MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 8, Number 14, 9 April 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, the biology of terrestrial extreme environments, planetary biology, primordial evolution, space physiology, biological life support systems, and human habitation of space and other planets. _____________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1) THE BEGINNING AND END OF LIFE ON EARTH Royal Astronomical Society press notice 01/13 2) SCIENTISTS PROBING THE ORIGINS OF LIFE DEVELOP METHOD OF MAKING NOVEL PROTEINS USING A 21ST AMINO ACID--IN VITRO EVOLUTION OF PRE-BIOLOGICAL CATALYST SUPPORTS "RNA WORLD" THEORY SUNY Buffalo release 3) PLUMBING THE SPACE STATION By Patrick L. Barry 4) EXOPLANETS: THE HUNT CONTINUES! European Southern Observatory release 07/01 5) MARTIAN HOMES By Ian Sample 6) MARS ATTACKS? PROTECTING EARTH FROM OFF-WORLD INFECTIONS By Leonard David 7) HITCHHIKING MOLECULES COULD HAVE SURVIVED FIERY COMET COLLISIONS WITH EARTH, UC BERKELEY EXPERIMENT SHOWS By Robert Sanders 8) MARS KEEPS TURNING UP SURPRISES From ESA Science News 9) EUROPE GOES TO MARS--PREPARATIONS ARE WELL UNDER WAY From ESA Science News 10) SEARCH FOR WATER ON MARS GOES ON From SpaceDaily 11) NASA'S 2001 MARS ODYSSEY SPACECRAFT IS ON ITS WAY JPL release 12) MAN IN SPACE: "THE GREATEST EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD" From SpaceDaily 13) 40 YEARS AFTER GAGARIN, SPACE REMAINS THE FINAL FRONTIER From SpaceDaily 14) ASTROBIOLOGY, A NEW MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, DEDICATES PREMIER ISSUE TO GERALD SOFFEN Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. release 15) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 16) CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS JPL release 17) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS REPORTS NASA/JSC releases 18) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT JPL release 19) THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ THE BEGINNING AND END OF LIFE ON EARTH Royal Astronomical Society press notice 01/13 29 March 2001 The evolution of life on our planet is inextricably linked with extraterrestrial influences. It is now well-established that various mass extinction events identified in the palaeontological record were triggered by the cataclysmic explosions produced when large asteroids or comets happened to collide with the Earth. The best-known episode is that in which the dinosaurs died 65 million years ago, but there have been many other catastrophic impacts both before then, and since. These asteroid and comet impacts were not entirely a bad thing. If it had not been for those extinctions, then the age of the mammals and the eventual evolution of humans would not have occurred. However, there is another way in which we should look favourably on objects from space that have hit the Earth. Initially our planet was hot and dry. The water and organic chemicals that made the initiation of primordial life feasible here seem to have been delivered to the early Earth by comets. Both of these aspects of planetary science are addressed in two talks to be given at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cambridge by Dr. Duncan Steel of the University of Salford. Tackling the impact threat In a public lecture on the evening of Thursday 5 April, he will discuss the threat to civilization posed by large near-Earth objects, under the title "The Spaceguard Project: Tackling the Asteroid Impact Hazard". As Steel points out, the object that killed the dinosaurs was a big one (five to ten miles in size), but just 93 years ago a much smaller asteroid (just 60 or 70 yards across) blew up in the atmosphere above Siberia, producing a blast which would flatten all of London out to the M25, should the next such event have Marble Arch as ground zero. The chance of that occurring is small, but the consequences are so phenomenal that it is a hazard we must take seriously. As a result, the UK Government is now considering what it could contribute to the international Spaceguard program. Earth's cosmic rain In a scientific paper to be presented on the morning of Wednesday 4 April, Steel will discuss the flip-side of the coin: how comets may have delivered the basic building blocks of life to the nascent Earth. In a massive impact, the molecules of water and organic chemicals of which comets are largely composed would be pyrolysed (split into individual atoms). What Steel has proposed is that organic chemicals might have been delivered to the sterile early Earth through the tiny meteoroids released as comets come near the Sun. With his co-worker Dr. Christopher McKay of NASA-Ames Research Center in California, Steel has shown that heavy organic compounds similar to tar would survive heating by the Sun within these small meteoroids during the thousands of years between being spawned by a comet and eventually arriving in the terrestrial atmosphere. Until now it has generally been presumed that such meteoroids -- which produce the familiar meteors or shooting stars when they burn up on atmospheric entry--must be made of rock and metal, like most meteorites. A prediction of the work by Steel and McKay is that such tarry meteoroids would burn up higher in the atmosphere than is feasible for rocky substances. The tar would start to evaporate from a meteoroid at around 500 degrees Celsius--a temperature quickly attained due to frictional heating when it plummets into the upper atmosphere at hypervelocity. In contrast, it takes much longer for rock to reach its evaporation temperature of over 2000 degrees. Using radar located near Adelaide in Australia, Steel has shown that such tarry meteoroids are indeed continually entering the atmosphere now, representing a rain of organic chemicals onto the Earth. The implication is that the basic building blocks of life were also supplied to our planet in this way around four billion years ago, as the Earth cooled from its original, intensely hot beginning. Background information Dr. Duncan Steel is Reader in Space Technology at the University of Salford. In 1990 he began the first Southern Hemisphere search program for near-Earth objects (NEOs), based at the Anglo-Australian Observatory in New South Wales. That program terminated in 1996, leaving only the American NEO search projects operating in the Northern Hemisphere. The southern sky is still uncovered. Steel was one of the six foreign members of NASA's Spaceguard Committee, which made recommendations to the US Congress on how NEOs might be searched out and tracked. He was the only non-US member of the corresponding NASA Interception and Deflection Committee, which addressed the vexed question of how we might tackle an NEO found to be due to collide with the Earth. In 1996 he was elected the initial Vice-President of the international Spaceguard Foundation, which has its HQ in Rome. Over the past year he was one of the main advisers to the UK NEO Task Force, whose report to the Government was published last September (http://www.nearearthobjects.co.uk). Duncan Steel has published several books, including the first popular-level account of the NEO impact hazard (Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets, Wiley, 1995), and most recently a heavily- illustrated book on the same topic (Target Earth, Time-Life, 2001). He was science adviser for the Discovery Channel's "Three Minutes to Impact", which won an Emmy in 1998. Contact: Dr. Duncan Steel Joule Physics Laboratory University of Salford Salford M5 4WT. Phone: +44 (0)161-295-3981/5253 Fax: +44 (0)161-295-5147 Mobile phone: 07967-949-342 E-mail: d.i.steel@salford.ac.uk Images and further information are available on the web at http://www.salford.ac.uk/physics/staff/d.i.steel/. An additional story on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deepimpact-01d.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SCIENTISTS PROBING THE ORIGINS OF LIFE DEVELOP METHOD OF MAKING NOVEL PROTEINS USING A 21ST AMINO ACID--IN VITRO EVOLUTION OF PRE- BIOLOGICAL CATALYST SUPPORTS "RNA WORLD" THEORY SUNY Buffalo release 1 April 2001 Investigations into the origins of life and the genetic code have resulted in a method of developing novel proteins that has enormous potential for the biotechnology industry while providing some important clues to answering the question: "How did life begin?" The research provides significant evidence for the existence of the so- called RNA world, believed to be the evolutionary stage that predates present biological systems. It was published today (April 2, 2001) by scientists at the University at Buffalo and the University of Tokyo in EMBO Journal (Vol. 20, no. 7), publication of the European Molecular Biology Organization. In evolving new sequences of an RNA catalyst, the authors also have developed an efficient method of creating novel proteins built out of not just the 20 amino acids found in nature, but out of additional, so-called non-natural amino acids designed in the lab. The research demonstrates for the first time that a precursor to transfer RNA--the genetic material that is responsible for synthesizing proteins--could have acted as the catalyst for reactions that link transfer RNA (tRNA) to amino acids in a pre-biological era. Aminoacylation, as that reaction is called, is the key step that spurs translation, or protein synthesis in cells, but scientists probing how genes first came to generate life as we know it have been puzzled about how that crucial step came to be taken, without a catalyst to trigger it. "Using an in vitro version of Darwinian natural evolution, we have evolved this RNA catalyst, which provides evidence for support that RNA may well have served as the evolutionary vehicle necessary for the development of present-day, DNA-protein-based life forms," said Hiroaki Suga, Ph.D., lead author and assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. With applications ranging from proteomics to drug design and novel catalysis, the synthesis method described in the paper for attaching the transfer RNA to an unnatural amino acid using a ribozyme, an RNA enzyme, has the potential to provide scientists with a highly potent tool for engineering brand new proteins. The system also has vast applications for the development of molecules with built-in tracers to help researchers precisely target specific proteins in living cells. The advantage is that since existing proteins are designed to "lock onto" only the 20 natural amino acids, an unnatural amino acid would act as a highly stable molecular tag, unlike current probes that tend to alter the structure or somehow destabilize any protein to which they are attached. A patent application has been filed for select catalytic RNA molecules, a method of constructing them and a method for identifying aminoacylating molecules. Ever since the discovery in 1987 that it was feasible to attach unnatural amino acids to proteins, scientists have wondered how that tantalizing possibility with its potential for engineering proteins with entirely new functions could be harnessed in an efficient, cost-effective manner. "Unnatural amino acid mutagenesis is very complicated," said Suga. "The biggest stumbling block is synthesizing the unnatural amino acid and attaching it to transfer RNA." According to Suga, attachment is physically very difficult because it involves efficiently and accurately attaching a tiny amino acid to a large macromolecule, tRNA. "Our ribozyme can do it," Suga said. Dubbed "Sugazyme" by the group, this ribozyme offers a more efficient method of attaching tRNA to unnatural amino acids by using new RNA sequences that Suga evolved in his lab to bind selectively amino acids and ligate to tRNA without having to use the very specialized and hard-to-engineer protein enzymes that nature uses. Suga noted that the current paper describes their success with the process in vitro, a method that produces minute amounts of the aminoacyl-tRNA. However, in the near future, the researchers expect to have an in vivo method, using recombinant methods, capable of producing infinite amounts. The work was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Contact: Ellen Goldbaum, goldbaum@buffalo.edu Phone: 716-645-5000 ext 1415 Fax: 716-645-3765 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01k.html. _____________________________________________________________________ PLUMBING THE SPACE STATION By Patrick L. Barry From NASA Science News 3 April 2001 Here on Earth, household plumbing is something most of us take for granted. Turn the faucet and water comes rushing out. Flush the toilet and water disappears. What could be more routine? But have you ever stopped to wonder about plumbing in space? For example, which way does water flow in a weightless environment? Can toilets flush in free-fall? And if something springs a leak in Earth-orbit, which plumber would you call? There are plenty of choices, but they're all at least 235 miles (378 km) away racing by at 17,000 mph (7.5 km/s). Designers of the International Space Station (ISS) had to contend with all these questions and many more as they laid out a complex network of tubes, pipes and ducts between the Station's outer skin and its inner walls. Like veins and arteries in the human body, the Station's plumbing circulates vital liquids and gases that keep the crew and the ISS itself in good health. Most of the time the ISS--and its plumbing--operates as a "ship in a bottle", cut off from the outside world. Between Shuttle visits, the Station runs on a fixed amount of air and water. Efficient, leak- free recycling of everything that flows through the pipes is essential. "This is kind of an ecologist's dream house," said Dave Williams, system manager for Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "If you built a house this way you would be reclaiming as much water as possible." For example, while a house on Earth can simply drain its wastewater to lines leading to a municipal treatment plant, the ISS must carry its own miniature water treatment plant onboard. This equipment must achieve a higher level of cleanliness than its earthly counterparts for several reasons. Unlike most municipal systems, the ISS system recycles the urine of both the crew and the laboratory animals and returns it to the drinking water supply--and the health of the crew is of particular concern in space. Like plumbers, there are few doctors nearby! Microbes are a danger even to the Station itself, as exemplified by the problems on Mir with fungal growth. Keeping microbe levels in the water supply to an absolute minimum is an important part of ensuring the longevity of the Station. Operating "in a bottle" also complicates the plumbing of the Station because the crew can't simply open a window to get some fresh air. Tubes carry pressurized oxygen and nitrogen from the Shuttle to storage tanks on the ISS. Ducts move cabin air from all parts of the Station to the carbon dioxide scrubbers and back, ensuring that the dangerous gas doesn't build up in any forgotten corner. To be certain cabin air is safe, a mass spectrometer routinely analyzes the gas content of the air. Another network of tubes draws air samples from many different spots around the Station and feeds this air to the spectrometer, which looks at levels of oxygen, carbon dioxoide, and other gases. "So if we know, for instance, there's some crew activity in a particular location that day, we can tell the computer to sample more frequently there," Williams said. The oxygen tanks--in addition to providing a backup supply of oxygen to replenish cabin air--attach to yet another set of tubes that supply low-pressure oxygen to the modules. Receptacles in the modules allow the crew to tap into these lines with their emergency breathing apparatuses, extending the 15-minute supply built into the breathing apparatuses so that the crew can take their time handling the emergency. And this collective network of tubing and hardware, which is far more elaborate than that of the typical house, must be compact, lightweight, corrosion-resistant, leak-resistant, microbe-resistant, and highly dependable. To meet this tall order, the pipes of the Space Station are variously made from titanium, stainless steel, or Teflon wrapped in metal mesh. In comparison, household plumbing is typically made of inexpensive PVC and copper. Along with the unique demands of a "ship in a bottle," the plumbing on the ISS must operate without the assistance of gravity. When building a house on Earth, it's enough to just lay the pipe and then let gravity or the pressure of the city water supply create the flow. In the mutual free fall of Earth orbit, liquids and gases would stagnate on their own. "You have to look at the lack of gravity carefully," Williams said. "Because normally fluids would just sit there, unless you had the head pressure to force them. In a house, you can count on gravity when you flush a toilet to take that water and put it out in the sewer." To keep the fluids flowing, the ISS plumbing system includes dozens of pumps and fans that create the pressure needed to coax the liquids and gases into moving. The mutual free fall environment also places special demands on the design of bathroom and faucet fixtures. Mass- produced fixtures like those found found in a typical home won't work on the ISS. "For water faucets, it's a lot different," Williams said. "For getting a drink, we usually keep the drink in a sealed container--it kind of reminds me of a kid's juice bag or something. You hook the bag up to the dispenser and you select how much you want and hit the button. It dispenses that fixed amount of water and then it will stop. You can't just turn on the faucet and let it go." The lavatory on the ISS looks markedly different than a bathroom here on the ground. A conventional toilet would not function at all without gravity. The ISS uses specialized equipment to meet these bodily needs. "We have to have active components to help remove the feces and urine away from the astronaut," Williams said. The two machines that separately handle these two body functions both use airflow created by suction to facilitate waste removal. With a little practice, no doubt, it seems just like home. And that's the goal of the most far-out plumbing in the solar system--to work so well that the crew takes it for granted. After all, building a new home in space is a full time job and nobody up there wants to waste time calling the plumber. For more information on this story, see http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast03apr_2.htm?list52260. _____________________________________________________________________ EXOPLANETS: THE HUNT CONTINUES! European Southern Observatory release 07/01 4 April 2001 Summary The intensive and exciting hunt for planets around other stars ("exoplanets") is continuing with great success in both hemispheres. Today, an international team of astronomers from the Geneva Observatory and other research institutes [1] is announcing the discovery of no less than eleven new, planetary companions to solar- type stars, HD 8574, HD 28185, HD 50554, HD 74156, HD 80606, HD 82943, HD 106252, HD 141937, HD 178911B, HD 141937, among which two new multi-planet systems. The masses of these new objects range from slightly less than to about 10 times the mass of the planet Jupiter [2]. The new detections are based on measured velocity changes of the stars [3], performed with the CORALIE spectrometer on the Swiss 1.2-m Leonard Euler telescope at the ESO La Silla Observatory, as well as with instruments on telescopes at the Haute-Provence Observatory and on the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea (Hawaii, USA). Some of the new planets are unusual: * a two-planet system (around the star HD 82943) in which one orbital period is nearly exactly twice as long as the other--cases like this (referred to as "orbital resonance") are well known in our own solar system; * another two-planet system (HD 74156), with a Jupiter-like planet and a more massive planet further out; * a planet with the most elongated orbit detected so far (HD 80606), moving between 5 and 127 million kilometers from the central star; * a giant planet moving in an orbit around its Sun-like central star that is very similar to the one of the Earth and whose potential satellites (in theory, at least) might be "habitable". At this moment, there are 63 know exoplanet candidates with minimum masses below 10 Jupiter masses, and 67 known objects with minimum masses below 17 Jupiter masses. The present team of astronomers has detected about half of these. A major international effort The discovery of eleven new exoplanets has resulted from three high- precision radial-velocity surveys now searching for such objects: * The CORALIE planet-search program on La Silla [4], conducted by astronomers of the Geneva Observatory [1]. * The ELODIE high-precision radial-velocity survey of solar-type stars at the Haute-Provence Observatory (OHP/France) conducted by a Swiss-French team, including the Geneva, Grenoble and Haute-Provence Observatories [1]. * The G-dwarf project, an ELODIE-HIRES/Keck planet-search program set up by a team of astronomers from the Geneva Observatory, the Center for Astrophysics (Cambridge, MA, USA) and the Tel Aviv University (Israel) [1]. The new results are the outcome of high-precision radial-velocity measurements. This fundamental observational method is based on the detection of changes in the velocity of the central star, due to the changing direction of the gravitational pull from an (unseen) exoplanet as it orbits the star. The evaluation of the measured velocity variations allows deduction of the planet's orbit, in particular the period and the distance from the star, as well as a minimum mass [3]. Four of the new planets were detected from La Silla and three ELODIE candidates were secured with CORALIE measurements. With the eleven new discoveries, the CORALIE/ELODIE programs have contributed to the detection of about half (32) of the known (63) planetary candidates with minimum masses below 10 Jupiter masses, or 36 out of 67 known objects with minimum masses below 17 Jupiter masses [2]. Several unusual systems Among the present detections, there are two new planetary systems (HD 82943 and HD 74156), each with two planets. They bring to six the number of known multi-planet systems, four of which owe their detection to CORALIE/ELODIE measurements. This demonstrates the outstanding role that comparatively small telescopes can still play in modern astrophysics. Detailed information about all of the new planets are available on the dedicated web page at the Geneva Observatory web site at http://obswww.unige.ch/~udry/planet/new_planet.html. Of the systems discovered at La Silla, two are quite unusual: HD 82943: a "resonant" system The detection of the outer planet that orbits the star HD 82943 was announced earlier (ESO Press Release 13/00), together with seven CORALIE planet candidates at other stars. The follow-up observations at La Silla soon revealed a departure from the previously determined orbit. The accumulated measurements (PR Photo 13a/01) now allow the detection of a second, inner planet in this system. Its orbital period (221 days) is about half of that of the outer one (444 days). Future observations should confirm the 1:2 ratio between the periods; this indicates a "resonance" that may result from the gravitational interaction between the two planets. Similar orbital resonances are known in the solar system, especially in case of the minor planets (asteroids). HD 28185: a giant planet in the "habitable" zone With the exception of the planet iota Hor b (cf. ESO PR 12/99), circular orbits among exoplanets have only been found for short- period systems, contrary to what is the case for the giant planets in our own Solar System. However, the orbit of the newly found planet near the sun-like star HD 28185 is very nearly circular and with a period of 385 days (close to 1 Earth year), its distance from the star, 150.6 million km, is almost equal to the distance betwen the Sun and the Earth (149.6 million km). This new planet is therefore located in the "habitable zone" where temperatures like those on the Earth are possible. Still, it is a giant, gaseous planet (with a minimum mass of 3.5 times that of Jupiter, or about 1000 times that of the Earth) and thus an unlikely place for the development of life. Nevertheless, it may be orbited by one or more moons on which a more bio-friendly environment has evolved. The presence of natural satellites ("moons") around giant extra-solar planets is not a far- fetched idea, just look at our own Solar System. HD 80606: a giant planet in an extremely elongated orbit A planet in an extremely elongated orbit around the star HD 80606 was found in the frame of the ELODIE/Keck collaboration. The measured, very large eccentricity (e = 0.93; PR Photo 13b/01) implies of factor of no less than 26 between the smallest and largest distance to the star. When the planet is closest to the star, it is only a few stellar radii away (about 5 million kilometers). Continuation of the program Further progress within the current program is expected soon, when the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Paranal becomes available, cf. ESO PR 06/01. This new instrument will have the observational capability of very high-accuracy positional measurements (astrometry) and thus be able to detect even very small wobbles of stellar positions in the sky that are due to the pull of orbiting planets. This will provide a crucial contribution to the determination of the true repartition of exoplanetary masses, a hotly debated question. Important advancement in our understanding of the formation of planetary systems is also expected with the advent of HARPS. This new high-resolution spectrograph, capable of reaching the extremely high radial-velocity precision of 1 m/sec, will be installed on the ESO 3.6-m telescope at La Silla at the end of 2002. HARPS will extend the domain of planets accessible with the radial-velocity technique towards significantly lower masses--down to about ten Earth masses on short-period orbits. It will also greatly improve our capability of detecting planets with longer periods and multi-planet systems. More information More information on these discoveries may be found in a Press Release from the Tel Aviv University and on the Geneva planet-search web page. Notes [1] The team consists of: Geneva Observatory (Switzerland): Michel Mayor, Dominique Naef, Francesco Pepe, Didier Queloz, Nuno C. Santos, Stephane Udry, Michel Burnet; Grenoble Observatory (France): Christian Perrier, Jean-Luc Beuzit; Haute-Provence Observatory (France): Jean-Pierre Sivan; Center for Astrophysics (Cambridge, MA, USA): David Latham, Guillermo Torres; Tel Aviv University (Israel): Tsevi Mazeh, Shay Zucker, G. Drukier. [2] The mass units for the exoplanets used in this text are 1 Jupiter mass = 318 Earth masses. [3] A fundamental limitation of the radial-velocity method, currently used by all planet-hunting research teams, is that because of the uncertainty of the inclination of the planetary orbit, it only allows to determine a lower mass limit for the planet. However, statistical considerations indicate that in most cases, the true mass will not be much higher than this value. [4] Earlier accounts of this research program have been published as ESO Press Release 18/98 and ESO Press Release 13/00. Views of the 1.2-m Leonard Euler telescope and its dome at La Silla are available as PR Photos 13a-c/00. Contacts Michel Mayor Geneva Observatory Sauverny, Switzerland Phone: +41-22-7552611 E-mail: michel.mayor@obs.unige.ch Stephane Udry Geneva Observatory Sauverny, Switzerland Phone: +41-22-7552611 E-mail: stephane.udry@obs.unige.ch Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1261000/1261872.stm http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/04/05/new.planets/index.html http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/new_planets_010405.ht ml http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0104/07exoplanets/ _____________________________________________________________________ MARTIAN HOMES By Ian Sample From New Scientist, http://www.newscientist.com 4 April 2001 IF astronauts ever make it to Mars, they'll need a roof over their heads. Bricks are too heavy to lug all the way from Earth, but with just a few bucket-loads of polyethylene powder, they could rustle them up when they get there. "In a couple of decades or so, humans may be going to Mars," says Richard Kiefer of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. "But you're likely to be there for a long time, so you're going to need a habitat." Because Mars has a very thin atmosphere and no magnetic field, astronauts would be exposed to cosmic radiation. "On Earth, the magnetic field and the atmosphere protect us on the surface from cosmic radiation," says Kiefer. Buildings on Mars would have to shield you from these. It's unlikely astronauts will have enough room on their spacecraft for the right materials to keep out high- energy particles. So Kiefer and some NASA researchers decided to try to take advantage of the local soils. "The idea is to see if we can use Martian topsoil mixed with polymer powder to make bricks," he says. With no suitable equivalent to Martian topsoil, Kiefer tried the next best thing: some simulated lunar topsoil sold off-the-shelf by the University of Minnesota. "It has very similar characteristics," he says. He mixed it with polyethylene powder and heated the mixture to 110°C for half an hour at a pressure of 100 pounds per square inch (690 kilopascals). The finished bricks were "good quality", as long as they weren't more than 93 per cent topsoil, says Kiefer. "Shielding against radiation is a tricky business because you can actually make matters worse by interposing materials," says Roger Emory of the Space Science and Technology Department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford. That's because incoming radiation can break down the nuclei of the atoms in the shield, producing more harmful particles. But Kiefer says polyethylene bricks will minimize this risk. "Polyethylene has more hydrogen than any other polymer, and hydrogen is good because it can't break apart like this," he says. Kiefer is now checking the shielding properties of his bricks by firing high-energy particles at them at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Contact: Claire Bowles, claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk, 44-207-331-2751 New Scientist issue: 7th April 2001 _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ATTACKS? PROTECTING EARTH FROM OFF-WORLD INFECTIONS By Leonard David From Space.com 4 April 2001 Ebola outbreaks. Mad cow disease. Now the huge effort to contain the highly contagious foot-and-mouth plague sweeping across England, infecting cattle, sheep and other cloven-hoofed animals. These are a few of the biological battlegrounds here on Earth. But they also offer insight into future projects designed to bring to Earth samples from Mars, asteroids and comets. NASA has had a long-standing effort underway in planetary protection. Not only is there an effort to make sure Earth biology isn't clinging aboard spacecraft bound for such places as Mars. The space agency is also looking into ways to assure extraterrestrial samples don't introduce any virulent and deadly alien life into our planet's biosphere. That is called "back contamination," so frightfully detailed in the book and subsequent movie thriller, The Andromeda Strain, in which microbial misfits from space spark a biological crisis. NASA scientists are hoping that a robotic Mars return-sample mission may be lofted in 2011. A large soup can-sized helping of prime Martian soil and rock would be snagged and sent back to Earth. The canister's contents would then undergo detailed lab work. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/mars_contamination_0104 04.html. _____________________________________________________________________ HITCHHIKING MOLECULES COULD HAVE SURVIVED FIERY COMET COLLISIONS WITH EARTH, UC BERKELEY EXPERIMENT SHOWS By Robert Sanders University of California, Berkeley release 5 April 2001 Simulating a high-velocity comet collision with Earth, a team of scientists has shown that organic molecules hitchhiking aboard a comet could have survived such an impact and seeded life on this planet. The results give credence to the theory that the raw materials for life came from space and were assembled on Earth into the ancestors of proteins and DNA. "Our results suggest that the notion of organic compounds coming from outer space can't be ruled out because of the severity of the impact event," said research geologist Jennifer G. Blank of the Department of Earth and Planetary Science in the College of Letters & Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Blank and her colleagues Randy Winans and Mike Ahrens of the Chemistry Division of Argonne National Laboratory, and engineer- mathematician Gregory Miller of the Applied Numerical Algorithms Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will report their preliminary findings on April 5 at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego, CA. The talk is part of an April 4-5 session on extraterrestrial organic chemistry organized by Blank and colleague Max P. Bernstein, a chemist in the Astrochemistry Laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center in California. Blank's team shot a soda-can sized bullet into a nickel-sized metal target containing a teardrop of water mixed with amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. More than seventy varieties of amino acids have been found in meteorites--many the suspected cores of comets that smashed to earth--and are presumed to exist in interstellar dust clouds. Not only did a good fraction of the amino acids survive the simulated comet collision, but many polymerized into chains of two, three and four amino acids, so-called peptides. Peptides with longer chains are called polypeptides, while even longer ones are called proteins. "The neat thing is that we got every possible combination of dipeptide, many tripeptides and some tetrapeptides," said Blank, a geochemist. "We saw variations in the ratios of peptides produced depending on the conditions of temperature, pressure and duration of the impact. This is the beginning of a new field of science." Freezing the target to mimic an icy comet increased the survival rate of amino acids, she added. The ballistic test was designed to simulate the type of impact that would have been frequent in Earth's early history, some four billion years ago, when rocky, icy debris in our solar system accreted to form the planets in what must have been spectacular collisions. Much of the debris would have resembled comets--dirty snowballs thought to be mostly slushy water surrounding a rocky core--slamming into Earth at velocities greater than 16 miles per second (25 km/sec). The severity of the laboratory impact was akin to an oblique collision with the rocky surface of the Earth--a comet coming in at an angle of less than 25 degrees from the horizon, rather than head on perpendicular to the Earth's surface. "At very low angles, we think that some water ice from the comet would remain intact as a liquid puddle concentrated with organic molecules," ideal for the development of life, Blank said. "This impact scenario provides the three ingredients believed necessary for life: liquid water, organic material and energy." Benton C. Clark, chief scientist of Flight Systems at Lockheed Martin Astronautics, proposed in 1988 that if comets are slowed sufficiently, for example by drag from the Earth's atmosphere, some water and organic compounds might survive the collision. They would collect in what he called a "comet pond" of concentrated organic material where life could develop. Though comet hunter Eugene Shoemaker estimated that in Earth's early history only a few percent of comets or asteroids arrived at low enough angles, the bombardment would have been heavy enough to deliver a significant amount of intact organic material and water, according to Blank's estimates. The best known theory of the origin of life on Earth is that it derived from complex molecules such as amino acids and sugars produced early in the planet's history by electrical discharges in an atmosphere replete with gases such as methane, hydrogen, ammonia and water. The famous Miller-Urey experiment in 1953, conducted by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago, demonstrated that a lightening-like discharge in a test tube filled with these molecules could produce amino acids. Other scientists, however, have proposed that the building blocks of life arrived from space. Astronomers have detected many kinds of organic molecules in space, floating in clouds of gas or bound up in dust particles. They range from the simplest--water, ammonia, methane, hydrogen cyanide and alcohols, including ethyl alcohol--to more complex molecules, including chains of up to eight carbon atoms. Interestingly, of the more than 70 amino acids found in meteorites, only eight of them overlap with the group of 20 which occur commonly as structural components of proteins found in humans and all other life on Earth. To test whether water and organic compounds could survive the high pressures and high temperatures of a collision, Blank and her colleagues worked for three years to design a steel capsule that would not rupture when hit with a mile-per-second (1.6 kilometer-per- second) bullet fired from an 80-mm bore cannon at the University of Chicago and later at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The target she and her team developed--a two-centimeter diameter stainless steel disk about a half-centimeter thick--was able to withstand about 200,000 times atmospheric pressure without bursting. They filled the small cavity with water saturated with five amino acids: three from the list of 20 that comprise all proteins in humans (phenylalanine, proline and lysine) and two varieties detected in the Murchison meteorite (aminobutyric acid and nor-valine). That meteorite plummeted to the ground in 1969 in Australia and is thought to be the core of a comet. The liquid contents were analyzed afterwards at Argonne using liquid chromatography and mass spectroscopy to determine the species and concentrations of molecules present. The survival of a large fraction of the amino acids and their polymerization during the collision make the idea of an extraterrestrial origin of organic compounds a strong contender against the Miller-Urey theory, Blank said. "About one comet per year arriving in a low-angle impact would bring in the equivalent of all the organics produced in a year in an oxidizing atmosphere by the Miller-Urey electric discharge mechanism," Blank estimated. "An advantage is you get all of it together in a puddle of water rather than diluted in the oceans." The next hitchhikers she plans to subject to a shock test are bacterial spores, which some have proposed arrived on Earth via comet to jump-start evolution. The work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1262000/1262216.stm http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast05apr_1.htm?list52260 http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/comet_life_010405.h tml http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01l.html _____________________________________________________________________ MARS KEEPS TURNING UP SURPRISES From ESA Science News http://sci.esa.int 5 April 2001 It was standing room only for the "Water and life on Mars" session at the European Geophysical Society's General Assembly in Nice last week. "This shows that the life issue is by no means dead. This was a very lively session," commented Agustin Chicarro, Project Scientist for ESA's Mars Express mission. The latest results from Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), NASA's spacecraft now in orbit around the Red Planet, are revealing that Mars may not be completely dry or geologically inactive. After feeding the latest temperature and topography data into a model, Robert Haberle from NASA Ames found that, even today, conditions could occasionally permit liquid water to surface in a few regions where ancient lakes are thought to have existed. Nathalie Cabrol, from the SETI Institute at NASA Ames, looked forward to the launch of Mars Express in 2003 because the stereo and global imaging provided by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) should be the "best" so far for determining whether layers seen on the surface were deposited as sediments in paleolakes, or by volcanoes. Several of those attending also expressed their eagerness to see results from MARSIS, the ground penetrating radar that will fly on Mars Express, which is the only instrument planned for any mission capable of searching for water and ice down to a few kilometers below ground. If there's water on Mars, then there could be--or could have been-- life. Imre Friedmann from Florida State University presented the latest evidence for ancient life in the form of biogenic magnetite in a Martian meteorite. This evidence was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and widely reported by the media. However, meteorite studies are no substitute for experiments on the surface of the planet, as the possibility of contamination by biological specimens on Earth can never be entirely eliminated. Beagle 2, the lander element of ESA's Mars Express mission, is the only spacecraft so far planned that will make the search for life on Mars central to its mission. Göstar Klingelhöfer from Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz, reported that the Mössbauer spectrometer on the lander would be capable of distinguishing biogenic from non-biogenic magnetite. Beagle 2's other instruments will also look for different, chemical signatures of life. Five sessions in the planetary and solar system sciences section of the Assembly were devoted to the exploration or scientific understanding of Mars. A whole morning of talks and about 20 posters were devoted to Mars Express and its scientific payload. Both the oral presentations and posters attracted large audiences. There were also talks on other missions, including France's plans to send four Netlanders to the Red Planet for seismological and climate studies. Among ideas presented for future missions were a Marskite, under preparation at ESTEC, ESA's technical center in the Netherlands, and a micromission made out of shape memory alloys and weighing only 20kg, which is under study at the DLR, Germany. "Every time we go to a more detailed scale, Mars seems to be a new place," commented Chicarro when reflecting on the outcome of the meeting. "After Mariner 6, people saw craters in the southern hemisphere and thought 'oh, the Moon again'. Mariner 9 saw the polar caps, canyons, volcanoes and wind--and Viking saw it all in more detail still. With MGS, we've had a revolution again--we now know that Mars had a magnetic field and there's evidence for huge amounts of water everywhere in the past. It used to be just geologists and geophysicists who were interested in Mars, but now we're building global models with contributions from a wide range of disciplines." Useful links for this story * Mars Express home page http://sci.esa.int/marsexpress * Europe should invest more in space science http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=1&cid=1&oid=26740 Image 1: The Beagle 2 Lander which aims to settle the question of whether life exists, or has ever existed, on the red planet. [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=9&cid=12 &oid=26749&ooid=17940] Image 2: This Martian meteorite is thought by some scientists to contain evidence of life on Mars. The rock is designated ALH84001, after the Allan Hills in Antarctica where it was found. Courtesy of NASA/JSC. [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=9&cid=12 &oid=26749&ooid=26756] _____________________________________________________________________ EUROPE GOES TO MARS--PREPARATIONS ARE WELL UNDER WAY From ESA Science News http://sci.esa.int 6 April 2001 If you live in Europe, there's almost certainly a research institute or industrial company near you that is contributing materials or expertise to Mars Express, Europe's first mission to the Red Planet. Under the umbrella of the European Space Agency, at least 25 companies from 15 European countries are building hardware or software for the spacecraft, or otherwise contributing their expertise; and more than 200 scientists from research institutes in all ESA member states and beyond are contributing towards the scientific payload. "The Mars Express project is providing about 1000 jobs throughout Europe," estimates Rudi Schmidt, Mars Express Project Manager at ESTEC, the European Space Agency's technical center in the Netherlands. Preparations are well under way and on schedule for a May/June 2003 launch sending the spacecraft on its six-month voyage. The structure is taking shape under the guidance of the prime contractor Astrium, Toulouse (France), and the scientific teams are on target with scientific instrument development. Water and life ESA's Mars Express mission consists of an orbiter, carrying seven scientific experiments, and a lander element, Beagle 2. The two vehicles will play key roles in an international Mars exploration program spanning the next two decades. The instruments on board the orbiter will provide remote sensing of the atmosphere, the surface and up to 5 km below the surface, to a degree of accuracy never before achieved. The information gleaned will help answer many questions outstanding about Mars. One concerns the fate of water that once flowed freely on the planet's surface; another is whether life ever evolved on Mars. Beagle 2 will be the first lander since NASA's two Viking probes in the 1970s to look specifically for evidence of past or present life on Mars. No other Mars probe planned so far is making exobiology so central to its mission. When the spacecraft arrive at the Red Planet around Christmas 2003, the Mars Express orbiter will jettison Beagle 2 and then move into a near-polar orbit from which it will observe the whole planet over the next Martian year (equivalent to two Earth years). The lander will make its own way to a carefully selected site on Isidis Planitia, a plain just north of the equator near where the ancient, cratered southern highlands meet the younger, smooth northern lowlands. Beagle 2 will complete its mission in about six months. The Mars Express orbiter instruments will: * Image the entire surface at high resolution (10 m/pixel) and selected areas at super resolution (2 m/pixel) (HRSCinstrument) * Produce a map of the mineral composition of the surface at 100 m resolution (OMEGA instrument) * Map the composition of the atmosphere and determine its global circulation (PFS instrument) * Determine the structure of the sub-surface to a depth of a few kilometers (MARSIS instrument) * Determine the water vapor and ozone in the atmosphere (SPICAM instrument) * Determine the interaction of the atmosphere with the solar wind (ASPERA instrument and MaRS experiment) The Beagle 2 lander will: * Determine the geology and the mineral and chemical composition of the landing site * Search for life signatures (exobiology) * Study the weather and climate Mars Express will provide unique investigations that will contribute to an understanding of many of the unknowns about Mars. Here are a few: * If Mars really was warm and wet during its early history, where did the water go? Some may have been lost to space and some may be buried underground. ASPERA will measure water loss to space and MARSIS is the only instrument planned for any mission with the capability of looking for water or ice down to a depth of a few kilometers. The presence of underground water would have a considerable impact on the prospects for future manned missions to the planet. * If there was water could there have been, or still be, life? Beagle 2 will scoop up soil and rock samples and analyze them there and then for some of the key chemical signatures of life. The results will be far more telling than anything yet found in Martian meteorites on Earth, as the chances of contamination by biological specimens from Earth will be virtually eliminated. * What is the surface of Mars made of and what can the composition tell us about the history of the planet, in particular about the history of water there? OMEGA will map surface mineral composition more accurately than ever before. In particular, it will look for carbonates, which no previous mission has found, but which should be present if water was once abundant on Mars. * The thin Martian atmosphere is thought to be very oxidizing--it turns the plentiful iron in the surface rocks and dust into rust, hence the planet's red color. SPICAM will help to determine precisely how the atmosphere has this effect. Such understanding will ultimately have implications for designing space suits and life support system for visiting astronauts! * Was there an ancient ocean over the northern plains of Mars? The evidence revealed by previous missions has been ambiguous. The HRSC's contiguous 3D imaging in full color has the best chance yet of revealing an ancient shoreline, if one exists. Over the next few months, the European Space Agency in collaboration with national organizations will be holding press conferences about Mars Express at different locations across Europe. Further information will follow as soon as it is available. In the meantime, background information and regular updates on the progress of the project are available on the Mars Express web site. For further information please contact: ESA Communication Department Media Relations Office Phone: +33(0)1.53.69.7155 Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690 Rudolf Schmidt, ESA Mars Express Project Manager ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Phone: +31 71 565 3603 Email: Rudolf.Schmidt@esa.int Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Express Project Scientist ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Phone: +31 71 565 3613 Email: Agustin.Chicarro@esa.int PR contact in Astrium (Mars Express Prime Contractor): Mathias Pikelj, Head of Press and Information Phone: + 49 75 4589123 Fax: +49 75 4585589 E-mail: mathias.pikelj@astrium-space.com Useful links for this story * Mars Express home page http://sci.esa.int/marsexpress * Mars Express Instruments and Principle Investigators http://spdext.estec.esa.nl/content/doc/79/26745_.htm * Europe goes to Mars--preparations are well under way http://subs.esa.int:8330/pressows/documents/news/1/2001/press16.html Image captions Image 1: Mars Express in orbit around Mars. [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=1&cid=1& oid=26725&ooid=26723] Image 2: Industrial partners in the Mars Express mission. [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=1&cid=1& oid=26725&ooid=26724] Image 3: The Mars Express orbiter on top of the Soyuz launcher upper stage (Fregat). [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=1&cid=1& oid=26725&ooid=17930] Image 4: Beagle 2 Lander--an artist's impression. [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=1&cid=1& oid=26725&ooid=17940] Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-01a.html _____________________________________________________________________ SEARCH FOR WATER ON MARS GOES ON From SpaceDaily 6 April 2001 Scientists will continue their search for evidence of water on Mars, as evidence emerges both in favor of and against the theory that water and therefore possibly life has existed there. Dubbed the "red planet" because of the ferrous oxides that tint its rocky terrain, Mars is half the size of Earth and some 460 million kilometers (286 million miles) away from the only planet where known life forms exist. Saturday's launch of the 2001 Mars Odyssey, a 400 million-dollar effort to recover from recent failed NASA missions, will send the craft into orbit to seek out water--the basis for known life forms-- by analysis of the planet's crust and atmosphere. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010406133404.yb30ugde.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NASA'S 2001 MARS ODYSSEY SPACECRAFT IS ON ITS WAY JPL release 7 April 2001 NASA's return to Mars began at 11:02 AM eastern time this morning as the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft roared into space onboard a Delta II launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. About 53 minutes later, at 11:55 AM Eastern time, flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory received the first signal from the spacecraft through the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia indicating that all is well aboard the orbiter. "I've never seen a more spectacular launch," said David Spencer, Odyssey's mission manager at JPL in Pasadena, CA. "The spacecraft seems to be performing beautifully, and we're right on our timeline. This gives us a terrific start on our odyssey to Mars." NASA's latest explorer carries three scientific instruments designed to tell us what the Martian surface is made of and about its radiation environment: a thermal-emission imaging system, a gamma ray spectrometer and a Martian radiation environment experiment. During its cruise to Mars over the next six months, the spacecraft will turn on and calibrate the instruments. The spacecraft will also fire its thrusters in five small maneuvers designed to fine-tune its flight path to Mars. Odyssey will arrive at Mars on October 24, when it will fire its main engine and be captured into Mars' orbit. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Principal investigators at Arizona State University in Tempe, the University of Arizona in Tuscon, and NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, will operate the science instruments. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations will be conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Contact: Mary Hardin, 818-354-0344 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/missions/mars_odyssey_sr.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/odyssey/010407launch.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010406133440.2lt8wb65.html _____________________________________________________________________ MAN IN SPACE: "THE GREATEST EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD" From SpaceDaily 7 April 2001 Forty years on, Yury Gagarin's leap into space remains a feat of breath-catching significance, marking the moment when for the first time man cast off the shackles of gravity and set out for the stars. And for millions of Russians, as they contemplate the sharp decline in their country's standing and the recent loss of their "embassy in space", the space platform Mir, it is a source of pride, a reminder of a time when they could still cock a snook at the United States. Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961, a single orbit of the earth lasting just under two hours, made the carpenter's son, raised on a collective farm, a household name from Spitzbergen to Tierra del Fuego, from the Andes to the Gobi desert. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010407022221.l3jqoj70.html. _____________________________________________________________________ 40 YEARS AFTER GAGARIN, SPACE REMAINS THE FINAL FRONTIER From SpaceDaily 7 April 2001 Forty years ago, Man took his first tentative step into space, setting out on a venture that has inspired innumerable dreams but also a daunting awareness of his own limitations. The anniversary of Yury Gagarin's historic flight on April 12, 1961 will be the moment for celebration of that pioneering era and the brave men who designed, built and flew the first primitive spaceships. But it may also be a time for some frank stock-taking about manned space flight rather than self-congratulation. For many scientists, the most brutal reflection is not how far we have come since then, but how little. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/010407013005.kvns1a0k.html. _____________________________________________________________________ ASTROBIOLOGY, A NEW MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, DEDICATES PREMIER ISSUE TO GERALD SOFFEN Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. release 7 April 2001 The premier issue of Astrobiology, an innovative multidisciplinary peer-reviewed journal that deals with fundamental questions about life's origin, evolution, distribution, and destiny in the universe, has been launched by publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Editor in chief of the new journal is Sherry L. Cady, Ph.D., of the Department of Geology of Portland State University, Portland, OR. It is published both in print and online. "Astrobiology provides a forum for investigators around the world to disseminate original research papers and reviews and to share their findings," said Dr. Cady, who heads the Geomicrobiology Electron Microscopy Laboratory at Portland State. "Scientists are intrigued by the questions posed by astrobiology and its implications for addressing complex environmental and health concerns of this new millennium. Advances in biomedical research, biotechnology, genomics, and bioinformatics will make contributions to this field." Volume 1, Number 1 of Astrobiology is dedicated to one of the founding fathers of astrobiology, the late Gerald A. Soffen (1926- 2000), National Aeronautics & Space Administration project scientist for the Viking missions that landed on Mars in 1976 and a guiding light in the creation of the new NASA Astrobiology Institute, a virtual organization designed to meld interdisciplinary research at various institutions via the internet. A tribute to Dr. Soffen by Michael A. Meyer entitled "A Lasting Legacy" and a remembrance by H. P. Klein are featured in the issue. "Astrobiology in its broadest sense is developing as an area of distinct academic endeavor," said Mary Ann Liebert in announcing the new publication. "This quarterly journal, which will be published both in print and online, will play an important role in the growth of this fascinating field." The journal's international editorial board includes 75 noted scientists from 16 countries whose expertise covers the fields of meteoritics, cosmochemistry, gravitational biology, planetary geology and habitability, exobiology, microbial paleobiology, ecogeology, origins of life, bioastronomy, life detection and space exploration technology, microbial ecology, genomics, computational biology, and proteomics, among others. The first issue includes a focus paper on the NASA astrobiology program, plus six research papers on topics ranging from a new approach to life detection on other planets to the geology and habitability of Mars, as follows: "A Non-Earthcentric Approach to Life Detection," "Cave Biosignature Suites: Microbes, Minerals, and Mars," "Microbial Influences on Local Carbon Isotopic Ratios and Their Preservation in Carbonate," "Location and Sampling of Aqueous and Hydrothermal Deposits in Martian Impact Craters," "The Physics, Biology, and Environmental Ethics of Making Mars Habitable," and "Importance of a Martian Hematite Site for Astrobiology." For a complete table of contents and authors, a listing of editorial board members, and subscription information, visit www.liebertpub.com/ast. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishes authoritative peer-reviewed journals in the most promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Cloning and High Altitude Medicine and Biology. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's publications is available at www.liebertpub.com. Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., Two Madison Avenue, Larchmont, NY 10538, (914) 834-3100. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 9 April 2001 Articles about astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html L. David, 2001. Mars attacks? Protecting Earth from off-world infections. Space.com. Articles about human space exploration and the microgravity environment http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html P. L. Barry, 2001. Plumbing the space station. NASA Science News. SpaceDaily, 2001. 40 years after Gagarin, space remains the final frontier. SpaceDaily. SpaceDaily, 2001. Man in space: "the greatest event in the history of the world". SpaceDaily. Articles about primordial evolution and prebiotic chemistry http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html NASA Science News, 2001. Was Johnny Appleseed a Comet? NASA Science News. R. Sanders, 2001. Hitchhiking molecules on comets can survive impacts with Earth. SpaceDaily. Space.com, 2001. Life molecules tough enough to survive comet impact on Earth. Space.com. SpaceDaily, 2001. In vitro evolution of pre-biological catalyst supports "RNA world" theory. SpaceDaily. SpaceDaily, 2001. Understanding life's impact. SpaceDaily. D. Whitehouse, 2001. Comets could have seeded life on Earth. BBC News. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS JPL release 29 March - 4 April 2001 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, April 3. 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/. Recent spacecraft activities included a Command & Data Subsystem (CDS) automatic repair of both Solid State Recorders (SSRs), a Reaction Wheel Assembly (RWA) unload, and a High Water-Mark clear. Instrument activities included Spica observations and an Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) dustband observation with Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) monitoring, successful normalization of instrument flight software, an ISS Instrument Expanded Block (IEB) load and dark frames activity, restart of the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) actuator sweep, a Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) HFR calibration, and start of the RPWS Periodic Instrument Maintenance. Commands were sent to increase the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) multiplier voltage to 3100 volts to better observe the effects on output science data. This was followed by a CDA CPU reset, release and instrument power off. Later in the week CDA was temporarily powered on and a diagnostics mini-sequence successfully run. The Cassini RADAR was powered on for 23.5 hours of data collection, the most aggressive set of radiometric observations to date. Flight software (FSW) was loaded to the RADAR system from the SSR, data were then collected during raster scans of five microwave sources that are scattered widely over the celestial sphere, as well as Jupiter and the Sun. Jupiter and the sources were observed using two orthogonal polarizations, accomplished by rolling the spacecraft 90 degrees, with 2 raster scans per polarization. Total data volume was roughly 500 Mbits. Included as part of this test was execution of a simulated Titan flyby by using all RADAR instrument modes. The Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) team performed another series of tests and a boresight calibration to further prepare for the Gravity Wave Experiment (GWE) test to be performed in May. This week's test objective was to characterize the Ka-band Translator behavior. The next opportunity for testing will be next week when an Operational Interface Test/Mission Verification Test (OIT/MVT) will be performed over a three-day period. A Simulation Coordination meeting and a Preliminary Sequence Change Request Approval meeting were held in support of the Cruise 26 development process. A Project briefing for the Cruise 27 sequence was held this week where an integrated plan was presented and approved. Detailed implementation of the plan will now begin. Several science working groups met this week. The Atmosphere Working Group (AWG) continued development of an overall discipline strategy for the Tour, the Rings Working Group (RWG) worked to identify the key Tour segments and priorities in support of the Cross-Discipline Workshop coming later this month, and the Surfaces Working Group (SWG) began identification and prioritization of the non-targeted satellite opportunities throughout the Saturn Tour. Two DCMs were held this week. One was for CIMS version 1.1, which provides streamlined access through the Cassini consolidated web server, enhanced security, additional output capability for teams' APGEN requests, and provides the science planning team with enhanced capability to manage the data for sequences under development. The other DCM was held for MSS Version D7.5 software. This version provides an update to SEG in support of the GWE and has now been installed on all appropriate workstations. The Spacecraft Office has reviewed, approved and released for distribution Revision D of 699-CAS-3-271 The Cassini Functional Requirement Book--Spacecraft Intercommunications. Navigation Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) personnel have published an article on the recent NAIF-sponsored Spacecraft, Planet, Instruments, C-matrix, and Events kernels (SPICE) conference. Cassini Team members both attended and presented at this event. The article entitled "SPICE Workshop Brings Enthusiastic Users and Developers Together," is due out in the April 2001 edition of the Science Information Systems Newsletter (SISN), and will be available at http://www-sisn.jpl.nasa.gov/issue59/article_spicews.html. 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. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS REPORTS NASA/JSC releases 4 April 2001 The resident crew of the International Space Station--Commander Yury Usachev and Flight Engineers Jim Voss and Susan Helms--spent the last week conducting experiments and performing routine housekeeping chores and some maintenance work. The activation of the station's Ku-Band antenna remains on hold until a software update is uplinked to the station's computers Thursday. This command is designed to correct an apparent pointing error with the dish-shaped antenna. The Ku-Band system is used to transmit television, voice and high-speed data to the ground. Normal communication is being managed through the S-Band audio system. Any required TV images, in the meantime, can be accommodated through the use of the laptop computer-based digital video system. Also, the crew changed out components of the carbon dioxide removal assembly system in the Destiny Laboratory in an effort to recover its use. Troubleshooting work continues as engineers evaluate what appears to be a sluggish vent valve on the unit. The Zvezda module's CO2 removal system is working fine and providing more than adequate capability to cleanse the cabin air in the meantime. Oxygen for the crew currently is being provided by supply tanks in the Progress supply vehicle, which boosted the cabin air yesterday. Without the Progress, the Russian Elektron in Zvezda provides oxygen generation. Not presently needed, the Elektron is turned off. Apart from maintenance tasks and routine housekeeping chores, the crew has been working with experiments on board. The Human Research Facility rack in Destiny is managed and operated by a science and operations team from the Telescience Support Center down the hall from the station's flight control room in Mission Control, Houston. All payloads on the station are overseen from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama where the Payloads Operations Center is located. For details on the science investigations ongoing aboard the ISS, visit http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/2001/01-105.html. The Progress supply craft currently docked to the aft end of the Zvezda module is scheduled to be undocked around April 15 in preparation for the arrival of the next shuttle flight carrying the station's Canadian-built robot arm and a second Italian Space Agency supplied logistics module called Raffaello. The open port allows for the relocation of the Soyuz capsule around April 17, which will provide clearance for the placement of Raffaello during the docked phase of the shuttle mission. The Flight Readiness Review to evaluate the readiness of Endeavour, its crew and the station for the shuttle's launch on the STS-100 mission will be held Thursday to select a target launch date, which currently is around April 19. Earlier today, a small test firing of the Progress supply ship's thrusters was performed to verify command capability of the steering jets via the Zvezda module's computers. The brief engine burn resulted in a change in the velocity of the Station of only one meter per second. It was the first time the Progress thrusters were commanded from the ground through the Zvezda module's computers. The test sets the stage for another Progress engine firing early next week designed to refine the orbit of the station relative to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in preparation for the arrival of a new Soyuz capsule to replace the one presently docked to the station. Soyuz capsules routinely are changed about every 180 days. A taxi crew, as it's called, will deliver the new capsule and return to Earth in the one launched last October carrying the station's first Expedition Crew. Late Tuesday, a handover of the station's attitude control from the electrically driven Control Moment Gyroscopes to the Zvezda module's thrusters was performed as a test to verify that the automatic switchover would occur in the event that the CMGs developed a problem. The test allowed the system to 'think' that the gyros had failed down to one operational system and the computers automatically switched to the thrusters. The test verified the system is fully operational. The International Space Station continues to orbit the Earth in good shape at an altitude of 238 statute miles (384 km). The next ISS Status Report will be issued April 11, unless developments warrant. 4 April 2001 (update) While the Expedition Two crew continues to set up their laboratory and living quarters, they also have started work on their science experiments. They began before they even transferred from the Space Shuttle to the Space Station, performing two runs with the Hoffman Reflex neurological experiment. Both of those were conducted on the middeck of Space Shuttle Discovery. The crew will perform one more test before they return at the end of the Expedition. H-Reflex measures how spinal cord reflexes are affected by space flight. Astronauts set up and activated the Bonner Ball Neutron Detector and the Dosimetric Mapping radiation-measuring experiments. Bonner Ball was activated March 23. DOSMAP was activated March 28. The crew also did the initial set-up for a third radiation experiment--Phantom Torso--which has additional components arriving on the STS 100/6A Shuttle mission to the Station. The crew performs status checks daily to make sure the instruments are working correctly. Radiation is one of the most significant hazards for human beings during long-term space missions. These experiments will measure the different types of radiation that penetrate the station and help scientists more accurately predict the crew's radiation exposure and develop countermeasures to safely prolong human exposure to radiation during space travel. On March 28, Susan Helms set up and activated the Human Research Facility laptop computer. It will be used to operate and store data from several experiments. The HRF is managed by the Johnson Space Center and is operated from the Telescience Support Center at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston. On Thursday, March 29, the crew successfully hooked up the Human Research Facility Rack. The umbilical mating provides the rack and its experiments with cooling air and water, electricity, pressurized gases and vacuum, and data and communications links. Final activation, power-up and check-out activities are planned soon. The Station's first science rack was carried to the orbiting laboratory by Space Shuttle Discovery in March. During the Station program, it will house a variety of experiments for studying the physiological, behavioral and chemical changes in human beings caused by space flight. On April 2, Jim Voss conducted the first Expedition Two photo session of the Crew Earth Observation experiment. He photographed the Parana River Basin in Paraguay, Argentina, an area experiencing rapid land use changes. Voss also transferred radiation data collected by a pair of radiation sensors called Dosimetry Telescopes to the Human Research Facility personal computer for transmission to the ground later. The crew has also been doing the Interactions experiment. This requires them to fill out a questionnaire once a week about how they feel and how they are getting along with their colleagues. After the mission, this experiment will provide scientists on the ground with "snapshots" of crew interactions during various phases of the mission. The goal of the experiment is to identify and characterize interpersonal and cultural factors that may impact crew performance in space. Ground controllers in Huntsville, AL, Houston, and Moscow also are participating in the surveys. While Expedition Two science got started, science experiments from Expedition One returned to Earth, including two experiments that gave hundreds of students an opportunity to participate in research aboard the Station. The Expedition One crew over a period of days watered containers of corn and soybean seeds. Images of the seeds will be distributed via the Internet to students to demonstrate the germination capability and growth of seeds in space. In addition to seeds, Discovery also landed with hundreds of biological crystals grown during Expedition One. Many of the solutions used to grow these crystals were prepared by more than 200 students and teachers from 89 schools in six states: Alabama, California, Florida, Michigan, Tennessee, and Texas. The program helps students learn about biological substances that carry out many important functions in humans, animals and plants. Students use the Internet to follow scientists' analysis of the space-grown crystals and compare them with crystals grown in their classroom. 6 April 2001 Flight Engineer Susan Helms conducted additional tests of a space structures experiment Thursday. Tests of the Middeck Active Control Experiment 2 begun during Expedition One are continuing with the Expedition Two crew. These tests will continue until the experiment returns to Earth along with the Expedition Two crew on the 7A.1 Space Shuttle mission planned for July. MACE studies the effects of vibrations on moving structures in space. Data from the experiment can help engineers design strong, lightweight, low-cost structures. The MACE platform is 60 inches (152 centimeters) long, including four struts and five nodes. Helms, who began MACE tests on Tuesday, used a handheld control unit to send pre-programmed commands to the computer on the MACE structure. These commands caused gimbals and reaction wheels attached to one side of the structure to vibrate. A support module detected the vibrations and attempted to damp them by activating gimbals and wheels on the other side of the platform. All data from the experiments are stored on removable hard drives for future analysis by scientists on Earth. MACE involves science teams from the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge. Also Thursday, Flight Engineer Jim Voss completed maintenance on the Bonner Ball Neutron Detector. Bonner Ball is one of three radiation- monitoring experiments on board being used to characterize the station's radiation environment and the potential effects on humans. Voss replaced a hard drive unit with a full memory with a new hard drive with fresh memory. The Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, manages all science research experiments aboard the International Space Station. The center is also home for coordination of the mission-planning work of a variety of international sources, all science payload deliveries and retrieval, and payload training and payload safety programs for the Station crew and all ground personnel. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT JPL release 4 April 2001 Launch / Days since Launch = November 7, 1996 / 1610 days Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 734 days Total Mapping Orbits = 9,272 Total Orbits = 10,955 Recent events The spacecraft continues to operate nominally in performing the beta- supplement daily recording and transmission of science data. The mm126 sequence executed successfully from 01-088 (3/29/01) through 01-090 (3/31/01). The mm127 sequence has performed well since it started on 01-091 (4/01/01). It terminates on 01-094 (4/04/01). The mm128 sequence, successfully uplinked on 01-093 (4/03/01), begins executing on 01-095 (4/05/01). MGS performed 6 Roll Only Targeted Observations since the last status report, bringing the total number of ROTOs to 46. Spacecraft health All subsystems report nominal health. Uplinks There have been 15 uplinks to the spacecraft during the past week, including new star catalogs and ephemeris files, instrument command loads, the background sequences cited above, ROTO mini-sequence mz084, and Radio Science Occultation Egress Scan mini-sequence mz085. There have been 5,228 command files radiated to the spacecraft since launch. Upcoming events The mm129 background sequence will be uplinked on 01-096 (4/06/01). ROTO mini-sequences mz086 and mz087 will be uplinked and executed this next week. Radio Science Occultation Egress Scans, contained in the mz085 mini-sequence, will take place on 01-095 (4/5/01) and 01- 096 (4/6/01). _____________________________________________________________________ THIS WEEK ON GALILEO JPL release 2-8 April 2001 There are no engineering activities scheduled this week, so the spacecraft can concentrate on playing back the data stored on the on- board tape recorder during its December flyby of Ganymede. From the Solid State Imaging (SSI) camera, three observations will be seen this week. First up will be additional views from a set of color pictures of the boundary area of Ganymede's north polar cap. This flyby of Ganymede occurred near 60 degrees North latitude, and this will complete our view of the North Polar Cap. There are no more passes by Ganymede for the remainder of the mission, so this will be our last high-resolution look at the area. Also scheduled are images taken of an equatorial region of Ganymede named Dardanus Sulcus. These pictures will help trace a strike-slip fault that cuts through this region's dark terrain. Finally, some data from color Io observations, which were lost in earlier trasmissions, will be replayed. From the Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS), data taken at moderate spatial resolution of Ganymede will be returned, as well as a global image of Ganymede obtained with the current full complement of NIMS wavelengths. This will give information about the composition of different areas of the satellite surface. Infrared observations of Io help to monitor that satellite's volcanic activity. In cooperation with the Cassini Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer instrument, NIMS observations were also made of Europa. NIMS also viewed the turbulent region of the atmosphere of Jupiter trailing the Great Red Spot, investigated hot spots in the clouds, and looked for aurorae in the south polar region of the giant planet. 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 _____________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 8, Number 14.