MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 28, 5 August 2002. Editor/Publisher: Dr. David J. Thomas, Science Division, Lyon College, Batesville, AR 72503-2317, USA. dthomas@lyon.edu Contributing Editor: 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) WORK STARTS ON BEAGLE 2 BUILD FOR MISSION TO MARS British National Space Centre release 2) SOIL STUDY MAY YIELD HARVEST OF WATER CYCLE DATA NASA/JPL release 3) NO BUGS PLEASE, THIS IS A CLEAN PLANET! From ESA Science News 4) END OF BED REST CAMPAIGN ESA release 54-2002 5) EUKARYOTIC ORIGINS: REVOLUTION IN THE CLASSIFICATION OF LIFE By Stephen Hart 6) NASA TO "TRAIN THE TRAINERS" TO DIG SOIL, ANALYZE WATER AND MORE NASA/ARC release 02-86AR 7) SEARCH FOR ANCIENT MARTIAN LIFE CONTINUES NASA release 8) PROSPECTING FOR VIRUSES By Anne M. Rosenthal 9) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 10) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 11) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-194 12) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 13) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ WORK STARTS ON BEAGLE 2 BUILD FOR MISSION TO MARS British National Space Centre release 23 July 2002 A joint UK and European mission to find evidence of life on Mars took another giant leap forward this week when engineers started assembling the Beagle 2 lander. The build is being carried out in a specially constructed Aseptic Assembly Facility at the Open University, in Milton Keynes. The assembly, integration and verification of the flight hardware for the UK spacecraft will take place under strictly controlled conditions to ensure that the components have been through a rigorous sterilization process. Professor Colin Pillinger, of the Open University, which has played a leading role in developing the lander, said, "This week is very special to us as we are starting to assemble the flight hardware, the culmination of all our efforts. The assembly room will keep Beagle 2 free of terrestrial microorganisms and other forms of contamination." "In less than six months Beagle 2 will be leaving the UK to join up with the European Space Agency's Mars Express satellite and on to the launch site at Baikonur. We hope that when it arrives on Mars at the end of next year, we will finally be able to answer the eternal question: is there, or was there, life on Mars?" A unique academic and industrial team in the UK, led by the Open University and Astrium plc, has developed Beagle 2. It will be launched as part of ESA's Mars Express mission next May and is expected to land on the Red Planet just before Christmas 2003. The Mars Express, part of ESA's Horizons 2000 program, is designed to take a payload of seven state-of-the-art scientific instruments to orbit Mars as well as the Beagle 2 lander. The orbiter instruments will record data for at least one martian year, or 687 Earth days; Beagle 2 is designed to work for 180 Earth days. The satellite will also carry a data relay system for communicating with Earth. Named after HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin's famous ship, Beagle 2 will deploy a "mole" to burrow down into the planet's sub-surface to collect samples that will be analyzed for evidence of past biological activity. It has been a tough assignment for the craft's creators, who have had to become masters of miniaturization by squeezing their scientific instruments into a box the size of a dog basket. Its vital Gas Analysis Package (GAP), which will heat up rock and soil samples and analyze their gases, includes a tiny mass spectrometer and a processing system reduced from several cubic meters in size to fit within a 10 cm cube. GAP will analyse the martian atmosphere for clues to the history of the planet, its climate and for trace gases indicative of current microbial life. A suite of instruments will also measure the weather, including temperature, pressure and wind. Colin Hicks, Director General of the British National Space Centre, said Beagle 2 will be a landmark for UK space exploration. "The mission to Mars is very important as it will help us to understand more about the surface and climate of Mars. This latest stage of the project's development is the result of months and years of hard work and dedicated research. Beagle 2 is a key part of the Mars Express mission and a fitting tribute to the vision of those who are working to make it possible." The Beagle 2 project is headed by the Open University, which has also provided the science lead, and Astrium, which is the prime industrial contractor. It involves a consortium of more than 100 academic institutions and industrial subcontractors, and is funded by a unique public/private partnership. ESA has spent around £130 million funding the Mars Express mission, which includes around £18 million from the UK. Contact: Professor Colin Pillinger FRS The Open University Phone: +44 (0)1908 655169 Fax: +44 (0)1908 655910 E-mail: psrg@open.ac.uk Internet: www.beagle2.com An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-02e.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SOIL STUDY MAY YIELD HARVEST OF WATER CYCLE DATA NASA/JPL release 30 July 2002 A recently concluded NASA aerial field experiment, high above our nation's heartland, may lead to a clearer understanding of soil moisture--a key variable in Earth's global water cycle that profoundly influences seasonal weather patterns and agriculture. Flying thousands of feet above Iowa farmlands in a NASA DC-8 and a National Center for Atmospheric Research C-130 aircraft, scientists and engineers from multiple NASA centers, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, participated in a three-week field experiment using remote sensing techniques to measure soil moisture content. The NASA scientists were joined by researchers from the Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, several universities and other agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The experiment will help pave the way for the eventual development of a remote global soil moisture observing system that will provide observations every three days, or less, over most of the unfrozen, non-forested regions of the globe (dense vegetation such as forests limits the ability to sense the underlying soil moisture). A proposal for such an observing system, called Hydros, was selected recently by NASA as an alternate mission under the Earth System Science Pathfinder small satellite program. "Soil moisture is a key variable in Earth's hydrology, or water cycle," said Dr. Eni Njoku, a JPL scientist and co-investigator on the experiment and a project scientist for Hydros. "Soil moisture conditions play a vital role in controlling summer precipitation over the central United States and provide initial information for seasonal predictions. Persistently wet or dry soil moisture conditions can also feed back into seasonal weather patterns that cause persistent flooding or droughts. "Today, scientists are limited to scattered ground measurements of soil moisture. A future remote sensing platform orbiting above Earth will enable us to better understand, on a global basis, the factors that influence soil moisture fluctuations. This will enable people everywhere to plant crops more intelligently and mitigate the effects of natural hazards." Njoku said that an additional objective of the experiment will be to evaluate how well the Advanced Microwave Sounding Radiometer, a Japanese National Space Development Agency instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite, can measure soil moisture of agricultural areas from space. Data from the Aqua instrument will be compared with the more detailed soil moisture information derived from the airborne instruments and ground measurements. The Aqua instrument operates at wavelengths of less than 5 centimeters (about 2 inches), so it may have only limited ability to measure soil moisture under moderate or dense vegetation cover like crops and forests. Two JPL airborne remote sensing instruments were an integral part of the experiment, conducted from June 25 to July 8. The Passive and Active L- and S-band microwave instrument flew at low altitudes (about 1.1 kilometers or 3,500 feet) on the C-130 aircraft. The JPL Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar flew at a higher altitude (about 7.9 kilometers or 26,000 feet) on NASA's DC-8 aircraft. Both instruments operate at long wavelengths (approximately 20 centimeters, or 8 inches) that are sensitive to soil moisture and have the ability to penetrate clouds and moderate vegetation cover. The flights took place over agricultural fields in the Walnut Creek watershed area south of Ames, Iowa. Exhaustive ground sampling of the soil and vegetation (corn and soybean crops) in that region was conducted in conjunction with the overflights. Scientists will spend the next year analyzing data from the spaceborne, airborne and ground-based samplings to better understand the influence of soil moisture on water cycling between the land and atmosphere, and to verify the accuracy of the instrument observations. In addition to JPL's instruments, other airborne microwave instruments operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Environmental Technology Laboratory also participated in the experiment, flying aboard the NASA P-3 aircraft. More information on the experiment is available at http://hydrolab.arsusda.gov/smex02/smex02SCAN.html. The experiment is part of the Terrestrial Hydrology program under NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, a long- term research effort to understand and protect our home planet. Through the study of Earth, NASA will help to provide sound science to policy and economic decision-makers so as to better life here, while developing the technologies needed to explore the universe and search for life beyond our home planet. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Contacts: Colleen Sharkey Phone: 818-354-0372 _____________________________________________________________________ NO BUGS PLEASE, THIS IS A CLEAN PLANET! From ESA Science News http://sci.esa.int 30 July 2002 When packing for a trip towards another planet, there are some things, such as microorganisms, that you do not want to include in your "luggage". For example, what if extraterrestrial life is finally detected on Mars, and scientists realize afterwards that such life is actually terrestrial? Fortunately, there are strict international rules to avoid the contamination of Solar System bodies with biological material from Earth. Landers, for example, may present a special danger to the objects they set down on. The European Space Agency (ESA) is well aware of this. ESA's missions, such as Mars Express, with its lander Beagle 2, Rosetta, which will land on a comet, and Cassini-Huygens, headed towards Saturn and its moon Titan, will be "clean" and responsible visitors. The strictest of procedures will ensure that they carry only highly sterilized landers. Cassini (with Huygens on-board) left Earth in 1997 and is traveling towards the planet Saturn. In 2004, Huygens will separate from the spacecraft and land on its own on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Titan is a highly promising site for the scientists because its atmosphere very much resembles that of primitive Earth. It is a very cold place, with temperatures down to -180 C. Many scientists think such freezing temperatures are precisely the reason why life never arose on Titan. However, Huygens may well give them reasons to reconsider. Rosetta and Mars Express will be launched in 2003. Rosetta is ESA's comet-chaser. It will spend 8 years traveling through the Solar System and in 2011 it will land on Comet 46 P/Wirtanen, making Rosetta the first spacecraft ever to land on a comet. Mars Express is the next mission to Mars and the first European one. It will arrive on the Red Planet in December 2003 and release its lander Beagle 2, whose task, among others, is to search for evidences of martian life. These diverse projects all have something in common. They have all had to take into account the "planetary protection" requirements set by the international scientific organization, Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). "We don't want to contaminate the planets we go to," says John Bennett, of ESA's Mars Express team and one of the scientists responsible for "protecting the Red Planet from an undesired terrestrial invasion. "We don't want future missions to detect contamination, instead of life." COSPAR rules determine a spacecraft's degree of cleanliness. Standards vary depending on both the type of mission and its "destiny". For example, from a contamination point of view, landers are obviously more "dangerous" than orbiters. Moreover, the more likely a planet is considered to bear life, the stricter the requirements are. For these reasons, rules are especially tough for Mars Express's lander, Beagle 2. Scientists set sterilization criteria of 300 microorganisms per square meter for missions to Mars in the past. At this level, no life was detected and they concluded that this sterilization level would not compromise or affect biological measurements. Beagle 2 will have to be sterilized to contain less than 300 microorganisms per square meter at launch, and no more than 300,000 inside the whole launcher. By comparison, the floor of even the cleanest kitchen inside a house on Earth has several thousands of millions of microorganisms present. The sterilization process is quite complicated. Many of the instruments' components are very delicate and would not withstand very high temperatures, so scientists use different techniques. They will heat most of the components of Beagle 2 to 120 C and clean other components chemically. For the solar panels, for example, an alcohol will be used. The microelectronics components will be placed in a vacuum chamber with a special gas, hydrogen peroxide plasma that oxidizes biological material, making it harmless. Scientists will also use another sterilizing technique, irradiation with ultraviolet light and other kinds of radiation. Sterilization will affect all parts of the lander, even the airbags and the parachute system the lander uses to reach the ground safely. For Beagle, the process will take place in several facilities in the United Kingdom. Special transportation systems will take each component to a specially built clean room where they will be assembled on location at the Open University site in the United Kingdom. Assembly will begin this summer. Once finished, the ultraclean Beagle 2 will be 'sealed' within its own front-shield and back-cover, and made ready to be mounted on Mars Express. Requirements for Rosetta and Huygens are less strict. When Cassini- Huygens was launched in 1997, scientists thought that life was simply too unlikely to exist on the cold Titan. They therefore labeled the project low risk, with no sterilization procedures considered necessary. However, according to COSPAR rules, the spacecraft was assembled in a clean room, that is, with less than 100,000 particles per unit of volume. Rosetta is a similar case. "Sterilization is generally not crucial since comets are usually regarded as objects where you can find prebiotic molecules, that is, molecules that are precursors of life, but not living microorganisms," explains Gerhard Schwehm, Rosetta's Project Scientist. On the other hand, Rosetta has to perform delicate experiments on the comet and scientists do not want the results to be spoiled, so cleanliness is required. * Sterilization and cleaning methods http://www.nas.edu/ssb/europach4.htm * COSPAR http://www.cosparhq.org * More about Mars Express http://sci.esa.int/marsexpress * More about Beagle 2 http://www.beagle2.com/ * More about Rosetta http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/ * More about Huygens http://sci.esa.int/huygens/ [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=1&cid=12 &oid=30313&ooid=30332] A typical sterilization process for a lander, in this case Beagle 2. The lander will be heated and cleaned chemically or using an alcohol, depending on the instrument part. A hydrogen peroxide plasma treatment will oxidize biological material and an ultraviolet light irradiation will also help sterilize the instrument's components. [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=1&cid=12 &oid=30313&ooid=30323] A typical view of a clean room at ESTEC, in this case showing details of the satellite BeppoSAX. [http://sci.esa.int/content/searchimage/searchresult.cfm?aid=1&cid=12 &oid=30313&ooid=28774] The Mars Express spacecraft in orbit around Mars. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02zl.html. _____________________________________________________________________ END OF BED REST CAMPAIGN ESA release 54-2002 30 July 2002 Long-duration spaceflight has a significant impact on the body, with astronauts experiencing changes in their bone and muscle in particular. To meet the requirements of long-stay missions aboard the International Space Station and prepare for future interplanetary missions, space agencies are working together to develop preventive- medicine methods or countermeasures intended to overcome the adverse effects of spaceflight. The European, French and Japanese space agencies (ESA, CNES and NASDA, respectively) set up the long-term bed rest (LTBR) experiment to simulate on the ground the effects of long-duration weightlessness. It was based on the anti-orthostatic (-6° head-down tilt) bed rest model (see ESA press releases 46-2001, 60-2001, 74- 2001 and 26-2002). The study took place at the MEDES Space Clinic in Toulouse (France) over two four-month phases, the first from August to December 2001 and the second from March to July 2002. To ensure sound scientific interpretation of the study, a homogeneous group of male candidates aged between 25 and 45 was selected. Out of a total of 725 applications received and following 123 medical examinations, 25 volunteers were chosen. They were all French, except for one Belgian, and aged between 26 and 41. Their occupations included history and geography teacher, builder, postman, gardener, book-keeper and mobile phone salesman. Throughout the study, the volunteers underwent numerous examinations, such as stress response tests, bone densitometry and MRI. Muscle biopsies and biochemical analysis of blood and urine samples were also carried out. Special medical checkups are scheduled 45 days, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months after bed rest, to be supplemented by a questionnaire after 2 years. The 25 volunteers for the two phases successfully completed the experiment. The initial results and conclusions of the study will be discussed at a scientific seminar followed by a press conference in Toulouse in January 2003. To find out more about this study, see http://www.medes.fr. Contacts: Benny Elmann-Larsen ESA – Physiology experiment coordinator, HDT study project manager Phone: +31 71 565 3517 Fax: +31 71 565 3661 E-mail: benny.elmann-larsen@esa.int Antonio Guell CNES – Head of life sciences programs, HDT study program committee member Phone: +33 561 28 2577 Fax: +33 561 27 3091 E-mail: antonio.guell@cnes.fr Eliane Moreaux CNES – Communications officer Phone: +33 05.61.27.33.44 Fax: +33 05.61.28.29.39 E-mail: eliane.moreaux@cnes.fr _____________________________________________________________________ EUKARYOTIC ORIGINS: REVOLUTION IN THE CLASSIFICATION OF LIFE By Stephen Hart From Astrobiology Magazine 31 July 2002 Peer through a microscope at some pond water today and you might see what Antonie van Leeuwehnoek or Robert Hooke saw in the mid-1600s: tiny organisms darting, wiggling and oozing to and fro. These single-celled organisms come in two distinct sizes, the larger ones easily big enough to engulf the smaller ones. Now it's a new millennium and scientists are still struggling to understand the evolutionary relationships among different types of cells. The small cells van Leeuwenhoek saw--mere specks even at 300x magnification--are the Archaea and the Bacteria. The larger cells swimming in pond water are essentially similar to the cells of all multicellular organisms, including humans. In the 1820s, as scientists began to revive the microscopic study of cells after a century-long hiatus, they discovered that cells of larger single-celled organisms, plants, fungi and animals all contain a large more or less central part which absorbs certain stains. They called this the nucleus, and cells that contain nuclei eukaryotes (true-kernel cells). The most recent classification of all life on Earth, then, includes three domains: Archaea, Bacteria (also called Eubacteria) and Eukarya, each of which contains a number of kingdoms. How? Eukaryotes as a group also contain other so-called organelles, such as mitochondria and chloroplasts. Less than 100 years after the discovery of the nucleus, a Russian scientist named Mereschowsky first suggested that at least some organelles, including the nucleus, evolved from bacteria engulfed by early cells. Most scientists today accept that at least the mitochondria (seen in nearly all eukaryotes) and chloroplasts (seen in all photosynthetic eukaryotes) descended from engulfed bacteria. Whether the nucleus resulted from such an endosymbiotic event remains hotly debated. Hyman Hartman, an evolutionary biologist at MIT, weighs in in favor of the nucleus being an endosymbiont. "Let's put it this way," Hartman says. "It's obviously an interesting hypothesis but not the fashionable one. I'm trying to revive it and I think that I am at this time the foremost advocate for it." Hartman's latest attempt, a February 2002 paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also asks another question: "Who engulfed whom?" Engulfing's not an easy task. Archaeans and bacteria can't do it. To "eat," they generally absorb nutrients from their surroundings, sometimes secreting digestive enzymes to break down more-complex environmental substances. They have none of the complex cellular apparatus, the cytoskeleton, that makes it possible for a cell to wrap part of itself around another cell. (At the May meeting of the Society for Microbiology, however, Cheryl Jenkins and James T. Staley, of the University of Washington, presented a poster reporting that the bacterium Prostehcobacter dejongeii has two genes remarkably similar to cytoskeletal genes of eukaryotes.) Hartman proposes a separate ancestral cell type, which he calls a chronocyte. He suggests that a chronocyte (C) engulfed both archaeans (A) and bacteria (B) to form eukaryotes (E): E = A + B + C, making today's eukaryotes a combination of all three cell types. "There's no doubt that there's been a B because the mitochondrion and chloroplast are coming from the eubacteria. And there's no doubt that there was an archaean because in some basic sense a lot of the informational proteins are coming from archaeans. So C + A is not good enough or C + B is not good enough," Hartman says. In the PNAS paper, Hartman presents evidence for his ABC hypothesis: a unique set of eukaryotic proteins not found in any bacterium or archaean. Hartman found 347 proteins he and coauthor Alexei Federov, of Harvard, call eukaryotic signature proteins. Among these proteins are several associated with the cytoskeleton, leading Hartman to the conclusion that the chronocyte had the mechanisms necessary to engulf other cells. Clues gleaned from this protein set and other research lead Hartman to the conclusion that the chronocyte stored its genetic information in RNA rather than DNA. This further supports his contention that the eukaryotic nucleus, a DNA-based structure, arose from a symbiosis of the chronocyte and a DNA-based archaean. This symbiosis moved genes from one type of cell directly to another type, an example of horizontal gene transfer. Evidence suggests that the symbiotic event in which chronocytes captured both archaeans and bacteria happened around 2 billion years ago. "And that's precisely when oxygen comes into the atmosphere." Hartman says. While we thrive in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, the gas was poisonous to many of the organisms on Earth when photosynthesis arose. "It forced cells into horizontal transfer due to the fact that they had to react to this new poison, oxygen," he says. When? The advent of molecular biology began a revolution in the classification of organisms. With the new tools for looking at molecules, biologists began attempting to figure out relationships between organisms based not on how they looked, but on the sequences of subunits in their proteins and nucleic acids. A new tree of life emerged from the work of Carl Woese, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and others. But as with any new technology, molecular phylogeny requires time to mature. Woese's early work relied on a single molecule, an RNA found in the protein synthesis machinery of the cell. And it required computing power. Jere Lipps, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, looked at the tree diagrams produced by molecular phylogenists and saw a problem. "There's alwaysbeen a worry about that tree in my mind and in other people's minds, and that has to do with the fact that at the base of the tree you have Giardia and several other vertebrate-parasite groups. And when I first saw that I thought, 'Wow, that can't be right; there's got to be something wrong with this.'" The problem arises as computers repeatedly calculate similarities in the sequences of proteins or nucleic acids. Called long-branch attraction, the glitch can make groups seem more related--that is closer together on the tree--than they should be. When Lipps adjusted a tree showing the emergence of eukaryotes to remove long-branch attraction artifacts, the "tree" turned into a bush with a long stem. Instead of many groups branching off sequentially, followed by a final crown group, the new diagram looks more like a single "star burst," Lipps says, with all eukaryotes emerging in a geologically short period of time. "I wouldn't call it an explosion," Lipps says, "I'm sure it took place slowly, and that each lineage would have evolved at different rates. It wouldn't be that all the lineages emerged independently at one time." Combined with the geological record, this reanalysis suggests that eukaryotes arose earlier than previously supposed, possibly as long as 2.7 billion years ago. What's next? The concept of horizontal gene transfer has clearly moved from a quirk seen in certain organisms to a driving force in evolution. All three domains have genetic material clearly derived from other domains. The human genome contains genes from both archaeans and bacteria, and the genome of one organism thought to be primitive, Thermotoga maritima, was found to be one-quarter borrowed from other organisms. Woese's original tree clearly needed to be rethought after the Termotoga results were published. "Carl Woese then decided that with this amount of horizontal transfer, he had to now justify what is a domain," Hartman says. "He set out to look for proteins that were unique to the Archaea, and that was what gave me the idea to look for unique proteins in the eukaryotes. (For Woese's latest theory, suggesting that horizontal gene transfer is even more important than previously thought, see "On the Evolution of Cells," published electronically by PNAS on June 17, 2001.) Lipps emphasizes that molecular phylogeny remains a work in progress. "I think the molecular phylogenies need to be adjusted, since they give us a single topology based on a single molecule or part of a molecule. People are trying to do this with more comprehensive trees [combining molecular data] with morphology and with the stratigraphy that we know about. So there's a lot more to do, and all of this has got to be considered extremely tentative. Everything that's been proposed, in my mind, is a working hypothesis, which is fine, that's the way science proceeds. I think it's an exciting time in this evolutionary biology business because of the convergence of paleontology, molecules and traditional sorts of biological approaches." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article243.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NASA TO "TRAIN THE TRAINERS" TO DIG SOIL, ANALYZE WATER AND MORE NASA/ARC release 02-86AR 31 July 2002 From checking soil by touch to using weather apparatus and making other observations, 25 educators from kindergarten through college level will converge at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley to learn how to conduct hands-on environmental workshops. The training, to take place August 5 through August 9, is part of the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program. The educators will take part in classroom activities and fieldwork that will prepare them to teach others how to involve their schools and students in the GLOBE program. GLOBE's goals include teaching students to observe and analyze their surroundings and thereby learn science, math and technology. GLOBE also is assembling a worldwide database of observations that can enable scientists to understand as well as predict global environmental changes. "GLOBE links students and scientists worldwide in a collaborative effort," said Pat Helton, manager of the GLOBE national help desk at NASA Ames. "They learn that the soil, the air, the water and land cover are all linked together to result in the Earth as one system," Helton said. The educator trainees will come from California, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas. "When students turn in data, they are contributing to the body of knowledge about the Earth," said Bonnie Samuelson, coordinator for the NASA Ames-GLOBE partnership. "They actually become 'student scientists' participating in a larger research project that spans the globe and involves 98 countries including the United States." "GLOBE is an ideal program for involving students in science," said Helton. "We support the teachers, and the teachers work with their students." "The program also provides unique teaching tools for educators, one of NASA's education priorities," said Donald James, NASA Ames education director. "GLOBE combines math, science, geography and technology into one package," Samuelson added. "Educators will get their hands dirty during soil characterization studies," said Helton. "Some of what they will do includes looking at the soil and feeling it with their hands to determine 'soil consistence'--whether it is loose, crumbles easily or is firm." They also look at soil color and how much sand, silt and clay there is. This and other data--gathering are much of what GLOBE students do across the world. Students make scientific observations and collect data about the atmosphere, hydrology, soils and land cover. Land cover includes the type and amount of vegetation in an area and could include trees, grasses, water, blacktop, dust, sand and other land components. Some of the data that GLOBE students collect daily include the amount of cloud cover, types and percentage of clouds; high, low and current temperatures; and precipitation amounts. The young observers also gather information about ozone and haze in the air; take water body temperatures; and measure pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, nitrate concentration and turbidity of water. "Students learn these and other scientific terms and concepts through their experience with the program, and they also learn the scientific method of observation and research," Helton said. "When we train the trainers, they will learn to link all these systems together. Students learn that their science lab is right outside the door." "The GLOBE program aligns with the NASA mission to understand and protect the home planet and to inspire the next generation of explorers," Samuelson added. There are several National Science Foundation (NSF) principal investigators who support GLOBE, developed the GLOBE procedures (protocol) and use the gathered data in their research. Student observations provide 'ground truthing' for scientists who are interpreting satellite images of various regions of the world. Ground truthing involves making very accurate observations on the ground or near the surface of the Earth that scientists use to calibrate satellite images. Once researchers learn what specific light wavelengths and other data in the satellite images and measurements represent on the ground, scientists have a 'spectral fingerprint' they can use to make accurate regional or worldwide observations by satellite. Participating schools also receive satellite images of their areas that students use to learn to analyze for spectral data, just as scientists do. "We help educators get started and involved in GLOBE. We help them implement it in their schools, solve computer and data entry problems, and we answer scientific and procedural questions of all kinds," Helton said. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise and NSF fund GLOBE. The 'Train the Trainers' workshop also is supported by Hartnell College, Salinas, CA; and the Shoreline at Mountain View Park. The GLOBE program began on Earth Day in April 1995. The GLOBE data are available to anyone via the World Wide Web at http://www.globe.gov. For more information about GLOBE, please contact Samuelson by e-mail or by telephone at bsamuelson@mail.arc.nasa.gov or 650-604-6355. Contact: John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-5026 or 604-9000 E-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ SEARCH FOR ANCIENT MARTIAN LIFE CONTINUES NASA release 4 August 2002 In the latest study of a 4.5 billion-year-old martian meteorite, researchers have presented new evidence confirming that 25 percent of the magnetic material in the meteorite was produced by ancient bacteria on Mars. These latest results were published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The researchers used six physical properties they refer to as the Magnetite Assay for Biogenicity (MAB) to compare all the magnetic material found in the ancient meteorite--using the MAB as a biosignature. A biosignature is a physical and/or chemical marker of life that does not occur through random processes or human intervention. "No non-biologic magnetite population, whether produced by nature or in the laboratory, has ever met the MAB criteria," said Kathie Thomas-Keprta, an astrobiologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston and the lead researcher on the study. "This means that one-quarter of the magnetite crystals embedded in the carbonates in martian meteorite ALH84001 require the intervention of biology to explain their presence." Magnetotactic bacteria, which occur in aquatic habitats on Earth, arrange magnetite crystals in chains within their cells to make compasses, which help the bacteria locate sources of food and energy. Magnetite (Fe3O4) is produced inorganically on Earth, but the magnetite crystals produced by magnetotactic bacteria are very different--they are chemically pure and defect-free, with distinct sizes and shapes. Four of the MAB biosignature properties relate to the external physical structure of the magnetite crystals, while another refers to their internal structure and another to their chemical composition. In their earlier studies, the researchers found that approximately one-quarter of the nanometer-sized magnetite crystals in ALH84001 had remarkable physical and chemical similarities to magnetite particles produced by a bacteria strain on Earth called MV-1. This is the first time, however, that any researcher has used the full MAB range of biosignature properties to compare the proposed bacteria- produced crystals in Mars meteorite ALH84001with the bacteria-produced crystals from Earth and with the other magnetites in the meteorite. The comparison between the proposed bacteria-produced crystals in the meteorite and crystals known to be produced by Earth bacteria MV-1 is striking and provides strong evidence that these crystals were made by bacteria on Mars. The fact that Mars Global Surveyor data suggest that early Mars had a magnetic field is consistent with a reason why Mars would have magnetotactic bacteria. "Our best working hypothesis is that early Mars supported the evolution of bacteria that share several traits with magnetotactic bacteria on Earth, most notably the MV-1 group," said Simon Clemett, a coauthor of the paper at Johnson. Mars has long been understood to provide the sources of light and chemical energy sufficient to support life, but in 2001 the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft observed magnetized stripes in the crust of Mars, which showed that a strong magnetic field existed in the planet's early history, about the same time as the carbonate containing the unique magnetites in ALH84001 was formed. In June, researchers using the Mars Odyssey spacecraft announced that they had found water ice under the surface of Mars. These attributes, coupled with a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, would have provided the necessary environment for the evolution of microbes similar to the fossils found in ALH84001. "We believe this latest study proves that the magnetites in ALH84001 can be best explained as the products of multiple biogenic and inorganic processes that operated on early Mars," Thomas-Keprta said. An international team of nine researchers collaborated on the three- year study. The team, led by Thomas-Keprta of Lockheed Martin at Johnson Space Center, was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Co-authors of the study are Clemett and Susan Wentworth of Lockheed Martin at JSC; Dennis Bazylinski of Iowa State University (funded by the National Science Foundation); Joseph Kirschvink of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; David McKay and Everett Gibson of JSC; Hojatollah Vali of McGill University in Canada; and Christopher Romanek of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0208/04marslife/. _____________________________________________________________________ PROSPECTING FOR VIRUSES By Anne M. Rosenthal From Astrobiology Magazine 5 August 2002 Scientists are prospecting for viruses in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park--and they are being richly rewarded with intriguing new finds. The pools where virologists collect typically reach temperatures of 78 to 90 degrees Celsius (172 to 194 degrees Fahrenheit). It's a tough environment for life--unless, that is, you're a thermophile, a life form specially evolved to survive at high temperatures. Not only are the waters twice the temperature of a comfortable bath, they have acidity considerably above the survival level of most aquatic organisms. Generally the pools are between pH 2 and 3.5 (between that of lemon juice and carbonated drinks), with some pools as acidic as pH 1 (about the acidity of stomach acid). Under scalding, acidic conditions, scientists wonder, how life processes function. Because of their simplicity relative to cellular life forms, viruses may offer scientists the best opportunity to glean information about survival in extreme environments. Viruses are just nucleic acid--either RNA or DNA--protected by a protein coat. Parasites at the molecular scale, viruses take over the machinery of host cells, using it to reproduce themselves. Therefore, the number of genes encoded by viral nucleic acid, generally on the order of 5 to 200, is relatively low in comparison to the thousands typical of cellular organisms. A viral genome usually codes only for the subunits of its protein coat, plus some enzymes--molecules that facilitate chemical reactions, such as nucleic acid replication. Results from the first studies of thermal viruses in Yellowstone were presented by Mark Young, Co-Director of the Thermal Biology Institute at Montana State University, Bozeman, and Ken Stedman, Assistant Professor of Biology, Portland State University, at the Second Astrobiology Science Conference in Mountain View, CA. "We're trying to use these viruses as models for understanding biochemical adaptations at high temperatures," states Young. Clues provided by this new research could give insight on how life existed in the extreme environments present early in Earth's history, or that exist today on other planets. It also could open a window into the biology of the viral hosts, in this case a one-celled thermophile called Sulfolobus, which shares important biological traits with more-complex organisms. Importantly, the DNA of heat-loving viruses may code for previously unknown enzymes that work efficiently at high temperatures, potential new workhorses for molecular biology laboratories. The tasks of these laboratories range from developing vaccines to unraveling the evolution of life on Earth. Viral diversity A key element of studies by Young, Stedman, and others is viral biodiversity. The scientists are examining the variations in both the morphology (physical structure) and the genomes of viruses from thermal environments. Because viruses carry just a small number of genes, which code for only a small number of proteins, their coats must be composed of only a few types of protein subunits. Once the subunits are manufactured by the parasitized cell, they self-assemble into the viral coat, also known as the "capsid." The vast majority of the approximately 3500 described viruses belong to two general morphologies--they are either rod-shaped or have a quasi-spherical shape termed an icosahedron. Similar to a miniature soccer ball, the icosahedron is composed of 5-sided and 6-sided faces (pentamers and hexamers). But in the thermal hot-spring environment, scientists have found viruses with capsids unlike any previously discovered--some have one of the traditional shapes but bear unusual structures, while others sport completely novel coat morphologies. An exquisite iscosahedral virus bearing extensions akin to propellers is one of the intriguing finds. The propeller-like structures have "never been seen before on any kind of virus," says Young. There are 12 of these propellers on each viral capsid, extruding from the 12 pentamers capping the vertices (corners) of the icosahedron. Like the pentamers in which they are lodged, the propellers have a 5- sided symmetry; the "blades" they bear number five. The pentameric subunits are surrounded by typical viral hexamers that lack special structures. This virus was originally isolated by Stedman, and the complete structure was determined by Liang Tang, a member of Jack Johnson's group at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. In puzzling over the role of the unique propeller structures, scientists keep in mind the steps involved in viral reproduction. First, a virus must be able to dock on the outside of an appropriate host cell, and then, in a second step, release its nucleic acid into the cell's interior. "We presume that the structures are involved in virus attachment to the host cell or movement of genetic material," says Young. "The density of these structures extends part way into the interior, suggesting that they may be a portal for nucleic acids." Young notes that the propeller-like structures could also be involved with helping newly replicated viruses exit the host cell. An interesting question is whether or not the structures are dynamic. One possibility, says Stedman, is that the proteins could change conformation, or shape. In so doing, the structures themselves might open, like a door. Alternatively, they could serve as a doorknobs or keys, somehow opening a second structure on the virus or on the host cell. The virus bearing propeller-like structures, as well as the other interesting viral forms being discovered in Yellowstone Park, are hosted by an organism called Sulfolobus. A member of the kingdom [Domain] Archaea, which contains single-celled organisms present in many extreme environments, Sulfolobus is found where volcanic activity is present, in hot springs located as far apart as Kamchatka, Italy, Iceland and Yellowstone National Park. Sulfolobus, a hyperthermophile (an organism that prefers extremely high temperatures), is favored by investigators searching for new hot- spring viruses because it is easy to culture in the laboratory. Explains Stedman, "It is probably the easiest extreme thermophile to work with, since it grows in [the presence of] air." Many other extreme thermophiles are poisoned by oxygen, he notes. The work on Yellowstone viruses builds on earlier studies by Wolfram Zillig of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany and his research group. Their work identified a number of new viruses in Sulfolobus. So different were the Sulfolobus finds from previously described viruses, that the new viruses were placed in four new viral families. Finding four new viral families living within a single organism was unprecedented, Young says. Prior to the studies on Sulfolobus viruses, the approximately 4000 described viruses were categorized into about 75 families. Few new family additions had been made for perhaps twenty years. Even studies of viruses found in other members of the Archaea, such as salt-loving and methane-producing species, had not yielded new families of viruses. In all, Young and Stedman have discovered ten novel viruses, never described before, hosted by Yellowstone Park Sulfolobus. These include the "propeller virus" as well as a virus-like particle, lemon-shaped with long appendages at each end. This particle is so large--5 to 10 times larger than the similarly shaped SSV viruses, found in Sulfolobus by the Zillig lab--that it may not be a virus at all, Stedman notes, but a nano-sized microbe that lives within the larger Sulfolobus as a symbiont. "It's remarkable," concludes Young. "Every time we look [in Sulfolobus], we find another virus that we are fairly confident is going to be a brand new group." With new discoveries occurring so rapidly, the scientists are just beginning to characterize these finds. Of great significance is the uniqueness of the viral DNA sequenced so far. "When we sequence these viruses in our labs, we use computer programs that search all public gene banks in the world. The computer programs search billions of sequences and try to align our viral sequence to all other known sequences," explains Young. The thermophilic viruses from Yellowstone have genes with less than 14 percent correlation with known sequences, he notes, "meaning that their genes are not related to other known genes or proteins." This probably reflects the unique biochemical environment where these viruses are found, Young says. So far most of the viruses found in Sulfolobus are non-lytic. Once reproduced, they reside within the Sulfolobus cells and slip out without destroying their host. Their non-lytic character allows the viruses to remain inside the modulated cellular environment of the Sulfolobus cells; it limits the time the viruses are exposed to the acidic environment outside. "Young's work is really pioneering," says Baruch Blumberg, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "To date there has not been a great deal of investigation of viruses in the extreme environments. However, there have been sufficient studies to realize that viruses are extremely common, particularly phages of the Archaea and the Bacteria." Viruses provide clues Sulfolobus is an important organism to study because it is an extreme thermophile--that is, it grows at extremely high temperatures, explains Stedman. Such a archaeans use proteins similar to those in more-complex cells, such as human cells, for certain important biochemical processes involving nucleic acids. But the Sulfolobus proteins are much simpler, making them easier to study, and thus potential stepping stones to understanding similar proteins in more complex organisms. The Sulfolobus viruses are important tools for understanding the machinery of the heat-loving archaeans that host them, adds Stedman. Importantly, "the complete genome sequence [of Sulfolobus] has been determined, so we know exactly what DNA is present in the organism," Stedman says. But, he cautions, "We don't know what it does." In other words, explains Stedman, they have the blueprint but have not studied most of the proteins it codes for. This also "is true of the human genome, but the [Sulfolobus] blueprint I have to work with is 1000 times smaller than the human blueprint," Stedman explains. The smaller size makes the Sulfolobus genomic blueprint a good starting point; the viruses parasitizing Sulfulobus are potential tools for studying this blueprint. Blumberg, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the hepatitis B virus, comments that, as a viral researcher for many decades, he was "aware of the profound effect that the hepatitis virus has on the liver cell. We've learned a lot about the liver cell by understanding how the virus worked." One way that Stedman is studying Sulfolobus is with a shuttle vector he created using the SSV1 virus. "A shuttle vector is a piece of DNA which can replicate in two different organisms--in this case the bacterium E. coli and [the archaean] Sulfolobus--i.e., something that one can use to move or 'shuttle' DNA from one organism to another. This is extremely useful for the development of molecular genetics," explains Stedman. "The significance of the shuttle vector is three-fold. First, it allows researchers to introduce genes into Sulfolobus to study how they function in the cell," says Stedman. "Secondly," he adds," it allows the purification of large amounts of viral DNA from E. coli, the workhorse of modern molecular biology." In other words, the shuttle vector allows scientists to produce the DNA of viruses that normally grow in the archaean Sulfolobus in the bacterium E. coli instead. "Thirdly," concludes Stedman," it allows much more flexibility in the study of the virus, since modifications of the viral genome can be made in the lab in E. coli and then re-introduced into Sulfolobus. What's next Young, Stedman, and their colleagues plan to look for additional viral forms in Sulfolobus and other heat-loving archaeans at new locations within Yellowstone. Their recently completed studies looked at viruses from only eight locales, a tiny fraction of the approximately 10,000 thermal features of the national park. Stedman has begun sampling in Lassen National Park, and Young, along with Zillig and others, have begun looking at the water-saturated soils underlying geothermally heated lakes and mud holes for new viruses. These habitats are extremely hot, often over 100 C (212 F), and host extreme heat-loving organisms, including, in the deeper anaerobic sediments, those that live without oxygen. Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article246.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 5 August 2002 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html ESA, 2002. Leave the bugs at home please. SpaceDaily. NASA, 2002. Search for ancient martian life continues. Spaceflight Now. K. L. Thomas-Keprta, S. J. Clemett, D. A. Bazylinski, J. L. Kirschvink, D. S. McKay, S. J. Wentworth, H. Vali, E. K. Gibson, Jr. and C. S. Romanek, 2002. Magnetofossils from ancient Mars: a robust biosignature in the martian meteorite ALH84001. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 68(8):3663-3672. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s2.html S. C. Neubauer, D. Emerson and J. P. Megonigal, 2002. Life at the energetic edge: kinetics of circumneutral iron oxidation by lithotrophic iron-oxidizing bacteria isolated from the wetland-plant rhizosphere. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 68(8):3988- 3995. A. M. Rosenthal, 2002. Prospecting for viruses. Astrobiology Magazine. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html S. Hart, 2002. Eukaryotic origins: revolution in the classification of life. Astrobiology Magazine. H. Hartman and A. Fedorov, 2002. The origin of the eukaryotic cell: a genomic investigation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 99(3):1420-1425. University of Queensland, 2002. First evidence for early bombardment of Earth. Spaceflight Now. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology_b ooks.htm K. Tritton, 2001. Earth, Life and the Universe: Exploring Our Cosmic Ancestry. Curved Air Publications, Suffolk. R. Zubrin, 2002. On to Mars - Colonizing a New World. Apogee Books, Burlington (Ontario). _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 25-31 July 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, July 30. 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/. On board activities this week included uplink of real-time commands to read out data from the AACS Stellar Reference Unit table, and clear the AACS High Water marks. Additional instrument activities included calibrations of the Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) High Frequency Receiver, Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) periodic instrument maintenance, and instrument flight software normalization for RPWS and UVIS. The data from the 2002 Solar Conjunction Experiment performed in June and July have been processed, and preliminary analysis shows a successful investigation, despite initial problems with the ground instrument. An estimation of the effect has been determined and will be refined as the data are calibrated further. One of the goals of the Cassini Solar Conjunction Experiment is to measure the effect of the solar gravity on the path of electromagnetic radiation. Propagating photons of the radio signal are deflected and delayed by the sun. Predicted by Einstein in 1916, this was measured during a solar eclipse in 1919 as the first experimental test of General Relativity. A violation of General Relativity might be due to scalar fields remnant of the Big Bang, and its detection would have crucial implications in physics. Cassini can measure the gravitational deflection utilizing a highly accurate Doppler system at X- and Ka-bands, potentially to a level of one hundred times better than past experiments. The Multi-mission Image Processing Laboratory software version 28 was installed for operations use this week. This delivery supports Cassini cruise and is the first of three phased implementations to include support for tour. Also included are ground processing updates to support changes to VIMS flight software, Video Information Communication and Retrieval multi-mission routines for project recognition, and label decoding and camera parameter updates to support Cassini. With this change, Cassini gains access to numerous image analysis tools. Instrument Operations (IO) personnel attended a Planetary Data System (PDS) Management Council meeting. Cassini archive status was presented, and a discussion held on archive challenges from a project point of view. PDS provided a demonstration of the new PDS archive and distribution system. The IO representative was very impressed and recommended a demonstration also be given at the next Cassini Project Science Group Meeting to be held at JPL in October 2002. During the transition from reaction wheel to thruster control last week, the Attitude Control team used the opportunity to perform a friction test on the reaction wheels. The test carefully examined the "spin down" characteristics of each of the wheels. The team has processed the data and concluded that the reaction wheels are continuing to perform normally. A series of meetings has been held to plan the implementation of Prime/Rider instrument coordination within Cassini. The preliminary results will be presented at next week's Instrument Operations Working Group meeting. Uplink Operations hosted an SSR Management Tool (SMT) development meeting to work with the Spacecraft Office (SCO), Science Planning, and Mission Planning on determining what updates will be included in the D9.0 delivery of SMT. System Engineering (SE) has completed work with the SCO CDS Team to clean up the flight rule (FR) allocation matrix, prioritize FR fixes in software, and review the sequence checklist. Similar activities for the remaining SCO subsystems are in work. In addition, SE presented a proposal for Level 4 Verification and Validation plans at the System Engineering Round Table meeting. Mission Assurance convened a quarterly Risk Team meeting to assess the remaining six cruise risks as well as risks associated with the Huygen's Probe mission. Several new risks were identified, existing risk descriptions were refined, and action was taken by the Spacecraft Office to rework Probe Mission risks completely. Quarterly meetings are part of the on-going Risk Management process on Cassini during Flight Operations. The Cassini Program Outreach Team has selected a vendor to produce the planetarium show "RingWorld." The show will debut in January 2003. Produced in multiple formats, it will be made available to over 950 planetariums in the USA, as well as community colleges, schools, youth groups, and online via the Cassini web site. A Spanish language translation of this show will also be produced. A portion of the show will talk about the Deep Space Network. The DSN will cost share and place a copy of this show in their visitor centers in Australia, California, and Spain. Cassini Outreach has updated the Titan Landing Site graphic to reflect the new landing site and date for the Huygens Mission. This new graphic has a reference number of P-50940, and is available through Finley-Holiday at http://finley-holiday.com or by calling (800)345-6707. The image will be placed on the gallery portion of the Cassini web site, and will also be part of Huygens related slide sets. 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 SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-194 1 August 2002 Soybean plants growing in the Advanced Astroculture (ADVASC) Plant Growth Unit have entered the reproductive stage. High-resolution photos taken by Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson on board the International Space Station show the plants have developed flowers and seed pods. The chamber environment has been set to the optimal conditions for the seed development. The crew on Tuesday conducted a third nutrient exchange and gas sample procedure. For this experiment, the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics (WSCAR) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Commercial Space Center managed by the Space Product Development Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, is collaborating with Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., a Dupont Company, to grow soybeans in space and determine if these space-grown plants produce seeds with unique chemical compositions. Soybeans are the largest single source of protein and oil in the American diet, representing a multi-billion-dollar market share in the food and animal feed industries. This research may result in soybeans with improved oil, protein, or carbohydrate content, as well as the secondary metabolites, such as phytoestrogen, of commercial value. This is the first soybean plant growth experiment that has ever been conducted in space. It will demonstrate that the controlled environment technologies developed for the ADVASC experiment can support the production of a variety of crop plants in space. "The experiment is doing very well," said Dr. Weijia Zhou, director of the Wisconsin center and ADVASC principal investigator. "It has entered a critical stage--seed production. Successful completion of this stage will provide significant science return." The Active Rack Isolation System (ARIS) vibration dampening system was tested for eight minutes Monday during crew exercise. The data will be used to compare the rack acceleration environment with restraints in place to the environment when the dampening device is free to move but placed in "hold" mode. In "hold," ARIS is keeping the rack centered in its space in the lab but is not damping out vibrations. Beginning Wednesday, the Payload Operations Center began a series of tests with ARIS to gain more operating experience. ARIS, located in EXPRESS Rack 2, is designed to counter vibrations caused by crew movement, operating equipment, etc. that could disturb delicate microgravity experiments. The Solidification Using Baffle in Sealed Ampoules (SUBSA) experiment team, which has been troubleshooting commanding issues, transmitted new software to the experiment Wednesday designed to verify a change in the temperature at which the furnace melts and crystallizes the semiconductor material inside. Following Wednesday's checkouts by controllers and the science team, including a full non-sample test run, Whitson today installed a sample for processing, the third processing run so far of the mission. SUBSA is investigating the distribution of impurities in a semiconductor crystal during processing. The goal is to identify what causes the motion in melts processed inside space laboratories and to reduce the magnitude of the melt motion so that it does not interfere with semiconductor production. These impurities, or dopants, are used to control the opto-electronic properties of the crystals, and uniform distribution of the dopant is essential to achieve the desired opto-electronic properties. Completed Expedition Five experiments include the Stelsys liver cell tissue growth experiment, the Microencapsulation Electrostatic Processing (MEPS) experiment to develop drug-filled microcapsules for study, the Educational Payload Operation--a demonstration of basic physics principles using simple toys with the results being videoed for production into an educational film. The other experiments under way in the Destiny lab module continue to function normally. Crew Earth Observations photography subjects this week included: fires in northern Namibia, southern Angola and Zambia; the Nyamuragira volcano near the eastern border of Congo, which erupted July 26, spewing lava, steam, ash and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere; and agriculture patterns in the Parana River valley of northern Argentina and southern Brazil. 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. Contact: Steve Roy Media Relations Department Phone: 256-544-0034 E-mail: Steve.Roy@msfc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 29 July - 2 August 2002 Yardangs in Medusa Fossae (Released 29 July 2002 http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020729a.html Poynting Crater Ejecta (Released 30 July 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020730a.html Medusae Fossae (Released 31 July 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020731a.html Enigmatic Terrain of Elysium Planitia (Released 1 August 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020801a.html Frosted Crater (Released 2 August 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020802a.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. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen 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 2 August 2002 There was one Deep Space Network tracking pass, and a NSP (Network Simplification Project) track reported last week. All subsystems are performing normally. Analysis of the data from last week indicated that the NSP test of the radiometric and telemetry data was very successful. Commands to deploy the aerogel grid were tested in the Spacecraft Test Laboratory on July 25th. These commands also move the spacecraft to the new interstellar collection position. As the commands simulated the spacecraft moving to the new position, an attitude controller fault was detected. This made the simulated spacecraft enter a safe mode. Analysis revealed that a configuration file providing the new position was corrupted. A new configuration file was built and the test repeated without any errors. Since the corrupted file was not understood until after a regularly scheduled track, the command files were not sent to the spacecraft at the time originally planned. An additional communications pass is scheduled, and the command files will be transmitted to the spacecraft. 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 28.