 1997. 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 by the number of articles and announcements. Copyright of this compilation exists with the editors, except for specific articles, in which instance copyright exists with the author/authors. E-mail subscriptions are free, and may be obtained by contacting either of the editors. Contributions are welcome, and should be submitted to either of the two editors. Contributions should include a short biographical statement about the author(s) along with the author(s)' correspondence address. Subscribers are advised to make appropriate inquiries before joining societies, ordering goods etc. Back issues may be obtained via anonymous FTP at: ftp.uidaho.edu/pub/mmbb/marsbugs. The purpose of this newsletter is to provide a channel of information for scientists, educators and other persons interested in exobiology and related fields. This newsletter is not intended to replace peer-reviewed journals, but to supplement them. We, the editors, envision MARSBUGS as a medium in which people can informally present ideas for investigation, questions 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 planets), the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), ecopoeisis/ terraformation, Earth from space, planetary biology, primordial evolution, space physiology, biological life support systems, and human habitation of space and other planets. ----------------------------------------------------------------- INDEX 1) HYDROGEN ESCAPING FROM GANYMEDE HINTS OXYGEN LURKING AT SURFACE JPL press release 2) LEARN WHAT TO SAY TO AN ALIEN... ATTEND THE CONTACT XIV CONFERENCE 3) DELAYS ASIDE, PATHFINDER IS ON ITS WAY By Diane Ainsworth 4) MISSIONS BEGIN EARTH'S FRIENDLY INVASION OF MARS By Paula Shawa 5) HEROINES AND HISTORY WELL REPRESENTED IN WORLDWIDE COMPETITION TO NAME ROVER 6) MYSTERY OF MARS EVOLVES, LIVES ON IN POPULAR CULTURE By Chuck Weirauch 7) REGULATIONS ENSURE VISITORS FROM EARTH KEEP PLANETS CLEAN By Susan Walsh 8) NASA'S DISCOVERY PROGRAM SETS MARK FOR FUTURE OF LOW-COST MISSIONS 9) ROVER DRIVER DREAMS OF PUTTING PEDAL TO METAL 10) NEW MARS SCREEN SAVER AVAILABLE ON-LINE By Diane Ainsworth 11) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS REPORT JPL press release 12) GALILEO MISSION STATUS JPL press release 13) SOFTWARE FOR FIRST NEW MILLENNIUM MISSION CLOSEST YET TO "HAL 9000" NASA release 97-7 14) CASSINI/HUYGENS: YOUR SIGNATURE OR MESSAGE IN SPACE! ESA release 02-97 ----------------------------------------------------------------- HYDROGEN ESCAPING FROM GANYMEDE HINTS OXYGEN LURKING AT SURFACE JPL press release Atomic hydrogen found escaping from Ganymede implies Jupiter's largest moon has large amounts of oxygen hovering over or locked up in its icy surface, according to University of Colorado observations with NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Senior Researcher Charles Barth of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics said observations made with a CU ultraviolet spectrometer on Galileo indicate UV radiation is breaking down Ganymede's rock-hard ice into atomic hydrogen and atomic oxygen. Because atomic hydrogen is the lightest atom and Ganymede has a weak gravitational field, the hydrogen escapes while the atomic oxygen stays behind, said Barth. Barth speculated the atomic oxygen forms molecular oxygen and ozone which may become trapped in the ice or form a very thin atmosphere above the surface of Ganymede. "If this process has been occurring for the past four billion years since Ganymede was formed, then the moon should have as much oxygen on its icy surface as Earth has in its atmosphere," he said. Galileo's ultraviolet spectrometer was designed and built at CU- Boulder under the direction of LASP Senior Researcher Charles Hord. Barth, a CU science team member on the spectrograph, presented the new results at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco Dec. 14 to Dec. 19. With a diameter of 3,269 miles, Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and is about three-quarters the size of Mars. The moon, which has craters, basins and mountains, is believed to be made of rock and water ice. The surface temperatures of Ganymede hover at a chilly minus 186 degrees F. The CU-Boulder spectrometer was pointed at Ganymede during a June 27 flyby, passing within 519 miles of the moon. The approach was 70 times closer than the approach of the Voyager 2 spacecraft to Ganymede in 1979. The spectrometer data from the flyby was stored on a tape recorder onboard the spacecraft for about six weeks before being transmitted to Earth for analysis. While previous observations with the Hubble Space Telescope have indicated there is oxygen at Ganymede, the direct observations of escaping hydrogen by the CU-Boulder team provide a mechanism for the presence of oxygen, Barth said. A CU-Boulder team discovered atomic hydrogen escaping from Mars and ozone at its surface in 1969 using NASA's Mariner 6 spacecraft, a finding essentially identical to the new Ganymede discoveries, Barth said. "Mars is an analog to Earth and Ganymede is an analog to Mars," Barth said. "Although the conditions on Ganymede are extremely cold, it would be interesting to see what processes might take place if there was a way to haul Ganymede into the orbit of Mars." ----------------------------------------------------------------- LEARN WHAT TO SAY TO AN ALIEN... ATTEND THE CONTACT XIV CONFERENCE With increasing signs of life on Mars flooding the media, the prospect of contact with exterrestrial beings is more likely now than it ever has been in human history. Will you be ready? Join some of the world's foremost social and space scientists, science fiction writers and artists at CONTACT: Cultures of the Imagination from March 7-9, 1997 at the Sunnyvale Hilton in Sunnyvale, CA, U.S.A. CONTACT is a unique interdisciplinary conference held each year to promote the integration of human factors into space age research and policy, emphasize the interaction of the Arts and Sciences and their technologies, and explore the connections between anthropologists who study alien cultures and science fiction writers who create them. Conference activities include the exchange of new ideas and perspectives; serious, creative speculation about humanity's future, on-world and off-world; as well as the development of ethical approaches in cross-cultural contact, whenever and wherever it occurs. We welcome those of similar mind to participate in CONTACT. We believe that our conference is enriched by new colleagues and new ideas. Conference participants will have the opportunity to engage in several projects including the Bateson Project, a special yearly project in the memory of anthropologist Gregory Bateson; Cultures of the Imagination (COTI), an experiment in creation; The Solar System Simulation (SolSys) intercollegiate curriculum where student teams represent colonies in a simulated future human community in space, communicating by computer in virtual reality; and hear about The CONTACT Consortium, an organization which integrates science and technology to build communities in virtual space. Research which has resulted from past CONTACT conferences has been presented at several scientific meetings, published in professional journals, featured in the national media and nonfiction books, and documented in a PBS video. Our educational curricula have been funded by NASA and Smithsonian and received national recognition. Over the years, CONTACT has evolved into an international and professional organization and nonprofit scientific and educational corporation. We are proud of the distinguished professionals in the sciences and arts who have devoted their time and energy to CONTACT over the past decade. CONTACT participants have included writers Poul Anderson, Peter Beagle, Greg Bear, Michael Bishop, David Brin, C. J. Cherryh, Alan Dean Foster, James Hogan, Larry Niven, G. David Nordley, Jerry Pournelle, Rudy Rucker and William Tenn. Everyone's a participant! CONTACT welcomes professionals, students and enthusiasts in the sciences, science fiction, and the arts. Come and be part of our 14th annual gathering in an informal and synergistic atmosphere with plenty of opportunities for interaction. Join us for three days of hard work and hard play... The pre-registration cost is $60 for individuals ($90 at the door) and $40 for students and seniors ($60 at the door). Payment should be made via check or credit card. Mail a check or credit card information to CONTACT XIV, AWIT, 1012 Morse Avenue, #15, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. Contact: Jim Funaro, funaro@ucscb.ucsc.edu Lynn Macias, (415) 852-3830 http://www.slip.net/~lmacias/conthome.html ----------------------------------------------------------------- DELAYS ASIDE, PATHFINDER IS ON ITS WAY By Diane Ainsworth [From the JPL Universe] Mars Pathfinder arced into a starlit sky, seemingly heading for a half-moon close on the horizon and the reddish sparkle of Mars itself, during a crystal clear night on Dec. 4 at NASA's Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla. Launch occurred right on the mark at 1:58 a.m. Eastern time (10:58 p.m. Pacific time on Dec. 3), sending the spacecraft on its way to Mars. The fiery blast of six of the Delta's nine boosters could be seen as they were jettisoned over the Atlantic Ocean, twinkling orange and yellow as they fell through the atmosphere. Ten days after launch, the spacecraft is currently about 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Earth, traveling at a speed of about 3.2 kilometers per second (7,155 mph). All spacecraft temperatures and electronics are performing at their expected levels for this early phase of the mission, said Brian Muirhead, Pathfinder flight system manager. The cruise stage solar array, propulsion module and electronics are also performing at just the right temperatures. Pathfinder is currently drawing power from two of the four segments of the solar array and producing approximately 250 watts of power, which is about 10 percent more power than was originally predicted. The battery is charged at 75 percent of its full capacity and is showing a temperature of 9 Celsius (48 degrees Fahrenheit), which is approaching the desired steady state of 8 Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit). In addition, the telecommunications system is performing well within its predicted range, indicating that it will be able to maintain higher data rates throughout the mission. A problem with one of the spacecraft's five sun sensors was resolved last week after a software patch was uplinked to compensate for a low voltage reading on one of the sensor heads, Muirhead said. The problem sensor was unit #4, which sits on the spacecraft's spin axis and became obscured or contaminated enough that its data were not usable. Unit #5, also located on the spin axis, was providing good sun orientation data, but at a lower voltage than was expected. The other three sensor heads are equally spaced along the cruise stage and were working fine. "The software modification allowed us to read the sun sensor's data, even though the output is lower than normal, and use the information to calculate the spacecraft's orientation in space," Muirhead said. "Once the problem was solved, we began to plan for our spin-down maneuver, which will reduce the spacecraft's spin rate from 12.3 rpm to 2 rpm." That maneuver was scheduled to take place on Friday, Dec. 13. Pathfinder's next scheduled in-flight event is the first trajectory correction maneuver, planned for Jan. 4, 1997. The latest orbital data from tracking operations at all three Deep Space Network stations suggest that the magnitude of TCM-1, if performed on that day, will be 29.5 meters per second (96 feet per second). Mars Pathfinder, the second in NASA's Discovery program of low- cost, highly focused spaceflight missions, is expected to have a relatively quiet cruise to the red planet. In March 1997, the spacecraft will catch up and fly past Mars Global Surveyor on its faster track to the planet. If all goes well, landing and the first photographs of the Martian surface in more than 20 years will be delivered to an eager audience on Earth on July 4, 1997. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MISSIONS BEGIN EARTH'S FRIENDLY INVASION OF MARS By Paula Shawa, Kennedy Space Center [From the JPL Universe] On Oct. 30, Orson Welles fans marked the 58th anniversary of his theater troupe's Halloween radio broadcast based on H.G. Wells' science fiction classic, "The War of the Worlds." The Mercury Theater's realistic depiction of a Martian invasion that begins in Grovers Mill, N.J., panicked the nation and catapulted Welles to international fame. As 1996 draws to a close, Planet Earth is turning the tables and launching its own "assault" on the Red Planet 81 million kilometers (50 million miles) away, although in this case the visitors are friendly. Beginning with the Mars Global Surveyor liftoff Nov. 7 and continuing into the next century, spacecraft will sail toward the planet, sometimes passing each other en route. Once they arrive at Mars, some of these remotely-controlled explorers will circle the planet while others will pierce the thin Martian atmosphere and descend to its rugged surface. The bits and pieces of information they send back to Earth will be like pieces of a puzzle which will yield a comprehensive picture of the planet, its daily weather and its early history. Mars Global Surveyor First off the launch pad was Mars Global Surveyor, which is now speeding toward Mars. For people like MGS project manager Glenn Cunningham, the mission holds a special urgency: many of the same personnel who bore the shock of the Mars Observer failure in 1993 are now working on Global Surveyor. Six of the instruments flown on Mars Observer also are being flown on the Global Surveyor. "We are really looking forward to this," Cunningham observes with quiet intensity. He points out that the Global Surveyor will have a nearly identical mission to Mars Observer: to map almost the entire surface of the planet. Major design changes have been made to prevent a propulsion system failure suspected to have ended the Mars Observer mission. The Global Surveyor will follow a loping, slow-moving trajectory to Mars. Because the spacecraft is traveling at a slower velocity, it requires less propellant to slow down once it is ready to be captured in orbit around the destination planet. The spacecraft should arrive at Mars on Sept. 12, 1997. A 25-minute engine burn will be combined with an innovative technique known as aerobraking, first demonstrated during the Magellan mission to Venus, to achieve a final mapping orbit an average 234 miles (378 kilometers) above the planet's surface. The primary mapping mission is scheduled to begin in March 1998 and last until January 2000-a period of one Martian year or 687 Earth days. Global Surveyor will complete one orbit around Mars about every two hours, each new orbit bringing the spacecraft over a different swath of terrain. The spacecraft will pass over the Mars Pathfinder lander, which will have touched down months before. The two Viking landers that arrived at Mars in 1975 also will be within the visibility range of the Global Surveyor instruments. The Global Surveyor will map the topography, magnetism, mineral composition and atmosphere of Mars, returning more than 600 billion bits of scientific data to Earth-more than that returned by all previous missions to Mars. Mars Pathfinder The complex scenario for the Mars Pathfinder mission is like Russian dolls that can be opened to reveal another doll inside, a process that repeats itself several times before the last doll is uncovered. When it lifted off at 10:58 p.m. Pacific time on Dec. 3, Pathfinder's configuration was a lander encased in a protective aeroshell attached to a cruise stage. Even though it lifted off nearly a month after Global Surveyor, Pathfinder travels on a more direct trajectory to Mars, and will arrive on July 4, 1997. Thirty-four minutes before touchdown, the cruise stage will separate. As the lander hurtles through the upper atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory, a parachute will be deployed to slow the spacecraft and alter its flight path to a more vertical descent. About 20 seconds after the parachute deploys, the heat shield side of the aeroshell is jettisoned and the lander, still attached by a bridle to the back shell and parachute, will continue its descent. About eight seconds before touchdown, giant airbags are inflated. Just two seconds before touchdown the bridle will be severed while the motors are still firing to pull the backshell and parachute away from the lander. The lander's radar altimeter will begin acquiring ground data when the spacecraft is barely one mile (1.6 km) above the planet's surface. The dramatic sequence of events that unfold during entry, descent and landing constitute one of the riskiest phases of the mission, says Pathfinder Project Manager Tony Spear, and extensive preflight research was conducted to ensure success. The entry velocity is 80 percent faster than that of the Viking landers; and spacecraft speed at touchdown is 35 mph (56 kilometers per hour) for the Pathfinder lander (cushioned by the airbags) compared to 5 mph (8 kilometers per hour) for the Viking landers. Once on the surface, the tetrahedral-shaped lander will right itself and the lander petals will unfold. If everything proceeds as scheduled, just hours after landing the Sojourner rover will amble off the lander and onto the surface of Mars. The small six-wheeled rover weighs a mere 22 pounds (10 kilograms) and travels just 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) per second. Images taken by the lander will determine the rover's course and direction. The rover is equipped with an alpha proton X-ray spectrometer to measure the elemental composition of rocks and soil. The 12-color lander stereo camera will help to navigate the rover, provide mineralogy data on rocks and soil, and make opacity measurements of the atmosphere. This data provides a ground truth for the orbital remote-sensing observations being obtained overhead by Global Surveyor. The extreme temperature cycling on Mars-temperatures range from 32 to minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit (0 to minus 100 degrees Centigrade) daily-may doom the rover to a relatively short life. The primary mission for the rover is seven Martian days and about 30 Martian days for the lander; scientists are hoping both will last long enough for extended mission operations. While the Pathfinder mission is sure to yield invaluable scientific data about Mars, its designers are just as eager to see how the hardware performs. In an extended mission, program managers will be monitoring the performance of both the rover and lander's solar arrays in the dusty environment as well as their electronics in the Martian temperatures. As the first wave of spacecraft to blaze a new trail to the Red Planet, Pathfinder and Global Surveyor will provide crosschecks and enrichment of the data gathered by each spacecraft. The scientific data they gather will further supplement that of earlier missions to Mars and set the stage for subsequent explorers. At the same time, the lessons learned from hardware performance will help insure the success of future missions. Mars '96 The Mars '96 mission was launched Nov. 16 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan but encountered problems early in its mission. The last stage on a four-stage rocket failed to re- ignite and propel the probe out of Earth orbit and onto Mars. The probe crashed into the Pacific Ocean Nov. 17, about 900 miles east of Easter Island. The mission was designed to use two landers--known as small stations--to separate from the Mars '96 spacecraft and descend to the planet's surface. Two penetrators were to have been deployed from the orbiter to actually pierce the Martian soil as much as 6 meters (20 feet) below the surface. The orbiter was to focus on performing orbital mapping and supporting operations on the ground. Specific science goals included: A topographic survey of the surface, including high-resolution studies of the terrain and mineralogical mapping; studies of Martian meteorology and climate; geophysical studies of the planet's crustal thickness, magnetic field and seismic activity; plasma investigations, including parameters of the Martian magnetic field; and astrophysical studies. The small stations were designed to descend to the surface in a manner similar to the Mars Pathfinder lander, first braked by an aeroshell and then descending on a parachute. Also like the Pathfinder lander, the stations were to have been protected from the impact of landing by airbags. The scientific instruments of the small stations were enclosed in a protective structure that unfolded like the petals of a flower. The Mars '96 probe also included two torpedo-like penetrators that were designed to slam into Mars at speeds of 80-100 meters per second (180-220 mph), lodging from 1 to 6 meters (3 to 20 feet) below the surface. Each probe contained equipment and sensors to study the geophysical and mechanical properties of Martian rocks. Data were to be relayed back to Earth via the orbiter circling above. The United States plans to send a pair of miniature probes, called the New Millennium microprobes, to Mars in 1998. ----------------------------------------------------------------- HEROINES AND HISTORY WELL REPRESENTED IN WORLDWIDE COMPETITION TO NAME ROVER [From the JPL Universe] The Sojourner rover could have been named Marie Curie. That was the second-place entry in a contest between students to name the compact vehicle scheduled to explore the surface of Mars. The name Sojourner was chosen after a yearlong worldwide competition in which students up to age 18 were invited to select a heroine and submit an essay about her historical accomplishments. The students were asked to address in their essays how a planetary rover named for their heroine would translate those accomplishments in the Martian environment. Valerie Ambroise, 12, of Bridgeport, Conn., submitted the winning essay about Sojourner Truth, an African American reformist who lived during the Civil War era. An abolitionist and champion of women's rights, Truth, whose real name was Isabella Van Wagener, made it her mission to "travel up and down the land," advocating the rights of all people to be free and the rights of women to participate fully in society. The name "Sojourner" was selected because it means "traveler." JPL scientists and engineers working on the Mars Pathfinder project and staff from the Planetary Society of Pasadena, who jointly initiated the contest in March 1994, reviewed the 3,500 essays received from around the world, including India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Poland and Russia. Nearly 1,700 of the essays were submitted by students aged 5 to 18. The second-place winner, Deepti Rohatgi, 18, of Rockville, Md., proposed naming the rover for Curie, a Polish-born chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1911 for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MYSTERY OF MARS EVOLVES, LIVES ON IN POPULAR CULTURE By Chuck Weirauch, Kennedy Space Center [From the JPL Universe] Portrayed throughout history as everything from a mythical god of war to the source of the destruction of the Earth many times over, Mars has survived the apprehensions of humankind to be transformed as a focal point of hope and exploration for the human race. Just why the Red Planet got off to a bad start with Earthlings is a mystery, since four other planets were visible to the first astronomers, the Babylonians, in approximately 1000 BC. Perhaps its blood-reddish color, coupled with the early belief that one's fate was influenced by celestial events, convinced the Greeks and Romans to perceive the planet as a symbol of violence and fear. These sentiments were reflected as late as 1719, when widespread panic broke out because, as a result of its elliptical orbit, Mars swung closer to Earth than it had in nearly 300 years. Unlikely though it seems today, astronomers played a major role in continuing the myth that unknown forces or entities lurked on the surface of Mars. Even though the Royal British astronomer Frederick Hershel correctly noted the polar ice caps and atmosphere of the Red Planet in 1784, he believed that dark flat areas of the planet's surface were oceans. He also felt that all of the planets were inhabited. Some astronomers in the mid-19th century gave further impetus to the concept of life on Mars by speculating that the dark areas were covered by vegetation, while others published detailed maps of continents and oceans. In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli unintentionally gave birth to the concept of Martian canals when he referred to streaks he observed on the surface as "canali," the Italian word for channels. By the late 19th century, many scientists and authors already believed there was life on Mars. H.G. Wells' classic novel "War of the Worlds," published in 1898, became the first and most famous tale of a Martian invasion of Earth. Famed astronomer Percival Lowell believed that Martians had built an intricate system of irrigation canals and produced a famous globe of this system in 1901 based on his observations. He also published "Mars and its Canals" in 1906 and "Mars as the Abode of Life" in 1908. Even though life was thought to be prevalent, observations of a dry climate and thin atmosphere indicated that whatever was alive must be in a desperate struggle to survive. Edgar Rice Burroughs, better known as the creator of Tarzan of the Apes, incorporated this struggle into a series of 11 novels begun in 1911 that featured a Civil War veteran hero who was transported to Mars to deal with a Martian race fighting for water. In spite of growing evidence in the 1920s that conditions on the planet were even more tenuous for life as we know it, the Martian seeds had been firmly planted on Earth and continued to grow in the minds of the public and the prose of early science fiction writers. With this type of literature gaining wider acceptance by the 1930s, it probably should have been no surprise that the 1938 radio broadcast of an adapted version of "The War of the Worlds" by Orson Welles was perceived as reality by more than a million people. The possibility of life not only on Mars but throughout the universe became entrenched in world culture perhaps forever when an ex-Air Force pilot reported the sighting of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, over the Arizona desert in 1947. Also that year, Dr. Wernher von Braun revealed "Das Mars Projeckt," his proposed human expedition to Mars. His plan called for 10 ships and their crews to travel to, land on, and explore the fourth planet from the sun, then return to Earth within 520 days. He was also involved with the first NASA robotic missions to the Red Planet, the Mariner spacecraft. The hundreds of films, including such classics as "Invaders from Mars" in 1953, and thousands of science fiction novels featuring otherworldly creatures such as those in Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" in 1951, since that time have only served to reinforce the now-popular belief that life could have evolved just about anywhere. The 1996 television season, bolstered by 30 years of Star Trek and two continuing Star Trek shows, has more scheduled science-fiction-themed programming than ever before. Science-fiction movies, including last summer's "Independence Day," have become blockbusters, whole walls of book stores display science-fiction novels and millions of science-fiction videos and computer games are played in homes in the United States every night. At least one movie company is continuing the trend. Warner Brothers is about to debut its latest Mars thriller, titled "Mars Attacks!" ----------------------------------------------------------------- REGULATIONS ENSURE VISITORS FROM EARTH KEEP PLANETS CLEAN By Susan Walsh, Kennedy Space Center [From the JPL Universe] It sounds like the plot of a B-grade science fiction movie. Microscopic organisms from Earth are carried on board a probe sent to explore the Martian surface and its geology. Despite the inhospitable climate-surface temperatures averaging minus 64 degrees Fahrenheit and an atmosphere almost entirely composed of carbon dioxide-a few of the organisms survive and begin multiplying. Soon, the Earth-borne spores taint all the geological samples and even find their way deep underneath the surface to ancient riverbeds where a primitive form of life still exists. The organisms from worlds apart join, and a new, alien form of life begins to evolve. Or, how about this? Thirty years after two Viking landers drop to the Martian surface and less than a decade after the Sojourner rover was left to explore an ancient Martian flood plain, a robotic spacecraft sent to pick up soil and rock samples from Mars returns to Earth covered by a mysterious green gelatinous material. A breach in containment protocol leaves a technician unprotected to the foreign matter. Soon after, the technician and everyone he came in contact with begin to display symptoms of a new and debilitating disease. As farfetched as it sounds--and most scientists agree it could never happen--NASA is taking every precaution to make sure that nothing like either of those two scenarios ever has a chance of occurring. "We're taking a conservative approach," said Dr. Michael Meyer, NASA's planetary protection officer. "We don't view outbound or inbound contamination as a problem, but we're going to do the right things to protect against it. We have the means to prevent contamination and do it safely." Planetary protection regulations date back at least to the 1960s when the United States and other space-faring countries signed the United Nations' Treaty of Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space. Known as the Outer Space Treaty, the 1967 document states that the exploration and studies of outer space including the moon and other celestial bodies be done "so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter." NASA policy establishes basic procedures to prevent contamination of planetary bodies. Different requirements apply to different missions, depending on which solar system object is targeted and the spacecraft or mission type-flyby, orbiter, lander, sample- return, etc. There are no outbound (from Earth to celestial body) contamination requirements for the Sun, Moon and Mercury since those celestial bodies have no biological history and, therefore, presumably cannot be contaminated by Earth material. In the case of the recently launched Mars Global Surveyor, the NASA policy centers on an orbital lifetime requirement. Surveyor is designed to remain in orbit for at least 50 years before entering the Martian atmosphere. By then, any contaminants it may carry would be rendered harmless. Also, to ensure that the spent third stage of the launch vehicle flies safely past Mars, the launch trajectory is biased away from the planet. For the upcoming Mars Pathfinder mission, the cleanliness of the spacecraft is the primary concern. Pathfinder's surfaces can contain only a maximum of about 250 spores per square yard (300 spores per square meter). The spacecraft was cleaned to a level consistent with the two Mars Viking landers in 1975 before they were sterilized. Dr. Meyer said that sterilization is no longer considered a requirement for spacecraft which land on Mars. In a 1992 report, the Space Studies Board concluded that there was no chance for an Earth organism to grow on the surface of Mars, but recommended that measures be taken to reduce the amount of matter which may be transported there and could contaminate any samples. NASA now focuses its efforts on a continual cleaning of the spacecraft and monitoring of the spore count, reducing what's called the "bioburden." For the Pathfinder mission, the samples were taken by JPL scientists Dr. Wayne Shubert and Dr. Roger Kern. They processed the samples in NASA's Life Sciences Support Facility at Hangar L, Cape Canaveral Air Station. A three-person KSC/Bionetics team led by Rudy Puleo, manager of medical programs, was given samples at various intervals to verify the procedures and spore counts. Throughout Mars Pathfinder processing, technicians continually cleaned the spacecraft and its components by wiping surfaces with an alcohol solution. Large areas, such as the airbags and parachute, were baked for about 50 hours at 230 degrees Fahrenheit (110 degrees Celsius). With its record low spore count, "the Pathfinder will be the cleanest spacecraft we have sent to Mars," Dr. Meyer declared. Other anti-contamination measures will be taken when NASA sends a robotic spacecraft to Mars on a sample return mission. Prevention of inbound contamination centers on quarantine measures, Dr. Meyer said. Although it is more important to ensure that the sample not contaminate Earth, steps also are taken to keep Earth from contaminating the sample. If there was a problem with containment on the spacecraft, one of the possibilities would be to turn the spacecraft away from Earth and toward the Sun, where it could do no damage. NASA is taking no chances, even though scientists dismiss the possibility that Earth could be infected by an organism from outer space, as depicted in "The Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton. "We've been exchanging material with the planets for a long time through meteorites, for example. If there is an andromeda-type thing out there, then it's already come to Earth," Meyer said. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NASA'S DISCOVERY PROGRAM SETS MARK FOR FUTURE OF LOW-COST MISSIONS [From the JPL Universe] The Mars Pathfinder mission is the second to be developed under NASA's Discovery Program, which emphasizes improved performance and lower cost through a series of management initiatives. In 1992 the Senate Appropriations Committee directed NASA to prepare a "plan to stimulate and develop small planetary or other space science projects, emphasizing those which could be accomplished by the academic or research communities." The goals of the Discovery Program are to increase flight rates, substantially reduce total mission cost, improve performance through the use of new technology, broaden university and industry participation in solar system exploration missions, and to increase public awareness of solar system exploration. Discovery missions are restricted to 36 months of development (consistent with many academic degree programs); will result in more spacecraft being built (providing opportunities for a larger number of industrial partners and small businesses); and must fall below a salary cap of $150 million for design and development and $35 million for data analysis. The first two Discovery missions, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) which launched Feb. 17, and Pathfinder, were picked by NASA from concepts already under study when the program was being organized. The third mission, the Lunar Prospector, was selected in February 1995 and the fourth mission, Stardust, was selected in November 1995. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ROVER DRIVER DREAMS OF PUTTING PEDAL TO METAL [From the JPL Universe] About 10 minutes before Sojourner makes its first historic move toward the Red Planet's surface, the rover's primary driver, Brian Cooper, will give it the commands to do so from a lab at JPL. Cooper will don a set of 3-D goggles and, using a "space ball" instead of a computer mouse, will guide the rover's movements across an ancient flood plain. Two cameras mounted on the lander spacecraft will give Cooper the "stereo vision" necessary to navigate Sojourner. "It's more like virtual reality with delayed reaction than a remote control car," explains Cooper. "I see the landscape and a cursor that is a scale image of the rover in my goggles and I move the cursor at a snail's pace." Any road hazards not detected by Cooper will be picked up by Sojourner's sensors and the rover has the option to deny an unsafe command. Cooper has worked for 11 years in JPL's rover program and designed much of the software and systems used on Sojourner's mission. "I'm excited about being the first person to drive on Mars, but this is an important geological mission and demonstrating this technology prepares us for longer missions in the future." ----------------------------------------------------------------- NEW MARS SCREEN SAVER AVAILABLE ON-LINE By Diane Ainsworth [From the JPL Universe] A new computer screen saver made its debut earlier this month, showing the "Sojourner" rover, which was launched Dec. 4 on the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, as it crisscrosses over or navigates around Martian boulders. The screen saver display is free and available on the Internet for computer users with Windows 3.1 and '95 and Macintosh software. It can be downloaded by accessing the JPL Mars home page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mars/ The software was designed by JPL as part of an effort to educate the public about the Mars Pathfinder mission and NASA's decade- long program of Mars exploration. It depicts the 60-centimeter (23-inch) long Sojourner microrover that will drive out onto the surface of Mars to explore the composition of rocks and soil in July 1997. Sojourner is able to hurdle small rocks and steer around those that are too large to scale. The rover features several innovative new technologies, including miniaturized electronics and a six-wheeled "rocker-bogie" suspension system that allows it to climb over rocks almost as tall as itself. The new screen saver also includes dramatic scenes of some geologically intriguing regions on Mars that will be photographed by the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, which was launched on Nov. 7. Surveyor, which will reach Mars on Sept. 12, 1997, will orbit the planet for one full Martian year, the equivalent of 687 Earth days, taking new images of Mars and making scientific measurements of its atmosphere and surface. JPL's new screen saver sequence depicts various dramatic images of Mars, showing increasing detail of some prominent features such as a towering volcano called Olympus Mons and a huge canyon known as Valles Marineris. The closing sequence shows a Viking photograph of Pathfinder's targeted landing site on an ancient flood plain known as Areas Valles. "The images of Mars were rendered here at JPL on our CRAY T3D parallel supercomputer," said Dr. Carl Kukkonen, manager of JPL's Supercomputing Project. "Scenes like this helped the Mars Exploration Program Office at JPL to determine the most ideal landing site for the Pathfinder mission." "This screen saver is another exciting tool that any Windows or Macintosh user can have to learn more about NASA's Mars exploration program," added Dr. Cheick Diarra, manager of the Mars Education and Public Outreach Office at JPL. The screen saver is available in the Windows 3.1, Windows '95 and Macintosh formats to computer users with any version of the "After Dark" screen saver software produced by Berkeley Systems, Inc. The screen saver was a joint effort of JPL and Berkeley Systems of Berkeley, Calif., developer of After Dark screen saver software, which can be downloaded from the Internet by using the following address: http://www.berksys.com The Mars Exploration Program and the Supercomputing Project at JPL supported development of the new Mars exploration screen saver with funding from NASA's Office of Space Science. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS REPORT JPL press release Friday, 20 December 1996 During the morning on Monday and Tuesday of this week, the Surveyor flight team conducted more tests to collect diagnostic data regarding the spacecraft's solar array position discrepancy. On each of the two test days, the gimbal joint holding the -Y solar panel to the spacecraft was commanded to wiggle the panel back and forth several times over a time period of 18 and 84 seconds, respectively. The strongest of these two tests occurred on Tuesday during which the wiggling caused the -Y panel to move by 8 degrees before returning to its pre-test position. Engineering telemetry transmitted back to Earth during these tests will allow the flight team to analyze the nature of the vibrations in the spacecraft that resulted from the wiggling. This data will provide valuable insight into determining the best method to clear the obstruction that is currently keeping the -Y solar panel 20.5 degrees out of position. Preliminary results from this week's tests and the three tests that occurred last week support the theory that the obstruction is a broken shaft from the solar array's deployment mechanism. The flight team believes that the shaft broke sometime during the launch phase, or during solar array deployment, and then wedged itself in a position to keep the -Y panel from deploying into its proper position. However, both arrays are generating full power and the position discrepancy does not pose a threat to the mission. Other activities this week included a test of the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter. Early Thursday morning, shortly after midnight Pacific Standard Time, Surveyor turned to point the laser altimeter at the Earth. Over the course of one hour, the laser fired pulses of light toward a receiving station at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Unfortunately, snow storms and low-level clouds prevented the station from detecting the laser's pulses. The flight team may consider attempting another test next year if time permits. After eight weeks of flight, Surveyor is 10.90 million kilometers from the Earth and is moving in an orbit around the Sun with a velocity of 32.48 kilometers per second. This orbit will intercept Mars on September 12th, 1997. All systems on the spacecraft continue to be in excellent condition. The flight team would like to extended our best wishes to everybody for safe and happy holiday season. ----------------------------------------------------------------- GALILEO MISSION STATUS JPL press release December 26, 1996 Data from last week's successful flyby of Jupiter's moon Europa by NASA's Galileo spacecraft are being radioed back to Earth on schedule, project officials report. "Everything is going normally on the spacecraft, and the return of the high-resolution images of Europa started on schedule yesterday," said Galileo Project Manager Bill O'Neil at JPL. Imaging data will be collected and processed over the coming days and weeks. Processing of the first of the images should be completed early in January and the images will be released shortly thereafter, O'Neil said. Galileo flew past Europa at an altitude of only 692 kilometers (about 430 miles) from Europa on December 19 at 0653 Universal Time (December 18 at 10:53 p.m. Pacific Standard Time). Galileo flew more than 200 times closer to Europa than the Voyager spacecraft came to that moon in 1979. Europa is especially intriguing because scientists believe it may have an ocean beneath its icy crust. Throughout last week, Galileo made scientific observations of Europa and the other satellites, and gathered data on Jupiter and its magnetosphere through December 22. The observations included the closeup images, nighttime and daytime temperature measurements, searches for auroral activity, the magnetic field, atmospheric studies and investigations of the charged-particle environment in Europa's vicinity. Playback of data stored on Galileo's tape recorder will continue through mid-February, concluding just before Galileo's next Europa encounter. The next Europa flyby will be even closer at an altitude of a mere 587 kilometers (364 miles) on February 19. The spacecraft's third flyby of Europa will occur on November 6, 1997, at an altitude of 1,125 kilometers (699 miles). ---------------------------------------------------------------- SOFTWARE FOR FIRST NEW MILLENNIUM MISSION CLOSEST YET TO "HAL 9000" NASA release 97-7 As the fictional birth date for the HAL 9000 main computer from the landmark science fiction tale "2001: A Space Odyssey" approaches, NASA is preparing the most advanced spacecraft artificial intelligence software yet developed for launch aboard the New Millennium program's Deep Space One (DS1) spacecraft. According to the 1968 book by highly acclaimed author Arthur C. Clarke, Hal "became operational" on January 12, 1997, in Urbana, IL, home of the University of Illinois. It then served as the "brain and nervous system" of the 400-foot-long spaceship Discovery that carried astronauts on a thought-provoking voyage to the planet Saturn (changed to Jupiter in the movie version). The robotic DS1 spacecraft carries no crew and is much smaller than the spaceship of "2001," at a total mass of 945 pounds, but its computer artificial intelligence program, known as the Remote Agent, shares the same basic goal of operating and controlling a spacecraft with minimal human assistance. "We don't want to give the impression that Remote Agent is an artificial lifeform," said Kanna Rajan, a DS1 computer scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA. "However, the software will logically reason about the state of the spacecraft, and the Remote Agent will consider all of the consequences of its actions." Following its scheduled July 1998 launch, DS1 will fly by the asteroid McAuliffe in 1999, and the comet West-Kohoutek- Ikemura and the planet Mars in 2000. DS1 is the first scheduled mission in NASA's New Millennium program, which is designed to test and validate cutting edge technology for the systems and instruments on-board future NASA science spacecraft. The Remote Agent is being developed in a collaborative effort between Ames and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. "The goals of the Remote Agent development are two-fold: to reduce the cost of exploration, and to extend exploration to realms of space where no ground-controlled craft could venture," said Dr. Bob Rasmussen, a computer autonomy expert at JPL. "Remote Agent should enable future spacecraft software to be more easily designed," said Dr. Barney Pell, another DS1 computer scientist at Ames. "The first version of Remote Agent will be the hardest to write. After that, we can copy it for the next mission and make improvements in it rather than developing the software from scratch." "This is made possible by model-driven software," Rasmussen explained. "Models of the spacecraft's components and environment are given to the Remote Agent and it figures out the necessary detailed operating procedures on its own. Only the models need to be updated for each new spacecraft." Given NASA's continuing efforts to develop many smaller, less expensive science spacecraft, "we also need to perform each mission with less than a dozen ground controllers instead of the hundreds of people now needed to run a major planetary science mission," said Dr. Brian C. Williams, DS1 team leader for the development of the Remote Agent fault protection software. "The large distances inherent in planetary exploration result in communications that can be too slow during emergencies," Pell added, "and sometimes your communication pathway is blocked when a planet is between the spacecraft and Earth." Three parts of Remote Agent will work together to demonstrate that it can autonomously operate a spacecraft: High Level Planning and Scheduling, Model-based Fault Protection (also called Livingstone) and Smart Executive. "Some estimates show a 60 percent reduction in mission costs using Remote Agent. The software would replace a large section of the human spacecraft control team back on Earth," said Dr. Nicola Muscettola, team leader for the planning software. The High Level Planning and Scheduling part of Remote Agent will constantly look ahead to the schedule for several weeks of mission activities. "Planner is mostly concerned about scheduling spacecraft activities and distributing resources such as electrical power," Muscettola said. "The Planner allows a small spacecraft control team on Earth to command the spacecraft more effectively by sending goals instead of detailed instructions to DS1." "After DS1 we want to work on even more autonomous spacecraft that could reconfigure themselves. If some part of such a spacecraft performed differently during the mission than expected, the craft would be able to detect this and change software models and algorithms to self-adapt," Muscettola added. "Future systems also should be able to learn about their environment and act in partnership with scientists to find and analyze new discoveries," said Dr. Guy Man, the co-leader of the New Millennium Autonomy Integrated Product Development Team at JPL. The fault protection portion of the Remote Agent, known as "Livingstone," functions as the mission's virtual chief engineer, according to Dr. P. Pandurang Nayak of Ames. "If something should go wrong with the spacecraft, Livingstone would use the computer model of how the spacecraft should be behaving to diagnose failures and suggest recoveries," Nayak said. Livingstone was named for David Livingstone (1813-1873), the 19th century medical missionary and explorer. "Like David Livingstone, the Livingstone computer program is concerned with exploration and the health of explorers," Nayak said. The third part of the Remote Agent software, Smart Executive, will act like an "executive officer" of the mission, issuing general commands to fly DS1. "The Executive has to be able to execute the plans that are produced by the Planner and Livingstone," said Pell. "If the Planner had to worry about every single detail, it would be hard pressed to produce a plan. So, the Executive takes care of the details." The Executive also can receive a plan directly from ground controllers. "However, if the ground's plan won't work, the Executive can say, 'Sorry, Ground, I can't do that,' " Pell said, comparing Remote Agent to Hal. "This can actually be a big help to ground controllers who must currently spend enormous effort double-checking every command," said Rasmussen. "In the event that the Remote Agent won't cooperate under some unusual circumstance, we will be developing a surgery mode where ground control can really get into Remote Agent and do a lobotomy," Pell added. "Remote Agent may someday lead to software that would be incorporated into a space robot that would be as intelligent as HAL 9000." The New Millennium program "has accelerated technology development in spacecraft automation by at least ten years," Man said. "The Remote Agent will open up new exploration opportunities for us, allowing us to really begin the in-situ era of space science." The ultimate goal of the New Millennium program, according to Wesley Huntress, Associate Administrator for Space Science at NASA Headquarters, is to generate and validate technology "to allow us to build a fleet of these smart spacecraft, called spacecraft constellations or armadas, and let them explore different places, share their findings, and even divide amongst themselves the work of achieving complex scientific goals. Systems like the Remote Agent will be crucial supporting components of this vision." ----------------------------------------------------------------- CASSINI/HUYGENS: YOUR SIGNATURE OR MESSAGE IN SPACE! ESA release 02-97 Paris, 9 January 1997 Cassini/Huygens, a joint ESA/NASA mission, will be launched in October 1997. After a journey lasting almost 7 years, which will take the spacecraft to an orbit around Saturn, ESA's Huygens probe will be released over Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and will examine its environment and surface. On the occasion of this unique scientific mission, ESA is planning to fly a CD-ROM aboard Huygens, on which all the signatures and messages contributed by Europeans will be borne away to Titan. These will be collected by ESA on a special Internet site, whose address is: http://www.huygens.com ESA and the media are linking up for this unusual operation, making arrangements for sending a token of human life into deep space. This is an idea that goes back to the 1970s, when the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes were fitted with metal plates carefully engraved with information about life on Earth. Today's digital storage technology enables a large number of signatures and messages to be recorded on a single CD-ROM for dispatch into space. ESA is proposing cooperation with the media in two ways: 1. Information on Huygens. ESA will provide the media with all the information they need about the Huygens program, including written, photographic and video material (request form attached). 2. Collection of signatures. The media will announce the operation and ask their readers, listeners and viewers to send messages and signatures via the Internet, either using their own sites, in which case they will need to create hypertext links with the ESA/Huygens site, or directly to the special ESA/Huygens site that has been set up. Signatures and messages will be accepted until 1 March 1997, though the Huygens site will remain active after that date. The information it provides on the Cassini/Huygens mission will be regularly updated, at least until the spacecraft is launched in October 1997. This operation, the first of its kind in the world, will enable ESA and its media partners to bring European space activities to the notice of readers, listeners and viewers from all countries in an original and spectacular way. ----------------------------------------------------------------- End Marsbugs Vol. 4, No. 1