MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 8, 25 February 2002. 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. Information concerning the scope of this newsletter, subscription formats and availability of back-issues is available from the Marsbugs web page at http://welcome.to/marsbugs or http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/marsbugs/marsbugs.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1) SPACE ADVENTURES TEAM DISCOVERS OVER 30 METEORITES IN ANTARCTICA Space Adventures release 2) FROM LIGHTBULBS TO LIFE By Leslie Mullen 3) ALIEN LIFE FORMS MORE LIKELY TO BE FOUND OUTSIDE SOLAR SYSTEM, SAYS COLORADO PROF University of Colorado at Boulder release 4) THE FUTURE OF HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: WE GO 'ROUND IN CIRCLES By Leonard David 5) SUPERNOVA SNUFFED OUT MARINE LIFE TWO MILLION YEARS AGO? By Kate Wong 6) GEOLOGISTS WEARY, BUT ELATED BY CHICXULUB DRILLING OPERATIONS By Lori Stiles 7) INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ASTROBIOLOGY Cambridge University Press release 8) WILL ET BE HOSTILE? ALIENATED PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO SAY "YES" By Doug Vakoch 9) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 10) CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 11) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS NASA/JSC release 12) MARS ODYSSEY MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 13) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ SPACE ADVENTURES TEAM DISCOVERS OVER 30 METEORITES IN ANTARCTICA Space Adventures release 29 January 2002 The Space Adventures team of private explorers discovered 33 meteorites during a meteorite recovery expedition in the Thiel Mountains of Antarctica. The recovered meteorites, which vary in size and shape, could possibly contain evidence of extraterrestrial life, and will be made available through the Planetary Studies Foundation (PSF) for study by NASA scientists. The meteorite recovery expedition was led by Professor Paul Sipiera, a planetary geologist and meteorite expert from Harper College in Illinois. The explorers, who have spent eight days hiking and camping in harsh Antarctic conditions in search for meteorites, have returned home. A daily record of the expedition can be accessed online at http://www.spaceadventures.com/terrestrial/antarctica. During the first day in the Thiel Mountains, the team found their first meteorite within hours, a 20-gram chondrite fragment with a fusion crust over half of it. Each search was successful in recovering additional meteorites of various sizes and textures. Some of the meteorites found are completely covered by a fusion crust and appear to be rare. The expedition's objectives were threefold. In addition to meteorite recovery, ice samples have been collected as part of a microbiology study for the University of Innsbruck (Austria), NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Alabama. The third project was an educational outreach effort that connected students from Chicago-area elementary schools and Harper College with team members via satellite and online forums. "I am proud to say that the expedition team has achieved all three missions with a high degree of success," stated Professor Paul Sipiera, the expedition leader. The expedition was offered in partnership with PSF and Adventure Network International (ANI), the only organization in the world providing private-sector services to the Antarctic interior since 1985. Additional information is available at http://www.spaceadventures.com/press/012902.html. _____________________________________________________________________ FROM LIGHTBULBS TO LIFE By Leslie Mullen From the NASA Astrobiology Institute February 2002 We all know that metals like copper, iron and zinc are needed to maintain human health. Molybdenum is also an essential nutritional requirement, used by several enzymes in the body to help metabolize carbon, nitrogen and sulfur compounds. Most other life forms use molybdenum in similar ways. But a one-celled organism that lives in deep-sea volcanic vents has developed an alternative metabolism that uses tungsten instead of molybdenum. Called Pyrococcus furiosus, the name means "rushing fireball" and refers to the microorganism's quick rate of reproduction--P. furiosus can double its numbers in just 37 minutes--and its preferred temperature of around 100 degrees C (212 degrees F), the boiling point of water. Such high temperatures will kill most organisms, because extreme heat causes the body's proteins to break down. The proteins of hyperthermophilic archaea like P. furiosus are resistant to heat, however. Such hot water also tends to have very little dissolved oxygen, but this does not trouble P. furiosus because it is an anaerobic organism. Tungsten, often described as the "metal from another world" because of its high melting point (3,422 degrees C, or 6,192 degrees F), is better known for its use in light bulbs than in life systems. But the element is very similar to molybdenum in many respects, and thus can be utilized by P. furiosus in similar ways. Michael Adams and his team at the University of Georgia have purified four tungsten-containing enzymes used by P. furiosus. Adams says that the genome sequence of P. furiosus suggests it may contain a fifth tungstoenzyme, but that enzyme has not yet been characterized. Enzymes are protein molecules that act as catalysts in biochemical reactions, spurring the reactions to work faster and more efficiently. An enzyme has a certain shape that only a particular chemical substance (the "substrate") can fit into. The enzyme is like a "lock" which only accepts a certain substrate "key." Once these two components come together, certain chemical bonds within the substrate molecule are activated. Adams says two of the tungstoenzymes of P. furiosus are involved in amino acid metabolism, in much the same way as some molybdoenzymes. One of the tungstoenzymes is involved in carbohydrate metabolism, but is unlike molybdoenzymes because the reaction it catalyses is different. The function of the fourth purified tungstoenzyme is still unclear. While tungsten and molybdenum make up part of their respective enzymes in a similar fashion, the tungstoenzymes in P. furiosus are not the same shape as molybdoenzymes. Adams says this difference suggests that tungstoenzymes and molybdoenzymes probably evolved independently. "The situation is similar to heme-containing enzymes," says Adams. Heme-containing enzymes, also known as hemoproteins, are a class of enzymes found in all mammalian cells (hemoglobin is one of the better known hemoproteins). "There are many different types of hemoproteins, with very different functions, and the various types can show little if any sequence similarity. Similarly, the molybdenum- and tungsten-containing families evolved separately, even though they contain a common cofactor." There are many different types of molybdoenzymes--they are used for various functions by everything from plants to animals to bacteria to archaea--but all these different enzymes contain molybdenum at the same kinds of sites. A very small number of these molybdoenzymes are also able to use tungsten. In these unusual enzymes, tungsten and molybdenum are both utilized at the same site. The first such enzyme was discovered by Lars Ljungdahl at the University of Georgia in 1983, in a thermophile called Clostridium thermoaceticum. Since this first discovery, more than a dozen of these enzymes have been isolated and characterized in bacteria and archaea. This type of enzyme shows genetic sequence similarity--and therefore is closely related--to molybdoenzymes. The tungstoenzymes of P. furiosus are unique because they are not able to use molybdenum at all. Instead, they only use tungsten. These enzymes show no genetic or structural relationship to the huge class of molybdenum-containing enzymes--not even to the molybdoenzymes like Ljungdahl's that also contain tungsten. "The tungstoenzymes of P. furiosus are very distinct evolutionarily from all molybdoenzymes and the few tungsten versions that are known," says Adams. "Yet even in the P furiosus enzymes, the way in which the tungsten is bound to the enzyme is very similar to the way it is in all molybdoenzymes--even though the rest of the enzyme structures are completely different." "Molybdenum and tungsten enzymes take similar steps in the metabolic pathway," says Edward Stiefel, Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. "They have the capability of playing the same roles. What is really interesting is that the rest of the proteins - which make up the largest part of the entity--are not at all similar. Thus, molybdenum and tungsten enzymes seem to point to a case of convergent evolution. Nature picked related elements to perform similar functions." Many scientists believe studying life at deep-sea volcanic vents could teach us about early life on Earth. Because the hyperthermophilic archaea that colonize these vents are thought to be one of the slowest-evolving organisms, they may be the best living representatives of the Earth's earliest inhabitants. Hydrothermal vents are rich in tungsten and scarce in molybdenum. The vents expel great quantities of sulfide, and molybdenum precipitates (turns into a solid) when exposed to sulfide. Tungsten, on the other hand, tends to remain soluble in the presence of sulfide. Molybdenum becomes soluble when exposed to oxygen, so in normal seawater--away from the anoxic, sulfidic vents--molybdenum is abundant. Perhaps ancient tungsten-using organisms evolved into today's molybdenum-using creatures. Before oxygen became abundant on Earth, the oceans may have been full of sulfur and tungsten. The earliest sea creatures would've been able to use the tungsten much as P. furiosus does today, while molybdenum would have been in its inaccessible solid form. But once cyanobacteria began saturating the atmosphere and oceans with oxygen, molybdenum became soluble, eventually becoming more abundant in the oceans than tungsten. Organisms evolved to adjust to the difference, and molybdenum eventually replaced tungsten in most metabolic processes. "Biology is very resourceful," says Stiefel. "You never know exactly how Nature is going to compensate, how it is going to replace one thing with something else." What next? Adams says his lab is currently trying to understand the physiological roles of the tungstoenzymes in P. furiosus. "Our studies are aimed at understanding what the other three enzymes do in the cell, how they are regulated, and what the nature is of the fifth tungstoenzyme. To this end, we have recently constructed DNA microarrays containing all 2,200 genes of Pyrocccus and are using these to evaluate how all of these genes--and particularly those of the five tungstoenzymes--behave under a variety of growth conditions" In a related project, Adams and his team are investigating the role and nature of tungsto- and molybdoenzymes in the hyperthermophile Pyrobaculum aerophilum. Additional information on this article is available at http://web99.arc.nasa.gov/NAI/stories/tungsten.cfm. _____________________________________________________________________ ALIEN LIFE FORMS MORE LIKELY TO BE FOUND OUTSIDE SOLAR SYSTEM, SAYS COLORADO PROF University of Colorado at Boulder release 18 February 2002 The chance of detecting life outside our own solar system probably is greater than discovering it on neighboring planets and moons like Mars or Europa, a moon of Jupiter, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder professor. Molecular, cellular and developmental biology Professor Norman Pace, a world-renowned biochemist and expert on life in extreme environments, said the chances of finding primitive life in thermal vents on Mars are not that promising. Perhaps the next likeliest place in the solar system to find life--in the ice on Europa--is significantly more of a long shot, he said. "The basic theme here is that if you look at what is required for life, it really is a narrow window," said Pace. "Our solar system outside Earth doesn't seem too promising to sustain life, but we don't know what kind of extreme conditions conducive to life may be found elsewhere in the universe." Pace gave a talk, "Molecular Perspectives of Extreme Life," at the 2002 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston held February 14-19. Signs of life elsewhere in the galaxy or universe may be "co- occurring, non-equilibrium gases like oxygen and methane, an indication the gases are being replenished," said Pace. This most readily could be explained by the influence of life. And should intelligent life out there be looking back, Earth could possibly be seen as a home for life by other life forms in distant galaxies working with very advanced telescopes and spectrometers like scientists on Earth are developing to locate such gaseous conditions, he said. Pace also is a member of CU-Boulder's Center for Astrobiology. In contrast, the search for life on Mars and Europa requires a rigorous chemical analysis, a process Pace has observed first-hand both in deep geothermal vents in the sea and in geothermal vents in Yellowstone National Park. That process involves the oxidation and reduction of geothermal compounds using hydrogen and carbon dioxide to form methane, or using hydrogen sulfide and oxygen to produce sulfuric acid. "We commonly see these processes with sediments under seawater," he said. The top 1 centimeter of some marine sediments may contain one billion microbes per cubic centimeter. However, 1,000 meters down into the sediments scientists only find about 100,000 microbes per square centimeter, "and those generally are starved." "But if life is really going to succeed and flourish for an extended period, I think it has to take over and modify a planet on the surface, like it has on Earth," Pace said. Primitive life forms in the depths of planets or moons are not likely to contribute to changing the surface. The key to abundant and diverse life on the surface of Earth and likely other planets is photosynthesis, which captures light energy and converts it into energetic electrons that act like tiny batteries to accomplish biochemical tasks required for life. "Life has changed the surface of Earth dramatically," he said. In a piece for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year, Pace wrote, "Considering the intrinsic fragility and complex organic systems coupled with the powerful force of natural selection, I venture that the physical limits of life are likely to be about the same anywhere in the universe." The definition of life should include self-replication--the mechanism of evolution through natural selection--and probably carbon-based molecules since carbon is one of the most abundant of the higher elements in the universe, he said. Given that primitive life on Earth has been found in boiling thermal vents in the oceans to microbes in ice, the temperature span for life anywhere in the universe is likely to range from roughly -58 degrees Fahrenheit to 302 degrees F, Pace said. "We don't know enough about Mars yet," he said. "Perhaps the soils under Olympus Mons--a mountain nearly 90,000 feet high--have some type of circulation method for underground water, which would enhance the chances of life." Last October, Pace was named winner of a prestigious $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship--often called a "genius grant"--from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago "for revolutionizing our conception of the range and diversity of microbial life." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.colorado.edu/NewsServices/NewsReleases/2002/1621.html. Contact: Norman Pace Phone: 303-735-1808 E-mail: Norman.pace@colorado.edu Jim Scott Phone: 303-492-3114 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02h.html. _____________________________________________________________________ THE FUTURE OF HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT: WE GO 'ROUND IN CIRCLES By Leonard David From Space.com 19 February 2002 On February 20, 1962, John Glenn's spaceflight helped kick start the pioneering, glory days of America's journeys to and from Earth orbit. Though his mission lasted a little under five hours, circling Earth for just three orbits--"You didn't ride in the Mercury capsule," Glenn said of the tiny Friendship 7, "...you wore it"--he parachuted into the history books forever. But at the dawn of the 21st century, with hundreds of people having now circled our planet, just what trajectory is human spaceflight really taking? Apollo, for all its glory and foot stomping moonwalks, is today a dusty, historical artifact of the Cold War. As the International Space Station faces size and budget reductions and as human missions back to the moon or on to Mars are put on the backburner or dismissed, human spaceflight appears to have been placed into a neutral parking orbit. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/glenn_next40_020219-1.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SUPERNOVA SNUFFED OUT MARINE LIFE TWO MILLION YEARS AGO? By Kate Wong From Scientific American 19 February 2002 The phrase mass extinction often calls to mind culprits such as asteroid impacts and volcanism. But new research suggests that in the case of a die-off of marine creatures that occurred two million years ago, at the interface of the Pleistocene and Pliocene epochs, a different phenomenon was to blame. According to a new report, cosmic rays from the explosion of a nearby supernova may have done these animals in. Get the full story at http://www.scientificamerican.com/news/021302/1.html. _____________________________________________________________________ GEOLOGISTS WEARY, BUT ELATED BY CHICXULUB DRILLING OPERATIONS By Lori Stiles 20 February 2002 The drilling crew on the Chicxulub Scientific Drilling Project near Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, has been doing "a fantastic job," last week recovering between 35 and 40 meters of exceptional core samples each day, according to a University of Arizona scientist and co- investigator on the project. The Chicxulub Scientific Drilling Project (CSDP) is an international project to core 1.8-kilometers into an immense crater created by the impact of an asteroid or comet 65 million years ago. The Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) impact is thought to have led to one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth history, including dinosaur extinction. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) is the lead institution on the $1.5 million, approximately 2-month project. The goal is to discover what the impactor was and the details of the catastrophic impact that wiped out more than 75 percent of all plant and animal species on Earth. "The crew is drilling 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at a far faster pace that we ever thought possible," said UA planetary scientist David A. Kring. "We had hoped to recover as much as 25 meters of core samples each day, but at the rate they are drilling, we will probably reach depths of 1.5 kilometers by the end of the project, despite the loss of a diamond drill head earlier in this effort." The CSDP drilling team members are from DOSECC (Drilling, Observation, and Sampling of the Earth's Continental Crust, Inc.), and Pitsa, a drilling contractor in Mexico. "We are getting a 100 percent core-recovery rate," Kring added. Scientists by such drilling operations often recover only between 50 percent or 60 percent, and sometimes as little as 20 percent, of intact core samples, he said. The drilling crew hands each core barrel pulled from the crater to onsite geologists who then remove and process the core samples. Kring and UA undergraduate student Jake Bailey last week helped relieve their tired Mexican colleagues in onsite geology duties, working 12-hour shifts. Kring worked a 28-hour stretch as well. When Kring left Chicxulub last Saturday night, the team had drilled to more than 1.2 kilometers (4,200 feet). Kring, director of the NASA/UA Space Imagery Center, has posted photographs and more details on recent operations on the Space Imagery Center web site at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/news/chicxulubl.html. For more about the Chicxulub Scientific Drilling Project, see: http://uanews.opi.arizona.edu/cgi- bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=4715 http://uanews.opi.arizona.edu/cgi- bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/wa/SRStoryDetails?ArticleID=5026 Contact: Lori Stiles, UA News Services Phone: 520-621-1877 David A. Kring Phone: 520-621-2024 E-mail: kring@lpl.arizona.edu _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ASTROBIOLOGY Cambridge University Press release 20 February 2002 Cambridge University Press is pleased to announce the launch of the International Journal of Astrobiology, which will soon be available online at the Cambridge Journals Online site http://journals.cambridge.org. The journal aims to become a major forum for the study of astrobiology and will publish peer-reviewed research papers, review articles, book reviews and news of interest to the astrobiology community. Subjects covered will include: * Cosmic prebiotic chemistry * Planetary evolution * Search for planetary systems and habitable zones * Origins, evolution and distribution of life * Extremophile biology and experimental simulation of extraterrestrial environments * Life detection in our solar system and beyond * Technologies and space missions for astrobiology and planetary protection * Human expansion, ecosystems and life support beyond Earth * Intelligent life and societal aspects of astrobiology Free articles We would like to offer you free online access to selected articles from the first issue of International Journal of Astrobiology as soon as they are available online. Please email astrobiology@cambridge.org if you are interested in finding out more about this. We will notify you when the first issue is online, and explain how you can access the free sample articles (available for a limited period of time). Call for papers Papers and contributions are now being accepted by the Managing Editor, Dr. Simon Mitton. For submission details, please visit http://uk.cambridge.org/journals/ija/ijaifc.htm. Alternatively, you can write to: Dr. Simon Mitton, Cambridge University Press, The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK. Subscription details Quarterly Volume 1 in 2002: January, April, July and October Institutions print and electronic: 120 pounds/$180 Institutions electronic only: 112 pounds/$168 Individuals print plus electronic: 50 pounds/$75 Print ISSN 1473-5504 To subscribe, please contact Journals Customer Services. Orders in North America, Canada and Mexico E-mail: journals_subscriptions@cup.org Phone: 914-937-4712 Orders elsewhere E-mail: journals_subscriptions@cambridge.org Phone: +44-(0)1223-326070 Please email astrobiology@cambridge.org with any queries. _____________________________________________________________________ WILL ET BE HOSTILE? ALIENATED PEOPLE ARE MORE LIKELY TO SAY "YES" By Doug Vakoch From Space.com 21 February 2002 Astronomer Frank Drake, the Father of SETI, has argued that ET will likely be altruistic, rather than malevolent. Drake reasons that if extraterrestrials are hostile, then their civilizations won’t last very long, and we’re unlikely to make contact with them. Only extraterrestrials with a long-lasting, stable society will be around long enough to be detected by our SETI programs. And yet, extraterrestrials we encounter in movies such as Alien and Independence Day are certainly not friendly. But is the possibility of malevolent aliens really just a matter of overworked imaginations in Hollywood? And to the extent that these images are held by people in general, might concerns over hostile aliens say more about ourselves than about ET? Get the full story at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_hostiles_020221.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 25 February 2002 Articles about astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html SpaceDaily, 2002. Life among worlds beyond beyond. SpaceDaily. Articles about the biology of extreme environments (on Earth) http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s2.html A. Sharma, J. H. Scott, G. D. Cody, M. L. Fogel, R. M. Hazen, R. J. Hemley, and W. T. Huntress, 2002. Microbial activity at gigapascal pressures. Science, 295(5559):1514-1516. SpaceDaily, 2002. Life in the rocks. SpaceDaily. Articles about human space exploration and the microgravity environment http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html L. David, 2002. The future of human spaceflight: we go 'round in circles. Space.com. Articles about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s4.html D. Vakoch, 2002. Will ET be hostile? Alienated people are more likely to say "yes". Space.com. Articles about evolutionary biology and chemistry http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html K. M. Towe, 2002. The problematic rise of Archean oxygen. Science, 296(5559):1419. K. Wong, 2002. Study suggests supernova snuffed out marine life two million years ago. Scientific American. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI WEEKLY SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 14-20 February 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, February 20. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/. Instrument activities this week include a Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) Ultra Stable Oscillator characterization, and Periodic Instrument Maintenance. Spacecraft activities this week included the completion of the Spacecraft Operations Office (SCO) procedure to change the fault protection safing response default telemetry mode to 10 bps, and load module index patches to RAM for both Command & Data Subsystem (CDS) strings and the SSR. Operations personnel received official notification of the changes upon completion of the procedure. Additional spacecraft activities included a memory readout of online CDS state matrix, an AACS Clear High Watermark, and an autonomous CDS Solid State Recorder memory load partition repair. SCO Power & Thermal personnel reported observing that the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) had increased in temperature by about 10 degrees C, and was drawing an additional 1.5W of power. ISS investigated and determined a possible Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) CCD sensor failure, which in turn, led to a false reading of a cooler temp and turned ON the CCD performance heater. The ISS team is working a recovery plan for next week to power cycle the NAC and Wide Angle Camera (WAC), and reload flight software. It is hoped that this activity will reset the sensor and that no further action will be necessary. The C31 background sequence has solidified and further changes are not anticipated prior to uplink. An Integrated Test Laboratory (ITL) procedure walkthrough for the Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS), and Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (UVIS) flight software uploads was held and the necessary files have been generated for next week's test. A three-day technical design and risk review for Saturn Orbit Insertion began this week. Members of SCO, Mission Planning, and Mission Assurance will make presentations. A Mission Sequence Subsystem D8 Module Functionality Design Review was held this week. The review was geared toward science users describing the functionality of the modules to be implemented in this delivery. No significant issues were brought up in the review. Participants have until the end of the week to submit any additional issues or concerns. A delivery review was held for Multimission Image Processing Laboratory software Version 27.0. Several Cassini specific upgrades to ISS and Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) functionality were delivered and accepted by Deep Space Mission Services. The RPWS FSW 2.5.0 and UVIS FSW 1.3.0 ALF text files were approved for Uplink at a Delivery Coordination Meeting Software Requirement Certification Review. Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION STATUS NASA/JSC release 20 February 2002 Expedition 4 astronauts Carl Walz and Dan Bursch completed a successful 5-hour, 47-minute spacewalk Wednesday, testing equipment and procedures for the Airlock Quest and performing other tasks to prepare for Space Shuttle Atlantis' STS-110 mission to the International Space Station in April. The spacewalk, which began at 5:38 AM CST and ended at 11:25 AM, notched some firsts. It was the first spacewalk from Quest without the presence of a space shuttle at the station, earning it the designation of U.S. EVA 1. It also marked the first U.S. use of an Intravehicular (IV) officer, Astronaut Joe Tanner, working from Houston's Mission Control Center instead of from onboard the spacecraft, as has been the case up to this point. Also, new procedures were used to expedite airlock depressurization at the start of the spacewalk. STS-110 will bring the S0 Truss to the station, the first segment of what will be the station's backbone. Four spacewalks will be conducted during that flight, all from the airlock and all using an oxygen/exercise protocol to purge nitrogen from the spacewalkers' bloodstreams. Walz and Bursch used that protocol today. During the spacewalk today, Walz and Bursch deployed two electrical cables from their stowage area on the U.S. Laboratory Destiny and connected them to a cable tray near the base of the Z1 Truss. Plans to disconnect and restow the cables were put on hold while engineers evaluated unexpected readings from current conversion units in the circuit the cables completed. Walz removed four thermal blankets from the Z1 Truss and stowed them inside the truss, while Bursch retrieved tools to be used on STS-110 spacewalks and brought them to the airlock. The two also secured looser-than-expected latches on two oxygen tanks and two nitrogen tanks, on the airlock. Walz and Bursch removed adaptors on which a Russian cargo crane had been mounted and attached one of them to the Zarya module's exterior. They brought the other, U.S.-made, adaptor into the airlock. They also inspected cable connectors outside the station and photographed the MISSE (Materials International Space Station Experiment). Some of the materials samples being exposed to the harsh conditions of space apparently were peeling back off their mountings. Scientists used the spacewalk to gather additional data for an experiment looking at the effects of spacewalks and long-term exposure to microgravity on lung function. Also, Walz and Bursch will wear radiation sensors for the EVARM experiment, a study of radiation doses experienced by spacewalking astronauts. Walz and Bursch each had made one previous spacewalk from the station last month, and Walz also made a spacewalk on STS-51 in September 1993. During today's spacewalk, Expedition 4 Commander Yury Onufrienko operated cameras on the station's Canadian provided robotic arm to document activities. A planned upgrade of the station's software is scheduled for late this week to prepare station computers for arrival of the S0 Truss and other equipment to be delivered on subsequent flights. 22 February 2002 The International Space Station Expedition 4 crew returned to normal activities today after Wednesday's successful spacewalk and what largely was a day of rest on Thursday. Commander Yury Onufrienko and astronauts Carl Walz and Dan Bursch participated in a number of medical tests, including post-spacewalk checkouts for Walz and Bursch. Also today, Houston's Mission Control Center and the crew began a transition to new software for the station's computers, a process that is proceeding well and will continue with checkouts for several days. Many of today's medical tests on crewmembers were done in the U.S. laboratory Destiny, in which the crew resumed work early this morning. As a precaution, they had spent much of the past 48 hours in the Russian segment while an air freshening system removed a musty odor that had spread through U.S. modules Wednesday. The odor originated from a Quest Airlock system that was being used to cleanse spacesuit air scrubbers Wednesday afternoon. The crew reported few remnants of the smell in the station this morning. Russian flight controllers reboosted the station Thursday using the Progress vehicle docked at the rear of the Zvezda living quarters module. The reboost, performed in two segments, raised the altitude of the station by a little less than three statute miles to an average altitude of about 239 miles. Information on the crew's activities aboard the space station, future launch dates, as well as station sighting opportunities from anywhere on the Earth, is available on the Internet at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov. Details on station science operations can be found on an Internet site administered by the Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, at http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov. The next ISS status report will be issued March 1, or sooner, if developments warrant. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 19 February 2002 NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has begun its science mapping mission. The spacecraft turned its science instruments toward Mars on Monday, February 18. Flight controllers report that the thermal emission imaging system was turned on this morning. The camera system, which takes both visible and infrared images, will go through a period of calibration before the first science images are taken during the next few days. The first images will be released at a news conference on March 1. "As with any new camera, it takes a while to get all the settings right to optimize the picture quality," said Dr. Philip Christensen, principal investigator for the thermal emission imaging system at Arizona State University, Tempe. "Once we get the system calibrated, there will be a tremendous flow of image data." The gamma ray spectrometer instruments are collecting data on the composition of the Martian surface. The door on the gamma ray sensor was opened yesterday, allowing the instrument to cool down to its operating temperature. The instrument will be fully operational later this week. The neutron spectrometer and high-energy neutron detector are collecting data that scientists expect will show the location of hydrogen on Mars, which may indicate deposits of water ice. Having passed these milestones, engineers plan to begin troubleshooting the Martian radiation environment experiment next week. The process of evaluating the status of the instrument could continue for several weeks. The radiation experiment stopped communicating and was turned off in August 2001. 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, operate the science instruments. Additional science investigators are located at the Russian Space Research Institute and Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico. 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. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-odyssey-02d.html. _____________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 22 February 2002 There were two Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking passes in the past week, and all subsystems are performing normally. Stardust is currently 2.69 AU (about 250 million miles, or 400 million kilometers) from the Sun. Since the spacecraft is far from the Sun, it will rely heavily on its battery, which backs up the solar arrays especially at such times as DSN communication sessions. This reliance will last for the next few months, so the flight team made the spacecraft more sensitive to its power state, and less likely to request entry into safe mode. The team raised the limit at which the spacecraft would place itself into safe mode from a 50- percent-charged battery to an 80-percent-charged battery. The value for performing a side swap (switching from one identical backup system to the other) was revised from 45 to 75 percent. The battery's charge state after a communications session is typically around 90 percent. Also, the length of the remaining DSN passes was cut from 4 to 2.5 hours. This will ensure that the charge state stays well above 80%. 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 9, Number 8.