MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 6, Number 10, 28 April 1999. Editors: Dr. David Thomas, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-3051, USA. Marsbugs@aol.com or davidt@uidaho.edu. Dr. Julian Hiscox, Division of Molecular Biology, IAH Compton Laboratory, Berkshire, RG20 7NN, UK. Julian.Hiscox@bbsrc.ac.uk 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. While we cannot copyright our mailing list, our readers would appreciate it if others would not send unsolicited e-mail using the Marsbugs mailing list. The editors do not condone "spamming" of our subscribers. Persons who have information that may be of interest to subscribers of Marsbugs should send that information to the editors. E-mail subscriptions are free, and may be obtained by contacting either of the editors. Article 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 and Adobe Acrobat PDF files suitable for printing may be obtained via anonymous FTP at ftp.uidaho.edu/pub/mmbb/marsbugs or at the official Marsbugs web page at http://members.aol.com/marsbugs/marsbugs.html. 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. Astrobiology 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 and astrobiology (life on other planets), the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), ecopoeisis and terraformation, Earth from space, planetary biology, primordial evolution, space physiology, biological life support systems, and human habitation of space and other planets. ------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS 1) MARS SURVEYOR 2001 TO TAKE FIRST SUNDIAL TO ANOTHER PLANET JPL release 2) MARS 98 MISSION STATUS REPORT JPL release 3) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR MISSION STATUS REPORTS JPL releases 4) THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release 5) STARDUST MISSION STATUS JPL release 6) NEW MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES By Ron Baalke 7) WANTED: EARTHLINGS TO SHARE THE JOYS OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM JPL release ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS SURVEYOR 2001 TO TAKE FIRST SUNDIAL TO ANOTHER PLANET JPL release 22 April 1999 Inscribed with the motto "Two Worlds, One Sun," the first sundial to be sent to another planet will travel to Mars aboard NASA's Mars Surveyor 2001 lander. The lander's panoramic camera will use features on the sundial as a virtual "test pattern" to help Earth- based operators calibrate the brightness and tint of the camera's images following its arrival on Mars in January 2002. Periodic pictures of the sundial will also reveal the passage of hours and seasons as the Sun moves across the salmon-colored Martian sky. In the process, the sundial could become one of the most photographed objects ever sent to another world. "Our ancestors made astonishing discoveries about the nature of the heavens and our place in it by closely watching the motion of shadows," said Bill Nye, public television's "The Science Guy," who helped unveil the sundial design yesterday at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. "Now at the dawn of the next century, we can make observations of new shadows, this time on another planet." The sundial will be about 8 centimeters (3 inches) square, and will weigh a little more than 60 grams (2 ounces). Made of aluminum to minimize its weight, the anodized metal surfaces will be black and gold. Photo etching and engraving will be used to apply lettering and drawings to the face and side panels of the sundial. Four side panels around the sundial's base are engraved with a message for future Mars explorers. Black, gray and white rings in the center of the sundial and color tiles in the corners will be used as the calibration target to adjust the camera, called the Pancam. The rings are arranged to represent the orbits of Mars and Earth, and red and blue dots show the positions of the planets at the time of the landing in 2002. Mirrored segments along the outer ring of the sundial will also reveal the changing colors of the sky. The Pancam is one of four instruments being developed for NASA's Mars Surveyor 2001 lander under the leadership of Steve Squyres, a Cornell professor of astronomy. Together these instruments form the Athena Precursor Experiment, which will test technologies to be used on the Athena Project. Athena, a rover aboard the 2003 and 2005 Mars Sample Return missions, will be used to determine which Martian rocks will be brought back to Earth later in the decade. The Mars Surveyor program is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. The design of the sundial evolved through suggestions and drawings from children across the United States solicited by Sheri Klug, director of the Mars Education and Outreach Program at Arizona State University in Tempe. One idea suggested by children was that the sundial carry writing in many languages, representing the diverse cultures of Earth. Together these languages are used by more than three-quarters of Earth's population; also included are ancient Sumerian and Mayan, because Mars figured prominently in both of these cultures. Several children also suggested that stick-figure drawings be included, symbolizing the people of Earth. Artist Jon Lomberg from Hawaii combined stick figures drawn by children with other space-related motifs to create the series of drawings that appear on the sundial's side panels. Other members of the sundial design team include Tyler Nordgren, an artist and astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ; sundial expert Woodruff Sullivan, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle; Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, Pasadena, CA; and, Cornell University astronomer Jim Bell. NASA's Mars Surveyor 2001 project consists of an orbiter and a lander. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. Information about the sundial and Mars Surveyor 2001 is available on the Internet. Mars Surveyor 2001: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/2001 Athena Precursor Experiment /Athena Project: http://athena.cornell.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS 98 MISSION STATUS REPORT JPL release 13 April 1999 The science instruments onboard the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft were given their first 'test drive' last week while in flight to the red planet. Five of the science instruments were turned on and calibrated, showing that each one is healthy and ready to perform when the spacecraft lands in December. Mars Polar Lander will search for water on Mars and study the history of the martian climate, which may be preserved in layers of terrain at the near- polar landing site. Today the lander is more than 21 million kilometers (13 million miles) from Earth, traveling at a speed of 3.762 kilometers per second (8,416 miles per hour) relative to Earth. The Mars Climate Orbiter continues to perform well in preparation for its arrival in September. Late last month, the orbiter completed the final health check for all of its instruments. The spacecraft team is now preparing a comprehensive test for the end of April to update the spacecraft's software for interpreting and processing pictures from the star cameras. These images are used to determine the spacecraft's orientation in space. Today the orbiter is more than 28.5 million kilometers (17.7 million miles) from Earth, traveling at a speed of 6.273 kilometers per second (14,032 miles per hour) relative to Earth. ------------------------------------------------------------------ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR MISSION STATUS REPORTS JPL releases 16 April 1999 NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft executed an automatic response to place itself in a "contingency" mode last night after a hinge that allows the spacecraft's high-gain telecommunications antenna to point toward Earth stopped moving as planned. When the spacecraft is in a contingency mode, it shuts down all the science instruments and initiates communications with flight controllers through its smaller low-gain antenna. Contingency mode is an intermediate step that is not as severe as when a spacecraft goes into a so-called "safe" mode. Flight controllers at JPL in Pasadena, CA, and Lockheed-Martin in Denver, CO are in the process of diagnosing the problem to determine when the antenna stopped moving. This diagnostic process will continue throughout the weekend. There are two hinges at the end of the boom that connect to the high-gain antenna. One hinge, called the azimuth hinge, moves the antenna from side to side; the other hinge, called the elevation hinge, moves the antenna up and down. The azimuth hinge appears to have stopped moving midway between its "parked" position and its "earth-tracking" position. The on-board sequence commands the hinge to the "earth- tracking" position before the daily communications downlink. At the end of the communication session the sequence commands the hinge to the "parked" position to minimize the gravity force on the antenna. The hinge has functioned as planned since the antenna deployment on March 28, indicating to project engineers that the problem is not related to that event. Mars Global Surveyor began its full-scale, two-year mapping mission of the red planet on March 9. In its deployed and steerable position, the high-gain antenna allows the spacecraft to simultaneously make measurements of Mars and communicate with Earth without turning the spacecraft. Information from the science instruments are recorded 24 hours per day on solid-state recorders onboard the spacecraft. Then the data are transmitted to Earth once a day, during a 10-hour tracking pass over a Deep Space Network antenna. 19 April 1999 NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft is no longer in contingency mode and this afternoon flight controllers have turned the entire spacecraft to point the high-gain telecommunications antenna toward Earth. The spacecraft is now using that antenna to playback telemetry information that controllers believe will help them further diagnose what caused the hinge on the antenna to stop moving last Thursday night. While no attempt has been made yet to move the hinge, engineers are hopeful the data that have been returned today will contain clues about what caused the hinge to stop moving. During the weekend controllers sent a series of commands to the spacecraft that turned off the hinge's motor. The spacecraft used its star scanner to find reference points in space and establish its orientation. The science instruments remain turned off. It is expected that later in the week engineers will send commands to the spacecraft to move the hinge a small amount in order to better understand its condition. 21 April 1999 Flight controllers for NASA's Mars Global Surveyor mission are continuing to work toward isolating what caused a hinge on the spacecraft's high-gain telecommunications antenna to stop moving last week. This afternoon, engineers received the results of a test they conducted earlier in the day that moved the hinge one- half of a degree from side to side. The information from the spacecraft shows that the hinge moves freely in one direction, but it's motion appears to be obstructed in the opposite direction. The tests are designed to help engineers determine if the obstruction is internal to the motor mechanism, or external, such as a thermal blanket or cable obstruction. Flight controllers continue to analyze the test results and will send additional commands to the spacecraft tomorrow that will attempt to move the hinge a little bit more--one full degree--in each direction. The spacecraft remains in good health and the science instruments are turned off while engineers continue to define the hinge. There are two hinges at the end of the boom that connect to the high-gain antenna. One hinge, called the azimuth hinge, moves the antenna from side to side; the other hinge, called the elevation hinge, moves the antenna up and down. The azimuth hinge stopped moving midway between its "parked" position and the position its in when it is transmitting data to Earth. 23 April 1999 Engineers will conduct another test tonight on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft to check the temperature of the hinges on the high-gain telecommunications antenna in an attempt to understand if part of a thermal blanket might be obstructing its movement. The spacecraft remains in good health and the science instruments are turned off while engineers analyze the hinge. While engineers continue to study the nature of the obstruction, they plan to proceed with the mapping mission next week. The science instruments will be turned back on Wednesday, April 28 and the next day the spacecraft will begin a one-week mapping campaign with the antenna in a fixed position. On May 6, when Mars and the Earth are at favorable angles from each other, the spacecraft will return to a normal mapping mission that will use the antenna in its steerable mode to send continuous data to Earth. Flight controllers say they could conduct a normal mapping mission through February 2000, when the geometry between Mars and Earth again becomes unfavorable, with telecommunications limited due to the restricted motion of the antenna hinge. After that, the spacecraft would need to return to mapping with the antenna in a fixed position if the obstruction has not been resolved. The Surveyor scientists prefer to map with a steerable antenna, as opposed to a fixed antenna, because twice as much data can be returned to Earth in a given period. Mars Global Surveyor is managed by JPL 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. Further information about the mission is on the Internet at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release 27 April through 2 May 1999 During this week, Galileo will complete the return of science data acquired during the spacecraft's February flyby of Europa. Early next week, the spacecraft will perform a close flyby of another of Jupiter's moons, Callisto. This is the first of four flybys of Callisto designed to change the spacecraft's orbit to allow for a close flyby of Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system! Science data return is interrupted several times this week to perform engineering and navigation activities required to prepare for next week's flyby activities. On Tuesday, the spacecraft performs regular maintenance on its propulsion systems. On Wednesday, it performs a standard gyroscope performance test. Finally, on Sunday, the spacecraft performs regular maintenance on its tape recorder and also executes a small flight path correction. In this week's playback plans, the spacecraft continues with a second pass through the data stored on the tape recorder. This second opportunity to read data from the tape allows data lost in transmission to Earth to be replayed, or for different parameters to be used in onboard processing, or to simply return additional new data. During the week, the Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer returns observations of Jupiter's Northern Temperate Belt, and of crystalline forms of water ice on Europa. The Photopolarimeter Radiometer returns observations of the texture and composition of Europa's surface. The spacecraft camera, or Solid-State Imaging subsystem, returns observations of several features on Europa's surface: the Tegid crater, mottled terrain, north polar regions, Rhadamanthes Linea and a set of frames designed to search for volcanic plumes. Finally, the Fields and Particles instruments continue to return data from an observation of the interaction between Europa and Jupiter's magnetosphere. Come back next week for the return of Today on Galileo and the Callisto-Orbit 20 encounter! For more information on the Galileo spacecraft and its mission to Jupiter, please visit the Galileo home page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo ------------------------------------------------------------------ STARDUST MISSION STATUS JPL release 6 April 1999 It's not a space race, but NASA's comet-bound Stardust spacecraft, launched in February, has now pulled ahead of two other NASA spacecraft launched earlier on trips to Mars. Stardust, traveling fast enough to cross the United States in less than two minutes, last week passed the slightly slower- moving Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander spacecraft. At this point in their journeys, all three spacecraft are in the same vicinity of our solar system, each traveling on a trajectory that will reach Mars' orbit, but only two will stop there. Stardust will keep traveling on its egg-shaped trajectory to eventually meet up in 2004 with Comet Wild-2, where it will collect samples of comet dust for return to Earth in 2006. Today, Stardust is traveling at a speed of more than 114,000 kilometers per hour (about 70,000 mph). Mars Climate Orbiter is traveling at a speed of about 100,750 kilometers per hour (about 62,600 mph) and will enter orbit around the red planet in September. Mars Polar Lander, traveling a speed of 106,000 kilometers per hour (about 65,800 mph), is due to land on Mars in December. For the Mars spacecraft, slower is better, because less energy will be required to brake the spacecraft when its time for them to land or enter orbit around Mars. Stardust is roughly between the two other spacecraft, with Mars Climate Orbiter more than 7 million kilometers (4.3 million miles) starboard of Stardust, and Mars Polar Lander more than 16 million kilometers (about 10 million miles) to Stardust's portside. Their relative trajectories can be seen at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/scnow.html. Three communications sessions were conducted with Stardust last week through NASA's Deep Space Network, and the spacecraft remains in excellent health. Controllers tracking Stardust at Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, successfully received navigation camera images that had been stored on the spacecraft, and set the comet and interstellar dust analyzer instrument in its flight operations mode. Mission controllers are monitoring temperature and other engineering data from the solid-state power amplifier at a higher rate to analyze a slight tuning variation in Stardust's radio signal that occurs with changing spacecraft temperatures. Analysis continues into why Stardust's main computer was overwhelmed last month with too many instructions while testing the spacecraft's navigation camera. The principal investigator for the Stardust mission is Dr. Donald C. Brownlee of the University of Washington. The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The spacecraft was built and is operated by Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver. Its instruments were provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and the Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ------------------------------------------------------------------ NEW MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES By Ron Baalke 15 April 1999 Two new images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available: Apollinaris Patera, Mars Once Pitted, Twice Spied: A New High Resolution View Inside Escalante Crater The images reside on the Mars Global Surveyor web site at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/index.html The image captions are appended below. Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera Apollinaris Patera, Mars MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-119, 15 April 1999 This month (April 1999), the Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) passed over the Apollinaris Patera volcano and captured a patch of bright clouds hanging over its summit in the early martian afternoon. This ancient volcano is located near the equator and--based on observations from the 1970s Viking Orbiters--is thought to be as much as 5 kilometers (3 miles) high. The caldera--the semi-circular crater at the volcano summit--is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) across. The color in this picture was derived from the MOC red and blue wide angle camera systems and does not represent true color as it would appear to the human eye (that is, if a human were in a position to be orbiting around the red planet). Illumination is from the upper left. Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera Once Pitted, Twice Spied: A New High Resolution View Inside Escalante Crater MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-120, 15 April 1999 During the year spent waiting to achieve the planned circular, polar Mapping Orbit, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) took about 1170 pictures that had resolutions in the 2 to 20 meters (7-66 feet) per pixel range. These pictures were obtained between September 1997 and September 1998, and are now archived with NASA and available to the public at NASA PDS-- http://ida.wr.usgs.gov/). Although these pictures were generally a vast improvement in spatial resolution compared to the previous images from Viking and Mariner, the latest pictures from MOC-- taken this month (April 1999) from the proper Mapping Orbit-- demonstrate the power of the MOC when in focus and operating at the correct altitude (~380 km or 235 miles). The Viking Orbiter picture on the left, above, shows the 83 kilometers-(52 miles)-wide crater, Escalante. Located on the martian equator at 245°W longitude, a portion of this crater's floor was seen by MOC before the mapping mission began, at a resolution of 9.4 meters (31 feet) per pixel as shown in the middle image. The new picture--on the right--peers down into one of the pits seen in the earlier MOC image--only now it is viewed at 1.8 meters (6 feet) per pixel. The new high resolution image (right) covers an area only 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) wide and shows that the crater floor--which appears relatively smooth in the context view on the left--is actually quite rough at the scale that a human being would notice if trying to hike around in this landscape. The latest picture also shows small, bright windblown dunes that were not visible in the earlier MOC image. MOC2-120a is a mosaic of Viking Orbiter images 381s62 and 379s47, and MOC2-120b is a subframe of MGS MOC image SPO-2-382/04. The large white box shows the location of MOC2-120b, and the small white box shows the location of MOC2-120c. In MOC2-120a and MOC2- 120b, illumination is from the right/upper right, in MOC2-120c it is from the left. ------------------------------------------------------------------ WANTED: EARTHLINGS TO SHARE THE JOYS OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM JPL release 22 April 1999 The hunt is on for at least 40 additional science educators to share the thrill of solar system exploration with America's communities through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Solar System Ambassador Program. The new recruits will help introduce the public to JPL's present and future missions to explore our solar system neighborhood. These missions include Cassini en route to Saturn, Galileo currently orbiting Jupiter, Stardust on its way to a comet rendezvous, as well as Europa Orbiter, Pluto-Kuiper Express, Solar Probe, Genesis, Ulysses, Voyager, and the Deep Space Network. "By interacting face-to-face with people in their own backyards, the ambassadors personalize the space program," said David Schranck, ambassador program coordinator. The volunteers will interact with JPL scientists, engineers, and project team members in high-tech teleconference/online training sessions. They'll soak up knowledge about such themes as "Water in the Solar System," "Life in the Solar System" and "Ringed Planets." The ambassadors will then carry their newfound knowledge back to their own neighborhoods, where they'll launch four public events per year with museums, planetariums and community groups. This spread-the-word program began with the Galileo Ambassadors to Jupiter, a venture that has brought tantalizing discoveries about Jupiter and its moons to more than 250,000 people in the past year through public, hometown events. The new ambassadors will join forces with 84 current volunteers from 38 states. It's helpful, but not essential, for applicants to have a formal or informal science or teaching background. The application deadline is May 17, 1999. Details about the announcement of opportunity and online applications forms are available on the web at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ambassador/. ------------------------------------------------------------------ End Marsbugs Vol. 6, No. 10