MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 6, Number 36, 8 November 1999. Editors: Dr. David J. Thomas, Biology and Chemistry Division, Lyon College, Batesville, AR 72503-2317, USA. Dthomas@lyon.edu or marsbugs@aol.com Dr. Julian A. Hiscox, School of Animal and Microbial Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AJ, United Kingdom. J.A.Hiscox@reading.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 from the official Marsbugs web page at http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/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 GLOBAL SURVEYOR THERMAL EMISSION SPECTROMETER RESULTS OF THE MARS POLAR LANDER LANDING SITE JPL/USGS release 2) CONTACT 2000 CONFERENCE By Jim Funaro 3) NASA PROVIDES 21st CENTURY SOLUTIONS TO 1999 DROUGHT NASA release 99-130 4) TERRESTRIAL PLANET FINDER RFP JPL/NASA Headquarters release 5) NASA APPLYING SPACE TECHNOLOGY TO HELP FARMERS DIAGNOSE FIELDS By Dave Dooling 6) THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release 7) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT JPL release 8) NEW MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES By Ron Baalke ---------------------------------------------------------------- MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR THERMAL EMISSION SPECTROMETER RESULTS OF THE MARS POLAR LANDER LANDING SITE JPL/USGS release http://wwwflag.wr.usgs.gov/USGSFlag/Space/MGS_TES/MPL.html 2 November 1999 The Mars Polar Lander will arrive at Mars on December 3, 1999. Analysis of the data from the Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft from the pre-mapping phase demonstrate the spacecraft is expected to land on bare ground, free of -128°C (-200°F) dry ice that completely covered this region during the winter. The image to the left shows the noontime temperatures of data within the landing site in January, 1998, almost exactly one martian year prior to MPL landing. The plus sign marks the landing site. The thick white line shows the location of the polar layered deposits. Temperatures are given in Kelvin. The temperature of CO2 frost (dry ice) on Mars is 145K (-128°C, approximately -200°F). Temperatures above 200K show the absence of CO2 frost. Current Temperatures at the South Polar Region and MPL Site These temperatures are from the TES thermal bolometer, which measures radiant energy from 6 µm to 100 µm. This spectral region includes the strong 15 µm atmospheric CO2 band and the 9µm atmospheric dust band, so atmospheric temperatures can have a small effect on the measured temperature. The current cap edge is between 65 S and 75 S, with the landing site partially covered in dry ice with patches of bare ground exposed. Over the next week, all of the dry ice will disappear and temperatures will rise rapidly. [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] The first two images show the most current temperatures in the Martian south polar region. The color transition from blue to green shows the current edge of the south polar cap. Circles are spaced at 10 degrees of latitude. 0 longitude is straight up. The third figure shows the current Albedo of the polar cap. CO2 frost should be bright, but there is a region that is made up of dark CO2, or cryptic CO2. Regions were the CO2 albedo is darker than 0.25 is considered cryptic. The fourth image shows the sublimation rate of CO2 in kg/day/m2. The green outline marks the area considered for landing. In addition to the cryptic region, another historical albedo feature can already be seen. In the upper right of the albedo image (about 70-75 degrees latitude), the Mountains of Mitchel can be seen as brighter (red coloring) than the rest of the cap. In late spring, the Mountains of Mitchel will detach from the recessing polar cap. The Mountains of Mitchel are not really mountains, but is a region where dry ice remains on the ground longer than the surrounding area. Watch the animation of last year's recession. Be sure and look for the appearance of the Mountains. [Image] [Image] [Image] [Image] The first two images show the most current temperature data for the martian Polar Landing region. The left image is 2:00 AM data and the right image is 2:00 PM data. The third image is the Lambert albedo and the fourth image is the estimated sublimation rate in kg per square meter per day. The plus sign is the targeted landing site. Over the last few days, daytime temperatures over a large portion of the landing site region have started to rise, suggestive of exposed bare ground. The landing site will be completely free of frost and ice by November 7th. A comparison with historical data (MGS TES and Viking IRTM) reveals a polar cap that that is receding in much the same manner in 1977, 1997, and 1999. This is good as the location and time of the Polar Landing was based polar temperature data from the IRTM, and later verified with TES pre-mapping data. Questions should be addressed to Tim Titus (ttitus@flagmail.wr.usgs.gov) or Jeff Johnson (jjohnson@flagmail.wr.usgs.gov). ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONTACT 2000 CONFERENCE By Jim Funaro 5 November 1999 CONTACT 2000 convenes on March 3-5,2000, at NASA Ames and the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Clara, California. Don't miss this one! See registration, banquet and hotel information below. Join us as we celebrate 17 years of CONTACT, a unique interdisciplinary conference which brings together some of the foremost international social and space scientists, science fiction writers and artists to exchange ideas, stimulate new perspectives and encourage serious, creative speculation about humanity's future... onworld and offworld. This letter also constitutes a second call for papers and projects. We need your proposals now, because the program is filling up. Send paper or project title and abstract (under 100 words) to me by November 1st at jafunaro@cabrillo.cc.ca.us. Check to see if your name is on the list below. Features of the program (visit www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/contact for updates) Friday at Nasa Ames: Exploring Artificial Intelligence What is the nature of Artificial Intelligence? How does it compare with biological intelligence? What might an AI civilization be like? Would it be antagonistic, compatible or even synergistic with ours? These, and other provocative questions, will be the focus of the daylong Ames Seminar, organized by NASA's AI specialist Michael Sims and planetary scientist Chris McKay. We already have a tentative commitment from Marvin Minsky, founder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Keynote Speaker at Friday Night Banquet: Octavia Butler Octavia E. Butler, winner of two Hugos and a Nebula, has published more than 10 novels and many shorter works, in science fiction and outside the genre. In 1995, Octavia was awarded the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grant, which rewards creative people who push the boundaries of their fields. Simulations: Two This Year! COTI HI and COTI AI Springboarding from our NASA/Ames seminar, we will present COTI AI, a SETI scenario in which humans will encounter representatives of a civilization of artificial intelligences. The goal: attempt to create a credible contact exercise invoking some problems and possibilities initiated at Friday's session and to "reality-check" a protocol to be demonstrated on the final day of CONTACT. Writer/astronomer Dave Brin and Jim Moore, coordinator of our simSETI simulation, will act as advisors. The COTI HI teachers, led by Carol Anderson and Larry Payne, will oversee a contact simulation based on our Cultures of the Imagination design. The teams will bring together high school students from the US and Argentina. Don't miss the real-time, unrehearsed meeting of aliens at the climax of the conference on Sunday--Contact! Education for the Future: Coordinator Don Scott of NASA Collaborating with CONTACT and NASA, a group of high school teachers from Oroville, California, will present a progress report on a two-year COTI HI curriculum they are developing for secondary education, and lead a contact simulation based on our Cultures of the Imagination design. Don't miss the real-time, unrehearsed meeting of aliens at the climax of the conference on Sunday afternoon--Contact! SETI Australia and the SETI Institute have collaborated on introducing the SETI educational materials into Australian high schools. Science writer and CONTACT listserve majordomo Carol Oliver will give us a report from down under. Our nationally recognized Solar System Simulation, back in full force for Spring semester, powers up its new virtual reality program. In an on-line demonstration, with originator Reed Riner of Northern Arizona University as guide, conference attendees can visit a space city, walk on the moon and talk to Martians via an international, multicampus computer simulation. The director of the Academy for Mars, Gabriel Rshaid, visits from Argentina to report on his project. The Millennium Showstopper Seth Shostak of SETI will convene a symposium of experts to consider the yesterday, today and tomorrow of the new millennium, to kick off the next thousand years of human future history. After the talks, the panel will discuss emergent implications with the audience. Other Highlights There will also be several other sessions of professional papers dealing with the problems and possibilities of humanity's future. The topics and speakers will be announced in later udpates at www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/contact. Our art gallery will this year feature fine artists of time and space, organized by Joel Hagen. See also the art of Epona, our 3-year project in world building which Larry Niven called the biggest playground he'd ever seen. And maybe the Epona team will unveil of a brand new planet! Grand opening: Friday evening. Join Us Now! Here's a list of those who are signed up for the program. Be sure to add your name by responding promptly, while we still have some space left in the schedule. Poul & Karen Anderson, Carol Anderson, Athena Andreades, Dave Brin, Octavia Butler, Chris Chyba, Bruce Damer, Jim Funaro, Joel Hagen, Al Harrison, Barbara Joans, Chris McKay, Marvin Minsky, Jim Moore, Gerald Nordley, Carol Oliver, Larry Payne, Doug Raybeck, Reed Riner, Gabriel Rshaid, Don Scott, H. Paul Shuch, Seth Shostak, Michael Sims, Allen Tough, Richard Zimmer. We will have plenty of opportunities to interact and discuss topics from the symposia at social activities in the hospitality suite and the Friday evening banquet. Everyone is a participant. We recommend that all attendees stay at the hotel to fully benefit from these activities for a friendly and mind- expanding experience. CONTACT welcomes all professionals, students and enthusiasts. We have developed and piloted several role-playing simulations for the general public. Come and be part of our next annual gathering in an informal and synergistic atmosphere with plenty of opportunities for interaction. Join us for three days of hard work and hard play... Let's go! Looking forward to hard work and hard play together... Registration You should register and make your banquet reservations at the same time. We have a registration webpage, with convenient forms, at www.softwaremanagement.com/contact. Otherwise, follow the instructions below or check www.cabrillo.cc.ca.us/contact. Preregistration is $60 (Students/Seniors $30) until Valentineis Day, 2000. To pay by credit card, e-mail contact@softwaremanagement.com or call 650/941-4027 or fax 650/941-4028. To register by mail, send name, address and check made out to CONTACT to: Contact 2000 Registration, B-10, Suite 237, 4546 El Camino Real, Los Altos, CA 94022. On February 15th, the prices go up to $80 for regular admission and $40 for students and seniors. One-day admission is $50. Register as above or at the door. Important: foreign nationals who plan to attend the sessions at NASA Ames must state their country of origin when registering. We must have this information well in advance Banquet The banquet will be a something-for-everyone, all you can eat buffet for an additional $25. And add a talk by Octavia Butler into the bargain. We have room for 100 people, and if there are to be more we need to know at least 72 hours in advance. As the banquet is Friday night, we will not be able to add more people beyond that 100 at the door, so it is important to make your banquet reservations now, when you register. Hotel You can make your reservations now. The address of the Biltmore is 2151 Laurelwood Road in Santa Clara (just off Highway 101); the phone number is 800/255-9925 or 408/988-8411. Mention CONTACT, to get the conference rate of $79 for a room (up to 4 people) or $99 for a Tower Suite. For special requests or information, contact gdnordley@aol.com or call 408/739-4032. ---------------------------------------------------------------- NASA PROVIDES 21st CENTURY SOLUTIONS TO 1999 DROUGHT NASA release 99-130 5 November 1999 As many drought-stricken farms in America limp through the last harvest of the 20th century, researchers are using remote sensing technology developed for the space program to help improve crop management and increase profitability. The availability of inexpensive agricultural products for consumers in the next century could depend on such capabilities-- potentially meaning the difference between "boom" and "bust" for American farmers in the new millennium. At the Global Hydrology and Climate Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, NASA scientists are collaborating with university researchers to apply remote sensing technology to a sophisticated agricultural technique called precision farming. In precision farming, growers break fields down into regions, or "cells," analyzing growth characteristics of each cell and improving crop health and yield by applying precise amounts of seed, fertilizer and pesticides as needed. Traditionally, farmers have lacked the ability to make those close analyses of specific cells. When they fertilized their crops, they simply spread it uniformly across the entire field. "Now, using remote sensing feedback, we can tailor that input more precisely," says Doug Rickman, lead researcher for the Global Hydrology and Climate Center. Such precise crop maintenance benefits society in another way: "Excess nitrogen can leak into groundwater," says Paul Mask, professor of agronomy at Auburn University in Auburn, AL. "Other fertilizers can increase pollution problems, threatening public health. By adding only the amount of fertilizer the land and the crop can effectively use, we can reduce such problems." "We can point to areas that will always have low yield," adds Mask. "If the maximum capability of an area is 50 bushels an acre, there is no need to fertilize for 120 bushels. It does no good." "The true potential is not simply improving yield," Rickman agrees. "It's improving stewardship of the land." Remote sensing is the gathering of data for analysis by instruments that are not in physical contact with the objects of investigation; in modern parlance, the term commonly refers to the gathering of data via planes or orbiting satellites. Remote sensing is used to measure electromagnetic radiation, including the thermal energy that is reflected or emitted in varying degrees by all natural and synthetic objects, such as crops. That makes remote sensing ideal for Rickman's research. "We can fly over an area and precisely map its plant quality and soil makeup--including estimation of mineral variation and organic carbon content--in two-meter increments," he says. "Farmers have sought this ability for 30 years." When NASA began studying precision agriculture techniques in the 1970s, the practice was hampered by researchers' inability to accomplish such precise mapping. Measuring yield was also inconvenient, time-consuming and often imprecise. "To measure a single field of 80 to 100 acres, you might take six soil samples from different parts of the field, send them to a lab, and wait days or weeks for the results," Rickman says. "And six samples don't give you a very accurate measure anyway-- soil quality can vary dramatically all across that area." The advent of global positioning systems and remote sensing technology changed all that. "Now farmers can intelligently control their systems," Rickman says, "before they ever plant a seed." "This is applied research," says Dr. J. M. Wersinger of Auburn University, the project coordinator. "We could have done our experiments in an antiseptic laboratory environment, but we understood from the beginning that we needed to involve real farmers in the program. They are full partners in this endeavor." NASA and its partners recognize that the research is still in its infancy. Rickman and his colleagues are still exploring "the breadth of potential understanding yet to be gained from the new technology," he says. "With current technology, nations can show the estimated yield of Kansas or Kazakhstan," Rickman says. "But that doesn't help the individual farmer. We're seeking to provide a system that will help farmers improve the efficiency of their fields and their crop management techniques. In the end, that will benefit everyone." ---------------------------------------------------------------- TERRESTRIAL PLANET FINDER RFP JPL/NASA Headquarters release 7 November 1999 The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) plans to issue a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) for architecture studies of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) mission in early January 2000. In anticipation of this planned RFP, interested parties from universities, the space industry, and other organizations are invited to attend a briefing in Pasadena, CA, on December 1-2, 1999. More information, including a draft Statement of Work, is available at http://acquisition.jpl.nasa.gov/rfp/TPF. The Terrestrial Planet Finder is a key component of the NASA Astronomical Search for Origins & Planetary Systems science program theme that is presently under study by JPL. The Origins program is expected to encompass a variety of missions over the next two decades, including the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), and the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), to explore the history of the Universe, from the formation of galaxies through the formation of stars and planets through to the eventual development of life on our own planet and those around other stars. TPF will build on the science and technology developments of these earlier Origins missions to study planets beyond our own Solar System in a variety of ways, for example, from their formation and evolution in the disks of newly forming stars to the properties of planets orbiting the nearest stars, and from their number, sizes, and locations to their suitability as abodes for life. ---------------------------------------------------------------- NASA APPLYING SPACE TECHNOLOGY TO HELP FARMERS DIAGNOSE FIELDS By Dave Dooling From NASA Space Science News 8 November 1999 To water or not to water? Or fertilize? And how much? These and dozens of other questions nibble at farmers as they go about the business of raising crops. What could be a simple decision for a single plant cannot be done thousands or hundreds of thousands of times to meet the needs of each plant on the farm. Of necessity, farmers often wind up with "one size fits all" solutions: an entire field gets the same treatment. Yet nature is viciously random. What we see on a map or from afar as a homogenous field actually has a complex anatomy. "That's the way the real world is put together," said Dr. Doug Rickman, a NASA remote sensing scientist at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Rickman is a co-investigator on a project that links remote sensing with precision farming to see whether high-altitude images can map the variations in a field and help farmers apply just the right amounts of resources only where they are needed. The co-principal investigator is Dr. Jeff Luvall, also of the GHCC. "This exciting project brings together NASA scientists diagnose fields and farmers," said Dr. J. M. Wersinger of Auburn University, "soil and plant researchers and Extension specialists--who make sure the technology gets to other farmers so they can use it." Wersinger is a NASA Space Grant Fellow who is administering and coordinating the program that is funded by the Alabama Space Grant Consortium, the Georgia Space Grant Consortium, Auburn University and the University of Georgia. The current effort grew out of a desire at NASA Headquarters to put remote sensing technology to work helping farmers and others in partnership with Extension people. Wersinger arranged for Dr. Paul Mask, an Extension specialist and agronomist at Auburn University, and Dr. David Kissel a soil scientist at the University of Georgia to line up farmers who had the right instruments on their harvesting combines, and asked Rickman to develop the remote- sensing end of the project. "We set up a small pilot project and were wildly more successful than we had expected," Rickman said. In one cornfield, aerial images correlated to 87 percent accuracy with the actual crop yield. "It's higher than almost anything else I've ever seen in land-based remote sensing," he continued. "There's some interesting physics going on that no one was aware of." Nor does anyone fully understand it yet, but that might not be necessary as far as farmers are concerned. What matters is whether it works. "I don't think we'll understand all of the physics involved in this any time soon," Rickman explained. But in this case, "understanding the science is tertiary. Our end objective is to make an economic difference to the individual farmer." The individual farmer is starting to benefit from what Rickman calls a "confluence of multiple technologies that are wildly dissimilar in their origins." Remote sensing is the field of taking images from a distance and making detailed interpretations about what is there. Weather satellites and space probe images of planets are examples of remote sensing. Since the 1970s, though, the term has generally been applied to satellites looking back at Earth and observing the environment. It's based in the fact that light does more than paint stunning pictures of the world. It also carries information about the object that reflected or emitted the light. The trick is in understanding how to manipulate the light to extract the right messages. The GHCC's application of thermal remote sensing to precision farming has its foundation in ecological thermodynamics, which states that ecosystems develop to maximize energy throughput and maintain the lowest possible surface temperature. In agriculture systems this translates to greater leaf area and greater rates of water evaporating from leaves, which is directly correlated to yield. The other technology joining the field is precision agriculture, derived from a different aspect of space. Since the mid-1990s, farmers increasingly have used navigation satellites originally designed for the military. By linking sensors that measure yield as crops are harvested with a series of navigational fixes every few feet, and then cranking the data through a computer, a farmer can get an accurate image of how productive different parts of a field are. Satellite navigation expands the potential value of high-altitude imagery. "I could do that as early as the '70s," Rickman said of the image that predicted crop yield. "But it wouldn't mean anything because you couldn't match it against ground data." In addition, ground data was difficult to acquire. Getting 10 soil samples from the field into a lab for analysis was a major effort. "Basically you couldn't do anything on a subfield basis," Rickman said. At the same time that satellite navigation became available to the consumer, advanced, low-cost electronics made it possible to add sensors that would sample field conditions as farm combines moved through the field. Coupling the sensors with GPS, farmers now could take dozens or hundreds of soil measurements while planting, fertilizing, and harvesting, and then return days and weeks later to repeat the measurement in the same location. Still, measuring an entire field is a daunting task, so Rickman, Luvall, and others are testing imagery taken from aboard NASA's Lear 23 jet equipped with the Advanced Thermal and Land Applications Sensor (ATLAS). This is the same system used in the highly successful Urban Heat Island experiments. ATLAS is sensitive to 15 channels of the electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from visible light (where the human eye is sensitive to red, green, and blue) through near-infrared down to thermal infrared. A crucial element in ATLAS is the ability to recalibrate itself to ensure that the readings are always accurate and don't drift with time. Calibration is a key requirement for successful remote sensing. Another isgeometric correction so the data taken by the sensor match correctly with elements on the ground. It makes no sense to predict a good harvest from a rock outcrop. Rickman said that ATLAS meets these and other needs, making it an outstanding selection to meet the requirements for helping precision agriculture. Working with Auburn University and the University of Georgia, and their respective agricultural extension services, six farms were selected in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee where precision agriculture systems are employed on several private farms. Especially valuable, Wersinger said, is precision agriculture directed by Dr. Paul Kvien of the National Environmentally Sound Production Agriculture Laboratory at the University of Georgia. The geographic variety was needed because, "Just as an individual field varies, you also get significant variations from region to region and area to area," Rickman added. One of the discoveries from overflights in 1998 and 1999 was that the image, taken two months before harvest, had an 87 percent correlation with the actual harvest yield. Normally in the science community a new correlation is studied in detail until it is fully understood before a paper is written explaining it from start to finish. But the vagaries of climate and farming--witness this year's drought and its impact on families and the economy--give Rickman and his colleagues a different perspective. "We have observed a correlation of a single band of data with a yield that is very high," he said. "We don't understand why it happens, but it happens, and that is enough for us to go forward and tell people that it exists." Especially since it happened more than once. Wersinger is reluctant to speculate on what it might eventually mean in improved agricultural economics. "We are in a phase where we are just trying to find out what it can do for people," he explained. "Precision agriculture means different things because fields vary from region to region. The economics are going to depend on the area, on the type of farm, and on what they mean by precision agriculture. However, tailoring the application of chemicals to real needs in the field will certainly benefit the environment, reducing water pollution." Another discovery is that wind apparently can affect the image collected by a remote instrument. One experiment over Georgia was designed to collect two sets of images 30 minutes apart. Because of the way the flight lines overlapped they acquired four images, two of them just 3 minutes apart. "If you didn't match the markers from one image to another," Rickman said, pointing at roads and other fixed elements, "you'd swear that you were looking at different fields." But the images are all the same field, and each has radical differences in thermal and near-infrared reflections. "I'm quite confident that it has to be a wind-related phenomenon," Rickman explained. Indeed, an airport just 16 km (10 mi) away recorded winds shifting from dead calm to 9 km/h and then 18 km/h (5, 10 knots). The details of why the image changed so radically still have to be worked out, but could lie in the elasticity of the plant stalks, interactions between the plant and cooler air, or just the change in the angle between plant and sunlight. Whatever the cause, "it puts an upper boundary on what you can say about remote sensing images," Rickman said, because winds are unpredictable. Wersinger agreed that the results are puzzling and said he and students at Auburn are working on a computer model that will try to simulate the crops and try to reproduce the effect. In addition to measuring crops, remote sensing and precision agriculture can measure the content of organic carbon, minerals, moisture, and other factors in the surface of the soil. "You can fly over an area and tell a lot about things that are extremely important to the farmer," Rickman said. "You're talking about the field of an individual farmer, and not some nebulous concept of helping farming in general. It makes a difference. It makes it real." Precision Agriculture Conference Planned Want to become an expert in precision agriculture? Check out the National Remote Sensing Applications Conference and Workshop to be held November 15-17, Auburn University Hotel and Conference Center in Auburn, AL. "This brings together universities, NASA, and commercial companies, as well as Extension services, our link to the people," Wersinger said. Among the presentations will be an invited talk by Rickman who will describe his project in detail. Conference sponsors include the NASA Earth Science Applications Office and the NASA Space Grant Program; the Space Grant Consortia of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, and Tennessee; and others. [For more information on this article see http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd08nov99_1.htm] ---------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release 1-7 November 1999 Galileo passes the halfway point between encounters as it flies through apojove on Wednesday, November 3. Apojove is the point at which the spacecraft is furthest from Jupiter in a given orbit. Galileo continues to return science data to Earth, as it starts heading back toward the heart of the Jupiter system and its next, even more daring, flyby of Io. The current set of data now being returned was acquired during Galileo's previous close flyby of Io on October 10. Galileo's next encounter with Io will occur on November 26. This week's playback contains observations made by the Near- Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS), the Solid-State Imaging camera (SSI) and the Fields and Particles (F&P) instruments. The F&P instruments are comprised of the Dust Detector, Energetic Particle Detector, Heavy Ion Counter, Magnetometer, Plasma Detector, and Plasma Wave instrument. Playback plans contain observations from a third pass through the data stored on Galileo's onboard tape recorder. Additional passes through the tape recorder allow replay of data lost in transmission to Earth, reprocessing of data using different parameters, or return of additional new data. Unfortunately, some of the images being returned by SSI are known to be corrupted. They are being returned with the hope that careful processing will allow some or all of the image data to be recovered. Data playback is interrupted twice this week to perform engineering and navigation activities. On Tuesday, the spacecraft executes a relatively large flight path adjustment. The adjustment will change Galileo's flight path so the spacecraft flies over Io's south pole during its next encounter. Galileo's previous flyby of Io was near-equatorial. On Thursday, Galileo performs standard maintenance on its onboard tape recorder. The first two observations returned this week were taken by NIMS and SSI and contain data on the Pele volcanic region. The observations were taken while Pele was on Io's night side. The NIMS data will be used to search for thermal emissions from the Pele caldera, while the SSI observation consists of high- resolution images of the region. The images were taken in the dark with the hope of catching hot glowing lava near Pele's volcanic vent. Next, SSI returns three observations. The first contains high- resolution images of the Pillan volcanic region. The images were taken at daybreak on Io and provide the best lighting conditions for showing details of the surface topography. High- resolution images of the Colchis Montes region are returned in SSI's next observation, followed by high-resolution images of the Zamama volcanic vent. NIMS also returns an observation of Zamama, designed to provide scientists with information describing the surface composition of the region. The F&P instruments then take the stage and return data from a 65-minute high-resolution recording of the environment (plasma, dust, and electric and magnetic fields) surrounding Io. These data will assist scientists with studies of the Io ionosphere and its interaction with the Jovian magnetosphere. SSI returns to the playback schedule with the return of images of the Prometheus volcanic vent and associated lava flows. A comparison of clear and green filter images of this region are expected to reveal unresolved lava and allow scientists to determine surface temperatures of the area. NIMS returns to the playback schedule with the return of an observation of the Colchis Montes region. SSI also returns images of Colchis, providing a wider, lower resolution view of the region and context for the higher resolution images returned earlier in the week. Next on the schedule is the return of SSI and NIMS observations of Tohil Mons. The Tohil and Colchis features are mountains, whose geological structure, origin and history are presently unknown. These observations are followed by a return of another couple of observations of Prometheus; one for each of SSI and NIMS. The SSI observation will provide color images, which will also be combined with the previous set of images to yield stereo coverage. Finally, SSI returns another observation of the Zamama volcanic vent, again providing coverage of a wider region as context for the higher resolution images returned earlier. For more information on the Galileo spacecraft and its mission to Jupiter, please visit the Galileo home page at one of the following URL's: http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo http://galileo.ivv.nasa.gov ---------------------------------------------------------------- MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT JPL release 28 October 1999 Launch / Days since Launch = Nov 7, 1996 / 1086 days Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 210 days Last Orbit Covered by this Report = 2860 Total Orbits = 4542 Total Mapping Orbits = 2860 Recent events The mm008 sequence continues executing nominally and will continue execution through November 17. The HGA position error counts noted last week have not recurred since. At this time, no further action is being taken by the SCT to determine the cause of those events, due to priorities in preparing the MPL spacecraft for Mars landing on December 3. We will continue to watch for recurrence of these events and determine appropriate action at that time. HGA anomaly The HGA inner gimbal angle continues to decrease and is currently at 73.8 degrees. The inner gimbal angle will continue decreasing, reaching the location of the gimbal obstruction at 41.5 deg in early February. Work continues on the design and implementation of a new mapping data collection and return plan that will maximize the science data return for the remainder of the nominal mapping mission. Spacecraft health All other subsystems continue to report nominal status. Uplinks There have been 32 uplinks to the spacecraft during the last week, including new star catalogs and ephemeris files, and instrument command loads. Total command files radiated to the spacecraft since launch is 4030. Upcoming events The mm009 sequence development kickoff meeting is scheduled for November 2, with uplink preliminary scheduled for November 15. ---------------------------------------------------------------- NEW MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES By Ron Baalke 1 November 1999 The following new images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. MOC Views of Martian Solar Eclipses The images resides on the Mars Global Surveyor web site at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/index.html The image caption is appended below. Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) 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. Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera MOC Views of Martian Solar Eclipses MGS MOC Release #MOC2-187, 1 November 1999 The shadow of the martian moon, Phobos, has been captured in many recent wide angle camera views of the red planet obtained by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC). Designed to monitor changes in weather and surface conditions, the wide angle cameras are also proving to be a good way to spot the frequent solar eclipses caused by the passage of Phobos between Mars and the Sun. The first figure (A, above), shows wide angle red (left), blue (middle), and color composite (right) views of the shadow of Phobos (elliptical feature at center of each frame) as it was cast upon western Xanthe Terra on August 26, 1999, at about 2 p.m. local time on Mars. The image covers an area about 250 kilometers (155 miles) across and is illuminated from the left. The meandering Nanedi Valles is visible in the lower right corner of the scene. Note the dark spots on three crater floors--these appear dark in the red camera image (left) but are barely distingished in the blue image (middle), while the shadow is dark in both images. The spots on the crater floors are probably small fields of dark sand dunes. The second figure (B, above), shows three samples of MOC's global image swaths, each in this case with a shadow of Phobos visible (arrow). The first scene (left) was taken on September 1, 1999, and shows the shadow of Phobos cast upon southern Elysium Planitia. The large crater with dark markings on its floor at the lower right corner is Herschel Basin. The second scene shows the shadow of Phobos cast upon northern Lunae Planum on September 8, 1999. Kasei Valles dominates the upper right and the deep chasms of Valles Marineris dominate the lower third of the September 8 image. The picture on the right shows the shadow of Phobos near the giant volcano, Olympus Mons (upper left), on September 25, 1999. Three other major volcanoes are visible from lower-center (Arsia Mons) and right-center (Pavonis Mons) to upper-middle-right (Ascraeus Mons). Phobos and the smaller, more distant satellite, Deimos, were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall, an astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. Hall had been hunting for martian satellites for some time, and was about to abandon the search when he was encouraged by his wife to continue. In honor of her role, the largest crater on Phobos was named Stickney, her maiden name. Phobos is a tiny, potato- shaped world that is only about 13 km by 11 km by 9 km (8 mi by 7 mi by 6 mi) in size. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published a story entitled "Under the Moons of Mars" (printed in book form in 1917 as A Princess of Mars) in which he referred to the "hurtling moons of Barsoom" (Barsoom being the "native" word for Mars in the fictional account). Burroughs was inspired by the fact that Phobos, having an orbital period of slightly less than 8 hours, would appear from Mars to rise in the west and set in the east only five and a half hours later. (Despite Burroughs' phrase, the outer moon, Deimos, can hardly be said to "hurtle" -- it takes nearly 60 hours to cross the sky from east to west, rising on one day and not setting again for over two more.) If you could stand on Mars and watch Phobos passing overhead, you would notice that this moon appears to be only about half the size of what Earth's Moon looks like when viewed from the ground. In addition, the Sun would seem to have shrunk to about 2/3 (or nearly 1/2) of its size as seen from Earth. Martian eclipses are therefore dark but not as spectacular as total solar eclipses on Earth can be. In compensation, the martian eclipses are thousands of times more common, occurring a few times a day somewhere on Mars whenever Phobos passes over the planet's sunlit side. Due to the changing geometry of the MGS orbit relative to that of Phobos, the shadow is actually seen in MOC global map images (like in B, above) about a dozen times a month. The shadow of Phobos was seen during the Viking missions in the late 1970s, and in fact one day the shadow was observed to pass right over the Viking 1 lander. Mariner 9 first imaged the surface of Phobos itself in 1971, and the Viking orbiters obtained global coverage in 1976-80. Phobos was the target of the ill-fated Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union in 1988. Phobos 2 actually reached Mars in 1989 and obtained a few pictures of the satellite---it also captured the shadow of Phobos cast upon the martian surface using its thermal infrared imager, Termoskan. More recently, the MGS MOC observed the tiny moon four times in August and September 1998. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems Acknowledgments: B. Cantor in conjunction with MOC Participating Scientist P. James of the University of Toledo (Ohio) first began to notice the Phobos shadows in MOC images while doing a systematic search for recent dust storms. M. Caplinger (MSSS) contributed some of the text for this article. ---------------------------------------------------------------- End Marsbugs Vol. 6, No. 36