MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 8, Number 42, 5 November 2001. Editors: Dr. David J. Thomas, 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 monthly 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) NASA ASTRONAUT PHOTOS CONTRIBUTE TO NEW CORAL REEF ATLAS NASA/JSC release J01-94 2) NEW SPACECRAFT TO PRESERVE OUR PLANET AND THE ENVIRONMENT ESA release 62-2001 3) SURVIVAL OF THE ELITIST: BIOTERRORISM MAY SPUR SPACE COLONIES By Robert Roy Britt 4) ASTROBIOLOGISTS TO LAUNCH MISSION TO EARLY EARTH University of Rochester release 5) THE THREE DOMAINS OF LIFE By Leslie Mullen 6) MICROSOFT TO SPONSOR "SURVIVING MARS" ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL Mars Society release 7) FUNDAMENTAL SPACE BIOLOGY GROUND-BASED RESEARCH NASA research announcement NRA-01-OBPR-06 8) MULTIPLE OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROUND BASED RESEARCH IN SPACE LIFE SCIENCES NASA research announcement NRA-01-OBPR-07 9) SCIENTISTS SUCCEED AT FIRST-EVER ATTEMPT TO SEQUENCE DNA AT SEA National Science Foundation release 01-90 10) THE INVASION OF THE DEEP-SEA MICROBES By Jack Farmer and Leslie Mullen 11) GOOD VIBRATIONS: A NEW TREATMENT UNDER STUDY BY NASA-FUNDED DOCTORS COULD REVERSE BONE LOSS EXPERIENCED BY ASTRONAUTS IN SPACE By Patrick L. Barry 12) THE HUNTING OF THE HEFFALUMP By Mikhail Vainshtein 13) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 14) CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 15) THIS WEEK ON GALILEO NASA/JPL release 16) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS NASA/JSC release 17) NEW MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES By Ron Baalke 18) MARS ODYSSEY MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 19) MARS ODYSSEY'S FIRST LOOK AT MARS IS ALL TREAT, NO TRICK NASA release 01-214 20) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ NASA ASTRONAUT PHOTOS CONTRIBUTE TO NEW CORAL REEF ATLAS NASA/JSC release J01-94 22 October 2001 A newly released atlas detailing coral reefs around the world contains numerous photographs taken by NASA astronauts. These photographs provide a unique perspective on coral reef geography, coastal development and the relationship of reefs to various land habitats. "These images from space are a beautiful and important way of bringing the coral maps to life. They enable the reader to connect between the maps and the real world; to see the reefs as they are, hard up against towns and roads, forests and rivers, or lying way out in deep oceanic waters," said Dr. Mark Spalding, lead author of the atlas at the United Nations Environment Programme's World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC). The World Atlas of Coral Reefs, produced by the UNEP-WCMC, is a detailed and definitive account of the current state of our planet's coral reefs. The 428-page atlas, published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, was released September 11. Images for the atlas were selected from a database of over 400,000 Earth photographs that have been taken by NASA astronauts since the U.S. began sending humans into space. The selection and development of images for the atlas was a collaboration between the Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, the ReefBase project at the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management in Malaysia, and authors of the atlas at the UNEP-WCMC in Cambridge, England. "Astronaut photography of coral reefs is important on a variety of levels," said Dr. Julie A. Robinson, a Lockheed Martin senior scientist who coordinates coral reef projects at JSC. "Because they are photographs, they are accessible to a non-technical audience. However, they also can be used as quantitative scientific data to produce basic reef maps and to supplement other satellite data." Photographs of the Earth from orbit began with the first human missions in the 1960s and have continued to the present, including space shuttle, shuttle-Mir, and International Space Station missions. Ongoing NASA Earth photography projects are focusing on diverse topics such as changes in river deltas, urbanization, global biomass burning and the global transport of dust. "Earth imagery acquired by astronauts is making significant contributions in NASA's efforts to understand global issues," said Dr. Kamlesh Lulla, Chief Scientist for Earth Observations at JSC. "Coral reefs are just one example of Earth remote sensing information that can be collected using astronaut photography. Our database of astronaut photography is a national resource." Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse habitats in the world. They are host to an extraordinary variety of marine plants and animals. They are also one of the world's most fragile and endangered ecosystems. Coral reefs are a significant source of food and offer countless benefits to humans, including supplying compounds for pharmaceuticals. The NASA Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth can be accessed via the Web at http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/. Additional information on the World Atlas of Coral Reefs can be found on the UNEP-WCMC Web site at http://www.unep-wcmc.org/marine/coralatlas/. Contact: Catherine E. Watson Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX Phone: 281-483-5111 _____________________________________________________________________ NEW SPACECRAFT TO PRESERVE OUR PLANET AND THE ENVIRONMENT ESA release 62-2001 30 October 2001 Three hundred leading scientists in the field of climate and environmental research using Earth Observation satellites meet this week in Granada (Spain) to push forward the European Space Agency's Living Planet program aimed at advancing our understanding of the interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, and the land, to enable mankind to understand the Earth as an integrated system. It all started in 1996, when the Earth Explorers missions were set on their way, and it continued in 1999, when the first two pioneering spacecraft missions--currently under development--were selected; one addressing the Earth's Gravity field and global ocean circulation (GOCE), the other studying the global dynamic wind-field in the lower atmosphere (Aeolus-ADM). And the story goes on today as, for the second cycle, ESA has again chosen Granada as the venue for the important decision on which satellite missions will fly next. The Earth Explorers are the research driven component of ESA's Living Planet program seeking to advance the understanding of the different Earth system processes, in developing our knowledge about the Earth, preserving our planet and its environment and managing life on Earth in a more efficient way. In the long term, the program also contributes to applications such as the management of the Earth's environment and its resources as well as mitigation of natural and human-induced hazards. The Earth Explorers consist of two mission types, the Core and the Opportunity missions. Core missions are large research/demonstration missions led by ESA. Opportunity missions are small research/ demonstration missions providing the means for a more rapid response to new ideas and can either be led by ESA or by other organizations. On 30 and 31 October in Granada, the new suite of Explorer-Core Mission candidates, proposed by Europe's leading scientific experts, will be evaluated by peer review panels--building the base for a recommendation that they later be launched into orbit. Five satellite missions have been defined and proposed. Three of them, based on their scientific excellence, will be recommended to go forward for feasibility studies. Two are planned to be launched after a further selection process. The mission candidates are: ACECHEM (atmospheric Composition Explorer for CHEMistry and climate interaction). A combination of spectrometers will investigate how human-induced chemical alterations to the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and upper atmosphere (stratosphere) may go on to cause climate change. EarthCARE (Earth Clouds, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer). Instruments, including radar, lidar, imager, radiometer, and spectrometer will peer closely at the interaction between clouds, aerosol and radiation to better understand their impact on climate. This is a joint European-Japanese candidate mission. SPECTRA (Surface Processes and Ecosystem Changes Through Response Analysis). A high-performance imaging spectrometer and a thermal imager will study the relationship between vegetation and climate change across the worlds entire ecosystems. WALES (Water vapor and Lidar Experiment in Space). A Lidar--a laser- based device that works on the same principle as radar does--will map atmospheric water vapor concentrations. WATS (Water vapor and temperature in the Troposphere and Stratosphere). A flotilla of small satellites will measure tropospheric and stratospheric humidity and temperature by checking how GPS radio signals are bent by passage through them. These Earth Explorer missions all build on the experience gained with their larger predecessors ERS-1 and 2, launched in 1991 and 1995 respectively, which provided us with a wealth of data giving major insight into climate processes particularly involving oceans and ice sheets. They will also follow up Envisat, the largest and most comprehensive environment and climate research satellite ever built, which is ready to be launched in January 2002. The Core Explorers are very specific dedicated science missions, much smaller than their predecessors, weighing not more than two tons and keeping to an overall budget of maximum 400 Meuro, from start of development until end of operations. The recommendations of the peer review teams will be passed on to ESA's Earth Science Advisory Committee and to the Agency's Earth Observation Program Board later in November. After that, the candidate missions retained will undergo full feasibility studies and finally ESA should start building the satellites for two out of three missions studied. More detailed information can be found on ESA's new Living Planet web pages launched earlier in October at http://www.esa.int/livingplanet. For more information, please contact: Dr. Mike Rast Earth Sciences Division Phone: +31-71-565-4465 Fax: +31-71-565-5675 _____________________________________________________________________ SURVIVAL OF THE ELITIST: BIOTERRORISM MAY SPUR SPACE COLONIES By Robert Roy Britt From Space.com 30 October 2001 Plans to save civilization from doom by sending people and important documents into space in a 21st Century Noah's Ark may get a boost from heightened fears of bioterrorism. Psychologists, terrorism analysts and some space-settlement enthusiasts interviewed by SPACE.com said fear is the wrong motivation for any effort to colonize the cosmos. But it might just work, others indicated, as the pie-in-the-sky dream of moving to another planet meets the reality of biological terrorism on this planet. ...The apocalyptic view that humans must leave Earth or perish was raised October 16 by the eminent physicist and author Stephen Hawking, who said a bio-engineered virus will wipe out the human species in this millennium. "The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us," he told the Daily Telegraph in London. Hawking is off base, according to several experts who accused him of ignoring science and speaking in language laced with religious overtones. One critic called his doomsday prediction "regrettable hype." Get the full story at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/colonize_now_011 030-1.html. _____________________________________________________________________ ASTROBIOLOGISTS TO LAUNCH MISSION TO EARLY EARTH University of Rochester release 30 October 2001 In what seems a cross between Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth and H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, researchers from the University of Rochester are burrowing deep underground into the most ancient regions of the globe to find the lost world where life began. The endeavor, called The Mission to Early Earth, is part of the NASA astrobiology program. Astrobiology literally means, "star life," but the NASA program is looking for life anywhere beyond our planet. To do that, however, an astrobiologist needs to know what he or she is looking for in the first place. "If we're going to look for evidence of life on Mars or beyond, then we have to know what we're looking for," says Ariel Anbar, professor of earth and environmental science at the University. "There is so much we don't know about the origin and early evolution of life. What chemicals must be present? What kind of atmosphere helps life start? What are the factors we haven't even thought of? If you want to understand the probability of life being elsewhere, what that life might be like, and what the course of evolution might be, then you should be studying the only planet known to harbor life, and study the history of that planet." Anbar is a member of one of NASA's astrobiology teams and a geoscientist, studying the planet to learn about its inhabitants. The greatest hurdle in trying to form a picture of what the world was like when life first formed is the scarcity of study samples. Old Earth simply doesn't exist anymore--on the surface. "We don't have a time machine, so we're stuck with old rocks," says Anbar. "But there aren't very many places you can find rocks that are billions of years old that haven't been ruined by exposure, so we're going to go subsurface." "Subsurface" means drilling a couple hundred meters into the oldest known rock formations in the world. Anbar has just returned from Australia with his team on an exploratory mission to scout sites in parts of the Earth's crust that date to nearly 2.5 billion years old- -more than halfway back to the Earth's birth--a time when the only life on the planet was bacteria. The NASA-funded trip to the Outback turned up a number of possible drilling sites that Anbar thinks may yield samples of the Earth's environment that have remained frozen in time. Though there are some sites in the world that boast rocks as old as 3.8 billion years, the Australian rocks are relatively undisturbed by weathering and geological processes. Anbar's team is especially excited at the chance to pull organic molecules from the ancient rock bed. Such molecules can speak volumes about the organisms that produced them and should shed light on the course that evolution took in life's infancy. The first life forms may have had a biochemistry substantially different than today's, which means astrobiologists investigating Mars or other worlds would need to be looking for something totally unlike anything they may have assumed. Anbar hopes to discover in what kind of environment astrobiologists should expect to find basic life. NASA hopes to launch space telescopes in the near future that will be able to pick out light from planets around distant stars. But what kind of telescope NASA builds will depend on what scientists are looking for--should it be tuned for an oxygen atmosphere or methane, or something else entirely? The answer to that will come from work like that of Anbar and his colleagues. The Earth's basic chemistry was very different billions of years ago than it is now. It's widely accepted that the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere rose dramatically around 2.2 billion years ago, but there are a number of factors scientists don't know, not the least of which is, what completely changed the entire planet's atmosphere? Anbar explains that the classical argument is that that was the time period when photosynthesis evolved and created oxygen, but there's good evidence that oxygen-producing photosynthesis is much too old, leaving scientists stumped when trying to explain the oxygen surge. Scientists don't really know the exact living conditions on early Earth, and until they find evidence of the makeup of the atmosphere trapped inside ancient rocks, they'll have nothing but speculation. "The odds are that we'll come across some surprises," says Anbar. "Some recent work by members of our team found that eukaryotes, the microbial line that humans came from, might have existed as early as 2.7 billion years ago. That's much earlier than a lot of people thought, which means there was a lot more diversification of biology back then. So maybe we'll learn that life was almost inevitable, a kind of by-product of our Earth's formation. Or maybe we'll learn that we're more rare and special than we ever imagined." Anbar and the rest of the astrobiology teams' work is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Contact: Jonathan Sherwood Phone: 716-273-4726 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01zk.html. _____________________________________________________________________ THE THREE DOMAINS OF LIFE By Leslie Mullen From the NASA Astrobiology Institute 31 October 2001 When scientists first started to classify life, everything was designated as either an animal or a plant. But as new forms of life were discovered and our knowledge of life on Earth grew, new categories, called "Kingdoms," were added. There eventually came to be five Kingdoms in all: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Bacteria [Monera]. The five Kingdoms were generally grouped into two categories called Eukarya and Prokarya. Eukaryotes represent four of the five Kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi and protists). Eukaryotes are organisms whose cells have a nucleus--a sort of sack that holds the cell's DNA. Animals, plants, protists and fungi are all eukaryotes because they all have a DNA-holding nuclear membrane within their cells. The cells of prokaryotes, on the other hand, lack this nuclear membrane. Instead, the DNA is part of a protein-nucleic acid structure called the nucleoid. Bacteria are all prokaryotes. However, new insight into molecular biology changed this view of life. A type of prokaryotic organism that had long been categorized as bacteria turned out to have DNA that is very different from bacterial DNA. This difference led microbiologist Carl Woese of the University of Illinois to propose reorganizing the Tree of Life into three separate Domains: Eukarya, Eubacteria (true bacteria), and Archaea. Archaea look like bacteria--that's why they were classified as bacteria in the first place: the unicellular organisms have the same sort of rod, spiral, and marble-like shapes as bacteria. Archaea and bacteria also share certain genes, so they function similarly in some ways. But archaeans also share genes with eukaryotes, as well as having many genes that are completely unique. Archaea are so named because they are believed to be the least evolved forms of life on Earth ("archae" meaning "ancient"). The ability of some archaea to live in environmental conditions similar to the early Earth gives an indication of the ancient heritage of the domain. The early Earth was hot, with a lot of extremely active volcanoes and an atmosphere composed mostly of nitrogen, methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and water. There was little if any oxygen in the atmosphere. Archaea and some bacteria evolved in these conditions, and are able to live in similar harsh conditions today. Many scientists now suspect that those two groups diverged from a common ancestor relatively soon after life began. Millions of years after the development of archaea and bacteria, the ancestors of today's eukaryotes split off from the archaea. So although archaea physically resemble bacteria, they are actually more closely related to us! If not for the DNA evidence, this would be hard to believe. The archaea that live in extreme environments can cope with conditions that would quickly kill eukaryotic organisms. Thermophiles, for instance, live at high temperatures--the present record is 113°C (235°F). In contrast, no known eukaryote can survive over 60°C (140°F). Then there are also psychrophiles, which like cold temperatures--there's one in the Antarctic that grows best at 4°C (39°F). As a group, these hard-living archaea are called "extremophiles." There are other kinds of archaea extremophiles, such as acidophiles, which live at pH levels as low as 1 pH (that's about the same pH as battery acid). Alkaliphiles thrive at pH levels as high as that of oven cleaner. Halophiles, meanwhile, live in very salty environments. But there are also alkaliphilic, acidophilic, and halophilic eukaryotes. In addition, not all archaea are extremophiles. Many live in more ordinary temperatures and conditions. Many scientists think the thermophilic archaea--the heat-loving microbes living around deep-sea volcanic vents--may represent the earliest life on Earth. But NAI member Mitchell Sogin, a microbiologist with the Marine Biological Laboratory, says that instead of being the Earth's first life form, they could be the sole survivors of a catastrophe that occurred early in the Earth's history. This catastrophe could have killed off all other forms of life, including the universal ancestor from which both archaea and bacteria arose. "Some have argued that the occurrence of thermophilic phenotypes in the deepest archaeal and bacterial lineages suggests that life had a hot origin," says Sogin. "However, there are other equally compelling arguments which suggest that this distribution of phenotypes on the tree of life reflects survival of heat-loving organisms during times of major environmental upheaval." Such environmental upheavals include asteroid and comet bombardments, which we know happened frequently during the Earth's earliest years. Although our geologically active planet has erased much of the evidence of these cataclysmic events, the Moon bears witness to the amount of asteroid and comet activity that occurred in our neighborhood. Because the Moon is geologically inactive, its surface is still littered with scars from these early impacts. Large impacts can create severe global environmental changes that wipe out life at the planet's surface. It is believed, for instance, that the dinosaurs fell victim to the environmental effects of a large asteroid impact. Among other effects, impacts throw a lot of dust and vaporized chemicals up into the atmosphere. This blocks sunlight, impairing photosynthesis and altering global temperatures. But thermophilic archaeans are not dependent on the Sun for their energy. They harvest their energy from chemicals found at the vents in a process called chemosynthesis. These organisms are not greatly impacted by surface environmental changes. Perhaps the only organisms that were able to survive the large, frequent impacts of Earth's early years were the thermophilic organisms that lived around deep-sea volcanic vents. "Certainly the discovery of the archaea pointed out microbial diversity--particularly in extreme environments--that was previously unrecognized," says Sogin. "As to what this data has to say about the origins of life, I am of the opinion that we still do not know where the root lies within the three kingdom tree." Woese is currently working to unearth that root. But he says the search for the universal ancestor is a far more subtle and complex problem than most people realize. "The problem is not merely a case of identifying some original cell or cell line that gave rise to it all," says Woese. "The universal ancestor may not be a single lineage at all." Instead, says Woese, lateral gene transfer--a process where genes are shared between microorganisms--may have been so prevalent that life did not evolve from one individual lineage. "At the universal ancestor stage, horizontal gene transfer may have been so dominant that the ancestor may in effect have been a community of cell lineages that evolved as a whole. We will be able to trace all life back to an ancestor, but that state will not be some particular cell lineage." The transfer of bacterial genes seems to have been a vital part of the evolution of archaeans and eukaryotes. In fact, it is believed that such a transfer was responsible for the development of the first eukaryotic cell. As oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere through the photosynthesis of blue green algae, life on Earth needed to quickly adapt. When a cell consumed aerobic (oxygen-using) bacteria, it was able to survive in the newly oxygenated world. Today, the aerobic bacteria have evolved to become mitochondria, which helps the cell turn food into energy. Modern-day archaea and eukarya seem to rely on such bacterial intervention in their metabolisms. This points to the possibility that bacterial genes may have replaced other genes in the two lineages over time, erasing some features of the last common ancestor. But Woese says there are certain molecular similarities among all three domains that still may point to a universal ancestor. "Although there are differences in the information-processing systems, there are many universal features in translation and core similarities in transcription that link all three domains," says Woese. "But this is a very complex and hard to understand area. These early interactions were almost certainly between entities the likes of which no longer exist. They were primitive entities that were on their way of becoming one of the three modern cell types, but were definitely not modern cells. Their interactions were peculiar to that particular era in evolution, before the modern cell types arose." Perhaps the universal ancestor is not to be found on Earth. Because life on Earth seems to have appeared very soon after the planet became habitable, many scientists think that life could have arrived from outer space, via the asteroids and comets that bombarded the Earth in its earliest years. In addition, because some Martian rocks that have arrived on our planet seem to contain fossilized microbes, some have speculated that life on Earth might originally have come from Martian meteorites. However, Woese believes that if we find evidence for life on Mars, it will either be unrelated to Earth-based life, or be the result of contamination of Mars by rocks from Earth. Sogin also doesn't think that the first microbes were brought to Earth by a Martian asteroid or comet. However, he does believe that microbial life may be a common feature of the Galaxy. "Life at extreme environments as represented principally by the archaea forces us to consider the possibility of living organisms on other solar system bodies under conditions that we would not have deemed possible just ten or fifteen years ago," says Sogin. "For example, we can imagine life under the ice on Europa and even the possibility of subsurface life on Mars. Certainly microbial life is far more robust and can survive and even thrive under conditions that are likely to be found elsewhere in the solar system and certainly in the galaxy." Woese, on the other hand, hasn't yet made up his mind about the occurrence of life elsewhere. "Life in universe--rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street," says Woese. "One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." Whether or not Earth-like life is common or unique, Sogin says it will be a long time before we can answer that question with any certainty. "I think that life occurs elsewhere in the universe," says Sogin. "However, I am not sure we will ever be able to obtain conclusive evidence of life elsewhere given today's technology, or even tomorrow's technology." What next? The development of the Three Domains concept has, in Woese's opinion, dramatically altered the way scientists view life on Earth. He says the concept has highlighted the shared traits--as well as the differences--among all three groups. "Most biologists still speak of prokaryotes versus eukaryotes, but now they discuss their similarities, says Woese. "In the old days, they focused mainly if not solely on their differences. I often analogize the conceptual climate before and after the discovery of the archaea to changing from monocular to binocular vision." By finding out what he can about the similarities among all three domains, Woese says he is "studying the two interrelated fundamental biological problems of the nature of the universal ancestor and the evolutionary dynamic of horizontal gene transfer." Sogin, meanwhile, is exploring the evolution of biological complexity in microbial ecosystems. "Life is very old--appearing on Earth at least 3.5 billion years ago and possibly 3.9 or 4 billion years ago," says Sogin. "It was microbial and continued in that mode for the first 70 to 90 percent of Earth's history. Complex multicellularity in the form of differentiated tissue is a relatively recent event. Throughout time the microbes ruled and continue to govern all biological processes on this planet." More information on this article is available at http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/index.cfm?page=domains. _____________________________________________________________________ MICROSOFT TO SPONSOR "SURVIVING MARS" ON DISCOVERY CHANNEL Mars Society release 31 October 2001 The Microsoft Corporation will sponsor the two-hour TV documentary "Surviving Mars," which will air on the Discovery Channel during prime time on Nov 7. The documentary, filmed and edited by twice- Emmy award winner Andy Liebman, is dedicated to chronicling the efforts of the Mars Society to build and operate the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Devon Island. To film the show, Liebman led a team of 7 who lived and worked with Mars society members on the island at 75 degrees north during the summers of 2000 and 2001. Starting soon, Discovery and Microsoft will air a series of half- minute "innovation" promos, consisting of 22 seconds of the show and 8 seconds of material about Microsoft. It promises to be a great show! Don't miss it! _____________________________________________________________________ FUNDAMENTAL SPACE BIOLOGY GROUND-BASED RESEARCH NASA research announcement NRA-01-OBPR-06 31 October 2001 Proposals requested by this Announcement may be for ground-based research in areas including: Molecular Structures and Physical Interactions Developmental Biology Cellular and Molecular Biology Organismal and Comparative Biology Gravitational Ecology Evolutionary Biology This solicitation is available electronically via the Internet at http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_u/open.cfm. Notices of Intent Due: November 30, 2001 Proposals Due: January 31, 2002 Paper copies of this NRA are available to those who do not have access to the Internet by calling (202) 479-9030 x277. Please leave a voice mail message with your full name and address, including zip code and telephone number with area code, along with the name of the NRA you are requesting. Questions regarding this specific NRA may be addressed to: NASA Headquarters, Code UF, Washington, DC 20546-0001 Dr. David Liskowsky, phone: 202-58-1963; E-mail: dliskows@hq.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ MULTIPLE OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROUND BASED RESEARCH IN SPACE LIFE SCIENCES NASA research announcement NRA-01-OBPR-07 31 October 2001 1. Biomedical Research & Countermeasures Program & Advanced Human Support Technology Program (Space Human Factors Engineering Element) 2. National Space Biomedical Research Institute 3. Countermeasure Evaluation and Validation Project This solicitation is available electronically via the Internet at http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_u/open.cfm Notices of Intent Due: November 30, 2001 Proposals Due: January 31, 2002 Paper copies of this NRA are available to those who do not have access to the Internet by calling (202) 479-9030 x277. Please leave a voice mail message with your full name and address, including zip code and telephone number with area code, along with the name of the NRA you are requesting. Questions regarding the BR&C, AHST, and CEVP Programs in this specific NRA may be addressed to: NASA Headquarters, Code UB, Washington, DC 20546 Dr. David L. Tomko, phone: 202-358-2211; E-mail: dtomko@hq.nasa.gov Questions regarding the NSBRI Program in this specific NRA may be addressed to: National Space Biomedical Research Institute One Baylor Plaza NA-425 Houston, TX 77030-3498 Dr. Ronald J. White, phone: 713-798-7412; E-mail: rwhite@bcm.tmc.edu _____________________________________________________________________ SCIENTISTS SUCCEED AT FIRST-EVER ATTEMPT TO SEQUENCE DNA AT SEA National Science Foundation release 01-90 www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/01/pr0190.htm 1 November 2001 Pioneering technologies allow real-time sequencing of organisms from hydrothermal vents in Pacific Ocean. Scientists funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated from the University of Delaware and Amersham Biosciences, Inc., in Piscataway, New Jersey, have succeeded in conducting the first-ever DNA sequencing experiments at sea. Using the research vessel Atlantis and submersible Alvin, the team carried out a pioneering environmental genomic study of the strange life that inhabits super- hot hydrothermal vents almost two miles deep in the Pacific Ocean. "This research is important for its contributions to the new field of marine genomics and to our basic ecological understanding of unusual deep-sea vent communities," said Jim Yoder, director of NSF's ocean sciences division, which funded the research. "The partnership with industry and its direct participation in the expedition could lead to new drugs and pharmaceuticals." By the close of the 17-day research cruise, which ends today, the scientists estimate that they will have sequenced just under two million base pairs of DNA from different microbes and organisms that live in and around the vents. The amount of DNA sequenced during the trip will be equivalent to the size of a small bacterial genome, which typically ranges from two million to five million base pairs. The microbes, tubeworms, and other vent dwellers are of critical interest to industry because these organisms may yield a range of new products and applications, from new pharmaceuticals to heat-stable, pressure-resistant enzymes for food processing, hazardous waste cleanup, and other fields. Under the direction of University of Delaware marine biologist Craig Cary, the team conducted daily dives aboard the submersible Alvin coupled with round-the-clock laboratory analysis on the R/V Atlantis. Two scientists from Amersham Biosciences' production sequencing group were on board using the company's MegaBACE 1000 DNA Analysis System and TempliPhi DNA Sequencing Template Amplification Kit. These technologies played a key role in carrying out the project in its natural environment, as soon as samples were collected by the sub and brought aboard ship. As part of a "virtual field trip," more than 13,000 students at 180 schools participated in the project, called "Extreme 2001: A Deep-Sea Odyssey." The students represented 32 U.S. states, Australia, Canada, Guam, New Zealand and Puerto Rico. Through phone call question-and- answer sessions to the ship, the educational program brought the excitement of real-time discovery into the classroom. The students and the public can log onto the expedition web site at www.ocean.udel.edu/extreme2001 to see photos, video clips, and daily updates. "We are excited to be carrying out this new phase of the research, which takes the work we've done in previous years to the next level," said Cary. "It will allow us to better understand the amazing ecosystem that exists in these vents and how these organisms, which thrive under some of the harshest conditions on Earth, interact with each other." The research expedition took place in the Pacific Ocean some 1,200 miles off the coast of Costa Rica. The team studied the Pompeii worm (Alvinella pompejana), vent crabs, bacteria, and other life that inhabits deep-sea hydrothermal vents to find out how these organisms thrive in an environment that reaches temperatures of 750°F. "This work was not possible even a year ago. It really is due to MegaBACE and the use of TempliPhi that we are able to accomplish this," said Robert Feldman, production sequencing and collaborations manager at Amersham Biosciences. "The technology that we are successfully bringing to these deep-sea systems is creating the new field of marine genomics. These efforts will be seen as ground- breaking for future studies on environmental, ecological and evolutionary biology." Additional funding for the project came from the National Sea Grant College Program and the University of Delaware. Media contacts: Cheryl Dybas, NSF, 703-292-8070, cdybas@nsf.gov Mary Saack, Amersham Biosciences, 732-457-8056 Tracey Bryant, University of Delaware, 302-831-8185 Program contacts: Phil Taylor, NSF, 703-292-8582, prtaylor@nsf.gov Lisa Rom, NSF, 703-292-8583 erom@nsf.gov _____________________________________________________________________ THE INVASION OF THE DEEP-SEA MICROBES By Jack Farmer and Leslie Mullen From the NASA Astrobiology Institute 2 November 2001 On the deep sea floor, along the margins of diverging plates of ocean crust, communities of microscopic organisms live around hot volcanic vents. These seafloor hydrothermal systems have probably existed on Earth since the oceans first formed, more than four billion years ago. The microscopic life around the vents may also have an ancient heritage--genetic comparisons suggest that modern vent microbes are close kin to the earliest forms of life on Earth. These regions are therefore of special interest to astrobiologists, who study the geology, chemistry, and biology of hydrothermal vents to better understand how Earth's early biosphere emerged. A team of scientists is presently using the deep sea submersible "Alvin" to further study these important communities. Alvin has a depth range of 4500 meters (2.8 miles), and therefore gives scientists access to the deep, high-pressure regions where these vents exist. Arizona State University professors John Holloway and Peggy O'Day have teamed with microbiologist Craig Cary from the University of Delaware for this new study. They hope to learn more about how the biology of hydrothermal vent communities may be affected by differences in vent chemistry and mineralogy. The team is exploring deep-sea vents located at a latitude of nine degrees North of the equator, along a large seafloor mountain chain called the East Pacific Rise. Where hot water exits the seafloor, tube-like structures called "chimneys" form. The chimneys expel dark clouds of sulfide minerals, giving them the nickname "black smokers." The expelled sulfur cools upon contact with seawater, and adds to the size of the chimney structures over time--some have reached heights in excess of 60 meters (about 200 feet). Previous studies of seafloor vent fields have revealed the existence of a wide variety of chimney types, each showing large differences in chemistry. As the chimneys grow over time, their physical, chemical and mineralogical properties change and create new habitats for life. But scientists still know very little about how microbial organisms respond to these environmental changes. Using a newly designed sampling system, the scientists will collect some of the smaller chimney structures. The team will also sample vent waters to determine any chemical differences, and monitor how heat-loving microbes--known as thermophiles--colonize actively forming vent surfaces. By studying the succession of microbial species that colonize chimneys, the team hopes to improve our understanding of how such processes may have driven patterns of diversification in early vent environments. Studies of vent chemistry will also provide basic information about how deep sea vent processes may have affected the overall geochemical balance of the Earth's oceans and atmosphere during our planet's history. The scientists plan to use the collected information to design a new experimental laboratory at ASU. This laboratory will simulate the broad range of pressure and temperature conditions observed in natural vent systems, and enable scientists to study how microbiology varies under these conditions. More information on this article is available at http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/index.cfm?page=vent_grow. _____________________________________________________________________ GOOD VIBRATIONS: A NEW TREATMENT UNDER STUDY BY NASA-FUNDED DOCTORS COULD REVERSE BONE LOSS EXPERIENCED BY ASTRONAUTS IN SPACE By Patrick L. Barry From NASA Science News 2 November 2001 "Use it or lose it." The familiar mantra of fitness buffs applies as much in space as it does on Earth--perhaps more so. The bones and muscles of astronauts, freed from the familiar strains of gravity, can weaken alarmingly. Muscles atrophy, while bones lose mass and become brittle. Reducing muscle atrophy requires exercise--and lots of it. Astronauts in space often spend hours each day working out with the aid of exotic devices that rely on springs, elastic, and even vacuum pumps to provide resistance and mimic body weight. Unfortunately, such "countermeasures" have not solved the problem of bone loss. Even as astronauts work out, their skeletons continue to slowly weaken. It's been a thorny problem for researchers. But now, perhaps, there could be a solution: NASA-funded scientists suggest that astronauts might prevent bone loss by standing on a lightly vibrating plate for 10 to 20 minutes each day. Held down with the aid of elastic straps, the astronauts could keep working on other tasks while they vibrate. The same therapy, they say, might eventually be used to treat some of the millions of people who suffer from bone loss, called osteoporosis, here on Earth. "The vibrations are very slight," notes Stefan Judex, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who worked on the research. The plate vibrates at 90 Hz (1 Hz = 1 cycle per second), with each brief oscillation imparting an acceleration equivalent to one-third of Earth's gravity. "If you touch the plate with your finger, you can feel a very slight vibration," he added. "If you watch the plate, you cannot see any vibration at all." Although the vibrations are subtle they have had a profound effect on bone loss in laboratory animals such as turkeys, sheep, and rats. In one study (published in the October 2001 issue of The FASEB Journal), only 10 minutes per day of vibration therapy promoted near-normal rates of bone formation in rats that were prevented from bearing weight on their hind limbs during the rest of the day. Another group of rats that had their hind legs suspended all day exhibited severely depressed bone formation rates--down by 92%--while rats that spent 10 minutes per day bearing weight, but without the vibration treatment, still had reduced bone formation--61% less. These results show that the vibration treatment kept the bones healthy, while brief weight bearing did not. Clinton Rubin, a professor of biomedical engineering at SUNY Stony Brook and principal investigator for the study, cautions that more experiments are required before scientists can be sure that vibration therapy is effective for people. "Animals are different than humans," he notes. And even among humans there are important variables, like nutrition and genetic make-up. What works for post- menopausal women (who often suffer bone loss in the form of osteoporosis) might not work for astronauts in space. In a recent "Phase I/II" clinical trial of vibration therapy, researchers applied the treatment to 60 post-menopausal women. Studies using adolescent girls with very low bone density and children with cerebral palsy are also underway. "The early results from the research with post-menopausal women are very encouraging--but they are preliminary. To determine efficacy, we will need a larger scale clinical trial that runs for a longer period of time," Rubin says. A broader "Phase III" clinical trial is currently being organized, which will provide a strong indication of the treatment's effectiveness for the general population of osteoporosis sufferers. Whether astronauts would benefit from a vibration-plate regimen is a question that can only be fully answered by conducting experiments in space, Rubin says. Such tests have been proposed, but none are scheduled yet. Rubin hopes that future experiments will reveal not only whether vibration therapy works, but also why. It's a bit of a puzzle because the treatment doesn't comfortably fit within the framework of conventional wisdom. Currently, most bone researchers believe that the stresses placed on bones by, e.g., bearing weight or strong physical exertion, signal the bone-building cells through some unknown chemical trigger to lay down mineral crystals that fortify bones. According to this thinking, the remedy for bone loss in space should be hard exercise with shoulder harnesses and elastic cords that provide a substitute for the body's weight. Unfortunately, that doesn't work. The regimen of exercise that astronauts perform while in space has shown some ability to reduce muscle atrophy, but bone loss seems to be unaffected. Rubin suggests that perhaps it's not only a few, large stresses placed on the skeleton that signal bone formation, but also many smaller, high- frequency vibrations applied to bones by flexing muscles during common activities such as standing or walking. Muscles may appear to pull steadily and constantly when flexing--like the pull of a stretched spring. But muscle contraction is more complex than that. Individual muscle cells (which run the whole length of skeletal muscles) can't provide a sustained pull--they can only apply a quick "twitch." To create a constant pull, the brain activates groups of muscle cells within a muscle (called "motor units") in a rapid, repeating pattern. You can feel these subtle patterns by squatting and resting your hands on your thighs--the slight trembling of your thigh muscles is the sequential contraction of the muscles' motor units. The frequency of such contraction ranges between 10 and 100 Hz. In comparison, the experiment with rats used a 90 Hz vibration, and the experiments with humans are using 30 Hz vibrations. "Our hypothesis is that a key regulator of bone mass and morphology are the mechanical stimuli that come out of muscle contractions," Rubin says. "So instead of these big, intensive deformations of bone, it's basically lots and lots of little ones [that provide a major stimulus for bone growth]." "While exercise in space may generate some of these signals, we believe that microgravity essentially extinguishes these signals during the great majority of the day, as postural activity is not neccesary," he says. "The vibration treatment generates a much larger signal in this frequency range, and we believe that 10 minutes per day of this higher frequency signal is sufficient to provide a maintenance signal to bone." "This is a real departure from the accepted theory of how mechanical signals control bone, and it is certainly controversial," Rubin says. Nevertheless, it might work. Good vibrations--unexpected and controversial--could be the key to healthy bones on Earth and beyond. Additional information on this article is available at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast02nov_1.htm?list52260. _____________________________________________________________________ THE HUNTING OF THE HEFFALUMP By Mikhail Vainshtein 4 November 2001 What was a Heffalump like? Did it come when you whistled? And how did it come? --A. A. Milne, "Winnie-the-Pooh" I knew a Russian microbiologist who organized a lot of experiments modelling bacterial life under the Martian conditions. In some specific chamber, he varied pressure, temperature, and atmospheric gasses to model Mars, but the nutrient substrate was beef broth and the model organism was Escherichia coli. As far as I know, one of the U.S. Martian expeditions [Viking landers] used 14C-labelled glucose as a test substrate for the Martian life. Recently I saw nice articles about proposed tests which produced a good reaction with some known specific organic molecules (“biomolecules”) typical for high concentration of organic matter of biological origin. Thus, all these experts assumed that these unknown Martian organisms (UMOs) are similar to Earth bacteria: E. coli and its relatives. Well, why not? I could mention that E. coli is very exotic bacterium on Earth (except in our bowels). It cannot live in natural unpolluted soils and water. But who knows what UMOs like? It seems that another method could be proposed to seek the Martian life. If we don’t know what are the UMO like, and if we don’t know what are the best nutrient substrates for them, and if we don’t know what are the final products of their metabolism, what do we know? We know that, if UMOs exist, then they must transform the media of their habitats. To discover the process, we need to discover a difference between sterile samples and sterilized samples inoculated with UMOs. The substrates would be Martian ones. Thus, an investigator of UMOs must: 1) take two samples of Martian soils, 2) sterilize both of them with wet heating (autoclave, 121°C), 3) inoculate one of them with a tiny bit of non-sterile Martian soil (approximately 1 % v/v), 4) expose both samples under Martian conditions, 5) compare the chemical compositions of both samples. If there is no UMO growth, there will be no difference between the samples. If there is some difference, we’ll know the substrates (by decrease in concentration) and products (by increase in concentration). Alas, my suggestion has a weak argument as well. I propose pressurized steam sterilization, but I can't guarantee that UMOs will die. Dr. Vainshtein is the head of the Bacterial section, All-Russian Collection of Microorganisms (VKM, http://www.vkm.ru), and deputy director of the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms, Russian Academy of Sciences. Contact information: Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms Russian Academy of Sciences Prospect Nauki 5 Pushchino, Moscow region 142290, Russia Phone: +7-0967-732677 Fax: +7-095-9563370 E-mail: vain@ibpm.serpukhov.su _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 5 November 2001 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. Good vibrations. NASA Science News. R. R. Britt, 2001. Survival of the elitist: bioterrorism may spur space colonies. Space.com. Articles about evolutionary biology and chemistry http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html SpaceDaily, 2001. Astrobiologists to launch mission to early Earth. SpaceDaily. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology_b ooks.html D. Darling, 2000. The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia: An Alphabetical Reference to All Life in the Universe. Three Rivers Press, New York. S. J. Dick, 1996. The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. S. J. Dick, 1998. Life on Other Worlds: The 20Th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. S. J. Dick (ed.), 2000. Many Worlds: The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life, and the Theological Implications. Templeton Foundation Press, Philadelphia. M. Grady, 2001. Astrobiology. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. F. Hoyle and N. C. Wickramasinghe, 1978. Lifecloud, the Origin of Life in the Universe. Harper & Rowe, New York. F. Hoyle and N. C. Wickramasinghi, 1980. Diseases from Space. Harper & Row, New York. F. Hoyle, 1982. Evolution from Space (The Omni Lecture) and Other Papers on the Origin of Life. Enslow Publishers, Hillside. D. H. Levy (ed.), 2000. The Scientific American Book of the Cosmos. St. Martin's Press, New York. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 25-31 October 2001 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Canberra tracking station on Wednesday, October 31. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the spacecraft's position and speed can be viewed on the "Present Position" web page at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/. Recent instrument activities include a Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) High Frequency Receiver calibration, a Composite Infrared Spectrometer boresight calibration, and an Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) Interplanetary Hydrogen Survey and Spica observation. Engineering activities taking place onboard the spacecraft this week include a static phase error test to characterize the spacecraft Deep Space Transponder uplink receiver tracking, and the final S-band pattern calibration for the Huygens Probe radio system. A minisequence uplinked last week executed and overlaid the Attitude Control Subsystem (ACS) momentum bias commands from the background sequence with new updated values produced by the ACS team. In preparation for the upcoming 40-day Gravitational Wave Experiment, the Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) team conducted a dataflow test in order to verify data paths in the RSS Ground Data System. DSN station personnel were familiarized with the monopulse system configuration, calibration, and operation, and flowed the monopulse monitor data back to JPL. RSS also conducted a long Ka-2-band track, with the various subsystems performing extremely well. Other activities performed in preparation for the GWE include an Ultra- Stable Oscillator characterization, a boresight calibration, and an RSS quiet test with the Fields, Particles, and Waves (FPW) instruments to determine if the RSS can detect the FPW instruments in their "noisy" states. The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) post-warm-up images were downlinked for analysis. The 15 images were planned in support of the UVIS Spica observation, and were examined for potential changes relative to the pre-warm-up images. Preliminary results show a change in the character of the anomaly with the halo gone but more spreading of the star image than before. ISS also performed a scattered light observation, in an effort to resolve an anomaly observed in C25 when an ISS observation received far more light than expected. This current observation included a series of scans across the sky to see how much scattered light ISS gets at different distances from the sun for a selection of different orientations, to see if reflection off another part of the spacecraft is causing the extra light seen by ISS. The RADAR team performed an instrument calibration, which involved collecting radiometry data of two microwave sources while executing repeated box scans. These scans were performed as close as possible to the power-on of the instrument so the RADAR team can better characterize their warm-up calibration requirements. Currently, RADAR is requiring 3 hours of warm-up for radiometry in science planning, which causes them to frequently conflict with other instrument teams. They are hoping to be able to reduce their warm- up time based upon the understanding they receive from analyzing this data. In conjunction with the ISS scattered light observation, the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) performed a test of the Ion and Neutral Camera (INCA) collimator. The test ramps the INCA high voltage collimator plates up to operational voltage on the positive plate, leaving the negative turned off. This is done in coordination with the scattered light test to provide a condition of sunlight on the collimator plates, but no thruster activity. It tests the theory that this configuration will prove to be noise-free for RPWS and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS). RPWS supported this test by monitoring its data for interference. The C29 Sequence Team development phase has been completed. The Final Sequence Integration & Validation Approval meeting was held, and all Cassini teams approved the sequence for uplink. The C29 sequence will be uplinked on November 1 and will begin execution on November 4. This sequence includes a Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer radiator test, a 5-pass Probe Relay Test, the first of three GWEs, an Attitude Control Subsystem (ACS) Periodic Instrument Maintenance, and a Cosmic Dust Analyzer flight software upload and checkout. The Science Uplink Verification (SUPV) activity for three Titan flybys has been completed, and the SUPV for three Icy Satellite flybys begun. The Science Planning Team is in the process of generating a final report on the Titan SUPV, which will include lessons learned from this exercise. A full suite of Target Working Team (TWT) integration team meetings was held last week to continue with the integration of the tour. Semi-monthly Satellite and Titan Orbiter Science Team meetings are now being held on Fridays. The Attitude Control Team has released its the third quarter report. In summary, the attitude control system is operating properly. There were no fault protection entries, all trends are as expected, and all scheduled activities were executed normally. 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 NASA/JPL release 29 October - 4 November 2001 The focus for Galileo this week is playback of the recorded data from the October 15 flyby of Io. First up is the calibration for the Photopolarimeter Radiometer instrument (PPR), which began our observing sequence. PPR then turns its attention to several observations of Jupiter. These measurements were made of a region of vortex-like storms near the north pole of the giant planet, and of a long-lived white oval storm that has been the subject of several observations during our stay in the Jupiter system. Scientists also expect to see data from a thermal map of the dark side of Io, taken while the spacecraft was still 11 hours away from its closest approach. The bulk of the week is taken up with the return of a two-hour-long recording by the suite of instruments that measure the electromagnetic fields and energetic particles that encircle the planet. These instruments are the Energetic Particle Detector, the Heavy Ion Counter, the Magnetometer, the Plasma Subsystem, and the Plasma Wave Subsystem. The recording was made while the spacecraft was passing through the Ramp region of the Io Torus. The torus is a doughnut-shaped area of increased radiation and particle density that nearly coincides with the orbit of Io. The Ramp is the transition between the background magnetosphere and the torus. It is a region where the ion density and temperature of the environment increase sharply, making it an intriguing target for exploration. Also during this week the Magnetometer and Dust Detector instruments continue to collect data about the immediate environment of the spacecraft as the hardy explorer increases its distance from Jupiter from 100 to 125 Jupiter radii (7.1 million to 8.9 million kilometers, or 4.4 million to 5.5 million miles). These data are stored within the two instruments' individual computer memories and periodically transmitted to Earth. The Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer instrument is also collecting data, studying the solar variation in the interplanetary hydrogen and helium abundance. This instrument also stores its collected data in internal buffer memory and periodically feeds this data into the main information stream coming from the spacecraft. 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 _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS NASA/JSC release 30 October 2001 Two Russian cosmonauts and a French researcher left the International Space Station (ISS) this evening, wrapping up almost eight days of experiments and joint activities with the Station's residents while delivering a fresh Soyuz return vehicle for the orbital outpost. Russian taxi crew Commander Victor Afanasyev, Flight Engineer Konstantin Kozeev and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Claudie Haignere undocked the Soyuz TM-32 craft from the Pirs Docking Compartment at 7:39 PM CST (1:39 GMT on October 31) as the Soyuz and the ISS sailed 240 statute miles over Eastern Asia near the Russian- Chinese border. The Soyuz TM-32 craft arrived at the ISS on April 30 and was nearing the end of its operational lifetime. A fresh Soyuz is flown to the Station every six months to provide Station residents an assured ride home in the event of an emergency. The successful undocking came ten days after the taxi crew was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in the new Soyuz TM-33 craft, which will remain at the ISS until next spring. The older Soyuz was scheduled to fire its braking rockets in a deorbit maneuver just after 10:00 PM CST (4:00 GMT on October 31) to enable the taxi trio to reenter Earth's atmosphere. Landing was scheduled at 10:58 PM CST (4:58 GMT, 9:58 AM Kazakhstan time October 31) on the Kazakh steppes. In the ISS, Expedition Three Commander Frank Culbertson, Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin monitored the undocking and began to turn their attention to the final weeks of their four-month mission aboard the complex. They are scheduled to return to Earth in December after being replaced by a Russian commander and two American astronauts. After saying their final farewells to one another, the two crews closed hatches between the Zvezda Service Module and the Pirs, to which the older Soyuz was docked. The undocking occurred after commands were sent to drive open hooks and latches that held the older Soyuz firmly to the new Pirs docking port. Afanasyev backed the Soyuz away from the ISS to a safe distance for the deorbit burn of the capsule's rockets. With systems operating normally, the station is orbiting at an average altitude of 247 statute miles (395 km). For additional information, including sighting opportunities from anywhere on the Earth, visit http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/. Now on their own once again, the Expedition Three crewmembers will continue their scientific investigations this coming week. Oversight of science investigations on the station from the ground is by the Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. The Human Research Facility is managed by the Johnson Space Center. Details on ISS science operations can be found at the center's web site at http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov. The next ISS status report will be issued on Wednesday, November 7, or earlier, if events warrant. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES By Ron Baalke 30 October 2001 The following new images were taken by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available: * Toe of Ganges Chasma Landslide * Dunes in Herschel Crater * Fractures and Pits in the Northern Plains of West Utopia * Ancient Layered Rocks in Schiaparelli Crater The images reside on the Mars Global Surveyor web site at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/index.html. The image captions are appended below. Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. Toe of Ganges Chasma Landslide MGS MOC Release #MOC2-295, 30 October 2001 Ganges Chasma--or Gangis Chasma (as it is sometimes spelled)--is a several kilometers-deep side canyon at the east end of the vast Valles Marineris trough system. In several places, portions of the steep walls of Ganges Chasma have collapsed down into the chasm, creating large landslide deposits. This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image acquired in 2001 shows the margin of one of the landslides in Ganges Chasma. The linear grooved and ridged pattern of the upper surface of the landslide results from shear as the mass of rock and debris was moving across the landscape. When the landslide occurred, the debris was moving from the upper right toward the lower left. Dark sand dunes are banked up against the landslide deposit margins, indicating that considerable time has elapsed since the landslide occurred. The scene is illuminated from the upper left. The box at upper left shows the landslide location in Ganges Chasma, and the 500 m scale bar equals ~547 yards. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems. Dunes in Herschel Crater MGS MOC Release #MOC2-294, 30 October 2001 Herschel Crater is a 300 kilometer (186 mi) wide impact basin located in the Martian southern cratered highlands at 14.5°S, 230°W. The floor of this ancient crater exhibits patches of dark material that, when viewed by the high-resolution Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) aboard the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, resolve into fields of sand dunes. In detail, these dunes have a grooved, lineated surface. These grooves indicate that the dune sands are cemented together and have been eroded and scoured by wind. The age of the dunes and how their sands became cemented are unknown. Sunlight illuminates this March 2001 scene from the upper left. The box in the upper left corner shows the location of the high-resolution view, the 400 m scale bar is ~437 yards. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems. Fractures and Pits in the Northern Plains of West Utopia MGS MOC Release #MOC2-293, 30 October 2001 In September 1976, NASA's Viking 2 lander touched down on a rocky plain in Utopia Planitia near 48.0°N, 225.7°W. Utopia is a vast and varied region. Nearly 1,700 kilometers (~1,060 miles) west of the Viking 2 site lies a pitted and fractured plain unlike anything found by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) elsewhere on Mars. Although the Martian northern plains are often considered to be "flat" or "featureless," the MOC has shown that, at the scale of a few tens of meters (tens of yards), these plains aren't all flat, featureless, or even "boring". In the 2001 MOC image shown here, a suite of sharply-oulined pits and fractures indicate that the upper surface materials are strong and indurated (cemented). The parallel and polygonal alignments of fractures and pits indicate that this area has been subjected to directional stress--perhaps weaker but not unlike the stresses in the Earth's crust that cause faulting and earthquakes. The pits furthermore indicate that something has been removed from beneath the rigid, upper crusted material. Unfortunately, the image does not provide obvious or direct answers as to what the rigid, indurated upper surface is made of, nor the composition of the material underneath it that was removed to cause the pitting. Some Mars scientists have speculated that removal of ground ice could cause the pitting, but whether this is actually the case is unknown and cannot be known with any certainty from the photograph alone. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the lower left; the box at the upper right shows the location of the high resolution view in Utopia. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems. Ancient Layered Rocks in Schiaparelli Crater MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-292, 30 October 2001 One of the earliest results of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) investigation shortly after the spacecraft began to orbit Mars in 1997 was the discovery of layered rock outcrops reaching deep down into the Martian crust in the walls of the Valles Marineris. Since that time, thousands of MOC images have revealed layered rock in a variety of settings--crater floors, canyon interiors, and scarps exposed by faulting and pitting. This spectacular example taken by MOC in 2001 is found on the floor of an impact crater located near the equator in northwestern Schiaparelli Basin (0.15°N, 345.6°W). The image covers an area approximately 3 km (1.9 miles) across and is illuminated by sunlight from the upper left. Layers of uniform thickness and appearance suggest that these materials are ancient sediments, perhaps deposited in water, or perhaps deposited by wind. Wind has subsquently eroded and exposed the layers. Dark drifts of sand occur at the lower center of the image, and lighter-toned windblown ripples dominate the center and upper right. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 30 October 2001 NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft took its first thermal infrared temperature image of Mars at approximately 1300 Universal time (5:00 AM Pacific time) today. The imaging team at Arizona State University, Tempe will process the data over the next couple of days and hopes to release the image later this week. This morning's image is part of the calibration process for the thermal emission imaging system and is designed to help determine that the imaging system is working properly. The main science mapping mission is expected to begin in early February 2002. Flight controllers report the aerobraking phase is proceeding as planned. The first aerobraking pass, when the spacecraft slowly dips into the Martian atmosphere to slow itself down, began on schedule last Friday night. Today, Odyssey is in its ninth pass around Mars. During its closest approach, the spacecraft is 128 kilometers (nearly 80 miles) above the surface and during its farthest point is 27,000 kilometers (nearly 17,000 miles) away from Mars. Currently, Odyssey is in an elliptical orbit and aerobraking will circularize its path during the next three months. Following the orbit insertion last week, scientists turned on the high-energy neutron detector and the neutron spectrometer to check out and validate the instruments during the course of three orbits. Both instruments functioned well. Neutrons were successfully measured during each close pass by the planet. Those instruments have since been turned off. JPL 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 Tucson, and NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, operate the science instruments. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, will provide aerobraking support to JPL's navigation team during mission operations. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY'S FIRST LOOK AT MARS IS ALL TREAT, NO TRICK NASA release 01-214 31 October 2001 NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey gave mission managers a real treat this Halloween with its first look at the Red Planet. It's a thermal infrared image of the Martian southern hemisphere that captures the polar carbon dioxide ice cap at a temperature of about minus 120°C (minus 184°F). The spacecraft first entered orbit around Mars last week after a six-month, 285 million-mile journey. The image, taken as part of the calibration process for the instrument, shows the nighttime temperatures of Mars, demonstrating the "night-vision" capability of the camera system to observe Mars, even when the surface is in darkness. "This spectacular first image of Mars from the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft is just a hint of what's to come," said Dr. Ed Weiler, Associate Administrator for Space Science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "After we get Odyssey into its final orbit it will be much closer to Mars than when it took this image, and we'll be able to tell whether or not there are any hot springs on Mars, places where liquid water may be close to the surface. If there are any such locations they would be places we might like to explore on future missions." The image covers a length of more than 6,500 kilometers (3,900 miles), spanning the planet from limb to limb, with a resolution of approximately 5.5 kilometers per pixel (3.4 miles per pixel), at the point directly beneath the spacecraft. The spacecraft was about 22,000 kilometers (about 13,600 miles) above the planet looking down toward the south pole of Mars when the image was taken. It is late spring in the Martian southern hemisphere. The extremely cold, circular feature shown in blue is the Martian south polar carbon dioxide ice cap, which is more than 900 kilometers (540 miles) in diameter at this time and will continue to shrink as summer progresses. Clouds of cooler air blowing off the cap can be seen in orange extending across the image. JPL manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science. The thermal-emission imaging system was developed at Arizona State University, Tempe, with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing, Santa Barbara, CA. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The Mars Odyssey image is available on the Internet at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GenCatalogPage.pl?PIA03459. Contacts: Donald Savage Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 Mary Hardin Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-5011 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1632000/1632139.stm http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/11/01/mars.odyssey.pic/index.html http://www.cosmiverse.com/space11010101.html http://www.msnbc.com/news/636963.asp http://spacedaily.com/news/011031235934.qzoyb4sf.html _____________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 2 November 2001 There was one Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking pass in the past week. The Stardust spacecraft is currently 2.45 AU (about 228 million miles) from the Sun, and all of its subsystems are performing normally. The power subsystem team has been conservatively predicting that the DSN passes beyond 2.3 AU (about 214 million miles) from the Sun will require power from the battery, thus limiting their duration. To date, the solar arrays are providing sufficient power during the DSN passes, and the batteries have not yet been used during a communications pass. One possible reason is that the solar array, when cold, (-58°C or - 72°F) provides more power. This factor, coupled with smaller heater loads, gives a larger power margin than predicted. The power engineers are continuing to analyze this in order to better predict the power margin. Since Stardust continues to go further from the Sun than any other solar-powered spacecraft, no flight data for solar panel performance at this solar distance exists to help predict Stardust's performance. Data Management and Archive team members met with the Max Planck Institute and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. They made great progress in producing a data archive for the Cometary and Interstellar Dust Analyzer (CIDA) instrument to deliver to the NASA Planetary Data System. The archive will include instrument and data descriptions and calibrations, ground and flight data and ancillary data to support data reduction. 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 42.