MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 25, 8 July 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) UC BERKELEY SCIENTIST URGES DRILLING INTO FROZEN LAKE UNDER ICE NEAR SOUTH POLE AS PRELUDE TO DRILLING INTO SUBGLACIAL LAKES IN ANTARCTICA AND INTO MARS POLAR CAPS By Robert Sanders 2) PATHFINDER'S 5TH ANNIVERSARY REVEALS BIG FUTURE FOR MARS EXPLORATION NASA/JPL release 3) GEOLOGIST'S DISCOVERY MAY UNLOCK SECRETS TO START OF LIFE ON EARTH Saint Louis University release 4) CARBON CONUNDRUM From Astrobiology Magazine 5) DEMOGRAPHICS OF MARSBUGS READERS By David J. Thomas 4) RUSSIA CALLS FOR JOINT BID TO CONQUER MARS BY 2014 From SpaceDaily 5) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 6) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 7) CONTOUR SPACECRAFT LAUNCHES FROM CAPE CANAVERAL--NASA MISSION ON COURSE TO PROVIDE UNPARALLELED LOOK AT COMETS NASA/KSC release 68-02 8) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-167 9) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 10) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 11) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ UC BERKELEY SCIENTIST URGES DRILLING INTO FROZEN LAKE UNDER ICE NEAR SOUTH POLE AS PRELUDE TO DRILLING INTO SUBGLACIAL LAKES IN ANTARCTICA AND INTO MARS POLAR CAPS By Robert Sanders UC Berkeley release http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/06/28_ice.html 28 June 2002 Measurements of the ice temperature far below the South Pole suggest that a so-called "lake" discovered at the base of the ice is most likely permafrost--a frozen mixture of dirt and ice--because the temperature is too low for liquid water. Far from being a disappointment, says a University of California, Berkeley physicist, the permafrost subglacial lake may be ideal for developing and testing sterile drilling techniques needed before scientists attempt to punch through the ice into pristine liquid lakes elsewhere in Antarctica in search of exotic microbes. Techniques that avoid contaminating a drill site with microbes also would prove useful for future drilling into Mars' polar caps in search of life. "This would be an excellent place to develop a sterile drill," said P. Buford Price, professor of physics at UC Berkeley. "Then, if we find that we've inadvertently contaminated the permafrost lake, we can be confident that the contamination is confined to only a small area." Drilling into a frozen lake 2.8 kilometers below South Pole Station would have scientific interest in its own right, he said. "We are likely to find interesting microbial life in the permafrost, in addition to learning how to drill in a sterile way," he said. Price and colleagues in the United States and Russia made the recommendation in a paper that appeared in the June 11 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their paper, the team reported data on temperature versus depth down to 2.3 kilometers beneath South Pole Station, based on temperature sensors implanted as part of the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array (AMANDA) observatory. Price, a cosmic ray physicist, is one of more than 100 collaborators in the AMANDA project, a National Science Foundation-funded array of detectors imbedded in deep ice at the South Pole and primed to look for high-energy neutrinos originating in exotic objects outside our solar system, such as black holes or the active centers of distant galaxies. AMANDA will become part of a larger, kilometer-scale neutrino observatory named IceCube, for which funding by NSF began earlier this year. Based on measurements down to 2.3 kilometers, the team estimated the temperature at the bottom of the ice, 2.8 kilometers below the surface. This temperature--9 degrees below zero Celsius (about 15 degrees Fahrenheit)--is 7 degrees colder than the temperature at which ice melts under the pressure of nearly 3 kilometers of ice. Several years ago, radar images of the ice around the South Pole showed evidence of a subglacial lake about 10 kilometers from the pole. Price said that the temperature there should be about the same as the temperature at the AMANDA site, meaning that the under-ice lake would likely be a frozen mixture of ice and sediment in order to explain the flat terrain indicated by radar images. The permafrost, similar to that found in Arctic regions of North America and Europe, may be 10 or 20 million years old, dating from before a sheet of ice covered the Antarctic continent. Since any contamination introduced by drilling into the permafrost would not travel far, the site would make a good place to test such techniques in preparation for drilling into Lake Vostok, a huge, Lake Ontario-sized subglacial sea that has intrigued scientists since it was detected four kilometers below the ice in 1996. Proposals to drill into Lake Vostok have met with opposition because of the danger of contamination. In addition, many of the nearly 100 under-ice seas discovered to date may be interconnected, so contaminating one could contaminate them all. An international committee is discussing the issue, which may delay drilling for a decade. Drilling first at the site near the South Pole also would be more convenient, because there currently are no permanent facilities near Antarctica's subglacial lakes comparable to South Pole Station. As part of the AMANDA and IceCube projects, temperature gauges were installed in boreholes that had been drilled with hot water down to 2,345 meters, nearly to the base of the ice at 2,810 meters at the South Pole. The gauges provided a detailed profile of temperature under the surface and also allowed Price and his colleagues to predict the temperature at the base of the ice: -9ºC. Price is primarily interested in the kinds of exotic microbes that might live inside solid ice, either as dormant spores or at a low level of activity. He said that life has been found wherever people have looked, from deep in the Earth's crust to high-altitude clouds, and he thinks they also reside deep inside glacial ice. In fact, he will present a poster on life in solid ice at the "Bioastronomy 2002" meeting in Australia during the week of July 8. Such creatures would not live in ice crystals, but in interconnected liquid veins at the boundaries where ice crystals meet. "Even at temperatures far below the freezing point, there is always some liquid," he said. "As water freezes, soluble salts and acids are excluded from the interiors of the freezing crystals, creating a network of thin liquid veins rich in nutrients for energy and elements such as carbon necessary for building more microbes. Bacteria are small enough to fit and move inside the veins. Why wouldn't bacteria take advantage of that? Well, they probably do." He and UC Berkeley colleagues have developed instruments that they have lowered into boreholes in Greenland and Antarctic ice to search for microbial life. The devices flash ultraviolet light, and detectors record any telltale fluorescence from bacteria. Such fluorescence is faint, however, and the team is still perfecting the instrument. In a second approach, Price and his colleagues have built at UC Berkeley a refrigerated box in which they can investigate sections of ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland in search of exotic, deep-ice bacteria new to science. With a fluorescence microscope mounted inside the cold box, they can search for the faint light emitted by fluorescing bacteria. "With the refrigerated microscope, we can catch any microbes trapped in liquid veins in their icy habitats," Price said. "This greatly reduces the possibility of contamination. If we just looked in melted ice, we wouldn't know where the bacteria had come from." Drilling in Antarctic ice, including to within about 100 meters of Lake Vostok, has turned up some bacteria, according to Russian scientists, but all were known before. Bacteria also have been found in ocean ice. Price and other scientists hope to discover new species in solid ice, analogous to the novel thermophiles found in hot seafloor vents living at temperatures above the sea-level boiling point of water (100ºC or 212ºF). "If microbes can exist in glacial ice on Earth, they can also exist in Martian permafrost and in certain regions of Jupiter's ice-covered moons," he said. Price's colleagues on the recent PNAS paper are Oleg V. Nagornov of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute; Ryan Bay, Dmitry Chirkin, Predrag Miocinovic and Kurt Woschnagg of UC Berkeley; Yudong He of Rosetta Inpharmatics in Kirkland, WA; Austin Richards of Indigo Systems Corporation in Santa Barbara, CA; Bruce Koci of the Space Sciences and Engineering Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Victor Zagorodnov of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University in Columbus. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-driller-02b.html. _____________________________________________________________________ PATHFINDER'S 5TH ANNIVERSARY REVEALS BIG FUTURE FOR MARS EXPLORATION NASA/JPL release http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/solar_system/features/pathfinder5.html 1 July 2002 On Friday, July 4, 1997, American flags dressed the nation in a giant Independence Day celebration. It was National Hot Dog Month, and an estimated 155 million hot dogs hit the grill that weekend alone. Space must have been on moviegoers minds, as the alien flick "Men in Black" took in a whopping $84 million during its holiday opening. How appropriate then that 192 million kilometers (119 million miles) away from Earth, there was even more to celebrate: NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission had completed its seven-month journey by bouncing to a landing on Mars and opening up a whole new world of Mars exploration. The landing was a tremendous event at JPL, where mission controllers cheered, clapped and even shed tears over their success. Now known as the Sagan Memorial Station, the Mars Pathfinder lander, along with the moving vehicle Sojourner, brought Americans together to share new and exciting information about our mysterious neighboring planet. Initially sent to demonstrate new and inexpensive technology, the spacecraft ended up literally "finding a path" for a parade of Mars missions that will follow in the next decade. Making a big entrance "The dominant thing that Pathfinder was about was an entry, descent and landing demonstration and a development of technology that could be used," said Mars Pathfinder Project Scientist Matt Golombek. "That's really come through here, now, in everything, so that's the big deal." Pathfinder's robust, inexpensive airbag landing system used a ballistic approach to land on Mars. Without orbiting first, the space probe directly entered Mars' atmosphere and landed. In 2003, when the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers makes the same journey, it will be equipped with an updated version of this revolutionary landing mechanism. Instead of deflating upon initial impact like a car's airbag system would, the spacecraft's sealed airbags stay inflated for every hit. They then bounce about 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) across Mars' rocky surface like a superball in slow motion, eventually losing energy through friction. Engineers have changed a lot about the landing system for the Mars Exploration Rover, but the overall architecture is basically the same. The new lander is about 150 kilograms (402 pounds) heavier than Pathfinder's, and its slightly larger structure allows for a bigger rover. The airbags now have more abrasion resistance and additional layers. Still, even though the landing system was successful on Pathfinder, it isn't guaranteed a repeat performance. "The more we learn about Mars, the harder it seems to get there because Mars is not as safe as we once thought," said Rob Manning, spacecraft chief engineer for Mars Pathfinder and spacecraft systems engineering manager for the Mars Exploration Rover. "We can, however, stack the odds very much in our favor." Accommodating the chicken and the egg Imagine designing a vehicle that could land anywhere in the United States. From beaches and prairies to hills and mountains, the terrain and conditions would be so diverse that the vehicle would have to handle as much variety as possible. That variety is also present on Mars. Without orbiters like Odyssey and the Mars Global Surveyor to take pictures of Mars' terrain, engineers and scientists would have little to go on. "Pathfinder was the first mission to accurately predict what the landing site was going to be like before getting down to the surface of the planet," Golombek said. However, engineers did not know what conditions the Pathfinder rover would encounter on Mars before they designed the vehicle to survive at least a week of safe roving. "It's kind of like the chicken-and-the-egg problem," Manning said. "We are trying to learn about what Mars is like by sending missions there, but the missions need to know what Mars is like to go there." Manning likened the evolution of design for Mars spacecraft to that of bicycles in the late 1800s. "There was a lot of variety back then because they hadn't figured it out yet. Bicycles today look very different than they did back then because we continued to develop them. Vehicles of the future are going to look very different than they do today because we often have to discover what we build as we build it. It's a race between what we learn about the technologies we develop and what we learn about Mars." Since Pathfinder, engineers have added more intelligence to the spacecraft and more control as the vehicle approaches landing. They have also obtained a better simulation of how winds develop and flow on Mars, as well as a better understanding for how those winds affect a safe landing. This benefits them when picking a landing site, but it limits where and how high they can go. Sharing the goods Since no orbiters operated around Mars during the Pathfinder mission, Pathfinder was unable to transmit information via orbiter back to Earth. Instead, the Sojourner rover used the Pathfinder lander as a middleman to communicate with Earth. This meant that the rover had to stay close to the lander at all times. Unfortunately, this presented limitations not only in the amount of ground scientists could explore, but also in the amount of information they could receive in one day. Sending and receiving information through the lander's direct-to-Earth link (an antenna pointed toward Earth) used up a lot of energy, and the rover's battery had to be saved to keep warm in Mars temperatures, which varied by 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) per Mars day. Scientists and engineers have learned from this, and as a result, have given the Mars Exploration Rover the ability to communicate directly with Earth. The disadvantage here is that images of the rover from the lander will be unavailable; however, the Mars Exploration Rover will have more ways to send information back to Earth. Critical data like spacecraft health and basic information on findings can travel through a direct-to-Earth link like the one used on Pathfinder. Extraneous images and other non-critical data can travel through the close-by Odyssey orbiter, which transmits information to Earth in a matter of minutes. Serving up the science "Pathfinder started the thread of continuity between science, water, climate and life, and the Mars Exploration Rover will continue it, for sure," said Golombek, who is also a science team member on Mars Exploration Rover. Following up on Pathfinder's glimpse of Mars, the Mars Exploration Rover will move further and do more to learn about the planet's history, water cycle and climate. Pathfinder's discoveries, combined with images from orbiters and the raging debate among scientists about life on Mars, has in some sense sparked a renaissance in Mars exploration. "It has changed the way scientists work with Mars and the way scientists work together," Manning said. "Scientists of different disciplines now collaborate to solve complicated problems and to understand how life and natural history complement each other." Mars has been opening secrets very slowly with tantalizing excitement, such as the most recent Odyssey discovery of water. In 1996, before Pathfinder launched, very few scientists would have dared to dream that water existed just below the surface. "The discovery was surprising, even though the evidence of water on Mars is ubiquitous," Manning said. "The big question is where did it all go? It couldn't have all evaporated. We know there is a big correlation between water and the evolution of life on this planet, so we have lots of hope that there may be signs of early life on Mars." Golombek speculated that in 2005 or 2009, we might investigate rocks and water on Mars. We may even know whether pre-biotic chemistry existed on the red planet. At the very least, with the Mars Exploration Rover, we will learn a lot about Mars' very complicated history and how it became the way that it is now. "You must crawl first, then walk." Golombek said. "Pathfinder was the first baby step, Mars Exploration Rover is going to take the next big step, and we're hoping for more steps beyond that." Contact: Charli Schuler, JPL Phone: 818-354-3965 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/pathfinder_annivers ary_020704.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-pathfinder-02a.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0207/07pathfinder/ _____________________________________________________________________ GEOLOGIST'S DISCOVERY MAY UNLOCK SECRETS TO START OF LIFE ON EARTH Saint Louis University release http://www.slu.edu/readstory/homepage/1285 2 July 2002 A Saint Louis University geologist has unearthed further evidence in his mounting case that shifting of the continents--and perhaps life on Earth--began much earlier than many scientists believe. Tim Kusky, a professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences, has discovered the world's first large intact pieces of oceanic mantle from the planet's earliest period, the Archean. The nearly mile-long section of rock, which is billions of years old, may hold clues as to when life developed on the planet. The major finding was reported today in the July issue of GSA Today--the premier journal of the Geological Society of America. Working with colleagues from Peking University, Kusky uncovered the rare find at a site near the Great Wall where last year the team discovered the planet's oldest complete section of oceanic crust. Reported in Science, their work recently was heralded by the Chinese government as one of the most significant scientific findings of 2001. This latest discovery may prove even more remarkable. For years, scientists have longed to find large pieces of the planet's deep interiors. But until now, they've had to rely on only tiny fragments to study. Formed tens of kilometers below the ancient sea floor, this new discovery's massive mantle rocks are preserved in a highly faulted belt 100 kilometers long. Unlike the sea floor samples Kusky found last year, the mantle rocks preserve 2.5 billion-year-old minerals that hold clues to the origin of plate tectonics. The minerals, including an unusual type of chromite deposit only known from deep ocean floor rocks appear to have been deformed at extremely high temperatures before they were completely crystallized by volcanic activity. This shows that the mantle rocks were flowing away from the ridges on the oceanic floor, evidence that the continents began shifting more than 500 million years earlier than now widely believed. Because the discovery shows that the plates were moving in that early period, these findings could have a more far-reaching effect on theories related to the development of life on the planet. Just when single- celled organisms evolved into more complex organisms has been contested for years. Because hot volcanic vents on the sea floor may have provided the nutrients and temperatures needed for life to flourish, Kusky said it's possible that life developed and diversified around these vents as the plates started stirring. Kusky and Peking University's J. H. Li have initiated a series of studies on the section of ancient mantle and its minerals aimed at understanding the conditions of the Earth 2.5 billion years ago. The U.S. National Science Foundation, the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation, Saint Louis University and Peking University are funding their work. The Chinese government also has dedicated a natural geologic park at the site of the discovery. Saint Louis University is a leading Catholic, Jesuit, research institution ranked among the top 50 national, doctoral universities as a best value by U.S. News & World Report. Founded in 1818, the University strives to foster the intellectual and spiritual growth of its more than 11,000 students through a broad array of undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs on campuses in St. Louis and Madrid, Spain. Contact: Clayton Berry Phone: 314-977-7117 E-mail: berrycl@slu.edu An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02zc.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CARBON CONUNDRUM By Astrobiology Magazine staff From Astrobiology Magazine 3 July 2002 As scientists study the complicated dynamics of a warming planet, they are trying to understand the movement of Earth's principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, as it meanders through the planet's atmosphere, biosphere, and geosphere. The easy part is calculating how much net carbon is released by human activities--about 6.6 gigatons (billion metric tons) per year. (For ease in tracking the element as it undergoes chemical changes while moving through ecosystems, measurements of carbon dioxide ignore the mass of the oxygen. Note also that all numbers regarding the carbon cycle are estimates that are more or less accurate.) The hard part is figuring out what happens to airborne carbon after it enters the ill-understood natural carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide can leave the atmosphere through organic and inorganic processes at or below the planet's surface. It may be removed through photosynthesis and stored in wood before being incorporated into soil or returned to the atmosphere when the wood decomposes. The oceans absorb lots of carbon dioxide, which is stored in biomass or sediment, or returned to the atmosphere. While it is impossible to say for sure that an enhanced greenhouse effect due to human activities is causing the ongoing planetary warming, the great majority of climate scientists believes that proposition. And that, in brief, explains the concern about the carbon cycle. A major goal of carbon-cycle studies is to balance this simple equation: carbon entering atmosphere minus carbon leaving atmosphere equals net change in carbon content of atmosphere As you can see from the "global carbon cycle" figure, many natural processes are involved in the planetary movement and transformation of carbon dioxide. Primary production, or photosynthesis (by which green plants store carbon in organic molecules) on land is almost balanced by respiration. A net of 1.5 gigatons of carbon is taken up on land each year, according to figures from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations group charged with researching climate change. Dissolution of atmospheric CO2 into seawater stores massive quantities of carbon dioxide in the ocean, some of which ends up in plants through photosynthesis. Although the ocean "exhales" practically the same amount of carbon dioxide, it does take up a net of about 2 gigatons of carbon each year. Sedimentation of animal detritus (primarily shells) removes carbon very slowly from marine environments. Weathering and erosion both gradually return carbon from the lithosphere to the ocean. The human element Added to these natural interactions is the impact of human activities. The largest human sources of atmospheric carbon are combustion of fossil fuels and cement production, which release about 5.5 gigatons per year), according to the IPCC. Changing land use (mainly deforestation) releases a net of about 1.1 gigatons of carbon. Fossil-fuel use has risen steadily during the industrial age, as has the CO2 content of the atmosphere, up from 200 to 280 parts per million (ppm) to today's 370 ppm. Through processes describe above, humans are adding about 1.5 ppm per year. The IPCC projects that a doubling of carbon dioxide over pre- industrial levels, expected to occur in about a century, could cause a worldwide warm-up of 2 to 5 degrees Celsius (3.5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit). Burning ever-increasing amounts of the estimated 4,000 gigatons of carbon stored in fossil fuels could wreak havoc with the climate, notes James Kasting, in the department of geosciences and meteorology at Penn State. "Carbon dioxide may double, and double again," largely due to the increased appetite for fossil fuels. A second doubling, Kasting warns, would produce an increase of 4 to 10 C (7 to 18 F), returning Earth to the climate of the dinosaurs and causing incalculable upheaval of human societies and natural ecosystems. Stores and sinks For many years, the key question in carbon-cycle research was the "missing sink," or storage location, for carbon. The carbon books did not balance. The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was rising more slowly than expected, given known inputs and outputs. Estimates from the 1980s, for example, showed that about 1.8 gigatons of the carbon entering the atmosphere every year could not be accounted for. It didn't remain in the atmosphere, but nobody could figure out where it went. Among the possible sinks that scientists are investigating is the vast Amazon forest. The system is complex, and Jeffrey Richey, a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, recently calculated that flooded Amazonian forests might be leaking a substantial amount of carbon that originates in decomposing plants. Instead of being stored in vegetation or soil, this carbon is dissolving in water. Each year, 0.5 gigatons of this waterborne carbon dioxide is outgassed from the rivers and wetlands of Amazonia, according to the study, which used satellite radar to assess ecosystem area. "We always suspected it was a big deal, but it wasn't until the smoking gun of the radar that we were able to prove how big the outgassing really was," says Richey. The study was published in Nature on April 11, 2002. If not in Amazon forests, the carbon sink may be in the North. In the December 18, 2001, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers announced the discovery of a large carbon sink in northern-hemisphere forests. Tree growth in these forests was calculated to be storing 0.7 gigatons of carbon per year, about 12 percent of annual industrial carbon releases. While Canada's forests were losing carbon (probably due to disease and logging), forests in the United States, Europe and Russia were soaking up the element. The 0.7 gigaton finding probably represents only a portion of northern hemisphere carbon storage, said Compton Tucker of Goddard Space Flight Center, one author of the report, which used data from NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. "This is only a piece of the total carbon sink in the north, which may be as large as 2 billion tons." If, as scientists currently suspect, most the "missing carbon" is being stored in northern-hemisphere ecosystems, Kenneth Davis, an associate professor of meteorology at Penn State, says the implication is clear: "We need to understand the terrestrial system. What is the cause of the sink? If we can identify why there's currently a sink, we have the possibility of looking into the future to see how it might change. " To pin down the relevant processes, Davis says, carbon-cycle studies must fill in gaps. "We have small-scale ecological methods that give a wonderful description of processes locally," he says, and relatively good knowledge of the global budget. At this point, he says, "a large focus is to bring the two scales together, so the local-process stage meets the global budget." Detailed knowledge of carbon processing at the regional scale, he says, could help policy- makers manage forests to maximize carbon storage and slow global warming. Terrestrial forests may be able to store another 50 to 100 gigatons of carbon globally, he says, about 10 years of fossil fuel burning at current rates. But as climate changes, the terrestrial carbon cycle will also likely change, obscuring the net impact of climate change on carbon stored in land ecosystems. "I think it is important to note the limits on terrestrial storage and the potential for unplanned changes due to climate," says Davis. "The science we are doing is broader than simply storage technology. There is danger that the system may outgas carbon due to climate change, for instance." Carbon-cycle studies have used a wide range of new techniques to assess carbon flows. Decades ago C.D. Keeling began monitoring the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at Mauna Loa. A global network of similar measurements is now a mainstay of this science. From towers in various habitats scientists have studied the flux of carbon entering and leaving the atmosphere. In water they measure the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (the pressure of CO2 among the many gases in the atmosphere), to calculate the rate of solution and exhalation. One new effort, the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia, is intended to produce better data on the interaction of land and atmosphere in the Amazon forest. This study, opened in 2000, with NASA's participation, will use towers and ground-based measurements to "capture the entire cycle of water, nutrients and carbon moving in and out of the Amazon ecosystem," according to NASA. The long-term picture of carbon dioxide's influence on Earth's climate is uncertain, but it helps to distinguish natural processes from human impacts, Kasting says, "There's a natural carbon cycle, and a natural greenhouse effect. That's all well and good, it's what stabilizes the climate on long time scales, but we are perturbing that cycle in a very large way, and it's likely to lead to very serious consequences, especially if you project several hundred years in the future." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article231.html. _____________________________________________________________________ DEMOGRAPHICS OF MARSBUGS READERS By David J. Thomas 3 July 2002 While I should have been preparing two seminars for the summer and the syllabi for my fall semester classes, my thoughts drifted to the international and interdisciplinary nature of astrobiology and the readership of this publication. Where is Marsbugs being read? Based on the domain names of readers' e-mail addresses, I came up with the following distribution. Australia 4 Austria 2 Belgium 1 Brazil 1 Canada 3 Costa Rica 1 Denmark 2 France 2 Germany 5 Greece 1 Indonesia 1 Israel 1 Italy 1 Japan 3 Mexico 1 Netherlands 2 New Zealand 4 Portugal 2 Russian Federation 1 Saudi Arabia 1 South Africa 1 Spain 2 Sweden 2 Switzerland 1 Turkey 1 United Kingdom 19 United States/Other 216* Yugoslavia 1 *Many non-U.S. subscribers use e-mail services with .com, .net and .org domain names so their nationalities cannot be accurately determined. As of 3 July 2002, Marsbugs has 283 subscribers. Please share Marsbugs with your friends and colleagues. Marsbugs readership is not limited to scientists; anyone may subscribe. _____________________________________________________________________ RUSSIA CALLS FOR JOINT BID TO CONQUER MARS BY 2014 From SpaceDaily 5 July 2002 Russian space experts invited their U.S. and European colleagues Friday in launching a manned flight to Mars by 2014. The conquest of the Red Planet "should be an international project" similar to the International Space Station, Vitaly Semyonov of the Keldysh Space Research Institute in Moscow, responsible for its space exploration program, told reporters. "Russia has excellent engines for lifting space systems and a high degree of experience in space medicine," Semyonov said, highlighting the record for the longest space flight, 437 days, held by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov aboard the Mir space station. Nikolai Anfimov, of the Russian space agency Rosaviacosmos, said Russia was currently building a new Angara heavy launcher with a 28.5-ton lifting capacity which would be suitable for the project. A manned flight to Mars would cost around 20 billion dollars, and Russia's share could be around 30 percent, Semyonov said, adding that the expedition could be launched in 2014 or 2015. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/020705154632.nsrq9fwz.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=1&u=/a p/20020705/ap_on_sc/russia_exploring_mars_4. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 8 July 2002 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s2.html R. Sanders, 2002. South Pole may provide test for mars drilling. SpaceDaily. Human space exploration and microgravity effects articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html Agence France-Presse, 2002. Russia calls for joint bid to conquer Mars by 2014. SpaceDaily. ESA, 2002. Mars 45 years from now. SpaceDaily. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html J. Ray, 2002. Probe launched to see fossils from formation of planets. Spaceflight Now. Saint Louis University, 2002. Geologist's discovery may unlock secrets to start of life on earth. SpaceDaily. C. R. Woese, 2002. On the evolution of cells. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 99(13):8742-8747. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 27 June - 1 July 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry confirms the Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Cassini will continue 24-hour Deep Space Network coverage in support of the Radio Science Subsystem Solar Conjunction Experiment until its conclusion next week. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/. July 1st marked the event of exactly two years until Cassini executes Saturn Orbit Insertion. Changes in launch requirements and a new launch date for Contour have resulted in DSN coverage updates and a few tracking gaps for Cassini. A revised version of the C32 Sequence of Events file, Space Flight Operations Schedule, and DSN Keywords file have been released reflecting the current July 2nd launch date. The C33 Preliminary Sequence Integration & Validation Approval meeting was held last week The 28th Project Science Group meeting concluded this week in Lisbon, Portugal. Instrument Operations (IO) Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) personnel from JPL attended the VIMS Science Team meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. Important issues regarding the capabilities of the on-board compressor were discussed with the French compressor expert. IO presented the contents of the next flight software upgrade and the results from recent cruise activities. Mission Support and Services Offices and Mission Planning Team personnel supported the Deep Space Mission System Services (DSMS) Mission Workshop. The primary topic of discussion was the need for projects to establish a "prioritization" scheme for November 2003 through February 2004. This period has an unusually high number of activities from many projects including the Cassini Radio Science Gravitational Wave Experiment, Saturn approach science, and a significant number of Mars activities. The prioritization will allow the OPS Chief and other real-time personnel to make appropriate choices should a DSN resource become unavailable. To help alleviate this situation, DSMS has added nine new Tracking Support Specialist positions, will be utilizing Multiple Spacecraft Per Antenna capabilities, and plans to use the Parkes and New Norcia stations in Australia for Mars view periods. The Spacecraft Office delivered an engineering delivery of the Inertial Vector Propagator/ Kinematic Prediction Tool 8.02 software set to fix 4 items required for Science Operations Plan Implementation of the S09 and S10 tour sequences. Mission Assurance supported the second joint JPL/Aerospace Risk Management Workshop. This workshop, conducted at JPL, was a follow- on to one conducted at Aerospace Corporation last month. These workshops will continue in an effort to jointly work together to advance the process of Risk Management. 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. _____________________________________________________________________ CONTOUR SPACECRAFT LAUNCHES FROM CAPE CANAVERAL--NASA MISSION ON COURSE TO PROVIDE UNPARALLELED LOOK AT COMETS NASA/KSC release 68-02 3 July 2002 NASA's Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft--set to provide the closest look yet at the "heart" of a comet--successfully launched today at 2:47 AM EDT aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. Designed and built by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, MD, the 2,138-pound (970-kilogram) spacecraft was placed into an elliptical Earth orbit 63 minutes after launch. About 19 minutes later the mission operations team at APL acquired a signal from the spacecraft through the Deep Space Network antenna station in Goldstone, CA, and by 5:45 AM EDT Mission Director Dr. Robert W. Farquhar of the Applied Physics Lab confirmed the craft was operating normally and ready to carry out its early orbit maneuvers. "CONTOUR's launch was a spectacular start to an important project," says Dr. Stamatios M. Krimigis, head of the APL Space Department. "CONTOUR is next in the growing lineup of missions to explore small planetary bodies--such as comets and asteroids--and we expect it will add much to what little we know about these ancient samples of the solar system's original materials." CONTOUR will orbit Earth until August 15, when it is scheduled to fire its main engine and enter a comet-chasing orbit around the sun. The mission's flexible four-year plan includes encounters with comets Encke (November 12, 2003) and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (June 19, 2006), though it can add an encounter with a "new" and scientifically valuable comet from the outer solar system, should one be discovered in time for CONTOUR to fly past it. CONTOUR's four scientific instruments will take detailed pictures and measure the chemical makeup of each comet's nucleus--a chunk of ice and rock--while analyzing the surrounding gas and dust. The 8-sided solar-powered craft will fly as close as 62 miles (100 kilometers) from each nucleus, protected by a 10-inch-thick, layered dust shield of heavy Nextel and Kevlar fabric. Scientists expect the data to reveal the differences between comet nuclei and answer questions about the role comets had in shaping the Earth and other planets. "We're looking forward to a fantastic mission," says APL's Edward L. Reynolds, who at launch assumed the role of CONTOUR project manager from Mary C. Chiu, who is retiring from the Applied Physics Laboratory. "From mission design and operations at APL, to the navigation group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to the science effort headed by Cornell University, this team includes the talent and expertise needed to capture and deliver the best data yet on a comet's nucleus." The $159 million CONTOUR is the sixth mission in NASA's Discovery Program of lower cost, scientifically focused exploration projects. APL manages the mission, built the spacecraft and its two cameras, and will operate CONTOUR during flight. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, provided CONTOUR's neutral gas/ion mass spectrometer and von Hoerner & Sulger, GmbH, Schwetzingen, Germany, built the dust analyzer. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, will provide navigation and Deep Space Network (DSN) support. Dr. Joseph Veverka, CONTOUR's principal investigator from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, leads a science team of co-investigators from universities, industry and government agencies in the U.S. and Europe. For more information about the CONTOUR mission or to view images of the spacecraft, visit www.contour2002.org. The Applied Physics Laboratory, a division of The Johns Hopkins University, meets critical national challenges through the innovative application of science and technology. For more information, visit www.jhuapl.edu. Contacts: Don Savage NASA Headquarters Phone: 202-358-1727 George H. Diller Kennedy Space Center Phone: 321-867-2468 Mike Buckley Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Phone: 240-228-7536 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/07/03/comet.probe/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/07/04/comet.scientist/index.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/delta2_launch_020703.html http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/whipple_contour_02070 3.html http://spacedaily.com/news/020703122951.9qurw15r.html http://spaceflightnow.com/delta/d292/ http://spaceflightnow.com/delta/d292/020703jpl.html _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-167 3 July 2002 The first sample runs of the Zeolite Crystal Growth (ZCG) experiment during Expedition Five began last Thursday, offering potential improvements in the printing industry and transmitting electronic data. The science team on the ground reported this week that they are receiving good data. The critical first 10 hours went normally with the temperature levels rising just as expected. ZCG is scheduled to process samples for 15 days. During the critical first 20 hours of crystallization, the Active Rack Isolation System operated to damp stray vibrations from the crew or operating equipment. It was put in hold mode during the docking of the Russian Progress-8 cargo ship on Saturday but was back in active mode on Monday. Zeolites have the ability to absorb liquids and gases such as petroleum or hydrogen but remain hard as a rock, giving up their contents only when heated or under reduced pressure. They form the backbone of the chemical processes industry, including, for instance, in production of virtually all the world's gasoline. In space, scientists hope the ZCG experiment will produce larger, more perfect crystals for study back on the ground. ZCG research began during Expedition Four. The samples processed during Expedition Five, however, have never flown before in space, said Dr. Al Sacco, director of the Center for Advanced Microgravity Materials Processing at Northeastern University in Boston. "Everything is going wonderfully at this time," said Sacco, a payload specialist aboard STS-73 in 1995. "The samples are all different from our three previous zeolite experiments aboard the Space Shuttle and Expedition Four aboard the Station. One of them is looking at a way to trap dyes for carbonless paper, fixing the dyes so print doesn't fade. The other one is looking at the process for growing the first continuous quantum wires in orbit for the next generation of electronics. Instead of electricity, these wires would transmit light." The crew completed a nutrient fluid exchange in the Advanced Astroculture experiment on Thursday, removing 210 milliliters of fluid and injecting 500 milliliters of fresh nutrient fluid for the soybean plants growing inside. On Friday, the crew completed the monthly background reading on the EVA Radiation Monitoring badges and downloaded the data to the Human Research Facility (HRF) laptop computer. The data, along with Pulmonary Function in Flight data obtained two days earlier was downlinked to the ground. Fifty-one files were received. As scheduled on Saturday, ground controllers deactivated one of the growth cylinders in the Protein Crystal Growth Single Thermal Enclosure System. The remaining cylinders continued operating normally. Also on Saturday, ground controllers and the crew completed checkout work with the Microgravity Science Glovebox including mechanical inspection and filter installation and inspection. The Glovebox ground team is re-verifying procedures in preparation for the first scientific research using the Glovebox. The Space Acceleration Measurement System and Microgravity Acceleration Measurement System experiments recorded vibration data during Saturday's docking of the Russian Progress ship. The crew on Tuesday and today completed their Crew Interactions surveys on the HRF laptop computer. After a day off on July 4, the crew on Friday is scheduled to set up and take documentation photos of the Solidification Using a Baffle in Sealed Ampoule (SUBSA) experiment in preparation for operations next week. SUBSA is a Glovebox experiment that will examine the behavior of molten materials used in semiconductor manufacturing. Crew Earth Observations (CEO) photography subjects this week included air quality over the Mediterranean, Saharan dust over the western Mediterranean, coastline and erosional features in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, dust storms near the Cape Verde islands, and air quality over the Ohio River valley. The Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, manages all science research experiment operations aboard the International Space Station. The center is also home for coordination of the mission-planning work of a variety of international sources, all science payload deliveries and retrieval, and payload training and payload safety programs for the Station crew and all ground personnel. Contacts: Steve Roy Media Relations Department Phone: 256-544-0034 E-mail: Steve.Roy@msfc.nasa.gov Marshall Space Flight Center Media Relations Department Phone: 256-544-0034 Fax: 256-544-5852 http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/news The Web Status Report http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/2002/02-167.html Photos http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/photos/2002/02-167.html ISS Science Operations News http://www.scipoc.msfc.nasa.gov/ ZCG Fact Sheet http://www.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/background/facts/zeolites.html _____________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 26 June 2002 Launch / Days since Launch = November 7, 1996 / 2058 days Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 1183 days Total Mapping Orbits = 14,751 Total Orbits = 16,434 Recent events The spacecraft is operating nominally in performing the beta- supplement daily recording and transmission of science data. The mm188 sequence executed successfully from 02-171 (6/20/02) through 02-173 (6/22/02). The mm189 sequence has performed well since it started on 02-174 (6/23/02). It terminates on 02-177 (6/26/02). The mm190 sequence, successfully uplinked on 02-176 (6/25/02), begins executing on 02-177 (6/26/02). On 02-172 (6/21/02) and 02-177 (6/26/02), DSS-15 performed acquisition and tracking tests with MGS to characterize the current performance capabilities of both MGS receivers. Updating our knowledge of the acquisition and tracking performance of the receivers will allow us to update the uplink sweep parameters for MGS. Seven Roll Only Targeted Observations (ROTOs) were performed successfully by the mz181 & mz182 minisequences. MGS has completed 260 ROTOs to date. Spacecraft health All spacecraft subsystems report good health and status. Similar to last week, the star identification software had some difficulty identifying stars following two of the ROTOs. The flight software modifications we made several weeks ago continue to work as designed and STAREX converged after autonomously resetting. We have instituted a process that should improve STAREX performance by modifying the star catalog when we determine that problematic stars are about to enter the CSA field of view. Uplinks There have been 23 uplinks to the spacecraft during the past week, including new star catalogs and ephemeris files, instrument command loads, the mz182 and mz183 ROTO mini-sequences, and the mm189 and mm190 background sequences. 6,828 command files have been radiated to the spacecraft since launch. Upcoming events ROTOs are planned for next week in the mz183 and mz184 mini- sequences. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 1-5 July 2002 Reull Vallis Source Region (Released 1 July 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020701a.html Ismenia Fossae (Released 2 July 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020702a.html Hephaestus Fossae (Released 3 July 2002 http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020703a.html Amazonis Planitia (Released 5 July 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020705a.html All of the THEMIS images are archived at http://themis.la.asu.edu/latest.html. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. Dr. Philip Christensen leads the THEMIS investigation at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey 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. _____________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 5 July 2002 There was one Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking pass this past week on Friday, June 28, and all subsystems are performing normally. Work continues on the Comet Wild 2 encounter Fault Tree analysis in preparations for the Critical Event Readiness Review (CERR). A Camera Mirror rate rotation test has been developed, and will be run on the spacecraft this month. During the Comet Wild 2 flyby the mirror will be commanded at very slow rates during the early portion of the nucleus tracking. The re-scheduled Contour launch, successfully on its way Tuesday night, will usurp the Stardust DSN track on Saturday, July 6. The missing data will be re-transmitted during the Tuesday, July 9 DSN track. The Stardust team welcomes the new Discovery mission to space. 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 25.