MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 8, Number 3, 22 January 2001. Editors: Dr. David J. Thomas, Math and Science Division, Lyon College, Batesville, AR 72503-2317, USA. dthomas@lyon.edu 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://welcome.to/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. Astrobiology is still a relatively young field, and new ideas may come from 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) SPACE INVADER By Jennifer Laing 2) SPACE ANIMALS MAKE SAFE RETURN From BBC News 3) NASA PLANE TAKES STUDENTS AND THEIR PROJECTS "OVER THE TOP" NASA release 01-09 4) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 5) CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS JPL release 6) THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release 7) ISS STATUS REPORT NASA/JSC release 8) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT JPL release 9) STARDUST STATUS REPORT JPL release --------------------------------------------------------------------- SPACE INVADER By Jennifer Laing From Universe Today 15 January 2001 Meeting Dr. Vaughan Clift for the first time is a memorable experience, as a group of Australian students recently found out at the Space Futures 2000 Conference in Canberra. He is wildly enthusiastic about space and the technology he has developed to enhance the U.S. space program, talks a million miles an hour, and has achieved outstanding success since being invited to work at the Johnson Space Center in 1992. Chief Scientist at DBCD Inc., Dr. Clift's research into non-invasive methods of measuring and monitoring the health of astronauts in space has led to a number of patented inventions, with important commercial 'spin-offs' for NASA. One of these inventions has greatly simplified the collection and analysis of blood and urine samples during missions. Get the full story at http://www.universetoday.com/html/articles/2001-0115c.html. --------------------------------------------------------------------- SPACE ANIMALS MAKE SAFE RETURN From BBC News 19 January 2001 The orbital module (rear) is still functioning normally China's Shenzhou II spacecraft carried a monkey, a dog, a rabbit and snails into space, an industry source has told the Reuters news agency. All the animals returned to Earth alive when the Shenzhou return capsule touched down in the inner Mongolian region on Tuesday, the source said. Chinese state media had said only that "various life forms" including animals, plants, aquatic creatures, microbes and cells made the journey into space, but gave no details. The Shenzhou II mission was the second test flight for the technology that China hopes will take the country's first astronauts into orbit and make it a major space player. Get the full story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1123000/1123823.stm. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.cosmiverse.com/space01190105.html http://www.universetoday.com/html/topics/chinese.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- NASA PLANE TAKES STUDENTS AND THEIR PROJECTS "OVER THE TOP" NASA release 01-09 19 January 2001 College students from around the country will hang on to their hats and their lunches as they use a NASA aircraft to conduct experiments in snatches of weightlessness. About 48 teams of students will carry out scientific experiments in the virtual absence of gravity beginning in mid-February in the next round of flights on the KC-135A aircraft near NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX. During each two- to three-hour flight over the Gulf of Mexico, the aircraft will fly about 30 parabolas, roller coaster-like steep climbs and descents. Each parabola offers the students and their experiments 25 to 30 seconds of zero gravity as they go "over the top." "We're providing a significant educational milestone for most of the students," said Donn Sickorez, Johnson education coordinator for the program. "It gives the students a behind-the-scenes look at science, engineering and the Johnson Space Center." NASA's 2001 Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program is funded by the space agency and administered by the Texas Space Grant Consortium in Austin, TX. The Reduced Gravity Program began in 1959 to expose people and equipment to weightlessness. The student program began about four years ago. This year the teams will be divided into four groups of about 12 teams each. The first group is scheduled to begin its almost-two-week stay at Johnson February 8. The fourth and final university group winds up KC-135A activities March 30. Community college teams will be at the center from April 5 through April 13. Subsequently, teams of Texas and New Mexico high school students will come to the center for microgravity flights, the first group arriving April 19 and the last departing May 11. Additional flights for university teams are scheduled for late summer. The KC- 135A is used to train astronauts, test hardware and experiments destined for spaceflight, and evaluate medical protocols that may be used in space. During the student campaign, teams of up to four students and their experiments fly in the plane's 60- by-10-foot cargo area. A supervising professor and a student ground-support team will remain at the KC-135's base at Ellington Field near Johnson to support their flying counterparts. Professional journalists will fly with many of the teams to report on their activities. Students spend months identifying, developing and testing their experiments. NASA experts critique them for scientific merit. Each experiment is subject to an extensive safety review. During the first week of their two weeks in Houston, students receive preflight training, and assemble and test their experiments. During week two, students fly with their experiments and conduct post-flight debriefings and reviews. Each team also is required to develop a program for sharing the results of its experiment with teachers, students and the public after the flights. Teams must analyze their data, prepare education and information materials, and submit final post-flight reports. Additional information is available through the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities, Texas Space Grant Consortium, 3925 West Braker Lane, Suite 200, Austin, TX 78759. Information about requirements and deadlines for subsequent programs is at http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/floatn/. The Texas Space Grant Consortium is part of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, which is administered by NASA. Contacts: Sonja Alexander Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1761 John Ira Petty Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX Phone: 281-483-5111 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.cosmiverse.com/space01220101.html. --------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 22 January 2000 Articles about human space exploration and the microgravity environment http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html BBC News, 2001. Space animals make safe return. BBC News. Cosmiverse, 2001. Shenzhou reported to have carried a monkey, a dog, and a rabbit. Cosmiverse. Articles about primordial evolution and prebiotic chemistry http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html NASA Astrobiology Institute, 2001. Precocious Earth. NASA Science News. --------------------------------------------------------------------- CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS JPL release 4-10 January 2001 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Wednesday, January 10. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. The speed of the spacecraft can be viewed on the "Present Position" web page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/. Phase E of the Jupiter subphase continued this week. Activities included Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) solar wind observations, atmospheric cyclic observations, Io eclipse observation, a ring observation at 90 degree phase angle, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede observations, a Ganymede and Europa eclipse observation, Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (UVIS) stellar occultation, Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) feature track observation, and a UVIS / Hubble Space Telescope aurora observation. Other activities included uplink of the CAPS, Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) and Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) Instrument Expanded Block (IEB) loads, CAPS IEB load for gain tests and execution of the tests, command to clear the Solid State Power Switch (SSPS) for the AACS Valve Drive Electronics Control Unit-B, AACS Reaction Wheel Assembly (RWA) memory readout (MRO), AACS highwater mark clears, uplink of AACS RWA unload bias overlay programs, Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) Ion and Neutral Camera (INCA) collimator high voltage commanded to off, a reaction wheel momentum unload, CDS-A and CDS-B automatic SSR repairs, CIRS focal plane assembly control set point to 21, MIMI to science mode mini-sequence, reset CDS SSPS trip counters, AACS reset of total RPM counter, and a MIMI processor MRO and turn on of the replacement heater for the Low Energy Magnetospheric Measurement Subsystem (MIMI LEMMS). Magnetometer Subsystem (MAG) personnel have been looking at the recent MAG data in the vicinity of the Jovian bow shock crossings identified recently by the other Cassini investigations and reported a number of interesting observations. First, the outbound shock crossing at 365/2212 is very clear in the field data and is accompanied by a large overshoot indicative of a supercritical shock. Hydromagnetic waves are also evident upstream of the shock. Mirror mode waves are present in the magnetosheath for much of the day. Second, the inbound and outbound shock crossings at 366/0959 and 1219 are also prominent and contain overshoots. There appear to be several close approaches to the bow shock near 1103, 1115 and 1212 while Cassini is in the magnetosheath suggesting that the spacecraft is skimming along the moving shock front. Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) personnel reported that Cassini entered the Jovian magnetosphere around mid day on January 9. RPWS observed trapped continuum radiation extending down to about 500 Hz, corresponding to a plasma density of about 3 x 10^-3 at about 1315. The actual magnetopause crossing time is still in question, however. Based on previous experience with Galileo in this region of the magnetosphere, it seems that on occasion, the density gradient can be very gradual and the location of the boundary not very clear in the wave data. Cassini exited the magnetosphere that same day reentering the magnetosheath and then went back in to the magnetosphere at about 0700 on day 10. For the period on day 9 when Cassini was inside the magnetosphere, Galileo also was still inside, hence the two spacecraft were inside Jupiter's magnetosphere at the same time. Instrument Operations and the Multi Mission Image Processing Laboratory (MIPL) have produced and delivered 16238 ISS images -10522 Narrow Angle Camera and 5716 Wide Angle Camera - and 2108 VIMS cubes since Jupiter encounter began. The Radio Science Ka-band exciter and traveling wave tube amplifier were turned on again, after RADAR observations concluded, to support DSS-25 upgrade implementation testing. The final approval meeting for C24 was held this week. The sequence is approved for uplink and will begin execution next week. The Sub Sequence Generation Sequence Change Request meeting was held for C25. Revision A of the Science Operations and Planning Computer User's Handbook, and the SPICE Events Kernel Development Plan were completed and distributed this week. Installation of Telemetry, Command & Data Management (TC&DM) 25.2.2 occurred this week. MSS D7.3.1 was deployed on all SOPCs ahead of target date. Deployment included 150 prerequisite patches and two software packages. A draft agenda has been released for the Planetary Science Group meeting to be held in January at JPL. Outreach personnel staffed a poster presentation on Cassini classroom activities at the joint meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Astronomical Society this week. Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release 15-21 January 2001 This week finds Galileo completing week 12 of a 14-week-long survey of the Jovian magnetosphere. Playback of data stored during the spacecraft's December 2000 passage through the Jupiter system is not scheduled to start until early next month. This is a relatively quiet week with no major activities taking place on the spacecraft. Galileo's survey data are recorded to its onboard tape recorder five times this week. Typically, these data are almost immediately packaged and transmitted to Earth. However, radio antennas of the Deep Space Network (DSN) are scheduled to listen to Galileo for only about 116 hours (out of a total 168 hours possible in a given week). For the hours during which no DSN coverage is available, the spacecraft makes use of a data buffer (a section of computer memory) to store up to seven hours of survey data at one time. When the buffer is full, and the DSN is not listening, the data are recorded to the tape recorder to prevent data loss. 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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- ISS STATUS REPORT NASA/JSC release 17 January 2001 With Space Shuttle Atlantis' STS-98 mission delayed three weeks, the Expedition One crew aboard the International Space Station will continue to review documents and procedures in preparation for the arrival of the station's newest module-the U.S. Laboratory Destiny. Commander Bill Shepherd, Pilot Yuri Gidzenko and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev spent the last week reinstating the use of all eight batteries inside the Zvezda module by replacing a faulty current converter unit. Meanwhile the crew pressurized and entered the shuttle docking port that will be repositioned on the next mission and moved an air duct that was obstructing the full motion of one of four berthing latches. Once the duct was moved, the latch was cycled without problem and is ready for the removal of the docking port in preparation for the installation of Destiny. The docking port then will be relocated to the opposite end of the laboratory. For the next week, the Expedition One crew will continue to conduct a thorough inventory of items onboard and stow equipment and supplies. The three crewmembers also will review documentation for the laboratory's activation, practice for an emergency departure similar to building fire drills, and take part in conferences with various technical specialists. Shuttle managers ordered the rollback of Atlantis off the launch pad so that inspections can be made to cables inside a tray on the Solid Rocket Boosters. Destiny was removed from the payload bay today and will remain in a protective room on the launch pad until Atlantis returns next week. Launch of Atlantis on the 102nd shuttle flight now is scheduled for no earlier than February 6. Liftoff is tentatively set for 5:37 PM CST (23:37 GMT). Docking to the station will occur just after Noon on February 8. Destiny will provide the orbiting outpost with its first science facility. Its attachment and activation is the highlight of the 11- day mission along with the relocation of the shuttle docking port. Three spacewalks will complete final connections between the laboratory, docking port and the station. The third spacewalk marks the 100th in U.S. spacewalk history and the 60th based out of the shuttle. Atlantis' five astronauts, Commander Ken Cockrell, Pilot Mark Polansky and Mission Specialists Bob Curbeam, Marsha Ivins and Tom Jones will spend the next two weeks reviewing their official Flight Data File before flying to the Kennedy Space Center for the final days of the countdown. International Space Station systems are in excellent shape orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of approximately 230 statute miles. The next Expedition One status report will be issued on Wednesday, January 24, or sooner, if developments warrant. --------------------------------------------------------------------- MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT JPL release 17 January 2001 Launch / Days since Launch = November 7, 1996 / 1533 days Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 657 days Total Mapping Orbits = 8,331 Total Orbits = 10,014 Recent events The spacecraft continues to operate nominally in performing the beta- supplement daily recording and transmission of science data. The mm104 sequence executed successfully from 01-011 (1/11/00) through 01-013 (1/13/01). The mm105 sequence has performed well since it started on 01-014 (1/14/01). It terminates on 01-017 (1/17/01). The mm106 sequence, successfully uplinked on 01-016 (1/16/01), begins executing on 01-018 (1/18/01). MGS successfully completed twelve Radio Science Occultation Egress Scans from 01-010 (1/10/01) to 01-011 (01/11/01). One Delta Differential One-Way Range (DDOR) experiment was conducted on 01-013 (1/13/01). Data from this and other DDOR experiments are being analyzed and should assist the Mars Odyssey Program in calibrating the interplanetary navigation system. Spacecraft health All subsystems report nominal health. Uplinks There have been 8 uplinks to the spacecraft during the last week, including instrument command loads, the background sequences cited above, and the mz070 mini-sequence. There have been 5,073 command files radiated to the spacecraft since launch. Upcoming events The mm107 background sequence will be uplinked on 01-019 (1/19/01). MOLA Polar Scans, contained in the mz070 mini-sequence, are scheduled for 01-018 (1/18/01) through 01-022 (1/22/01). On 01-025 (1/25/01), a Roll Only Targeted Observation (ROTO) demonstration will be conducted on the spacecraft. It will verify our readiness to conduct these observations during the extended mission. Two more DDOR experiments are scheduled for 01-024 (1/24/01) and 01-027 (1/27/01). 01-031 (1/31/01) will mark the end of the MGS primary mission and 01- 032 (2/1/01) will mark our entry into the extended mission. --------------------------------------------------------------------- STARDUST STATUS REPORT JPL release 15 January 2001 Early this morning, the Stardust spacecraft successfully completed its first solar orbit when it flew by the Earth. Closest approach distance was approximately 6012 kilometers (3721 miles) at approximately 11:13 UTC (04:13 MST, 03:13 PST). The Deep Space Network (DSN) at Canberra was able to track the spacecraft until the end of its track at 11:00 UTC. The Goldstone DSN complex acquired the spacecraft's signal at 12:30 UTC as predicted. No coverage was possible between 11:00 and 12:30 as the spacecraft was below the elevation limits of the DSN. All subsystems performances are normal. The thermal subsystem reports that all temperatures are slightly lower than predicted. Later today, the commands for the navigation camera (NAVCAM) to take images of the Moon will be transmitted to the spacecraft. The first of twenty-five images will be taken later today. These images are being taken to provide calibration data for the navigation camera. Astronomers from California, Hawaii and Australia have reported successful observations of the spacecraft during the Earth flyby, and images of the spacecraft will be placed on the Stardust home page as they become available. For more information on the Stardust mission-the first ever comet sample return mission-please visit the Stardust home page at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov. --------------------------------------------------------------------- End Marsbugs, Volume 8, Number 3.