MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 8, Number 45, 26 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) EUROPE HEADS FOR MARS By Stephen Hart 2) ASU RESEARCHERS SET CRITERIA FOR RECOGNIZING EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE Arizona State University release 3) ANY EARTHLIKE PLANETS OUT THERE? FREE LECTURES EXPLORE THE IDEA NASA/JPL release 4) EVIDENCE OF MARTIAN LIFE DEALT CRITICAL BLOW Arizona State University release 5) UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH RESEARCHERS FIND POTENTIAL SLEEP PROBLEMS AWAIT ASTRONAUTS ON LONG MISSIONS University of Pittsburgh Medical Center release 6) FLOATING FERTILITY: RESEARCHERS HAVE FOUND THAT GRAVITY AFFECTS THE BEHAVIOR OF SPERM IN PUZZLING WAYS By Karen Miller 7) NO BUCKS WITHOUT E.T. By Bruce Moomaw 8) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 9) THIS WEEK ON GALILEO NASA/JPL release 10) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS REPORT NASA/JSC release 11) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JSC release _____________________________________________________________________ EUROPE HEADS FOR MARS By Stephen Hart From the NASA Astrobiology Institute 14 November 2001 The H.M.S. Beagle set sail from Britain late in the stormy December of 1831, bearing the young naturalist Charles Darwin on a quest to understand the natural history of the farthest lands humans could reach. One hundred and seventy two years later, the UK's Open and Leicester Universities, together with Astrium, an Aerospace Industry partner, aims to reach a bit farther: to Mars. Beagle 2, a compact, lightweight lander carried on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express, will search for signs of life on the red planet. The H.M.S. Beagle's captain, Robert FitzRoy, conceived the idea of taking a naturalist only in the summer of 1831, making Darwin--the "scientific package" aboard the original Beagle--something of an afterthought. Beagle 2 was also something of an afterthought, says lead scientist Colin Pillinger. "Mars Express was originally going to be a rescue mission. It was going to relaunch instruments that had been lost on the Russian Mars '96 mission," Pillinger explains. But the discoveries related to signs of life in Martian meteorites and the 1996 scientific revelation that ALH84001 might contain a fossil sparked a new idea, Pillinger says. "I suggested to ESA that if they were going to have a mission to Mars that they really needed to have a lander and address some of these new issues that had arisen 20 years after Viking had said "We don't think there's any evidence of life on Mars." Other researchers in France and Finland had conceived a "net lander" strategy: many small landers making measurements on Mars. But with no plans for one lander, let alone many, Pillinger says, Mars Express had neither space nor a mass allocation for numerous net landers, no matter how small. "So it came down to a competition as to who could propose a [single] lander for a 60 kilogram limit. And Beagle is the only one that was a viable possibility," he says. Because of the severe mass restrictions, Beagle 2 has no propulsion system. Instead it relies on parachutes and a slowly deflating balloon in a controlled crash landing. And it cannot move once it lands. Instead it relies on a robotic arm studded with scientific instruments, like digits on the end of a living limb. Scientists call the instrument package the paw. Beagle 2, once on the surface, deploys four solar panels and the robotic arm. The paw includes a subsurface sampler called a mole, which taps itself into the ground--preferably under a large boulder, Pillinger says--a millimeter at a time. To sample unweathered rock, the paw also includes a grinder--developed conceived by a dentist--a microscope, spectrometers and other instruments. But the part of the package that excites Everett K. Gibson, geochemist, adjunct scientist on the Beagle 2 project and a senior scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, is the gas- analysis instrument. "The real beauty of this is to be able to sample on the surface, beneath the surface, make fresh surfaces of the rocks to get samples and then to take those and send them into the gas-analysis package, where we can begin to get a handle on the nature of the biogenic elements that might be present." The gas-analysis experiment is a miniaturized version of the lab equipment developed by Pillinger to analyze Martian meteorite samples on Earth. It slowly heats a sample in the presence of oxygen, then analyzes the gases driven off. At each step in the heating cycle, different chemicals burn. During the process, the instrument can detect carbonates produced by water percolating through cracks in rocks and organic matter--the chemical signs of life. Because the instrument analyzes gases, it can also analyze the Martian atmosphere. Gibson explains that the Beagle instrumentation eclipses that of Viking "I'm really pleased that we'll have information in early '04 about the nature of the light elements, in particular carbon and the biogenic elements, from an in situ package that is well, well advanced beyond anything that Viking could do in 1976." Unlike Viking, Beagle 2 can garner isotopic information about individual carbon atoms. Carbon atoms come in two stable forms, called isotopes: carbon-12 and carbon-13. The only difference between the two is the number of neutrons it contains. Carbon 12-and carbon-13 are mixed together in atmospheres. As biological processes build organic molecules, they use more carbon-12 than -13. This distinctive carbon-12:13 ratio becomes a detectable signature both of living organisms and their leavings. It is this signature that Beagle-2 will look for. But if the same instrumentation has found evidence of life in Martian meteorites, why take them to Mars? Because, Pilinger argues, however enticing, the evidence from meteorites is not complete. "You can prove that the meteorites come from Mars and that the carbonates were formed on Mars and that Martian water trickled through the rocks. And you see organic matter there. But what you cannot prove is that the organic matter is indigenous. You can't prove it's Martian. We just have one more step to make in this puzzle, we think, of going back to Mars and seeing whether the organic matter we've seen in the meteorites is in fact in Martian rocks and whether it meets the same criteria that we've recognized in the meteorites." What's next? Plans for the various parts of Beagle 2 are taking shape. But the very genius of the Beagle 2 design--complete integration, with no separate boxes containing separate experiments--poses a significant problem, that of cleaning and sterilizing the whole spacecraft to remove all microbial contamination. "This is a tricky issue for Beagle," Pillinger says. "You have to sterilize everything which is part of the spacecraft and you also have to clean parts of the spacecraft as well so that you don't take dead bodies any more than you take live ones. The rules on planetary protection are quite extreme in that you have to meet an internationally agreed protocol. This is something that is exercising us quite a lot at the moment." The team is currently building a facility for cleaning and decontaminating. Gibson, meanwhile, is already thinking past Beagle 2. "I would love to see sons of Beagle scattered throughout the whole surface of Mars," he says. "Any spacecraft that's going to Mars, that's going into orbit about the planet, should have a probe of the Beagle type." Because sons of Beagle would be cheap, mission planners could risk sending some into rugged terrain, which also might have a higher probability of having harbored life. "If we can send a multitude of these vehicles onto the surface in some of these high-risk areas, we have a good chance of getting some really interesting data on the nature of potential living systems that might have been on the planet in the past," Gibson says. Pillinger, who trained as a chemist, has found astrobiology a great stimulus to learn many other fields. He has dabbled in biology, physics, astronomy and earth sciences and added a bit of plain old invention in his search for the evidence of life on other planets, he says. "It takes you back to the days of Victorian scientists, when you were allowed to be interested in what fascinated you." Additional information on this article is available at http://web99.arc.nasa.gov/NAIRedesign/stories/beagle.cfm. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-01e.html. _____________________________________________________________________ ASU RESEARCHERS SET CRITERIA FOR RECOGNIZING EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE Arizona State University release 15 November 2001 For as long as people have gazed at the night sky, they have wondered whether neighboring planets could be populated by living things. In fact, recent explorations of our solar system have relayed several enticing hints that the life-supporting conditions on Earth may not be so unique. Evidence for water and organic compounds on Mars and Europa has astrobiologists seriously pursuing the possibility that primitive life once existed on other planets and moons. As they gear up for the real acid test--collecting samples from these distant bodies to examine them directly for evidence of life--they are tackling nothing less profound than the origins of life in the universe. But this pursuit is nagged by an uncertainty. We have never seen our extraterrestrial cousins before. How will we recognize them if we meet face to face? Peter Buseck and Martha McCartney, new members of ASU's arm of the NASA Astrobiology Institute, are among many scientists who predict the best clues are to be found in lowly bacteria. Buseck, Regents Professor of geological sciences and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at ASU, and McCartney, a research scientist at ASU's Center for Solid State Science, were recently funded by NASA to help develop reliable criteria for identifying traces of life, or "biomarkers," for use during future astrobiology missions. Study of organisms from Earth, Buseck and McCartney argue, is the most promising way to start. After all, Earthly life is the only life we know, making it our one reference point in judging whether extraterrestrial life exists. Therefore, Buseck reasons, "if you find something in extraterrestrial samples that resembles life on Earth then it's reasonable to think that you have found traces of life" on other planets. Because astrobiologists expect extraterrestrial life, if it exists, to be simple, terrestrial bacteria are getting top billing as model Martians. Bacteria are single-celled organisms, among the most primitive life forms on Earth. But the hunt for ancient bacteria presents some special challenges. Bacteria, all soft parts and no bones, do not usually leave any traces in the rock record, making their presence hard to prove. To unequivocally demonstrate that bacteria were ever present, Buseck stresses that "you need some sort of biomarker, some sort of remainder." Preferably, that biomarker should be a durable material, such as a mineral, that can survive for billions of years. Just such a long-lasting biomarker may have already been found--in a NASA scientist team's 1996 claim of fossil bacteria in a 4.5 billion- year-old Martian meteorite, perhaps the most stunning evidence to date of extraterrestrial life. Not surprisingly, the claim continues to spark heated controversy. Buseck and McCartney aim to moderate the debate by putting the Martian life hypothesis to a very thorough test. The group of scientists originally studying the now-renowned meteorite--known as ALH84001--presented a slew of findings, including organic chemicals and "bacterium-shaped objects," that collectively cried "life." Since then, intense scrutiny by other researchers has shown that most of that evidence could have resulted from non- biological processes or artifacts introduced during study of the meteorite. Only one of the original findings is still thought to be a unique indicator of life: crystals of an iron-based mineral called magnetite. The crystals found in the meteorite are striking because magnetite grains with similar size, purity, and structural perfection previously have been seen only in bacteria found on Earth. According to the NASA group's report, no inorganic process could have produced the meteoritic crystals. Only so-called "magnetotactic" bacteria, which form the magnetite grains through a controlled process, can generate these particular shapes. Magnetotactic bacteria, common in aquatic and marine habitats, produce and carry the magnetic crystals in a chain. The chain, which looks like a faux backbone under a microscope, acts like a compass as the bacterium swims along Earth's magnetic field lines. These crystals are at the center of Buseck and McCartney's planned work. If bacterial synthesis is the single possible explanation for the magnetite grains found in ALH84001, they could be the one clear indication that life ever existed outside Earth. But, Buseck worries, if no major holes have yet been punched in this argument, that may be because it has not been examined closely enough. And when Buseck says "closely," he means it quite literally. "These crystals are at the limit of what one can see, even with powerful electron microscopes," he says. At 40 to 100 billionths of a meter wide, magnetite nanocrystals have evaded clear three-dimensional imaging. That's a problem for the hypothesis of life on Mars, which now hinges on precise matching of the complex shapes of the magnetite crystals from ALH84001 and from magnetotactic bacteria. "There are questions about how well we know the shapes of these tiny crystals and how secure the identity is between those in the meteorites and those in the bacteria," says Buseck. To be able to match the crystals from the two sources with confidence, Buseck says astrobiologists must first fulfill four clear objectives. "What we need to do is determine the shapes in the meteorites with high accuracy, determine the shapes of the crystals in bacteria with comparable accuracy, demonstrate their identity, and then somehow determine that there are no other ways of forming such crystals. Then we'd have a tight case." Of these four steps, Buseck and McCartney intend to test the first three. They are studying the shapes, chemical composition, and magnetic properties of both the meteoritic and bacterial magnetite grains in unprecedented detail. New developments in transmission electron microscopy, a technique in which samples are viewed with a beam of electrons rather than a beam of light, have only recently made such precise study of crystal shapes possible. Using the recently improved techniques, the team will generate dozens of two- dimensional images taken from different angles as well as three- dimensional holograms of each magnetite grain. The resolution of their images will be in the range of hundreds of trillionths of a meter. In these efforts, Buseck and McCartney plan to continue ongoing collaborations with fellow scientists Dennis Bazylinski (of Iowa State University), Richard Frankel (of the California Polytechnic State University), Rafal Dunin-Borkowski, (of Cambridge University, England), and Mihály Pósfai (of the University of Veszprém, Hungary). Their work will provide improved data and criteria for use in evaluating whether other magnetite grains, from meteorites or from samples collected in outer space, have a biological origin. Of course, ALH84001 will be the first Martian rock subjected to Buseck and McCartney's uncompromising analysis. Contact: James Hathaway Phone: 480-965-6375 E-mail: jim.hathaway@asu.edu An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01zq.html. _____________________________________________________________________ ANY EARTHLIKE PLANETS OUT THERE? FREE LECTURES EXPLORE THE IDEA NASA/JPL release 19 November 2001 How did we get here? Are we alone? These tantalizing questions are addressed in two free, public lectures called "The Hunt for Earthlike Planets," at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Thursday, November 29, and at Pasadena City College on Friday, November 30. Dr. Charles Beichman, chief scientist of astronomy and physics at JPL, will discuss NASA's Origins Program, a series of missions on the ground and in space designed to find planets orbiting other stars that might harbor life. Scientists will hunt for planets with the same conditions that make Earth such a cozy habitat for life--water, the right temperature, size, density and chemistry. With current technology, we can find very large planets, which probably don't have life. The Origins program is developing powerful new telescopes to find smaller, Earthlike planets in a similar "Goldilocks zone" around other stars--not too hot, too cold, too big or too small. Sophisticated instruments will look for the telltale chemical signatures of life. "We are looking initially for simple forms of life" Beichman said, "but with this information we will be able to assess the chances of someday finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe." Beichman continues to serve as chief scientist for the Origins Program at JPL. Previously, he was director of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, NASA's premier institute for infrared astronomy, jointly operated by JPL and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Beichman also headed JPL's astronomy program in the mid-1980s. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, Cambridge, MA. He received masters' degrees in astronomy and physics, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu. Beichman has been honored with two NASA awards and has published more than 150 scientific and popular articles. Both lectures begin at 7:00 PM. Seating is on a first-come, first- served basis. The lecture will also be webcast on Thursday, November 29 at 7:00 PM Pacific time. The lecture at JPL, located at 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, off the Oak Grove Drive exit of the 210 (Foothill) Freeway, will be held in the von Karman Auditorium. The Friday lecture will be held in Pasadena City College's Forum at 1570 East Colorado Blvd. For more information, call (818) 354-5011. Information on the von Karman lecture and webcast is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures/nov01.html. JPL, a NASA center, is a division of Caltech. Contact: Jane Platt Phone: 818-354-0880 _____________________________________________________________________ EVIDENCE OF MARTIAN LIFE DEALT CRITICAL BLOW Arizona State University release 20 November 2001 When, in 1996, a group of NASA researchers presented several lines of evidence for fossil bacteria in a Martian meteorite, a wave of excitement passed through the public and the scientific community alike. Of course, that wave was followed by a storm of controversy. Five years of scrutiny and debate over the NASA group's claims have since brought all but one of their arguments unceremoniously back to Earth. Non-biological processes and contamination could explain the "bacterium-shaped objects" and organic chemicals found in the meteorite, other scientists have argued. Only one line of evidence for bacterial life in the meteorite still stands: microscopic crystals of a mineral called magnetite. According to the NASA scientists, the magnetite crystals found in the meteorite are so structurally perfect, chemically pure, and have such unique, distinctive three-dimensional shapes that only bacteria could have produced them, not any inorganic process. New data and criticisms from an Arizona State University research team and their collaborators are now assailing this claim, too. Peter Buseck, Regent's Professor of geological sciences and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at ASU, and Martha McCartney, a research scientist at the ASU Center for Solid State Science, argue that the match between the meteoritic crystals and those in bacteria is at best ambiguous. At worst, they say, the data used in the NASA group's analysis is mistaken. In their paper, "Magnetite Morphology and Life on Mars," published November 20, 2001, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Buseck and his co-authors assert that the evidence for bacterial magnetite crystals on the Martian meteorite is inadequate. In doing so, they may have cut the Martian meteorite's last tenuous hold on life. The magnetite crystals in the meteorite are tiny, even by an electron microscopist's standards, at only 40 to 100 billionths of a meter wide. And there's the rub. The technology necessary to accurately describe the three-dimensional shape of such small crystals has become available only in the last few years, and has not yet been used to study the magnetite grains in the meteorite. Therefore, says Buseck, it is too early to say for sure what the exact shapes of the meteoritic crystals are, let alone whether they provide identical matches to those in bacteria. The only kind of microscope powerful enough to produce clear images of such small crystals is a transmission electron microscope, or TEM. By using a beam of electrons rather than a beam of light to view the sample, the TEM allows researchers to see objects smaller than one billionth of a meter wide. But a TEM sees only in two dimensions. It generates a spectacular silhouette image of the sample, but conveys little about its thickness. An accurate description of the crystals' complex three-dimensional shapes requires that they be examined from a variety of perspectives. Discriminating between their flat facets and tapered edges is a particular challenge--when viewed in profile, the two are indistinguishable straight edges. Only by tilting each crystal at dozens of angles can scientists unequivocally identify their three- dimensional shapes, says Buseck. At the time of the NASA group's study, the tilting experiments could be done only by hand, with great technical difficulty. "It's a lot of work and it's not very precise," says McCartney. The NASA group used this approach to create images of the magnetite crystals from both the meteorite and from one strain of bacteria. Since then, scientists studying the three-dimensional shapes of crystals have upgraded TEM technology and merged it with computer technology. "The microscope stages and beam shifts and focuses have come under computer control, which makes the experiments much more doable" and more precise, says McCartney. Only two laboratories, Buseck and McCartney's and that of their co- authors in Cambridge, have applied the new technology to study magnetite crystal shapes. Using these new developments, they have reexamined the evidence described in the NASA team's study. "The shape [the NASA group] came up with disagreed with what we thought the shape was," says McCartney. This difference calls into question whether the shapes of the meteoritic crystals are accurately known and whether the claim of an exact match--the only remaining evidence for bacterial life on the meteorite--is accurate. Buseck's team also criticizes several other underpinnings of the Martian life claim. The NASA group selected only 27 percent of all the magnetite crystals present in the Martian meteorite for comparison with bacterial crystals. The Buseck group implicitly questions both the objectivity of their selection and the effect of such a limited comparison on their conclusions. Further, Buseck and McCartney's team demonstrates that the shapes of bacterial magnetite grains vary more than scientists had previously thought. The shapes and sizes differ among bacterial strains and even within individual bacteria. That expanded variety makes it more likely that bacterial and meteoritic magnetite grains could appear to match by simple chance. Lacking sufficiently precise data and resting on a restricted analysis, the NASA team's claims must be considered best guesses, Buseck and his co-authors argue. However, they have not eliminated the possibility that the Martian crystals could have a biological origin. With more advanced technology now at their disposal, Buseck and his collaborators plan more conclusive studies of the magnetite crystals from both the meteorite and several strains of terrestrial bacteria. "We will look at them in far greater detail than others have been able to do before," says Buseck. Buseck and McCartney's co-authors on the paper are Rafal Dunin- Borkowski, Paul Midgley, Matthew Weyland (all of Cambridge University, England), Bertrand Devouard (of Blaise Pascal University, France), Richard Frankel (of California Polytechnic State University), and Mihály Pósfai (of the University of Veszprém, Hungary). Image caption: [http://clasdean.la.asu.edu/news/images/buseck/] Multiple views of a magnetite (Fe3O4) nanocrystal from within a magnetotactic bacterium. This tomographic reconstruction shows the three-dimensional shape of the crystal viewed from several directions. The images were obtained in a transmission electron microscope with a field-emission gun. A chain of such crystals from within a single bacterial cell runs from the upper left to the lower right. Contact: James Hathaway Phone: 480-965-6375 E-mail: Hathaway@asu.edu Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/searchforlife/mars_meteor_011120.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-01j.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0111/20marslife/ http://web99.arc.nasa.gov/NAIRedesign/stories/hematite_letdown.cfm _____________________________________________________________________ UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH RESEARCHERS FIND POTENTIAL SLEEP PROBLEMS AWAIT ASTRONAUTS ON LONG MISSIONS University of Pittsburgh Medical Center release 21 November 2001 Astronauts traveling to distant places such as Mars may find themselves suffering from sleep problems as their missions progress, say scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in a report to be published in the December issue of Psychosomatic Medicine. The researchers, led by Timothy H. Monk, D.Sc., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, found that the endogenous circadian pacemaker (ECP), which is the part of the brain controlling the body's cycle of sleep, wakefulness, alertness, temperature, and brain chemistry, is able to maintain its 24-hour rhythm for about 90 days once removed from the natural time cues on Earth. After that time, the influence of the ECP appears to diminish significantly and the quantity and quality of sleep drops. "Man's ability to leave Earth and travel in space raises the question of whether the human endogenous circadian pacemaker (ECP), which evolved on a planet with a 24-hour rotation, would still function well when removed from all of the natural time cues of Earth," said Dr. Monk. "Our study shows that human kind may need to find ways to trick the ECP into maintaining a strong 24-hour cycle if we are to succeed on longer missions." According to Dr. Monk, studies of animals orbiting in microgravity, the weightlessness astronauts experience while in orbit, have suggested that mechanisms which keep the ECP "on-track", such as day and night, might be weakened in space. With funding from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), and cooperation from American astronaut Jerry M. Linenger, M.P.H., Ph.D., who is a co-author of the study, the researchers set out to determine how Dr. Linenger's ECP would change as the mission progressed and how those changes would impact his sleep, alertness and performance. Dr. Linenger lived aboard Russian Space Station Mir for nearly five months, from January to May of 1997. The mission was an eventful one with a fire aboard, coolant leaks and a near collision. He has written a book about the mission titled Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir. While aboard Mir, Dr. Linenger recorded data on himself from three measurement blocks, each almost two weeks in duration. Block one consisted of days 37 to 50; block two, days 79 to 91; and block three, days 110 to 122. Dr. Linenger habitually went to bed and arose at fairly regular times (11:25 PM to 6:06 PM). During each measurement block Dr. Linenger was required to measure his oral temperature and rate his subjective alertness five times per day, recording his results on a laptop computer. During each "morning" of a measurement block, within one hour of waking, Dr. Linenger completed a computer-based version of the Pittsburgh Sleep Diary, which yields measures of the times of bedtime and waking, the estimated duration of unwanted wakefulness and the amount and rated quality of the sleep obtained the preceding "night." Over the course of the mission the data showed an apparent "flattening" in the time-of-day function of Dr. Linenger's body temperature and alertness, indicating weakened ECP influence. These findings coincided with his subjective impressions. In block three, Dr. Linenger often forced himself to go to bed "by the clock" without feeling sleepy as a deliberate strategy to keep a rigid routine and to lessen the feeling of being dissociated from 24-hour time. "Because one of the major functions of the ECP is to prepare a person for a restful night of sleep, we were particularly concerned with what would happen to the sleep variables during block three," said Dr. Monk. "We found a drop in the estimated amount of sleep Dr. Linenger got during that block, resulting mostly from an increase in the number of times he woke up during the night. This is the sort of sleep disruption we would expect when the ECP is not doing its job properly." "The bottom line is we now know that the human body clock may lose its influence once we leave the planet for extended periods," said Dr. Monk. "We still have to determine if and how longer missions, such as to Mars, could be jeopardized by performance problems associated with poor sleep and ECP disruption. More research is needed with a greater number of subjects and better measures of ECP functioning." Contact: Craig Dunhoff or Lisa Rossi Phone: 412-647-3555 Fax: 412-624-3184 E-mail: DunhoffCC@msx.upmc.edu or RossiL@msx.upmc.edu An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/sleep_space_0111 22.html. _____________________________________________________________________ FLOATING FERTILITY: RESEARCHERS HAVE FOUND THAT GRAVITY AFFECTS THE BEHAVIOR OF SPERM IN PUZZLING WAYS By Karen Miller From NASA Science News Things are different in space. Humans sleep upside down. Hot air doesn't rise. Boiling water doesn't froth. Bones weaken, muscles atrophy, and an ordinary sneeze can send you flying! The list goes on and on... Now scientists have added one more item--a surprising and important one--to the list of things that work oddly when the familiar feel of gravity vanishes: sperm. According to Joseph Tash, a NASA-supported physiologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, sperm behave differently in the near-weightless environment of space than they do on Earth. Whether these changes will impair or aid fertility, he doesn't yet know. But, says Tash, it's becoming increasingly clear that in outer space, fertilization--of humans, of animals, and even of plants--will very likely be affected. The puzzling behavior of space-faring sperm first attracted attention in 1988 when the German researcher U. Engelmann sent samples of bull sperm into orbit aboard a European Space Agency rocket. His goal, in that and a later experiment, was merely to determine whether changes in gravity affected the motility (movement) of sperm. He found that it did. The tiny cells appeared to move better in a low gravity environment--good news, it seemed, for fertilization, which is closely tied to sperm motility. Perhaps making babies would actually be easier in space! But, says Tash, who has studied the sperm of sea urchins on board NASA shuttle flights, it's not so simple. Sperm movement, he explains, begins with a process called phosphorylation--a chemical reaction widely used by cells to control their own activities. In phosphorylation, an enzyme changes the functioning of a protein within a cell. This sets off a kind of domino chain reaction that starts some type of activity--like causing the tails of sperm to move, and to propel the sperm cell forward. On Earth, the tail movement is halted or modified when a second enzyme, known as a protein phosphatase, kicks in. In microgravity, Tash found that the second enzymes don't do their job within the normal time period. Although his results may explain why sperm move faster in space, they don't necessarily imply that fertilization will be easier. After all, if one enzyme (protein phosphatase) isn't activated properly perhaps others will be affected, too. Many enzyme reactions play a role in the fertilization process: for example, to ready the sperm to insert the DNA into the egg. Says Tash: if enzyme processes are being altered by gravity--and they are--you can't even guess at the effect on fertilization until you've studied more than just sperm movement. Tash's initial research took place on board shuttle missions STS-81 and STS-84. "Those were part of the MIR docking flights," he explains, "and there was no room for microscopes. Although we wanted to, we could not actually look at the sperm motility itself." As it turned out, doing without microscopes led to unexpected benefits. They were forced to concentrate instead on the proteins that are connected with the process. "As a result," says Tash, "we were able to identify [previously-unknown] proteins in the sperm tail that are very tightly coupled to the initiation of sperm movement." More recently, Tash has studied the effects on sperm of hypergravity (greater than normal gravity). Working with a centrifuging microscope in Germany, he was able to examine activated sea urchin sperm under conditions up to 5 G (five times normal Earth gravity). His findings expanded on the results of the shuttle experiments. On the shuttle, Tash explained, researchers examined the proteins by activating millions of immotile sperm and then, using antibodies, looking at the way the proteins had changed 30 and 60 seconds later. With the centrifuging microscope, "we were actually taking measurements of individual sperm cells." Following each of the unique wrigglings of hundreds of individual sperm, Tash found that sperm motility begins to deteriorate at as little as 1.3 Gs. And, he found, in hypergravity fertilization itself is reduced by a full 50%. As in microgravity these effects seem to be driven by changes in phosphorylation. It's actually astonishing that something as tiny as sperm could be affected by gravity. Physicists, says Tash, "might argue that the size of molecules critical to sperm movement are not big enough to be sensitive to gravity." But, he points out, the head of a sperm is about the same size as statoliths in plants--small floating granules that help plants tell up from down. Gravity may in fact affect things that are even smaller. Researchers, says Tash, are now beginning to find evidence that even the individual proteins that form the structures of the sperm tail may be sensitive to gravity changes. No one knows exactly how gravity affects cells. It may have to do with the cytoskeleton: the structure that gives a cell its shape. Proteins that send signals are often physically connected with the cytoskeleton, says Tash. Perhaps, he says, there is a mechanism in which the gravitational forces on the sperm head are somehow transmitted into the cytoskeleton, which then affects the signaling pathways that alter movement. This is a puzzle humans need to solve if we plan to spend much time in space. Ultimately, our exploration of space may rely on the ability of many species to reproduce in microgravity: not only humans, but also animals and greenhouse plants. "For NASA," says Tash, "the basic underlying question is: Do changes in gravitational force affect the ability of species to reproduce?" Increasingly, the answer seems to be yes. "It's an area," he says, "that requires a lot more attention." More information on this article is available at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast21nov_1.htm?list52260. _____________________________________________________________________ NO BUCKS WITHOUT E.T. By Bruce Moomaw From SpaceDaily 26 November 2001 ...Planetary scientists who gathered November 14-16 in Irvine to map out the best plan for the next 10 years for NASA's Solar System exploration program saw discussions center around three critical themes--astrobiology, the need for more terrestrial studies, and the need to start a new line of "Medium-class" planetary missions midway in cost between the small Discovery missions and the billion-dollar behemoths NASA has been fond of in its earlier space science plans. Of these, "astrobiology", received much attention as the main motivator for funding Solar System exploration--a situation that can provoke sharp feelings among scientists dealing with non- astrobiologically focused research. As a way of attracting support from the general public--and thus funding--the search for life on other worlds has undeniable power. After all, most people find the idea of alien life forms (even primitive ones) far more interesting as a subject than rocks or gases or magnetic phenomena. But the very large number of planetary scientists who deal with worlds and phenomena that are virtually certain to be lifeless--or have only a weak connection (or none) to the question of alien life forms--naturally feel that their areas of interest will be slighted in a space exploration scheme centered around alien life, and take a bitter attitude toward the idea of making planetary exploration revolve primarily around it. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/decadal- 01b.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 26 November 2001 Articles about astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html R. A. Kerr, 2001. Putting the lid on life on Europa. Science, 294(5545):1258-1259. B. Moomaw, 2001. No bucks without ET. SpaceDaily. P. Recer, 2001. Researcher says NASA has failed to prove case for bacteria fossils in Martian meteorite. Space.com. SpaceDaily, 2001. ASU researchers set criteria for recognizing extraterrestrial life. SpaceDaily. SpaceDaily, 2001. Evidence of Martian life dealt critical blow. SpaceDaily. Spaceflight Now, 2001. Evidence of Martian life dealt critical blow. Spaceflight Now. Articles about human space exploration and the microgravity environment http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html K. Miller, 2001. Floating fertility. NASA Science News. D. Nephin, 2001. Researchers say sleep in space less than restful. Space.com. _____________________________________________________________________ THIS WEEK ON GALILEO NASA/JPL release 19-25 November 2001 The quiet of this holiday week is interrupted only briefly on Monday by a test of the on-board gyroscopes. The remainder of the week is filled with the steady collection of real-time data by the Magnetometer, the Dust Detector, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer, and by the continued playback of recorded data from the October 15 flyby of Io. A temporary problem with the onboard tape recorder last week delayed playback for almost four days before it was cleared up, but now we're back to business as usual. This week the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer will provide the views of the volcanos Loki and Pele that were delayed from last week, as well as a thermal map of the south polar region of Io. The Solid State Imaging camera will provide pictures of Pele, and of a scarp or cliff feature named Telgonus. It will also return high-resolution pictures of a lava channel in the Emakong region. From the Fields and Particles instruments, we will begin to see the return of a 1.5-hour recording centered on the closest approach of Galileo to Io. This recording provides an intensive study of the detailed interactions in the environment near this extremely active satellite. Since this flyby occurred at a far southerly latitude of nearly 79 degrees, these data will provide an excellent contrast with data acquired on previous flybys over the equatorial regions. Combining all of this data should give scientists a more complete picture of the full three-dimensional structure of the magnetospheric region that surrounds Io. 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 REPORT NASA/JSC release 21 November 2001 During their 103rd day aboard the International Space Station, Expedition Three Commander Frank Culbertson, Pilot Vladimir Dezhurov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin Wednesday began activation of the Progress unpiloted supply vehicle in preparation for its undocking. The Progress, attached to the docking port at the rear of the Zvezda service module, is the fifth to visit the station. It will undock at 10:06 AM CST Thursday, to be deorbited and burn up in the atmosphere with its load of trash and unneeded equipment. Its undocking makes room for Progress 6, scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 12:24 PM CST Monday. The new Progress, filled with fresh supplies, is planned to dock to the station at 1:45 PM on Wednesday, November 28. The Expedition Three trio also began preparations for their return home after about four months in space. They began packing up gear and readying station equipment in anticipation of the arrival of the space shuttle Endeavour, targeted for a launch to the space station from Kennedy Space Center on November 29 at 6:41 PM CST on the STS- 108 mission. Dom Gorie commands Endeavour. Pilot is Mark Kelly and Mission Specialists are Linda Godwin and Dan Tani. The major purpose of the mission is bring the Expedition Four crew, cosmonaut and Commander Yury Onufrienko and Astronauts Dan Bursch and Carl Walz, to the station and bring home Expedition Three. Also during the flight, Godwin and Tani will do a spacewalk to install thermal blankets over the station's beta gimbal assemblies of the orbiting laboratory's solar wings, which stretch 240 feet from tip to tip. The assemblies let the wings track the sun to provide maximum power. Flight controllers at Houston's Mission Control Center have seen in those mechanisms occasional unexpected surges in the power required to turn the wings. They believe the surges are related to extreme temperature swings that occur as the station moves in and out of direct sunlight. Installation of the blankets is expected to reduce the temperature fluctuations and eliminate the "power spikes" seen as the wings pivot. The spacewalkers will go out of Endeavour's airlock, then get a 50-foot lift from the shuttle's robotic arm. They will have to climb with the blankets another 30 feet to the work site, atop the P6 Truss and about 80 feet from Endeavour's cargo bay. With systems operating normally, the station is orbiting at an average altitude of 247 statute miles (397 km). For the latest information on launch dates and times, as well as sighting opportunities from anywhere on the Earth, visit the Web at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/. Human physiology experiments continue to be a focus of crew science activities as the crew prepares for its return home. Autonomous microgravity materials research continued to accumulate scientific experiment run time hours in a variety of disciplines. Overall coordination of the research is the responsibility of the Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. The Johnson Space Center manages the Human Research Facility. Details on station science operations can be found on the Web at http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov. The next status report will be issued after the Progress launch on Monday, November 26, or earlier, if events warrant. _____________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JSC release 21 November 2001 There were two Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking passes this past week with one of the passes dedicated to radiometric Doppler and ranging tracking only. The spacecraft and all its subsystems are operating normally. On December 24, the Stardust spacecraft will pass within a half a degree of the Sun as seen from Earth, interfering with communications, as expected, for a week before and after this time. In preparation for this solar conjunction, the command to extend the command loss timer from 15 days to 20 days is being tested. 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 45.