Date sent: Mon, 15 Sep 97 19:16:00 UT From: "Dr. Julian Hiscox" To: julian.hiscox@bbsrc.ac.uk BCC to: Subject: Marsbugs v13. n13. MARSBUGS: The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter Volume 4, Number 13, 14th September, 1997. Editors: David Thomas, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-3051, USA, thoma457@uidaho.edu or Marsbugs@aol.com. Julian Hiscox, Division of Molecular Biology, IAH Compton Laboratory, Berkshire, RG20 7NN, UK. Julian.Hiscox@bbsrc.ac.uk or Marsbug@msn.com 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. ----------------------------------------- (1) BOOK REVIEW: -Asteroids: their nature and utilization. (2) PUBLICATION WATCH ----------------------------------------- (1) BOOK REVIEW Title: Asteroids. Subtitle: Their Nature and Utilization. Author: Charles T. Kowal. Pages: 153. Publisher: Wiley. ISBN: 0-471-96039-X Price: 30 pounds. Hard back. The space between and beyond the planets is not empty. Comets, meteoroids, and asteroids are found there. These bodies, along with gas and dust, make up the interplanetary debris. There are three main regions of such material. The first is the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which in general is composed of rocky material (silicates, iron and nickel). The second, composed of comets, postulated by Gerard Kuiper, is past the orbit of Neptune. Finally, lies the Oort Cloud, named after the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who first postulated its existence and structure in the 1950s. The majority of the comet nuclei in the Oort Cloud are probably distributed throughout a broad spherical shell between perhaps 25,000 (but possibly 40,000) and 60,000 AU from the Sun. (1 AU is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, 149.6 x 106 km or 8.3 light minutes). Asteroids and comets have played a very real part in both influencing the climate and the evolution of life on the Earth. For example, the majority of water in our ancient oceans was thought to have been brought in by the influx of comets, and comets may also have provided many of the organic precursors to life, such as amino acids. Asteroids and comets have also directly influenced the evolution of Homo sapiens by impacting with the Earth some 65-million years ago, contributing to the demise of the dinosaurs. However, asteroids may also provide Mankind with unprecedented opportunities by supplying materials for future space born industries. Asteroids by Charles Kowal is an excellent and clearly illustrated account of asteroids and comets. Kowal is well qualified to write such a book being a senior project engineer on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission. He begins by describing the history and cataloguing of asteroids. Then several chapters are spent describing the composition and orbits of the different classes asteroids and comets. Of interest to the amateur and professional astronomer alike are those chapters which describe how we can go about observing, measure the colours and rotation rates, and compute the orbits of asteroids. With the advent of affordable CCD cameras, all of this is within reach of most amateur astronomers. Kowal ends the book by describing how asteroids can be mined and what incredible value they represent. For example, one cubic kilometre of a nickel-iron asteroid contains 7 billion tons of iron, one billion tons of nickel, and enough cobalt to supply the entire world for 3000 years. In today's prices this represents about 5 trillion US dollars! Kowal also describes future missions to asteroids, and the Spacewatch and Spaceguard programmes - which will hopefully prevent us from meeting the same fate as the dinosaurs. I thoroughly recommend this book to those interested in the minor planets. ----------------------------------------- (2) PUBLICATION WATCH Economically viable Lunar development and settlement Benaroya_H Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp323-324 Binary asteroids and the formation of doublet craters Bottke_WF, Melosh_HJ ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.372-391 A model of outflow generation by hydrothermal under pressure drainage in volcano-tectonic environment, Shalbatana Vallis (Mars) Cabrol_NA, Grin_EA, Dawidowicz_G ICARUS, 1997, Vol.125, No.2, pp.455-464 Twelve years of Mir space station operations Caldwell_LR Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp317-320 Hydrodynamic escape of oxygen from primitive atmospheres: Applications to the cases of Venus and Mars Chassefiere_E ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.537-552 Russian participation in the International Space Station: Status and Issues Green_JL Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp296-302 Oxygen and carbon isotope ratios in Martian carbon dioxide: Measurements and implications for atmospheric evolution Krasnopolsky_VA, Mumma_MJ, Bjoraker_GL, Jennings_DE ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.553-568 Production of Lunar propellants (Lunprop) Koelle_HH, Lo_R Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp353-360 Viking and the Question of Life on Mars, Part 1 LePage_AJ SETIQuest, 1997, Vol. 3. No.3, pp1-6 SETI Synchronization: Passive and active strategies Lemarchand_GA SETIQuest, 1997, Vol. 3. No.3, pp8-15 An oxygen isotope model for the composition of Mars Lodders_K, Fegley_B ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.2, pp.373-394 Commercial approach toward the future Lunar resource utilisation Matsumoto_S, Isome_N, Yoshida_T, Kanamori_H, Takagi_K Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp333-336 Looking for life on Mars McKay_CP Astronomy, 1997, Vol. 25, No. 8, pp38-43 Limits on the CO2 content of the Martian polar deposits Mellon_MT ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.1, pp.268-279 Deucalionis Regio, Mars: Evidence for a new type of immobile weathered soil unit Merenyi_E, Edgett_KS, Singer_RB ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.1, pp.296-307 Mapping of spectral variations on the surface of Mars from high spectral resolution telescopic images Merenyi_E, Singer_RB, Miller_JS ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.1, pp.280-295 Identification of a 10-mu m silicate absorption feature in the Acidalia region of Mars Moersch_JE, Hayward_TL, Nicholson_PD, Squyres_SW, VanCleve_J, Christensen_PR ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.1, pp.183-196 Evolution of earth's noble gases: Consequences of assuming hydrodynamic loss driven by giant impact Pepin_RO ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.1, pp.148-156 The algal blooms monitoring system Pomfret_NE Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.10, pp371-373 Vertical distribution of water in the near-equatorial troposphere of Mars: Water vapor and clouds Rodin_AV, Korablev_OI, Moroz_VI ICARUS, 1997, Vol.125, No.1, pp.212-229 Lunar resource utilization Risenberg_SD Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.9, pp337-352 Science onboard the Mir space station 1986-94 Salmon_Al Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp283-295 The selection of cosmonauts Shamsutdinov_S Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 1997, Vol. 50, No.8, pp311-316 Retrieval of atmospheric temperatures in the Martian planetary boundary layer using upward-looking infrared spectra Smith_MD, Conrath_BJ, Pearl_JC, Ustinov_EA ICARUS, 1996, Vol.124, No.2, pp.586-597 Stress and flexural modeling of the Martian lithospheric response to Alba Patera Turtle_EP, Melosh_HJ ICARUS, 1997, Vol.126, No.1, pp.197-211 End Marsbugs. 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