MARSBUGS: The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter Volume 4, Number 15, 17 November, 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. 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- [I'm sorry for the delay in getting this out, but I am preparing to take my comprehensive exams for my Ph.D., and my time has been severely limited. DJT] INDEX 1) MARS PATHFINDER ROVER EXITS ROCK GARDEN TO BEGIN LONG TREK NASA release 97-217 2) SCIENTISTS DEVELOP NEW MAP OF THE WORLD'S SEA FLOORS NOAA release 97-56 3) THE SOUTH POLE UNDER SCRUTINY BY RADARSAT CSA release 4) SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPPORTUNITIES NASA release 5) FIRST MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES AVAILABLE by Ron Baalke 6) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR UNVEILS ITS FIRST PORTRAIT OF MARS JPL release 7) FIRST IN-SPACE DIET ASSESSMENT, CREATED BY UC BERKELEY EPIDEMIOLOGIST, WILL BEAM DOWN FRIDAY FROM MIR SPACE STATION. By Patricia McBroom 8) PATHFINDER TEAM PAINTS AN EARTH-LIKE PICTURE OF EARLY MARS JPL release 9) SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH OF CASSINI-HUYGENS MISSION ESA release 32-97 10) JPL DIRECTOR EXPECTS LIFE TO BE FOUND ON OTHER PLANETS LSU News Service 11) NASA "SPACE SUITS" HELP BROTHERS WITH RARE GENETIC DEFECT JSC release J97-30 12) EXPLORING MARS FOR EVIDENCE OF PAST OR PRESENT LIFE ARC release 97-75AR 13) NASA JOINS CRUSADE FOR WOMEN'S HEALTH NASA release 97-244 14) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR TO RESUME AEROBRAKING NASA release 97-249 15) NASA ASTROBIOLOGY INSTITUTE PROPOSALS SOLICITED 16) UB ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS DESIGN HOTELS IN SPACE, INCLUDING ONE BUILT INSIDE A 'CAPTURED' ASTEROID SUNY Buffalo release 17) GALILEO: COUNTDOWN TO EUROPA by Ron Baalke 18) MARS PATHFINDER WINDS DOWN AFTER PHENOMENAL MISSION JPL release 19) SURVEYOR RESUMES AEROBRAKING, HEADING TOWARD NEW MAPPING ORBIT NASA release 97-262 20) CORNELL ROVER TO LAND ON MARS IN 2001: $17 MILLION ATHENA PROJECT WILL EXPLORE MARTIAN HIGHLANDS Cornell University release 21) MARS PATHFINDER MISSION STATUS REPORTS 22) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR MISSION STATUS REPORTS ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS PATHFINDER ROVER EXITS ROCK GARDEN TO BEGIN LONG TREK NASA release 97-217 After 83 days of atmospheric, soil and rock studies, NASA's Mars Pathfinder is moving into extended mission activities that will take the rover on its longest trek yet, while the lander camera completes its biggest and best landscape panorama. "The lander and rover performance continues to be nothing short of extraordinary," said Brian Muirhead, Mars Pathfinder project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. "We have proven that we know how to design robust robots to operate in the hostile environment of Mars." The rover has just completed its last alpha proton X-ray spectrometer study for a while, taking compositional measurements of a rock nicknamed Chimp, located just behind and to the left of an area scientists call the Rock Garden. Once data from the spectrometer have been retrieved, Sojourner will begin a 164-foot (50-meter) clockwise stroll around the lander to perform a series of technology experiments and hazard avoidance exercises. Meanwhile, the Pathfinder lander camera is continuing to image the Martian landscape in full-resolution color as part of its goal to provide a "super panorama" image of the Ares Vallis landing site. Each frame of this panorama is imaged using 12 color filters plus stereo. "The super pan will be our biggest and best imaging data product," Muirhead said. "It is made up of 1 gigabit (1 billion bits) of data, of which we've received more than 80 percent. Given our limited downlink opportunities, we should have the full image by the end of October." The 22-pound (10.5-kilogram) rover has survived 10 times longer than its primary mission design of seven days, while the lander has now been operating 2.5 times longer than it was originally expected to operate, according to Richard Cook, Mars Pathfinder mission manager. Both vehicles are solar-powered, but carried batteries to conduct night-time science experiments and keep the lander warm during the sub-freezing nights on Mars. Normal usage has fully depleted the rover's non-rechargeable batteries, limiting it to daylight activities only. The lander battery, which packed more than 40 amp-hours of energy on landing day, performed perfectly during the 30-day primary mission, but is now down to less than 30 percent of its original capacity. "We expected to begin seeing this type of degradation on both vehicles and, of course, designed both the lander and rover to operate without batteries altogether," Cook said. "If everything else continues to operate properly, we could continue conducting surface experiments for months." About once every two weeks, the lander battery is used to perform some nighttime science experiments, he added. The primary activity is acquiring meteorological data and images of morning clouds, as well as images of Mars' two small moons, Phobos and Deimos. Despite the lack of battery power, the rover has continued taking successful spectrometer readings during the day. In the next two weeks, engineers will drive the vehicle back to a magnetic target on the ramp from which Sojourner first touched Martian soil. "This analysis of the dust on the ramp magnet is a very important science measurement," noted Dr. Matthew Golombek, Mars Pathfinder project scientist. "The results should give us a clue about how all this magnetic dust was formed." Recent images and movies from Mars Pathfinder activities continue to be posted to the Internet at the following URL: http://marsweb.jpl.nasa.gov The Mars Pathfinder mission is managed by the JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The mission is the second in the Discovery Program of fast track, low-cost spacecraft with highly focused science goals. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ------------------------------------------------------------------ SCIENTISTS DEVELOP NEW MAP OF THE WORLD'S SEA FLOORS NOAA release 97-56 Scientists have used gravity data from satellites in addition to depth soundings from ships to produce a more defined, high resolution map of the world's ocean floors, the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today. The new map, which looks similar to one the scientists published in 1995, provides estimations of the ocean depths from gravity data from satellites. The 1995 map was based on gravity data, but did not provide estimations of ocean depths. Scientists Walter H.F. Smith of NOAA's National Oceanographic Data Center and David T. Sandwell of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, report on their project in the September 26 issue of Science magazine. Conventional sea floor mapping using echo sounding data from ships has been difficult because of the large gaps between surveys in remote areas. "There are places as large as the State of Oklahoma where no soundings are available," said Smith. "Traditionally, bathymetric contours are drawn by hand so that human intuition (or prejudice) fills the gaps in coverage," Smith and Sandwell write in Science. "Recent developments allow a new approach to this problem." Smith and Sandwell used gravity data from satellites to estimate depths in unsurveyed areas, thus filling the gaps in the map in an objective and high-resolution manner. The new topography reveals all of the intermediate and large-scale structures of the ocean basins, including new mountain ranges such as the Foundation Seamounts in the South Pacific. These were not found by conventional mapping but were revealed by the satellite gravity data. Smith and Sandwell showed that uncharted seamounts are a significant source of topographic variation, and information from satellite gravity can reduce the error in estimated topographic variation by more than half. Knowledge of sea floor topography is vital for understanding physical oceanography, marine biology, chemistry and geology. Topography influences currents, tides, and mixing and upwelling of nutrient-rich water. The new topographic features portrayed by Smith and Sandwell reveal new fish habitats and should influence computer simulations of ocean circulation, which are used to forecast global climate change. The map can be viewed on the World Wide Web at: http://www.goes.noaa.gov/special.html For more information and images on the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/announcements/announce_predict.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SOUTH POLE UNDER SCRUTINY BY RADARSAT CSA release St. Hubert, Sept. 29, 1997 The Canadian Space Agency (CSA)released today the first high- resolution satellite image ever taken of the South Pole. The image was acquired on 14 September by RADARSAT, Canada's first Earth observation satellite operated by the CSA. The image, acquired at night, clearly shows the modern infrastructure of the Amundsen-Scott Station and also shows the runway and the remains of the old South Pole Station established in the late 1950's and now buried under about 10 meters of snow. The Amundsen-Scott Station is operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation and supports a host of international science programs. This image and several other images can be seen and retrieved from the CSA RADARSAT WEB site at the address given below. This unique image of the South Pole was obtained by rotating the RADARSAT satellite 180 degrees in yaw. This maneuver was performed for the Antarctic Mapping Mission (AMM), between September 9 and 11. The maneuver allowed the radar to image to the left of the satellite track instead of to the right and by steering the radar beam up to cover the South Pole. This coverage is not possible with other high-resolution sensors because of a combination of their orbit inclination and field of view capability. Although other missions do regular yaw maneuvers for sun data acquisition purposes, the AMM maneuver is believed to be unique for an earth observation spacecraft like RADARSAT. The satellite will remain in this configuration until November 3 to allow the complete mapping of Antarctica at high resolution. This mapping of Antarctica, a largely uncharted region the size of Canada and Alaska combined will take 18 days to complete and will require the collection of over 5000 images. The RADARSAT AMM has important significance for the scientific community; almost 70% of the Earth's fresh water is contained in the Antarctic region, and changes in this enormous reservoir directly influence world sea levels and climate. A high- resolution digital image mosaic of the ice sheet and exposed portions of the continent will be prepared from images taken by RADARSAT. The new digital radar map will provide an unprecedented detailed portrayal of the surface form and features of the icesheet. This RADARSAT based map will help scientists to better understand the dynamic behavior of the ice sheet and provide them a greater insight into the effects of human activity on the Southern Continent. The RADARSAT AMM data will also serve as a benchmark for testing the predicted effects of global warming on the interior ice sheet and the bounding ice shelves, some of which have recently under gone rapid retreat especially in the Antarctic Peninsula. Using the images taken by RADARSAT, scientists will be able to examine for the first time the effects of complex climatological, glaciological and geological processes on the Antarctic at high resolution and on a Continental wide scale. Furthermore, the availability of this unique data set will be welcomed by scientists from many of the nations interested in the governance and protection of Antarctica in accordance with the Antarctic Treaty System. The AMM is a commitment that was negotiated and agreed to by the CSA in an International Memorandum of Understanding (IMOU) signed with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on February 27, 1991. In exchange for the launch of the RADARSAT satellite by NASA, Canada agreed to provide the USA with access to a proportionate amount of RADARSAT's SAR on-time and to execute a yaw maneuver of the spacecraft twice during the mission to allow the mapping of the Antarctic Continental Ice Sheet. Partners in the AMM include the CSA and NASA. CSA support draws upon the Canada Center for Remote Sensing (CCRS) and RADARSAT International (RSI). NASA support draws upon the Byrd Polar Research Center of the Ohio State University (OSU), NASA's Alaska SAR Facility (ASF), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Vexcel Corporation, the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. Launched in November 1995 and operated by the CSA from Saint- Hubert, Quebec, RADARSAT uses a sophisticated microwave radar system to produce images of extraordinary clarity through cloud cover, smog, haze, smoke, and even in darkness. The satellite can be programmed to capture images of an area as wide as 500 kilometers, and can detect objects as small as eight meters. Marketing and worldwide distribution of RADARSAT data have been licensed to the Canadian firm, RADARSAT International (RSI), of Richmond, British Columbia. With the AMM, RADARSAT will complete the detailed radar mapping of the entire planet Earth. For further information: Isabelle Hudon, CSA, (514) 926-4355, www.space.gc.ca, http://radarsat.space.gc.ca NOTE: The images are available at http://radarsat.space.gc.ca/ENG/AMM/images.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPPORTUNITIES NASA release Opportunities to conduct science experiments aboard the International Space Station will be limited during its assembly period, but the wait should be worth it, a top NASA scientist said Thursday. "What we are about to build is a laboratory, a fully operational platform that is going to let us do things we never thought of before at scales we never considered before," said Dr. Ray Askew, space station senior scientist at NASA Headquarters. He spoke recently at the AIAA Defense and Space Programs and Conference. The full story at http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/msad26sep97_1.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------ FIRST MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES AVAILABLE by Ron Baalke The first images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft while it has been in orbit around Mars are now available on the Mars Global Surveyor home page (click on "First Images From Mars!"): http://marsweb.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/ Launched on November 7, 1996, Mars Global Surveyor entered Mars orbit on Thursday, September 11, 1997. The spacecraft has been using atmospheric drag to reduce the size of its orbit for the past three weeks, and will achieve a circular orbit only 400 km (248 mi.) above the surface early next year. Mapping operations begin in March 1998. At that time, MOC narrow angle images will be 5-10 times higher resolution than these pictures. Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. Contact: info@msss.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR UNVEILS ITS FIRST PORTRAIT OF MARS JPL release Mars Global Surveyor's first look at Mars is showing scientists a world devoid of an active core and anything more than the relic of an ancient magnetic field. "Mars no longer has a global magnetic field generated by an internal energy source, like Earth and the other planets," said Dr. Jack Connerney, co-investigator of the magnetometer/electron spectrometer team, at an Oct. 2 Mars Global Surveyor press briefing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It appears that the crust of Mars is strewn with multiple magnetic anomalies, which may represent the solidification of magma as it was coming up through the crust and cooling very early in Mars' evolution, but this is only the memory of a magnetic field." Mars Global Surveyor went into orbit around Mars on Sept. 11 after a 10-month journey to the planet, and detected the presence of a weak magnetic field within a week of its arrival. Evidence of this faint magnetic field confirmed long-standing theories that the red planet had, at one time in its history, a liquid core able to support a dynamo. Scientists believe this core probably froze and solidified early in the planet's evolution. The magnetometer data, acquired during one of the spacecraft's highly elliptical orbits around Mars during the week of Sept. 15- 18, indicates that the planet's magnetic field is not globally generated in the planet's core, but is localized in particular areas of the crust, said Dr. Daniel Winterhalter, magnetometer experiment representative at JPL. Scientists plan to correlate these strong magnetic anomalies with topographical data obtained by Global Surveyor's camera and laser altimeter. That information may lead to the identification of particular topographic features in the crust. "The identification of these magnetic anomalies and their correlation with surface features may enable us to trace the history of the planet's interior, just as we are able to trace the history of Earth's interior using the magnetic anomalies that have been imprinted on the ocean floors," Winterhalter said. Mars' very localized field also creates a new paradigm for the way in which it interacts with the solar wind, one that is not found with other planets. While Earth, Jupiter and other planets have large magnetospheres, and planets like Venus have strong ionospheres, Mars' small, localized magnetic fields are likely to produce a much more complicated interaction process as these fields move with the planet's rotation. These observations and many more came just as the spacecraft finished the walk-in phase of aerobraking and was about to begin the main phase, which will last three months. All six of the spacecraft's science instruments had been turned on midway through the elliptical walk-in phase for calibration and engineering adjustments. Since its capture, the spacecraft's orbit has been reduced from 45 hours to 40 hours, 20 minutes. Through January 1998, the aerobraking and navigation teams will gradually circularize Surveyor's orbit into the final two-hour, 378- kilometer (234-mile) mapping orbit. "The spacecraft and science instruments are operating magnificently," reported Dr. Arden Albee, of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, who is the Mars Global Surveyor project scientist. "The initial science data we've obtained from the walk-in phase of aerobraking are remarkable in their clarity, and the combined measurements from all of the instruments over the next two years are going to provide us with a fascinating new global view of the planet." Mars Global Surveyor carries six science instruments--a camera, laser altimeter, magnetometer/electron reflectometer, thermal emission spectrometer and ultra-stable oscillator--that will paint a global portrait of Mars, gathering data on the planet's atmosphere, surface and interior. The mission will enable scientists to determine Mars' current state and some of the major turning points in its evolution. Among a myriad of science objectives, Global Surveyor will study Mars' climate and its resources, and attempt to determine if life ever existed on the planet. During the past three weeks, the spacecraft has been aerobraking through the upper atmosphere of Mars each time it passes closest to the surface. Aerobraking operations are continuing to proceed smoothly. The spacecraft has completed 12 revolutions around Mars, including nine aerobraking passes through the upper Martian atmosphere, said Dr. Richard Zurek, an investigator at JPL who is leader of the Mars Global Surveyor atmospheric advisory team. Each of these atmospheric passes takes place at the start and low point of the orbit, known as the periapsis, as Global Surveyor orbits at current altitudes of about 110 kilometers (70 miles). So far, the upper atmospheric density has varied according to daytime and nighttime measurements by as much as 70 percent, said Dr. Gerald Keating, on the atmospheric advisory team from George Washington University, Washington, DC. And densities are five times higher than they were when the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft entered the upper atmosphere on July 4. Density profiles are being acquired on a daily basis and used to help guide the aerobraking team's work to shrink and circularize the spacecraft's orbit. Although the thickness of the Martian atmosphere continues to run slightly higher than predicted, no major changes to the aerobraking strategy are being considered because the spacecraft was designed to tolerate up to a 70 percent increase in atmospheric thickness. The first orbital images of the Martian surface in more than 20 years are showing geologic features that would dwarf some of the most spectacular features known to Earth. Initial science data show a canyon far deeper than Arizona's 1-mile-deep Grand Canyon and mountains standing much taller than Nepal's Mt. Everest. Vast expanses of smooth crustal flatlands in the northern hemisphere hint at a geologically younger portion of Mars, while new measurements of the planet's southern polar cap indicate drastically frigid temperatures of about minus 129 degrees Celsius (200 degrees Fahrenheit). Mars Global Surveyor's camera revealed two regions of interest to geologists: a view of a highland valley network called Nirgal Vallis and an image of Labyrinthus Noctis, an area west of the Valles Marineris near the crest of a large updoming in the Martian crust. Dr. Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems Inc., San Diego, who is the principal investigator of the Mars Global Surveyor camera, presented the images. Nirgal Vallis is about 15 kilometers (9 miles) across by about 45 kilometers (27 miles) in length, with many small sand dunes and different aged craters in the vicinity, Malin said. The valley is located at 28.5 degrees south latitude, 41.6 degrees west longitude. Of interest to scientists are the processes that helped shape this canyon. "The origin of this and many other canyons on Mars has been debated ever since the Mariner 9 mission," Malin said. "There are two leading theories: the first suggests that water flowing over the surface accumulated, as it does on Earth, then formed a drainage basin that allowed the water to flow further down into a larger channel. The alternative explanation was that ground water processes dissolved part of the subterranean materials on Mars, causing collapse and progressive deterioration of this particular region." Labyrinthus Noctis, the second image presented Oct. 2, is near the crest of a large updoming of the Martian crust that is probably thousand of kilometers in diameter, and near very large, 2,000-meter-deep (6,500-foot) canyons bounded by faults. Debris shed from the steep slopes has moved down into the region after the canyons opened. Small dunes are seen in the lower portion of this area, beneath the high cliffs. Global Surveyor's camera has acquired about a dozen high resolution images of Mars to date, which are being used to fine- tune the instrument in preparation for the start of mapping operations in March 1998. These first images were not the highest resolution expected during mapping because the spacecraft is not yet in the proper mapping orbit and the correct sunlight conditions have not yet been reached, Malin said. As the spacecraft moves into its Sun-synchronous orbit, in which it will cross the Martian equator at 2 p.m. local Mars time during each revolution, the Sun will be at a standard angle above the horizon in each image. The spacecraft's thermal emission spectrometer recorded sub- freezing temperatures at the southern polar cap, said principal investigator Dr. Philip Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe. The instrument, which takes infrared measurements on the surface, also recorded temperature highs of about -7 C (20 F) at the warmest parts of the planet and a very clear, dust-free atmosphere. The laser altimeter, which fires 10 laser pulses a second at the surface, is also performing well, reported Dr. David Smith, principal investigator of the instrument and based at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. This experiment will measure the height of Martian surface features and provide elevation maps that will be precise to within 30 meters (98 feet) of surface features. From the 12,000 measurements already taken, Smith reported a notable inaccuracy in the location of some Martian features as shown on current maps based on Viking data. Global Surveyor will provide a much more accurate global map, which will be used to guide future missions to the surface. Additional information about the Mars Global Surveyor mission is available on the World Wide Web by accessing JPL's Mars news site at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsnews or the Global Surveyor project home page at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov. Mars Global Surveyor is the first in a sustained program of Mars exploration, known as the Mars Surveyor Program. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL's industrial partner is Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, which developed and operates the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ------------------------------------------------------------------ FIRST IN-SPACE DIET ASSESSMENT, CREATED BY UC BERKELEY EPIDEMIOLOGIST, WILL BEAM DOWN FRIDAY FROM MIR SPACE STATION. UC Berkely release By Patricia McBroom On Friday (October 10), U.S. astronaut David Wolf, who recently began a four-month stay on the Russian Mir space station, will beam down the first in-flight record of a diet eaten in space. Created by public health epidemiologist Gladys Block of the University of California at Berkeley, the record is a weekly intake questionnaire designed specifically to counter the effects of extended weightlessness. For the first time, food and liquid intake can be systematically measured and modified while the astronaut is in space, said Block, whose dietary assessments are widely used by nutritional scientists. The space diet evaluation includes a formula for translating Wolf's weekly food log into measures of calcium, sodium, iron, fluid, calories and protein. "We've never been able to do this in real time before," said Block, a professor in UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "If we discover that Wolf's fluid intake is low, the flight surgeon can say, 'You've got to drink more water.' " Block said scientists hope to have an impact on such possible consequences of extended space flight as kidney stones and bone loss. Long-duration space flight has serious effects on the human body, including loss of weight, bone and muscle; changes in blood cells, and increased risk of kidney stone formation, according to Scott M. Smith, nutritional scientist with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, who will receive the results of Wolf's weekly questionnaire. Smith said these physiological hazards, particularly the risk of bone loss, will increase significantly with the extended space flight envisioned for the International Space Station, due for inauguration in 1998. "In my opinion, bone loss is one of the most critical things we must fix before we can do anything like send humans to Mars," said Smith. Experience with three decades of space flight has shown that individuals vary greatly on bone loss, said Smith. Some astronauts have recovered completely, while others have not yet returned to pre-flight levels. The total diet available on Mir comprises approximately 250 food items, about half of which are Russian foods. Daily menus are created for astronauts, but they often swap foods or otherwise change the diet while in flight, said Smith. The questionnaire of 50-60 items took several months to develop, but it takes only ten minutes to answer, Block said. Pre-flight ground tests with NASA volunteers demonstrated the ability of such a brief questionnaire to estimate fluid and nutrient intake thought to be critical for health during space flight. The volunteers ate a space station diet while living in a capsule for 60 days. ------------------------------------------------------------------ PATHFINDER TEAM PAINTS AN EARTH-LIKE PICTURE OF EARLY MARS JPL release Mars is appearing more and more like a planet that was very Earth- like in its infancy, with weathering processes and flowing water that created a variety of rock types and a warmer atmosphere that generated clouds, winds and seasonal cycles. Those observations, along with new images taken by the Mars Pathfinder rover and lander, and an update on the condition of the spacecraft, were presented at an Oct. 8 press briefing originating from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "What the data are telling us is that the planet appears to have water-worn rock conglomerates, sand and surface features that were created by liquid water," said Dr. Matthew Golombek, Mars Pathfinder project scientist at JPL. "If, with more study, these rocks turn out to be made of composite materials, that would have required liquid water flowing on the surface to round the edges in pebbles we see on the surface or explain how they were embedded in larger rocks. That would be a very important finding." Golombek also stressed the amount of differentiation--or heating, cooling and recycling of crustal materials--that appears to have taken place on Mars. "We're seeing a much greater degree of differentiation--the process by which heavier elements sink to the center of the planet while lighter elements rise to the surface-- than we previously thought, and very clear evidence that liquid water was stable at one time in Mars' past. "Water, of course, is the very ingredient that is necessary to support life," he added, "and that leads to the $64,000 question: Are we alone in the universe? Did life ever develop on Mars? If so, what happened to it and, if not, why not?" Despite recent communications problems with Earth, the Mars Pathfinder lander and rover are continuing to operate during the Martian days, when they can receive enough energy to power up spacecraft systems via their solar panels. The mission is now into Sol 94, or the 94th Martian day of operations, since landing on July 4. "Everything that we have seen over the last 10 days (with respect to communications) is like a twisty little maze with passages all alike," said Jennifer Harris, acting mission manager. "I am happy to report that we have made contact with the spacecraft using its main transmitter. We were able to confirm that we could send a command to the spacecraft to turn its transmitter on and then turn it off. "We don't know yet whether we are receiving that signal over the low-gain or high-gain antenna," she added, "but we should be able to determine this over the next few days." The Mars Pathfinder team began having communications problems with the spacecraft on Saturday, Sept. 27. After three days of attempting to reestablish contact, they were able to lock on to a beacon signal from the spacecraft's auxiliary transmitter on October 1, which meant that the spacecraft was still operational. At that time they surmised that the communications problems were most likely related to depletion of the spacecraft's battery and uncertainties in the onboard clock. The last successful data transmission cycle from Pathfinder was completed at 3:23 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Sept. 27, which was Sol 83 of the mission. Since then, efforts have been made during each Martian day to reestablish contact with both the primary and auxiliary transmitter and obtain engineering telemetry that would tell the team more about the health of the lander and rover. On Oct. 7, the team was able to lock on to Pathfinder's signal, via NASA's Deep Space Network 34-meter-diameter (112-foot) dish antenna in Madrid, Spain, for about 15 minutes, using the main transmitter. However, in repeating the process on Oct. 8, they did not receive a signal. The rover, which receives its instructions from Earth via the lander, is currently running a contingency software program that was preprogrammed to start up if the vehicle did not hear from the lander after five Martian days. That program was powered on Oct. 6, on Sol 92 of the mission. In this contingency mode, the rover is instructed to return to the lander and begin circling it. This precaution is designed to keep Sojourner close to the lander in the event that the spacecraft was able to begin communicating with it again. If normal communications are reestablished, the rover team will send new commands to Sojourner to halt the contingency circling and begin a traverse to a specific location. Dr. William Folkner, an interdisciplinary scientist at JPL, presented data on the rotation and orbital dynamics of Mars, which are being obtained from two-way ranging and Doppler tracking of the lander as Mars rotates. Measurements of the rate of change in Mars' spin axis have important implications for learning more about the density and mass of the planet's interior. Eventually, scientists may be able to determine whether Mars' core is presently molten or fluid. The size of the core also can be used to characterize the thickness, or radius, of Mars' mantle. "By measuring the spin axis of Mars, we can learn something about the interior of the planet, because the speed of the change in its orientation is related to how the mass is distributed inside," Folkner said. "If the core is fluid, its spin and the way in which the planet wobbles slightly will be different from the spin and wobble of a planet with a solid core. "If Mars' core is solid, then it can't be less than about 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) in radius, out of the planet's total radius of 3,400 kilometers (2,112 miles)," Folkner added. "If the core is made up of something less dense than iron, if it's a mixture of, say, iron and sulfur, then the core would be bigger, but it couldn't be bigger than about 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) in radius." New close-up images of dunes around the landing site are showing some scientists clear evidence that there is sand on the surface of Mars. Identification of sand, as opposed to dust or pebbles, is a significant factor in establishing that weathering processes such as erosion, winds and flowing water all contributed to Mars' present landscape. "We've made significant progress in establishing that water was a dominant agent in forming the surface, and now we can say that there is another agent at work, and that is the wind, that has created and modified some of the landforms on a smaller and medium scale," said Dr. Wes Ward of the U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ, a member of the Imager for Mars Pathfinder team. "And because the water is no longer there, wind probably is the dominant agent shaping the Martian surface at this moment." Ward showed images of Ares Vallis, taken by the rover and Viking 1 orbiter images to point out the structural difference in these surface features. While Viking 1 surface features around a rock nicknamed "Big Joe" showed drifts, the dune-like surfaces in the Ares Vallis flood basin resemble sand that has been blown southwest over the landing site. The presence of sand also points to the likely presence of liquid water, needed to create these small, 1-millimeter-diameter granules, and weathering agents such as wind to blow them into small ridges and moats present around the Ares Vallis rocks. "The wind is quite an active agent," Ward said. "Sand is the smoking gun, and as far as I'm concerned, the gun is smoking and has Colonel Mustard's prints all over it. We are seeing sand at the landing site." Dr. Greg Wilson, of Arizona State University, who is on the Pathfinder atmospheric experiment team, reported increases in the pressure of the Martian atmosphere and a drop in surface temperatures. "We expect to see a continued increase in pressure and decrease in temperatures as the dust season approaches and winds begin to lift more dust into the Martian atmosphere," he said. "The dust season on Mars usually begins in the next few weeks." Additional information, images and rover movies from the Mars Pathfinder mission are available on JPL's Mars news media web site at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsnews or on the Mars Pathfinder project's home page at http://marsweb.jpl.nasa.gov . Images from Mars Pathfinder and other planetary missions are available at NASA's Planetary Photojournal web site at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Pathfinder mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The mission is the second in the Discovery Program of fast-track, low-cost spacecraft with highly focused science goals. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ------------------------------------------------------------------ SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH OF CASSINI-HUYGENS MISSION ESA release 32-97 ESA's latest and farthest venture into the Solar System began at 10:43 Paris time on 15 October. The American Titan IVB/Centaur launcher sent NASA's large Cassini spacecraft on its way to Saturn. Cassini carries ESA's probe Huygens, as well as the high- gain antenna provided by ASI, the Italian Space Agency. In 2004 ESA's Huygens probe will plunge into the thick atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. About 500 representatives of the scientific, engineering and industrial teams in Europe, which created the Huygens Probe, were present at Cape Canaveral for the Cassini Huygens launch. They saw the powerful boosters of the Titan launcher light up the pre- dawn sky. The launch sequence concluded with the completion of the second firing and separation of the Centaur upper stage rocket. NASA's ground station at Canberra, Australia, obtained good signals from Cassini an hour after launch. The European Space Operations Center (ESOC) at Darmstadt will monitor the condition of the Huygens spacecraft. Their report is expected in 8-10 days' time. The next major event will be the swingby of Cassini Huygens at Venus on 21 April 1998. This is the first of a sequence of "gravity-assist" operations at Venus, the Earth and Jupiter, to accelerate the spacecraft. ------------------------------------------------------------------ JPL DIRECTOR EXPECTS LIFE TO BE FOUND ON OTHER PLANETS LSU News Service 26 September, 1997 BATON ROUGE -- Edward Stone, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and vice president of the California Institute of Technology, said in a talk at LSU that he expects life will be found any place in the galaxy where there is liquid water. Stone, who spoke Thursday night at the Lod Cook Alumni Center as the Max Goodrich Distinguished Speaker, chronicled NASA's search for life on other planets, beginning with the 1976 landings of the Viking spacecraft on Mars. Although those experiments turned up nothing, the discovery on earth of tube worms living in the near- boiling waters of deep ocean vents, and algae living beneath the ice sheets at the polar caps proved that life is much more robust than originally thought, he said. Indications of life from a Martian meteorite found at the South Pole also gave impetus to the search for life elsewhere. Stone said it is unlikely that life will be found on the surface of Mars because the sun's ultra-violet rays tend to sterilize the surface, but if there is liquid water underground, some form of life will probably be there. Part of the mission of the Mars surveyor, which arrived at Mars last week, will be to look for "hot spots," where there may be liquid water. It will be these hot spots where further exploration for life will take place, he said. NASA has plans to send spacecraft to Jupiter's moon, Europa, and to Saturn's moon, Titan, to look for liquid water. Both spacecraft should arrive in 2004. The surface of Europa is thought to be ice, with the possibility of liquid water beneath. Eventually a spacecraft may be sent to drill through the ice to gather information about Europa's climatological history and to probe the liquid water beneath. Titan, as large as the planet Mercury, has a methane atmosphere, Stone said, but such an atmosphere is excellent for the formation of large, complex organic molecules--the type which gave rise to life on earth. The Cassini spacecraft, which is now in Florida, will explore the chemistry of Titan's atmosphere and map its surface. Another promising area in the search for life is on the surface of a comet. Comets are covered with a black, sooty residue which may be organic, he said. What this residue is, where it came from and whether it might possibly have seeded life on earth are all questions that need to be explored. Plans are under way to capture some of this residue during a comet fly-by in 2004 and return it to earth. Although Jupiter has atmospheric zones that are temperate and should contain liquid water, Stone said he did not expect life to be found there because the gasses in the atmosphere are constantly rising and falling out of these zones. There are no stable places for life to get a foothold, he said. And because NASA has made the search for life a high priority, exploration of Venus must wait until later. Venus has a surface temperature of 900 degrees and little or no water, so it is an unlikely place to search for life. Other projects include connecting the two Keck telescopes in Hawaii in such a way that they will act as part of a mirror with a diameter of the distance between them, and plans for an orbiting telescope based on the same principles. This might permit us to see earth-sized planets around other stars. An earth-sized planet is one-billionth as bright as its star, Stone said. Ultimately, humans will be sent on a three-year, round trip to Mars. NASA is addressing the challenges in feeding them, protecting them and getting them back now. ------------------------------------------------------------------ NASA "SPACE SUITS" HELP BROTHERS WITH RARE GENETIC DEFECT JSC release J97-30 by Ann Hutchison 10 October, 1997 Technology being designed to protect astronauts working in space is helping two British youngsters enjoy a more normal life. A team at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, recently provided two specially designed "space suits" to 4-year-old Kyle and 2-year-old Ryan Richards of Shotton Colliery, England. The brothers suffer from Polymorphic Light Reaction Syndrome, which is caused by a very rare genetic defect. It is characterized by extreme allergy to light that causes the skin to break out in rashes and blisters. Without the suits, the boys could venture outside only at night. Even exposure to a bright light bulb may cause an allergic reaction. "An English newspaper journalist approached us earlier this year on behalf of the Richards family," said Robert Dotts, Assistant Director of Technology Transfer and Commercialization at JSC. After discussions with the family, NASA formed a small team and "set about defining suit requirements, identifying possible materials and testing them." Based on test results, NASA engineers decided on a two-layer suit, plus an active cooling system to keep the children comfortable inside the suits. The suit's outer layer consists of a white jacket, pants, gloves and head gear, including goggles. The external garments protect the children's sensitive skin from more than 99.9 percent of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays. The garments are made of a new material that should be available in several months from the Solar Protective Factory, Carmichael, CA. The cooling undergarments, made of nylon/lycra, are based on a design worn by astronauts during spacewalks and sized for the children. The cooling system--shorts and T-shirt fitted with tubes filled with ice- cooled water--is operated by a battery-powered unit worn on the waist. The JSC team (Dotts, NASA engineers Dominic Del Rosso and Evelyne Orndoff and Dr. Smith Johnston, a NASA physician) delivered the suits to the Richards family, which was on a trip to Orlando, FL, in late September. They accompanied the youngsters on their visit to Disney World to assist with their first extended outing while wearing the UV protective suits. While in Florida, the children also were able to watch a Space Shuttle launch. According to Johnston, the NASA team closely monitored the children in the suits. Testing involved first normal children, then the Richards boys inside the home in Florida, followed by a short excursion outside. After a few minor modifications to the suits, the group made a six-hour excursion to Disney World. "This was the first time Ryan had ever been outside in the daytime," Johnston said. The suits worn by the Richards children are prototypes of space suits being developed at JSC. "This should be a great way to test the durability of these suits," Dotts said. "Who better to give them a real work-out than a couple of active, energetic youngsters?" Dotts said the suits' performance was "fantastic for the first prototypes." He said the team has identified "a few minor changes to the suits to improve their usability." They plan to incorporate them into another prototype suit in the next month. NASA provided the suits through an agreement with the HED Foundation, Hampton, VA, which since 1987 has provided cooling gear to children with hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (HED) and with multiple sclerosis. HED is a medical disorder characterized by a lack of sweat glands, which can lead to heat exhaustion, heatstroke and even death. JSC also is working with MicroClimate, Inc., Sanford, MI, which has developed cooling garments using a phase-change material to provide the cooling. Dotts said he hopes to develop a long-term agreement with the HED Foundation by the end of the year for distribution of similar UV suits to needy children in the U.S. and worldwide. It is estimated that several thousand children around the world suffer from various defects that cause either extreme sensitivity to light or problems in cooling their bodies. A photograph to accompany this release is available at the NASA Commercial Technology Network Web site at URL http://www.nctn.hq.nasa.gov/success/index.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ EXPLORING MARS FOR EVIDENCE OF PAST OR PRESENT LIFE ARC release 97-75AR by Elizabeth Carter 17 October, 1997 Alternative exploration strategies designed to detect evidence of past or present life on Mars are the subject of a presentation to be given by NASA's Dr. Jack Farmer at the Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Oct. 20, 1997. Farmer, an exobiologist and paleontologist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, asks the question, "If there was life on Mars, where would it be found?" The crucial first step in implementing an exploration strategy is identifying the best places to look, he states. "A close synergy between orbital and landed science will be essential for effective site selection to explore for past life," Farmer said. In exploring for a Martian fossil record, present scenarios assume that rover missions in 2001 and 2003 will gather and cache samples for possible return-to-Earth mission in 2005. A critical step is to locate accessible surface outcrops of water-formed sedimentary deposits on Mars. The effectiveness of a sample return mission in addressing the question of past Martian life will be significantly enhanced by 1) obtaining high spatial resolution data from important sites during the 2001 orbital mission, 2) delivering highly mobile robotic platforms to exopaleontological sites in 2001 and 2003, e.g. rovers that are capable of multiple kilometer traverses during nominal mission times, and 3) carrying out in-situ mineralogical and geochemical analyses of a variety of rock types as a basis for selecting samples for return to Earth. Potentially important targets include fine-grained, clay-rich detrital sediments, water-lain volcanic ash deposits, and chemical precipitates--lithologies that on Earth have been shown to be especially favorable for preserving fossil biosignatures of microbial life. According to Farmer, exploring for Martian life will require a fundamentally different approach than exploring for a fossil record. A deep subsurface hydrosphere, touted as the most likely haven for an extant biota on Mars may yet exist beneath the Martian cryosphere at a depth of several kilometers. However, during the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Program, robotic platforms will be unable to penetrate deeper than a few meters. Farmer believes that the technological challenge of deep subsurface drilling presently provides the most compelling scientific reason for mounting human missions to Mars. But as a first step in planning drilling missions, systematic orbital searches using high spatial resolution multispectral imaging should be undertaken sometime during the MGS Program (perhaps in 2003) to identify spatially-restricted thermal anomalies, and concentrations of water, methane or other reduced gases that may indicate the presence of near surface hydrothermal systems. ------------------------------------------------------------------ NASA JOINS CRUSADE FOR WOMEN'S HEALTH NASA release 97-244 NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin today unveiled dramatic new technological developments affecting women's health at two events on Capitol Hill. The technologies, which grew out of spin-offs from the U.S. space and aeronautics program, will usher in a new era in detection and treatment of women's health problems ranging from breast cancer to osteoporosis to reproductive health. "As a husband, father of two daughters, and a grandfather, few subjects are as important to me as women's health," Goldin said. "That is why I am so proud of how NASA technologies, originally developed for our space and aeronautics programs, improve health care for women, men and children around the world." In the first event, NASA signed an agreement enlisting NASA technologies to fight breast cancer and other women's illnesses. The agreement was signed by Dr. Henry McDonald, Director of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, and Dr. Susan Blumenthal, Assistant Surgeon General and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Women's Health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). At the signing ceremony, Goldin and McDonald demonstrated for Blumenthal six advanced technologies resulting from the U.S. space and aeronautics program that can dramatically influence the state of women's health. The agreement between NASA and HHS establishes a cooperative framework between Ames and the Office on Women's Health to identify, develop and transfer NASA technologies to benefit women's health. Major areas of concern are cancer, reproductive health, pregnancy, osteoporosis and education. The technologies demonstrated included the new robotic "Smart Surgical Probe"; technology to allow three-dimensional "planning" for breast reconstruction, as is currently done for facial reconstruction surgery; and a device to predict an individual's specific risk of contracting osteoporosis. At the second event, Goldin was the keynote speaker at a luncheon sponsored by the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues discussing "Space Technology Contributions to Breast Cancer Research." He highlighted several NASA research and technology programs that help scientists and doctors understand, diagnose and treat breast cancer. "Part of the breast cancer story is that it kills thousands every year," Goldin said. "However, this tragic statistic does not tell the whole story. The rest of the story is one of hope. It's a story of strength and grace and awesome courage. At NASA, we are proud to be part of this story. Before today, Americans may not have connected NASA with the fight against breast cancer. They may not know that NASA is on the front line for women's health. We are pushing the edge of the envelope, developing state-of-the- art technologies that will help save women's lives." NASA Astronaut Mary Ellen Weber, Ph.D., explained how NASA efforts to grow human cells and tissue in space help researchers understand cancer and the response of the human immune system. Dr. Carolyn Krebs of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, provided information on the way technology allowing the Hubble Space Telescope to map distant stars is being used in doctors' offices today to easily detect tiny spots in breast tissue, using a needle for biopsy rather than surgery. More information on the NASA technologies described above can be obtained from the NASA home page at URL: http://www.nasa.gov/today/index.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR TO RESUME AEROBRAKING NASA release 97-249 [For more on this, see the MGS flight reports at the end of this issue. DJT] After a two-week hiatus, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) flight team will resume lowering the spacecraft's orbit around Mars beginning Nov. 7. The effort will proceed at a more gradual pace than before, which will extend the mission's aerobraking phase by several months, and will change Global Surveyor's final science mapping orbit. The decision to resume aerobraking came after intensive engineering analysis, computer simulations and tests with representative hardware to characterize the current condition of one of the spacecraft's two solar panels, which began to flex more than expected during the spacecraft's lowest dip into the Martian atmosphere on Oct. 6. Under normal circumstances, the spacecraft's two 11-foot- long (3.5-meter) solar panels should remain fixed and nearly motionless during each aerobraking pass through the upper atmosphere of Mars. One of the panels, which did not fully deploy and latch after launch, moved past its latched position and has shown slight movement during the spacecraft's last three closest approaches to the Martian surface. "After sufficient time to study the observed motion, we concluded that it is possible to perform additional aerobraking at a slower rate, without putting undue stress on the solar panel in question," said Glenn E. Cunningham, Mars Global Surveyor mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. "This changes Mars Global Surveyor's final mapping orbit, but it should not have a significant impact on the ability of Global Surveyor to accomplish the mission science objectives." The spacecraft's scientific instruments have performed flawlessly and continue to return new information about Martian magnetic properties, its atmosphere, surface features, temperatures and mineralogy since Mars Global Surveyor entered orbit around the red planet on Sept. 11. The spacecraft is currently in a 35-hour elliptical orbit which brings it 107 miles (172 kilometers) above the surface of Mars at its closest approach to the planet. The operations team at JPL and Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, will begin to reduce that orbit using a more moderate level of aerobraking that will slowly bring the spacecraft into the desired nearly circular mapping orbit. Aerobraking, a technique first demonstrated in the summer of 1993 during the final months of the Magellan mission to Venus, allows a spacecraft to lower its orbit without relying on propellant, by using the drag produced by a planet's atmosphere. "There are several types of desirable orbits for us to consider in the next several weeks that will give us global coverage of the planet and yield all of the science data we expected to return," Cunningham said. "In the meantime, the instruments are performing marvelously, and we will continue gathering new science data as we begin to reduce the spacecraft's altitude and bring it down into the upper Martian atmosphere. Even if we wind up in an elliptical orbit, we will have an opportunity to study Mars at closer range than we originally planned because the spacecraft's periapsis -- or closest passage over Mars -- will be closer than the 234-mile (378-kilometer) circular orbit that was to be its original mapping distance." The spacecraft's current orbit was raised Oct. 12 after the flight operations team observed that the unlatched solar panel had moved more than 20 degrees and beyond what should have been its fully deployed and latched position. Significant movement was observed on periapsis 15 -- or the 15th closest pass over Mars, which occurred on Oct. 6 -- when the Martian atmosphere had become twice as dense as it had been during previous passes. The thickness of the atmosphere amounted to a 50 percent increase in pressure over what was expected on the spacecraft's solar array. Although atmospheric variations like these were anticipated as the seasons change on Mars, the spacecraft's orbit was raised by about seven miles (11 kilometers) to adjust the pressure level. Subsequent motion of the panel at periapsis 16 through 18 caused the flight team to raise the orbit further on Oct. 12, taking the spacecraft out of the atmosphere altogether. "The investigation of the unexpected motion of the unlatched panel led us to identify a secondary source of damage in the yoke, a piece of structure that connects the solar panel to the spacecraft," Cunningham said. "This secondary source of damage was a result of the failure of the damper arm that jammed in the panel's hinge joint shortly after launch, when the solar panels were initially deployed." Mechanical stress analysis tests suggest that the yoke -- a triangular, aluminum honeycomb material sandwiched between two sheets of graphite epoxy -- probably fractured on one surface. The analysis further suggests that the fractured surface, with increased pressure on the panel during aerobraking, began to pull away from the aluminum honeycomb beneath it. "Aerobraking will be reinitiated at 0.2 newtons per square meter (0.00003 pounds per square inch), which is about one- third of the original aerobraking level," Cunningham said. "This is a pressure that we currently believe is safe but we will continue to work with ground tests, analysis and close monitoring of in-flight spacecraft data to assure that it is safe." "Aerobraking will take much longer, perhaps eight to 12 months, at this more gradual rate. In the meantime, we will continue collecting science data and work in the next several weeks toward selection of the best possible orbit to fulfill the science objectives of the mapping mission," Cunningham said. A new color image from the MGS Mars Orbiter Camera of the giant volcano Olympus Mons is available on the Internet at the following URL: http://barsoom.msss.com/mars/global_surveyor/camera/images/index.h tml Additional information about the Mars Global Surveyor mission is available on the World Wide Web by accessing JPL's Mars news site at URL: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsnews or the Global Surveyor project home page at URL: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov. Mars Global Surveyor is part of a sustained program of Mars exploration, known as the Mars Surveyor Program. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL's industrial partner is Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, which developed and operates the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ------------------------------------------------------------------ NASA ASTROBIOLOGY INSTITUTE PROPOSALS SOLICITED 31 October, 1997 CAN 97-OSS-01 Cooperative Agreement Notice: NASA Astrobiology Institute. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is interested in receiving proposals under a Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN 97-OSS-01) for participation in a newly forming NASA Astrobiology Institute as an innovative way of conducting basic interdisciplinary research in the area of Astrobiology; the study of life in the universe. Participation in the program is open to all categories of organizations, foreign and domestic, including industry, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, NASA centers, and other Government agencies. The full text of the CAN and all appendices will be available electronically via the World Wide Web by selecting "Research Opportunities" at: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oss/ after October 31, 1997. Further information is available from: Dr. Michael A. Meyer, Research Program Management Division, Code SR, Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC 20546- 0001; Phone: (202) 358-0307; FAX: (202) 358-3097; E-mail: michael.meyer@hq.nasa.gov. This solicitation leading to the award of Cooperative Agreement is issued pursuant to title 14 CFR Part 1260 for educational and nonprofit institutions and 14 CFR part 1274 for commercial organizations. It will be open for the period through January 30, 1998. ------------------------------------------------------------------ UB ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS DESIGN HOTELS IN SPACE, INCLUDING ONE BUILT INSIDE A 'CAPTURED' ASTEROID SUNY Buffalo release BUFFALO, N.Y.--What will hotels be like in the year 2045? How about hotels in outer space? Two teams of students in the University at Buffalo's School of Architecture and Planning explored the possibilities as they each designed a "Hotel of the Future" in a Student Design Competition conducted by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). The UB projects were among 13 finalists named in the competition, which involved 561 students from 99 colleges and universities worldwide. Competitors were encouraged to select remote and unusual locations for their hotel. Options included: the middle of a city, in a remote corner of the Earth, underground, underwater, on top of water or in outer space. Designers were required to use their imaginations to come up with a design that would respect its site and surrounding culture, incorporate local materials and landscape, satisfy the client's program and delight its guests--not an easy task, especially when the site is outer space. The UB teams proposed a modular hotel in orbit 200-250 miles above the planet and a hotel constructed in the interior of a "captured" asteroid. Advising the students was Gary Scott Danford, associate professor of environmental and organizational psychology in the UB Department of Architecture, who assigned the project as part of a one-credit course on architectural programming in Spring 1996. "I am convinced that beyond the novelty of the site (outer space), what made these projects finalists was the student inquiry into and analysis of technical requirements of the users, guests, staff and construction workers in a zero-gravity environment, all of which strongly influenced their subsequent architectural designs. "This project forced the students to recognize that all traditional architectural forms were irrelevant and to start from scratch without assumptions," Danford added. "The students also learned the importance of communicating, documenting and justifying their design decisions." Students were allowed to form their own teams and worked on the project outside of class three hours a week for five weeks. According to Danford, his students' achievement is particularly notable because they only had a fraction of the time their competitors had. "Other students typically took an entire semester, or 15 weeks in a 6-7 credit studio, to do this project. My students had five weeks in a one-credit course," noted Danford. He also pointed out that other advisors were typically architects rather than environmental psychologists. Although Danford is not an architect, in 1983 and 1984 he was a faculty fellow at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where he examined long-term habitation of space and the psycho-social factors that influence the design of a space station. His knowledge in this area helped the students with the technical content of their projects. "My role," he said, "was primarily to make sure that the students acknowledged the difficulty of construction in zero gravity and the isolated and hostile environment of outer space, as well as the dramatic changes that occur (in zero gravity) in the human body, particularly body posture, all of which pose severe challenges to conventional architectural design and construction techniques." The entries were judged on quality of design, construction, presentation and guest experience. "Gateway Resort 2045" was the name of the winning design created by a UB team consisting of Chris Martell (Portland, Maine), Vincent Poon (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Willer Yu (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Anna Beresniewicz (Webster, N.Y.), Shantina Moore (Niagara Falls, N.Y.) and Elisabette Moreira (Asuncion, Paraguay). The hotel's location: Lower Earth Orbit inside the Van Allen Belt approximately 28.5 degrees from the equator and "flying" at a height of 200-250 miles above sea level. The group incorporated the use of modules to ensure safety in the event of a pressure breach, as well as to ease of construction, servicing and reconfiguring. They also altered the size and shape of individual rooms and other areas to accommodate new ways of sitting, eating and sleeping. Advanced computer systems with user-friendly voice-recognition peripherals were included to monitor guests' physical well-being, act as a translating device for the multi-cultured guests and offer means of communication with Earth. The second winning UB design--in which the hotel was constructed in an asteroid--was called "Toutatis 4179." It was the brainchild of Jason Benedict (East Syracuse, N.Y.), Karen Chan (Fanling, Hong Kong), Darren Hook (Hasbrouck Heights, N.J.), Melissa Morgano (Angola, N.Y.) and Scott Nunemaker (Rochester, N.Y.). What made the project difficult, according to Danford, was the need to "capture" a passing asteroid and then excavate the interior to create habitable space--in a zero-gravity environment. The design involved solar-power stations placed in orbit around Earth to collect energy from the sun and transfer it to Toutatis through microwaves and energy converters. The students chose to inhabit an asteroid because, according to their statement, the solid mass provided protection for the guests and because "an asteroid in pure form represents all that is natural relevant to its environment and only such a spectacle could allow freedom and exploration." Toutatis also was equipped with a museum displaying technological advances in space exploration, as well as an escape pod in case of the need for evacuation. Competition sponsors were ACSA, Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, AT&T, Fluor Daniel, Mastercard International, Microsoft and PT Dharmala Intiland. ------------------------------------------------------------------ GALILEO: COUNTDOWN TO EUROPA by Ron Baalke 2 November, 1997 It is now 4 days and 1 hour to the Galileo spacecraft's closest approach to Europa. A special Countdown to Europa home page is now available on the Galileo Home Page: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/countdown/ Launched in October 1989, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter on December 5, 1995, and is currently near the end of its 2 year orbital tour around the solar system's largest planet. Galileo's orbital tour consists of 11 elliptical orbits around Jupiter, and each orbit (except one) will include a close flyby and gravity assist of one of the Galilean moons (Ganymede, Callisto or Europa). In addition to close-up observations of a Galilean moon, distant scientific encounters with additional satellites are scheduled and Io will be observed at medium range on every orbit. The first ten orbits have been completed and the next close encounter on the 11th and final orbit is scheduled for Europa on November 6, 1997 20:32 UT. With a diameter of 3,138 km, Europa is slightly smaller than our own Moon an is the smoothest object in the solar system. On Galileo's previous flybys of Europa, ice volcanoes were discovered on the icy satellite (none active) and probable icebergs were observed for the first time. Galileo will continue its attempt to find evidence of a liquid ocean underneath Europa's icy crust and look for signs of active volcanism on the moon's young surface. On the upcoming encounter, Galileo will pass by Europa at a distance of 2,042 km, which is 100 times closer than Voyager's closest approach. Also scheduled for the Europa 11 encounter are observations of the other satellites of Jupiter: Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Amalthea, Thebe, Metis and Adrastea. Observations of brown barges and aurora on Jupiter are also planned as well as a survey of Jupiter's magnetosphere and a search for lightning. Highlights of the Countdown to Europa home page: * A virtual flyby of Europa with computer-generated approach images displayed at the top of the home page, including a simulated Galileo view of Jupiter and Europa. These images are updated every 5 minutes. * Live Doppler plots of Galileo spacecraft radio signal as it received on Earth. Watch the gravity of Europa change the frequency of the radio signal in real-time. The Doppler plots will be updated every minute on encounter day (Nov 6). * The latest Galileo status reports reporting on the Europa 11 encounter. * Galileo's current position, updated every minute. This includes the distances from Jupiter, the Earth and Sun, and relative speeds. * Fact sheets and Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, Io and Amalthea. * A detailed timeline of events and sequences that the spacecraft will perform for the Europa 11 encounter. * Galileo SSI planning images provided by the Galileo imaging team. * Voyager 1 & 2 images of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. * Hubble Space Telescope images of the Galilean satellites. * Pioneer 10 & 11 images of Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and Io. * Europa flyby animations. Ron Baalke baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov Galileo Home Page Webmaster ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS PATHFINDER WINDS DOWN AFTER PHENOMENAL MISSION JPL release 4 November, 1997 After operating on the surface of Mars three times longer than expected and returning a tremendous amount of new information about the red planet, NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission is winding down. Flight operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, made the announcement today after attempting to reestablish communications with the spacecraft over the last month. With depletion of the spacecraft's main battery and no success in contacting Mars Pathfinder via its main or secondary transmitters, the flight team cannot command the spacecraft or the small rover named Sojourner that had been roving about the landing site and studying rocks. "We concede that the likelihood of hearing from the spacecraft again diminishes with each day," said Pathfinder Project Manager Brian Muirhead. "We will scale back our efforts to reestablish contact but not give up entirely. "Given that, and the fact that Pathfinder is the first of several missions to Mars, we'll say 'see you later' instead of saying goodbye," he said. At the time the last telemetry from the spacecraft was received, Pathfinder's lander had operated nearly three times its design lifetime of 30 days, and the Sojourner rover operated 12 times its design lifetime of seven days. "I want to thank the many talented men and women at NASA for making the mission such a phenomenal success. It embodies the spirit of NASA, and serves as a model for future missions that are faster, better and cheaper. Today, NASA's Pathfinder team should take a bow, because America is giving them a standing ovation for a stellar performance," said NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin. Since its landing on July 4, 1997, Mars Pathfinder has returned 2.6 billion bits of information, including more than 16,000 images from the lander and 550 images from the rover, as well as more than 15 chemical analyses of rocks and extensive data on winds and other weather factors. The only remaining objective was to complete the high-resolution 360-degree image of the landing site called the "Super Pan," of which 83 percent has already been received and is being processed. The last successful data transmission cycle from Pathfinder was completed at 3:23 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Sept. 27, which was Sol 83 of the mission. "This mission has advanced our knowledge of Mars tremendously and will surely be a beacon of success for upcoming missions to the red planet," added Dr. David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology, which manages JPL for NASA. "Done quickly and within a very limited budget, Pathfinder sets a standard for 21st century space exploration." The Mars Pathfinder team first began having communications problems with the spacecraft on Saturday, Sept. 27. After three days of attempting to reestablish contact, they were able to lock on to a carrier signal from the spacecraft's auxiliary transmitter on Oct. 1, which meant that the spacecraft was still operational. They locked on to the same carrier signal again on Oct. 6, but were not able to acquire data on the condition of the lander. At that time, the team surmised that the intermittent communications were most likely related to depletion of the spacecraft's battery and a drop in the spacecraft's operating temperatures due to the loss of the battery, which kept the lander functioning at warmer temperatures. Over the last month the operations team has been working through all credible problem scenarios and taking a variety of actions to try to recover the link with Pathfinder. With all of the most plausible possibilities exhausted, the team plans to continue sending commands and listening for a spacecraft signal on a less frequent basis. "Basically we are shifting to a contingency strategy of sending commands to the lander only periodically, perhaps once a week or once per month," said Mission Manager Richard Cook. "Normal mission operations are over, but there is still a small chance of reestablishing a link, so we'll keep trying at a very low level. " Although the true cause of the loss of lander communications may never be known, recent events are consistent with predictions made at the beginning of the extended mission in early August, Muirhead said. When asked about the life expectancy of the lander, project team members predicted that the first thing that would fail on the lander would be the battery; this apparently happened after the last successful transmission September 27. After that, the lander would begin getting colder at night and go through much deeper day-night thermal cycles. Eventually, the cold or the cycling would probably render the lander inoperable. According to Muirhead, it appears that this sequence of events has probably taken place. The health and status of the rover is also unknown, but since initiating its onboard backup operations plan a month ago, the rover is probably circling the vicinity of the lander, attempting to communicate with it. The rover, which went into a contingency mode on Oct. 6, or Sol 92 of the mission, had completed an alpha proton X-ray spectrometer study of a rock nicknamed Chimp, to the left of the Rock Garden, when it was last heard from. The rover team had planned to send the rover on its longest journey yet--a 50-meter (165- foot)clockwise stroll around the lander--to perform a series of technology experiments and hazard avoidance exercises when the communications outage occurred. That excursion was never initiated once the rover's contingency software began operating. Now known as the Sagan Memorial Station, the Mars Pathfinder lander was designed primarily to demonstrate a low-cost way of delivering a set of science instruments and a free-ranging rover to the surface of the red planet. Landers and rovers of the future will share the heritage of spacecraft designs and technologies first tested in this "pathfinding" mission. Part of NASA's Discovery program of low-cost planetary missions, the spacecraft used an innovative method of directly entering the Martian atmosphere. Assisted by an 11-meter-diameter (36-foot) parachute, the spacecraft descended to the surface of Mars on July 4 and landed, using airbags to cushion the impact. The spacecraft's novel entry was successful. Scientific highlights of the Mars Pathfinder mission are: -Martian dust includes magnetic, composite particles, with a mean size of one micron. -Rock chemistry at the landing site may be different from Martian meteorites found on Earth, and could be of basaltic andesite composition. -The soil chemistry of Ares Vallis appears to be similar to that of the Viking 1 and 2 landing sites. -The observed atmospheric clarity is higher than was expected from Earth-based microwave measurements and Hubble Space Telescope observations. -Dust is confirmed as the dominant absorber of solar radiation in Mars' atmosphere, which has important consequences for the transport of energy in the atmosphere and its circulation. -Frequent "dust devils" were found with an unmistakable temperature, wind and pressure signature, and morning turbulence; at least one may have contained dust (on Sol 62), suggesting that these gusts are a mechanism for mixing dust into the atmosphere. -Evidence of wind abrasion of rocks and dune-shaped deposits was found, indicating the presence of sand. -Morning atmospheric obscurations are due to clouds, not ground fog; Viking could not distinguish between these two possibilities. -The weather was similar to the weather encountered by Viking 1; there were rapid pressure and temperature variations, downslope winds at night and light winds in general. Temperatures were about 10 degrees warmer than those measured by Viking 1. -Diversity of albedos, or variations in the brightness of the Martian surface, was similar to other observations, but there was no evidence for the types of crystalline hematite or pyroxene absorption features detected in other locations on Mars. -The atmospheric experiment package recorded a temperature profile different than expected from microwave measurements and Hubble observations. -Rock size distribution was consistent with a flood-related deposit. -The moment of inertia of Mars was refined to a corresponding core radius of between 1,300 kilometers and 2,000 kilometers (807 miles and 1,242 miles). -The possible identification of rounded pebbles and cobbles on the ground, and sockets and pebbles in some rocks, suggests conglomerates that formed in running water, during a warmer past in which liquid water was stable. Engineering milestones of the mission included demonstrating a new way of delivering a spacecraft to the surface of Mars by way of direct entry into the Martian atmosphere. In addition, Mars Pathfinder demonstrated for the first time the ability of engineers to deliver a semi-autonomous roving vehicle capable of conducting science experiments to the surface of another planet. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Pathfinder mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The mission is the second in the Discovery program of fast track, low-cost spacecraft with highly focused science goals. The California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, manages JPL. ------------------------------------------------------------------ SURVEYOR RESUMES AEROBRAKING, HEADING TOWARD NEW MAPPING ORBIT NASA release 97-262 NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft has successfully resumed aerobraking through the upper atmosphere of Mars, heading toward a new science mapping orbit that is the mirror image of its original target orbit, project officials announced today. Aerobraking resumed Nov. 7 with a brief propulsive maneuver that changed Global Surveyor's flight path slightly. A second maneuver was performed successfully on Nov. 9, with a third maneuver planned for Nov. 12. These small adjustments at the farthest part of the spacecraft's orbit around Mars--known as the apoapsis--begin the process of lowering Global Surveyor's orbit into the Martian atmosphere more gradually than originally planned. The more gradual aerobraking strategy will lead to a new mapping orbit that preserves all of the original scientific objectives of the mission. Selected by the mission's science team, the new orbit is essentially just the reverse of the original orbit: data will be taken from the south to the north along the spacecraft's orbital track, rather than north to south, and mapping will begin one year later than originally planned. In this new mapping orbit, beginning one-half Mars year (equivalent to one Earth year) later than planned, Mars will be at a point in its orbit that is directly opposite where it would have been in the original mission. From the spacecraft's point of view, the side of Mars that would have been dark will be sunlit and vice versa. "From the perspective of the science instruments, the orbit will look just like the original orbit, except that instead of taking data from north to south on the sunny side of Mars, Global Surveyor will be making its observations in a south to north direction in the sunlight," said Glenn E. Cunningham, Mars Global Surveyor project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. "The new mapping orbit will take the spacecraft down over the Martian equator at 2 a.m. local Mars time during each orbit, rather than the originally planned orbit that would have crossed the Martian equator at 2 p.m." The new mapping orbit will take an additional year to achieve, due to both the more gradual pace of aerobraking and a six-month hiatus in the spring of 1998, while Mars moves into the correct alignment with the Sun for global mapping. Rather than reaching its final mapping orbit in mid-January 1998, and beginning the science mission in mid-March 1998, Mars Global Surveyor will achieve its final orbital position in mid-January 1999, and mapping will begin in mid-March 1999. "Essentially, we will begin mapping the surface of Mars in mid- March 1999, during summer in the northern hemisphere," Cunningham said. "Originally we had planned to begin mapping on March 15, 1998, during summer in the southern hemisphere." During next year's hiatus, Mars Global Surveyor will remain in a fixed, elliptical orbit in which it will pass much closer to the surface of Mars during each periapsis--or closest part of its orbit around Mars--than it will in the final mapping orbit. These close-range passes are essentially an opportunity for bonus science and will provide superb opportunities for data acquisition. The spacecraft's full suite of instruments, including the laser altimeter, will be turned on during this time to study the planet up close. "We expect to gain some spectacular new data during this time," Cunningham said. "The spacecraft's orbit will still be elliptical during this period, with a duration of between eight to 12 hours, but at periapsis, the surface resolution will be much greater, and the lighting angles will be excellent." Mars Global Surveyor's first two aerobraking maneuvers have gone well, giving the operations team confidence that the spacecraft's unlatched panel will be able to withstand an increased amount of pressure as it begins to dip lower into the Martian atmosphere. The new pressure level (an average of 0.2 newtons per square meter) is about one-third the level of pressure originally planned for aerobraking. Aerobraking is a technique that allows a spacecraft to lower its orbit without relying on propellant, by using the drag produced by a planet's atmosphere. The technique was first demonstrated in the summer of 1993 during the final months of NASA's Magellan mission to Venus. Although these initial maneuvers have not changed Global Surveyor's orbital period significantly, they will soon begin to reduce the time it takes the spacecraft to complete one revolution around Mars. "The spacecraft's unlatched solar panel performed as expected during the two drag passes we've conducted so far," Cunningham said. "Although we observed some slight movement during the passes, the panel returned to its initial position and its stiffness did not change. That performance gives us confidence that the mission can proceed without further delay." A third, five-second burn with spacecraft's small thrusters to be performed at 2:30 a.m. EST on Nov. 12 will lower the spacecraft's periapsis by an additional 2.5 miles (four kilometers). With completion of that maneuver, Global Surveyor will begin the main phase of aerobraking well inside the upper atmosphere of Mars. During this two-month main phase, the spacecraft will be circling Mars every 34.5 hours to start at a periapsis altitude of about 77 miles (125 kilometers), with the apoapsis starting at 27,500 miles (44,400 kilometers) and decreasing with each pass. The final goal is a 248-mile (400 kilometer) circular mapping orbit. If additional problems arise with the aerobraking process, the new mission plan will offer the Surveyor team other opportunities to reach an elliptical orbit that will satisfy many of the mission's science objectives. These so-called "off-ramps" from the aerobraking process, will be detailed in a new mission plan to be reviewed by NASA officials in February 1998. During a press briefing today at JPL, scientists also showed stunning new images of layered rock and sediment in the canyon walls of Valles Marineris on Mars. Other images of an ancient valley hint at the presence of active sand dunes and dried-up ponds. The new images are available on the Internet at URL: http://www.msss.com/ or http://barsoom.msss.com/mars/global_surveyor/camera/images/ Additional information about the Mars Global Surveyor mission is available on the World Wide Web by accessing JPL's Mars news site at URL: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsnews/ or the Global Surveyor project home page at URL: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/ Mars Global Surveyor is part of a sustained program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL's industrial partner is Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, which developed and operates the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ------------------------------------------------------------------ CORNELL ROVER TO LAND ON MARS IN 2001: $17 MILLION ATHENA PROJECT WILL EXPLORE MARTIAN HIGHLANDS Cornell University release ITHACA, N.Y.--Following a real-life space odyssey to Mars in 2001, a late-model lander and rover, equipped with a Cornell University scientific instrument package called Athena, will roam and study a large corridor of the Martian highlands and ancient terrain, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced today (Nov. 7, 1997). The mission, to be launched in April 2001, will seek out the geological record of ancient Martian waterways and possible biology, according to Steven Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and the principal science investigator for the Mars 2001 Lander mission. NASA is funding the Cornell portion of the mission at a cost of $17 million. James Bell, Cornell senior research associate of astronomy, will join Squyres as one of 20 science team members from the United States, Germany and Denmark for the Athena project. Squyres begins work on the project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Monday. "We're starting fast. We're going to hit the ground running," he said. The Athena rover payload on the Mars 2001 Lander/Rover has four scientific objectives: * to provide sharp, color stereo imaging of the planet's surface; * to determine the fine-scale textural properties of the Martian landscape; * to identify the elements and minerals of the dusty Martian countryside; * to collect and store surface samples in the hope that the samples will be retrieved later in the mission. Autumn has been nothing but gilt-edged for Cornell's role in space science history, as today's NASA announcement follows close on the heels of other important space projects. On Oct. 21, NASA announced that Cornell will lead and direct a $154 million mission to conduct close-proximity comet fly-bys, scheduled for launch in 2002. On Oct. 31, two Cornell astronomy professors announced the discovery of two new moons orbiting the planet Uranus. "We are delighted that NASA has once again affirmed Cornell's leadership in space studies by appointing Steve Squyres to lead Project Athena," Cornell President Hunter Rawlings said. "Athena is the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and guardian of the city of Athens, of whose enlightened citizens Pericles wrote, 'We throw open our city to the world.' Today, we can say that we open our city--our campus--to the stars." Athena is designed to be larger and to last longer than Sojourner, which sent back detailed images of the Martian surface this summer. Rover Athena is part of two Mars Surveyor 2001 missions. The first mission, to be launched in 2001, will be the Mars 2001 Orbiter, due for launch in March of that year. Athena is part of the second mission, called the Mars 2001 Lander/Rover, which is scheduled for launch in April of that year. Prior to the Mars Surveyor 2001 missions, NASA will launch two other robotic Mars missions, now scheduled to blast off in late 1998 and early 1999, the space agency said. Both of the Mars Surveyor 2001 missions are part of an ongoing series of Mars exploration spacecraft, which began with the 1996 launches of the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Pathfinder lander. All the missions are components of NASA's long-term exploration of the red planet, in which two missions are launched approximately every 26 months, according to the space agency. An integrated science team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Denver, will develop the missions. Cornell's Athena rover payload is an integrated suite of scientific instruments designed to conduct onsite analyses of the surface. Those instruments include an imager and infrared spectrometer, giving the instruments the ability to see through dust coatings that normally would obscure spectral analyses of the surface. Athena also will feature an Alpha-Proton-X-Ray spectrometer (APXS), a Mossbauer spectrometer and a Raman spectrometer, all of which gather mineralogical data. The microscopic imager will reveal surface composition information in detail. Rather than collect loose pebbles and Martian dust, a low-powered mini-corer will drill through the Martian rock to accumulate intact samples of rocks and boulders. The mini-corer can drill at an angle and has been demonstrated to cut through dense, basalt- type formations, according to Squyres. In addition to Athena, the Mars 2001 Lander will carry an imager to take pictures of the terrain during the lander's rocket- assisted descent to the surface. The images will render geologic information, important for the rover's initial operations and traverses by the Athena rover. NASA said that Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems Inc., San Diego, Calif., will be the team leader for the Descent Imager science team. PHOTO CAPTION: [http://www.news.cornell.edu/science/Nov97/Athena.Mars.1.bpf.html] NASA artist's conception of the Mars rover with the Athena payload mounted on the front. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MARS PATHFINDER MISSION STATUS REPORTS 23 September 1997, 11:30 p.m. PDT The spacecraft and rover are both in good health today and successfully completed their activities. We did not resolve the signal strength problem from yesterday's downlink in which the spacecraft signal strength was not as high as expected during the final minutes of the transmission session. In fact, the same problem was observed today. We will continue to investigate the cause of this problem. Fortunately, today we received nearly all of the expected data despite this problem. This included about six megabits of science data consisting primarily of super resolution images. The Earth rose this morning on Mars at 2:45 p.m. and the Sun rose at 5:15 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Today the rover team made some necessary changes to the rover's on-board contingency sequence. In addition, Sojourner continued to take APXS measurements on the rock "Chimp." Earth set on Mars at 3:30 a.m. and the Sun will set 5:15 a.m. PDT on September 24th. The spacecraft will sleep for nearly 16 hours tonight and will wake up tomorrow morning around 3:00 p.m. PST . We should receive data from the deep space network tomorrow starting around 10:00 p.m. PDT . Tomorrow's planned activities are for the rover to start off towards Mermaid Dune and for the lander to continue with its super resolution imaging . We also plan to continue to take ASI/MET weather data. 24 September 1997, 11:30 p.m. PDT The spacecraft woke up at 8pm tonight which is 5 hours after Earth rise on Mars and 2 hours after sunrise. All data from the spacecraft and rover indicate that they are both healthy. We've received about 2 megabits of data from the Canberra Australia Deep Space Network station today during our 1.5 hour downlink session. We did not experience the problem seen for the last few days regarding the spacecraft signal strength. Although we are not completely certain, it is possible that this problem is due to an obscuration on the lander. At a certain time of day on Mars now, it appears as if the IMP camera is in the line-of-sight between the High Gain Antenna and the Earth. This is not a significant problem, because the geometry will be changing as the days progress. The rover woke up today to the song, "Old Time Rock-N-Roll", played by Rover engineer, Howard Eisen. Howard and the rover are longing for the old times of the rolling of the Rover on the surface of Mars. Today the rover did not roll because of the completion of the images of the APXS on the rock, "Chimp". Tomorrow the rover will begin its journey toward Mermaid Dune. Earth set on Mars will be at 4:15 AM and the Sun will set at 6:15 AM PDT on September 25. The spacecraft will sleep for nearly 16 hours tonight and will wake up tomorrow at around 8 PM PDT. We should receive data from the spacecraft tomorrow between 10 PM and 3:30 AM PDT. 26 September 1997, 3:00 a.m. PDT The Earth rose over Mars this morning at 4:00 p.m. PDT and the Sun rose at 6:30 p.m. PDT. The data received during our 2.5 hour transmit session indicated that the spacecraft and rover are in good health. We received less data than expected from the Deep Space Station located in Canberra Australia due to bad weather. Although we expected to drive the rover today, we were not able to do so due to critical Mars Global Surveyor operations which occurred at the same time and required extra DSN support. So, we contacted the spacecraft after it woke up at 3:00 p.m. PDT, made sure it was healthy and then verified that the expected super resolution imaging data and ASI/MET measurements were being collected. We played the rover wakeup song "Slud" by Jive of Clay, reminding us of what the area near our landing site was like 4.5 billion years ago. Earth set on Mars will be at 4:45 am and the Sun will set at 6:30 a.m. PDT on September 26th. The spacecraft will sleep from 5:17 a.m. and until 9:00 p.m. tomorrow PDT. We should receive data from the spacecraft from between 10:00 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. this time tomorrow. We are planning for the rover to drive towards toward Mermaid Dune. 29 September 1997, 12:45 PM PDT For the past few days, we have been having difficulty communicating with the Pathfinder spacecraft and Sojourner rover. Although we have expected the spacecraft to attempt to communicate with us, we did not receive the expected signal. Today we will attempt to understand what the spacecraft problem is by using the Canberra Deep Space Network station to uplink commands to Pathfinder that will cause us to give us a beacon signal from the low-gain antenna. We will also attempt to initialize the high-gain antenna and send down engineering data that will help us diagnose the problem from the last few days. Although we don't specifically know the problem, we do believe it is associated with the expected degradation of the Pathfinder battery. It is possible that the lander is now operating only on solar power, and we will need to adjust the operations to support this. Understanding how to do this and also how the spacecraft operates in this new mode are our goals for the next few days. October 1, 1997 After experiencing difficulties in communicating with the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft for the past three days, the operations team was able to reestablish a brief two-way communications session Tuesday using the lander's auxiliary transmitter. Receipt of this beacon signal indicated that the spacecraft is still operational. The team began having communications problems with the spacecraft on Saturday, Sept. 27. These problems could be related to degradation of the spacecraft's battery. The last successful data transmission cycle from Pathfinder was completed at 3:23 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Sept. 27, which was Sol 83 of the mission. No signal was received from the spacecraft on the next Martian day, Sol 84, which began in the evening of Sept. 27. The team's transmission session began at 11:15 p.m. PDT. The lack of a signal, at that time, was thought to be caused by a possible computer reset incident, ground system problem or low voltage condition. A reset or a low voltage condition, caused by the aging of the battery, would cause the spacecraft sequence to automatically stop and not execute its planned communication with Earth. The team attempted to communicate with the spacecraft again on Sept. 29 (Sol 85) and Sept. 30 (Sol 86) with no success. Tonight, on Sol 88 of the mission, the team will use the auxiliary transmitter again to attempt to acquire engineering data that will help them assess the cause of the communications problem. Meanwhile, the rover, which receives its instructions from Earth via the lander, is currently running a contingency program which has instructed it to stand still rather than begin its trek around the lander. The team will repeat these activities on subsequent days and attempt to receive telemetry that will give them more information about the health of the lander and rover. If Pathfinder operations do not return to normal tonight, a Mars Pathfinder team representative will provide an update on the situation at the beginning of the planned Mars Global Surveyor science news briefing at 9 a.m. PDT on Thursday, Oct. 2. 3 October 1997 The Mars Pathfinder spacecraft team has been experiencing communication problems with the lander spacecraft on Mars. The last successful data transmission cycle was completed Saturday morning, September 27, 1997 at 3:23 am (sol 83). On September 27, at 11:15 pm, (sol 84) no signal was received. The spacecraft was powered on at 2:00 am local Mars time to perform early morning weather measurements and sky images. The lack of a signal, at that time was thought to be caused by a possible reset, ground system problem or low voltage condition. A reset or a low voltage condition, caused by the aging battery, would cause the spacecraft sequence to automatically stop and not execute its planned communication with Earth. On September 29 at 1:30 am (sol 85) the team attempted to command the spacecraft to send a carrier signal to Earth over the low gain and high gain antenna. Neither signal was received. In the early morning of September 30 (sol 86), the team again attempted to command the spacecraft to send a carrier signal to Earth over the low gain antenna. This attempt was done at Mars local noon in order to ensure maximum power on the solar arrays in order to power the spacecraft transmitter . No signal was received. At this point a preliminary assessment was made of possible problems. As in the past, loss of communication can be caused by problems with the ground system, flight software and/or flight hardware. On early Wednesday morning, October 1, (sol 87), assuming a possible hardware problem, the team commanded the spacecraft to switch to its auxiliary transmitter. At first no signal was received but at approximately 4:23 am, a signal was received that lasted for about 20 minutes. The team also attempted to power on the secondary string of the main transmitter but no signal was seen. Thursday morning, October 2, (sol 88), the team attempted to get digital data from the auxiliary transmitter. During the beginning of track the spacecraft auxiliary transmitter signal was seen again. The signal turned off at 11:30 local solar time on Mars indicating that the spacecraft computer had enough power to wake- up and turn off the transmitter. Because of the late wake-up there was no time to attempt to receive digital data from the spacecraft. At this point the team assessed that the spacecraft may be seeing extra loads on the bus resulting in late wake-up times. Since this could be related to a battery failure, commands were sent to put the spacecraft in a mode where it does not use the battery and takes it off-line. It is not clear whether these commands were received. October 3, (sol 89), the team once again attempted to get digital data on the auxiliary transmitter. No data was received. However, the time of day in which it was necessary to try and send data due to tracking station elevation requirements may have been too early for the spacecraft to have been awake. A later attempt was made to send and activate a sequence on the spacecraft, which put the Pathfinder in the safest state possible for a potential non-operational battery. There was no signal indicating that these commands executed on the spacecraft. The problem of not seeing this signal could have been ground station related. The rover continues to be in a contingency state. Sojourner will do nothing until Sunday, October 5 (sol 91) and then will begin to drive in an arc around the lander. The team continues to investigate a number of possible scenarios. Since so little information is currently available from the spacecraft the number of possible scenarios is large. However, since the spacecraft battery has exceeded its expected lifetime by a factor of 3, scenarios associated with the degradation of the battery are probably most likely. Learning how the spacecraft operates without the battery is something the team is in the process of doing. Although the Pathfinder mission has extended far beyond its expected lifetime, the team is currently doing everything possible to attempt to get back on schedule with Pathfinder's extended mission. 15 October 1997, 3:00 p.m. PDT Today again we attempted to up link commands to the spacecraft that would turn on the transmitter. However, we were unsuccessful. Tomorrow we will resume our attempts to command the spacecraft. Our team is continuing to investigate the problem in an effort to better understand what is occurring on board the spacecraft. 16 October 1997, 4:00 p.m. PDT After making some changes in our commanding strategy yesterday, commands were sent to the Sagan Memorial station which should have resulted in a signal from the spacecraft's low gain antenna being received on Earth. The signal was expect at 1:15 this afternoon, but was not seen. The spacecraft was then commanded to send two additional signals to Earth today using both its primary and auxiliary transmitters, but neither signal was received. The last verified signal we received from Pathfinder was nine days ago on Sol 93. Tomorrow's plans include the anticipated use of the 70 meter station at Goldstone California. Sol 103 will mark the first use of our new temperature models for both commanding the spacecraft and receiving a signal from the spacecraft over its auxiliary transmitter. The spacecraft team remains optimistic that the Sagan memorial station is good health and that our current difficulties can be traced to lower than normal operating temperatures. 17 October 1997, 4:00 p.m. PDT Today we attempted to make contact with Pathfinder using the 70 meter station in Goldstone California. We commanded the spacecraft to turn on the auxiliary transmitter, but unfortunately we did not see any downlink signal. Due to commitments to the Galileo mission we moved our operations to the 34 meter antenna and commanded the spacecraft to turn on the SSPA transmitter. The SSPA is a backup transmitter in addition to our primary and auxiliary transmitters. Unfortunately, we did not receive any signal during this second attempt. We will continue with our efforts to reestablish contact with Pathfinder and will promptly post any favorable developments. October 29, 1997 Mars Pathfinder's operations team is continuing daily efforts to reestablish communications with the lander. Over the last month the team has been working through all credible problem scenarios and taking a variety of actions to try to recover the link with Pathfinder. They plan to continue sending commands to the spacecraft for another week before shifting to a contingency plan of less frequent commanding and listening. During the past month, the team has investigated a variety of scenarios that could explain why the Pathfinder lander has not sent telemetry to Earth since September 27. Since that time, ground stations have detected a carrier signal from the lander on two occasions, but on each attempt following the receipt of the carrier signals they were not able to reestablish a link, and therefore no digital data was received to enable determination of the spacecraft's condition. The team initially investigated the possibility that the lander's battery had failed. This scenario would have resulted in spacecraft clock uncertainties and unknown spacecraft power conditions due to the lander only operating on solar power. They then investigated the possibility that, because the lander's transmitter had been turned off for many days, the lander's temperature had dropped to a range between -50 and -30 C (-58 to - 22 F), some 20 to 40 degrees C (about 35 to 70 degrees F) colder than previous operating temperatures, causing its radio receiver to shift away from its normal frequency range. Currently the team is sending commands to the lander to investigate the possibility that the spacecraft's flight computer is not operating normally. "Under this scenario, the thought is that perhaps the computer is not booting up fully," said Mission Manager Richard Cook. "The team is sending resets to the lander at various times of the day before we attempt to send other commands." All scenarios are expected to have been fully investigated by end of day on Tuesday, November 4. If the team does not reestablish contact by then, said Project Manager Brian Muirhead, they plan on shifting to a contingency strategy of sending commands to the lander only periodically, perhaps once a week or once per month. "The normal extended mission would be over, but there is still a small chance of reestablishing a link, so we'll keep trying at a very low level," Muirhead said. "Of course the science team will continue to process, catalog and understand the large volume of science data we have received, which will keep us very busy for several months." Although the true cause of the loss of lander communications may never be known, recent events are consistent with predictions made at the beginning of the extended mission in early August. When asked about the life expectancy of the lander, project team members predicted that the first thing that would fail on the lander would be the battery; this apparently happened after the last successful transmission September 27. After that, the lander would begin getting colder at night and go through much deeper day-night thermal cycles. Eventually, the cold or the cycling would probably render the lander inoperable. According to Muirhead, it appears that this sequence of events may have taken place. The health and status of the rover is also unknown, but since initiating its onboard backup operations plan three weeks ago, it is probably in the vicinity of the lander attempting to communication with the lander. At the time the last telemetry from the spacecraft was received, Pathfinder's lander had operated nearly three times its design lifetime of 30 days, and the Sojourner rover operated 12 times its design lifetime of seven days. Since its landing on July 4, 1997, Mars Pathfinder has returned 2.6 billion bits of information, including more than 16,000 images from the lander and 550 from the rover, as well as more than 15 chemical analyses of rocks and extensive data on winds and other weather factors. The only remaining objective was to complete the high-resolution 360- degree image of the landing site called the "Super Pan," of which 83 percent has already been received and is being processed. ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS REPORTS Saturday, 27 September 1997 Aerobraking operations on the Mars Global Surveyor mission continue to proceed smoothly. As of today, the spacecraft has completed nine revolutions around the red planet, including six aerobraking passes through the upper Martian atmosphere. Each of these atmospheric passes took place at the start and low point of the orbit as Surveyor zipped across the sky at altitudes scarcely greater than 72.1 miles (116 km). At the start of aerobraking slightly more than one week ago, the high point of Surveyor's orbit occurred at an altitude of 33,570 miles (54,025 km). Since then, air resistance from the atmospheric passes has slowed the spacecraft by an average of 2.2 mph (1 meter per second) on each orbit. The result is that the orbit's high point has dropped by 1,050 miles (1,690 km). Over the next four months, aerobraking will reduce the high-point altitude all the way down to 280 miles (450 km). Dr. Richard Zurek of the Surveyor science team reports that the thickness of the Martian atmosphere continues to run slightly higher than predicted by current models. Because a thicker atmosphere will result in more stress on the spacecraft during aerobraking, both the navigation and atmospheric science teams are currently studying possible changes to the baseline plan. However, no major changes are expected because Surveyor was designed to tolerate up to a 70% increase in atmospheric thickness. In other news this week, minor wobbling on the spacecraft's solar panels caused the pointing control system to off-point Surveyor's high-gain antenna by slightly more than two degrees from the direct line to the Earth. The flight team fixed the wobbling by commanding the solar panels into a stable position. Then, the pointing discrepancy was corrected by allowing Surveyor to scan and lock-up on reference stars in deep space. These distant stars serve as fixed reference points that allow the spacecraft to determine its proper pointing orientation relative to the Earth and Sun. After a mission elapsed time of 324 days from launch, Surveyor is 165.28 million miles (265.99 million kilometers) from the Earth and in an orbit around Mars with a period of 42.75 hours. The spacecraft is currently executing the P10 command sequence, and all systems continue to be in excellent condition. 16 October, 1997 Mars Global Surveyor arrived at Mars on the evening of September 11th and achieved a very precise 45 hour long elliptical orbit around the planet. During the spacecraft's third closest approach to the planet, the MGS science instruments had the opportunity acquire a significant amount of new information relative to the surface, atmosphere and interior of Mars. Among these new findings is the observation that the northern hemisphere area called Elysium is extremely flat, and that there are strong remnant magnetic fields near the surface rather than a global magnetic field like the Earth's. (See http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov) You may have heard that MGS has encountered some difficulty with aerobraking and that's true. After twelve aerobraking drag passes we've pull up out of the Mars atmosphere to assess the unexplained motions of one of the solar panels that we've observed and to be sure that the spacecraft is safe and that we preserve our ability to acquire more great science data at Mars. We've decided to take a two week hiatus from aerobraking to do this. The big effect from the time lost due to the hiatus is that we will use a different mapping orbit later on, and we are working on defining what that orbit will be. In the mean time, we have taken opportunity afforded us by the hiatus in aerobraking to take a lot more significant science data at each periapsis pass. The Laser Altimeter has been turned back on and the Mars Orbiter Camera, and Thermal Emission Spectrometer will have great opportunities for science acquisition. The current periapsis altitude is two times closer to the surface of Mars than the altitude would be during the originally planned mapping orbit so the surface resolution is much greater. The spacecraft, except for the uncertainty concerning the -Y solar panel, and all its instruments are working exceptionally well, and we continue to have great expectations for the discoveries that this mission will return. MGS... the adventure continues. Read on if you want more details on the situation: The Mars Surveyor Operations Project began, on September 16th, moving the lowest point of the MGS's orbit from 250 km (155 miles) down into the Martian atmosphere in order to begin aerobraking. Aerobraking is the process that uses the drag on the spacecraft caused by skimming through the top of the atmosphere to reduce the period of the orbit. Aerobraking worked just fine! After twelve passes through the upper atmosphere, we reduced the orbital period from its initial 45 hours down to 35 hours on the way to the target of 2 hours. You may recall that when MGS was launched, the -Y solar panel did not completely deploy and latch properly. It ended up about 20 degrees away from being folded out completely flat. After a lot of analysis and test, we determined the best way to do aerobraking, which uses the solar panels to provide most of the drag surface area, was the turn the -Y panel around. Thus, the atmospheric drag pressure would push on it during aerobraking so that we were compressing the small piece of metal that we believe is trapped in the solar panel's hinge joint. Then, as the drag pressures on the panel increase as we got deeper into the atmosphere, the panel might move further toward the fully folded out position and even latch. On Tuesday, October 1st, at periapsis or closest approach to Mars number 12 where the altitude was 110 km (68 miles), we observed the panel move about 14 degrees closer to fully unfolded - good! Then, on Monday, October 6th, we had an aerobraking drag pass (periapsis 15) where the Martian atmosphere became more dense than we had expected for that orbit, although well within the capabilities of the spacecraft, and we observed the panel move past where we thought it should latch and stay past that position by about one degree - not so good! Atmospheric density variations like observed in periapsis 15 are expected as the seasons change on Mars, and it is probably not the result of a great dust storm. Our flight operational process is designed to accommodate these kinds of variations, and so, to reduce the dynamic pressure that the atmosphere puts on the solar panels, we moved the spacecraft's orbit up 11 km (7 miles) to 121 km (75 miles), to where we thought the pressure would be fairly light on the panel. That would also give us a few days to understand why the panel might have moved past its latch point. As it turned out, the pressure was small as we expected, but the - Y solar panel continued to show us some unexpected motion during the next two drag passes. There has never be any concern about the electrical power that the panel produces. Thus, on Saturday evening, October 11th, we decided to take the spacecraft completely out of Martian atmosphere because we are concerned that we don't know why the panel moves as it does and we were concerned that we might have some kind of life limiting mechanism involved. The closest point to Mars is now about 172 km (107 miles) and the orbital period is about 35 hours. We are taking a two week hiatus from aerobraking, and in the process we have forfeited our ability to reach the orbital conditions that would result in the sun synchronous circular mapping orbit with an equator crossing at 2 pm local solar mean time. There are, however, other orbital conditions that we can reach that will yield exceptional science return from Mars. During the hiatus, the Mars Surveyor Operations Project team, at JPL and Lockheed Martin Astronautics, is studying the observed motion of the solar panel, and will understand how the original launch failure model must be modified to accommodate the new motion. With that information, we will then plan how to start aerobraking again in a configuration that will not stress the panel, and given the intensity of aerobraking that is possible, we, with the MGS science investigators, will determine the best mapping mission to target for. The 2 pm orbit was a compromise among the science investigators. We will work for another compromise orbit that yields the best results for whatever orbital capabilities we can achieve. In the best case, it will be a circular orbit at some other local time. In the worst case, it will be an elliptical orbit with a period of about 16 hours. We are planning on a Monday, October 27th, a decision milestone on the plans for and safety of returning to aerobraking. Status report prepared by: Office of the Flight Operations Manager Mars Surveyor Operations Project NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA 91109 ------------------------------------------------------------------ End Marsbugs Volume 4, Number 15