MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 34, 16 September 2002. Editor/Publisher: David J. Thomas, Ph.D., Science Division, Lyon College, Batesville, AR 72503-2317, USA. dthomas@lyon.edu Contributing Editor: Julian A. Hiscox, Ph.D., 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 effectively 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/. _____________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1) A CASE FOR LIFE ON MARS From SpaceDaily 2) THE PULSE OF LIFE: MUSIC OF OUR WORLD AND BEYOND By Douglas Vakoch 3) SILICON SIDEKICKS By Patrick L. Barry and Tony Phillips 4) THE RIGHT STUFF FOR SUPER SPACESHIPS By Patrick L. Barry 5) TINY CAMERA OBSERVES WORMS SPINNING AT 100 TIMES EARTH'S GRAVITY By John Bluck 6) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 7) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 8) THE NEXT FOUR WEEKS ON GALILEO NASA/JPL release 9) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-226 10) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 11) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ A CASE FOR LIFE ON MARS From SpaceDaily 11 September 2002 A multitude of arguments supporting the possible existence of life on Mars have surfaced after the discovery and examination of the ALH84001 meteorite. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found within, plus detailed examination of the ratios of certain metabolites, all have various interpretations supporting or opposing their organic origin. In a recent NASA workshop, the results of careful sectioning, imaging, identification of mineral constituents, measurement of isotope ratios and analysis of the organic matter in the meteorite were compared. In the process of filtering out the evidence supporting microbes, new avenues of investigation are being conceived, leading to the current flourishing of exobiological methodology. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life- 02f.html. _____________________________________________________________________ THE PULSE OF LIFE: MUSIC OF OUR WORLD AND BEYOND By Douglas Vakoch From Space.com 12 September 2002 As the deep, rich drone of a didgeridoo continued to emanate from a portable CD player, American composer Andrew Kaiser wrapped up his argument for the role of music in interstellar communication. Speaking at a recent workshop in Paris, Kaiser echoed the sentiments of others at the meeting, stressing the fruitful interplay of art and science in constructing interstellar messages. The workshop was one of an ongoing series of international meetings that brings together artists and scientists to discuss ways to create messages that might some day be transmitted across interstellar space, whether by radio signals or laser pulses. The meetings provide advance preparation for one of the most critical decisions that would face humankind if the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) should some day succeed: should we reply, and if so, what should we say? Get the full story at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_music_vakoch_020912.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SILICON SIDEKICKS By Patrick L. Barry and Tony Phillips 13 September 2002 Yelling "Fetch, Rover!" the man tosses a frisbee far across the yard. His dog just stands there and does nothing. Oh yeah, he thinks, I forgot. "Rover! Turn clockwise until you face north-by-northwest, move forward ten-point-five meters and stop, lower your head fourteen centimeters, then close your mouth on the frisbee," he instructs. "After that, return!" The dog bounds across the yard, only to return with nothing in his mouth. The frisbee had been 2 cm farther forward than the man said-- but the dog couldn't make that small adjustment on its own. So the man gives his long-winded instructions again, substituting "ten- point-five-two" this time. Playing fetch this way is no fun at all. But it could be worse. What if you were an astronaut newly-landed on the surface of Mars and Rover was your robotic assistant? With only a few precious months to explore Mars, Rover would be a tremendous waste of your time. Having no common sense or flexibility, Rover could even be a danger to you in the unforgiving environment of a distant planet. It might blindly follow instructions that cause it to damage vital equipment, and it would ignore the plain-language pleas of an astronaut in distress. The Sojourner rover that explored Mars' surface in 1997 operated much like our clueless canine. Teams of scientists here on Earth had to feed Sojourner precise, step-by-step instructions for each task it performed. If the rover hit a snag, it would just stop and wait. The scientists then had to tell it exactly how to overcome the problem. It took days just to get simple tasks done. Sojourner was nevertheless successful thanks to the ingenuity and patience of its controllers. Yet much more was possible. If we're serious about exploring the solar system, say mission planners, we must build smarter and more capable robots. Common sense robots "During the next decade," says NASA Ames roboticist Liam Pedersen, "there's not likely to be a human presence much beyond Earth orbit. So if we wish to explore places like Mars, we'll have to send robots. No robots, no exploration. Period." "Transmitting detailed instructions to essentially dumb robots is grossly inefficient and expensive--especially when there's lots to do," he adds. For example, robots scouting Mars, perhaps in advance of human explorers, will reconnoiter vast areas. They'll sample hundreds of rocks, drill holes in search of frozen water, and take thousands of pictures. "If each of these operations takes several days and a standing army of mission controllers... well, you can see how the cost increases." The first humans on Mars will be just as busy as the scouts that precede them. Astronauts will have to set up the first base camp on an alien world and learn to survive in a place that makes Antarctica seem mild. And while they're at it, they'll collect thousands of measurements for scientists back on Earth. "An astronaut's time will be more precious than edible gold," says Pedersen. "They're going to need smart robot helpers." How smart? The kind of intelligence that we usually take for granted in animals would do fine, says Pedersen. Animals effortlessly distinguish the objects in their environment based on the input of their senses. They can recognize threats, and they intuitively understand how objects move and behave. They can identify goals-- like a little scurrying morsel of food--and then plan and perform all the actions needed to get it. And they know their own limitations of energy, strength, temperature, and endurance, and they're careful not to exceed these. Getting a robot to do all this is not easy. Pedersen says, "Try teaching this simple lesson to a robot: 'You can't turn a glass of water upside-down because the water will fall out.' To us, that's extremely obvious. It's common sense. But if you want a machine to understand that, you've got to spell it out in painful detail." The computer brains of conventional robots operate in basically the same way as home computers do. They execute a fixed program of "if- then" logic and computations. The speed and precision of this approach makes computers extremely good at narrow, specialized tasks. But it also makes them inflexible. Confront a conventional robot with a situation outside the scope of its programming, and it's clueless about how to respond. The adaptability and novel problem- solving ability of humans (and many animals) has proven very hard to reproduce. Learning from experience Nevertheless, a patchwork of approaches to more-flexible computing has emerged. Among these are technologies like probability theory, evolutionary computing, natural language recognition and neural networks. Each provides a way to add learning or flexibility to a robot. For example, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University taught a robot to steer a car autonomously for 98% of a drive across the U.S.--a project cleverly called "No Hands Across America." They first trained the robot by letting it ride along and watch as a human drove the car. The robot learned to associate certain visual inputs with the correct steering responses. The "brain" of this robot was a computer simulation of a neural network, which mimics in a rudimentary way the architecture of animal brains. Input signals are processed by webs of "nodes" (neurons) and "links" (axons). Neural networks learn from experience and can associate general inputs with specific outputs: four legs + a bark (the inputs) = a dog (the output), for instance. Pedersen cautions that the inner workings of organic brains are too poorly understood to mimic precisely. "While neural networks are in some ways similar to organic brains," he says, "they remain vastly less complex or capable." Probability theory, especially Bayesian statistics, provides another path to machine learning, says Pedersen. It allows computers to operate not only in terms of black and white--true or false--but also in shades of gray. Machines that "think" using such statistical models learn well from new and unexpected experiences. ("This is where I would consider the excitement to be in robotics," notes Pedersen. "Watch out for an explosion in robot capabilities.") Yet another possibility is evolutionary computing, in which computers "evolve" their own software. "Mutants" of an original program are tried, and those that produce better results are preserved. Their code is then mixed and mutated again--like sexual reproduction--to produce the next "generation," and so on for hundreds or thousands of generations. This software "evolution" can produce very effective problem-solving programs that are too complex for the scientists themselves to understand. These and other novel approaches to computing form the foundation for smarter, more autonomous robots. Scientists draw from this toolbox to build into robots those abilities that we take so much for granted in ourselves: understanding the meaning of spoken language, figuring out all the little actions needed to complete a task, navigating across terrain and avoiding dangers--the nitty-gritty of autonomous exploration. In search of R2-D2 Progress is indeed being made. One prototype robot called Hyperion has shown the ability to autonomously traverse the terrain of the Canadian Arctic. Developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute, this robot carefully navigates to avoid being caught in shadows, so that its solar panels are always receiving sunlight. And it's smart enough to know when it's lost or in trouble. Another experimental robot, called the Extra-Vehicular Activity Robotic Assistant (ERA), is a true astronaut partner--roving on wheels side-by-side with a space-suited human. Scientists at the Johnson Space Center are using it to test advanced technologies like natural-language interaction and recognition of astronauts' gestures. Much of what they learn will help design similar assistants, not only for planetary surfaces, but also for Earth orbit and deep space. Notes Pedersen, "Here at Ames we're working on a rover called K9 that will be able to do many things on its own. It can look at rocks, make measurements, and decide what's 'interesting.' K9 is a technology testbed for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers and for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (a.k.a. the Mars Smart Lander and Mobile Laboratory). Other experimental robots are pioneering a different frontier: life onboard a spaceship. The Personal Satellite Assistant (PSA), for example, is a small floating sphere that can propel itself using fans through a spaceship's corridors. Created by Yuri Gawdiak and colleagues at NASA Ames, the PSA looks remarkably like Luke Skywalker's robotic light-saber sparring partner from Stars Wars. That's no coincidence, says Gawdiak, who dreamed up the PSA after watching the movie. The PSA will be able to do many things: talk to astronauts who want information from the ship's main computer; monitor the air (like a canary in a coal mine) for concentrations of potentially harmful gases, e.g., too much CO2; or simply venture into situations that might be too dangerous or uncertain for their human crewmates. Such high-tech helpers would be welcomed on the International Space Station. Other robots are best-suited for duty outside the spaceship. Robonaut, for example, is under development at the Johnson Space Center. It has the basic shape of a human--or rather a half-human. Its body stops at the waist. Its arms and hands are designed to be very dexterous, and its head contains video cameras. Astronauts, safely inside their ship, could perform routine maintenance or important repairs to the outside of the ship using Robonaut as a remote-controlled proxy. If robots are going to live onboard spaceships, notes Pedersen, then the spaceships must be designed with robots in mind. "The need for this kind of system-level design--designing the robot and the spaceship to each suit the other--is often overlooked by non- experts," he says. The ship must have facilities for recharging and storing the robot, and the robot must be able to access the ship's computers and handle any necessary equipment. The International Space Station and its robotic arm, Canadarm2, are an example of a well-integrated system. The arm crawls on the outside of the station--flipping end over end like an inchworm from one specially-placed handhold to the next. A custom-made trolley can quickly transport the arm from place to place when speed is of the essence. Canadarm2 is impressive, but like Sojourner on Mars it is neither smart nor autonomous. The arm moves only when commanded by a human. The main reason for the gap in "smarts" between the robots in scientists' laboratories (like K9) and those that have flown in space is a lack of proven reliability. Pedersen explains, "The problem is that these advanced technologies do not have any flight history. Will they work under the demanding conditions of spaceflight? Mission managers are rightly conservative; they prefer to stick with well-proven solutions." With time and field testing, though, the best among these technologies will prove their mettle--or rather, their silicon. Good thing, too, because future astronauts are going to want their silicon sidekicks. Additional information on this article is available at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/13sep_sidekicks.htm?list52260 . _____________________________________________________________________ THE RIGHT STUFF FOR SUPER SPACESHIPS By Patrick L. Barry From NASA Science News 16 September 2002 "What I'm really looking for," you say to the salesman, "is a car that goes at least 10,000 miles between fill-ups, repairs itself automatically, cruises at 500 mph, and weighs only a few hundred pounds." As he stands there wide-eyed, you add, "Oh yeah, and I can only spend about a quarter of what these other cars cost." A request like this is sure to get you laughed off the new-car lot. But in many ways, this dream car is a metaphor for the space vehicles we'll need to expand our exploration of the solar system in the decades to come. These new spacecraft will need to be faster, lighter, cheaper, more reliable, more durable, and more versatile, all at the same time. Impossible? Before you answer, consider how a rancher from 200 years ago might have reacted if a man had asked to buy a horse that could run 100 mph for hours on end, carry his entire family and all their luggage, and sing his favorite songs to him all the while! Today we call them minivans. Revolutions in technology--like the Industrial Revolution that replaced horses with cars--can make what seems impossible today commonplace tomorrow. Such a revolution is happening right now. Three of the fastest-growing sciences of our day--biotech, nanotech, and information technology--are converging to give scientists unprecedented control of matter on the molecular scale. Emerging from this intellectual gold-rush is a new class of materials with astounding properties that sound more at home in a science fiction novel than on the laboratory workbench. Imagine, for example, a substance with 100 times the strength of steel, yet only 1/6 the weight; materials that instantly heal themselves when punctured; surfaces that can "feel" the forces pressing on them; wires and electronics as tiny as molecules; structural materials that also generate and store electricity; and liquids that can instantly switch to solid and back again at will. All of these materials exist today, and more are on the way. With such mind-boggling materials at hand, building the better spacecraft starts to look not so far fetched after all. Weight equals money The challenge of the next-generation spacecraft hinges on a few primary issues. First and foremost, of course, is cost. "Even if all the technical obstacles were solved today, exploring our solar system still needs to be affordable to be practical," says Dr. Neville Marzwell, manager of Revolutionary Aerospace Technology for NASA's Next Decadal Planning Team. Lowering the cost of space flight primarily means reducing weight. Each pound trimmed is a pound that won't need propulsion to escape from Earth's gravity. Lighter spaceships can have smaller, more efficient engines and less fuel. This, in turn, saves more weight, thus creating a beneficial spiral of weight savings and cost reduction. The challenge is to trim weight while increasing safety, reliability, and functionality. Just leaving parts out won't do. Scientists are exploring a range of new technologies that could help spacecraft slim down. For example, gossamer materials--which are ultra-thin films--might be used for antennas or photovoltaic panels in place of the bulkier components used today, or even for vast solar sails that provide propulsion while massing only 4 to 6 grams per square meter. Composite materials, like those used in carbon-fiber tennis rackets and golf clubs, have already done much to help bring weight down in aerospace designs without compromising strength. But a new form of carbon called a "carbon nanotube" holds the promise of a dramatic improvement over composites.The best composites have 3 or 4 times the strength of steel by weight--for nanotubes, it's 600 times! "This phenomenal strength comes from the molecular structure of nanotubes," explains Dennis Bushnell, a chief scientist at Langley Research Center (LaRC), NASA's Center of Excellence for Structures and Materials. They look a bit like chicken-wire rolled into a cylinder with carbon atoms sitting at each of the hexagons' corners. Typically nanotubes are about 1.2 to 1.4 nanometers across (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter), which is only about 10 times the radius of the carbon atoms themselves. Nanotubes were only discovered in 1991, but already the intense interest in the scientific community has advanced our ability to create and use nanotubes tremendously. Only 2 to 3 years ago, the longest nanotubes that had been made were about 1000 nanometers long (1 micron). Today, scientists are able to grow tubes as long as 200 million nanometers (20 cm). Bushnell notes that there are at least 56 labs around the world working to mass produce these tiny tubes. "Great strides are being made, so making bulk materials using nanotubes will probably happen," Bushnell says. "What we don't know is how much of this 600 times the strength of steel by weight will be manifest in a bulk material. Still, nanotubes are our best bet." Beyond merely being strong, nanotubes will likely be important for another part of the spacecraft weight-loss plan: materials that can serve more than just one function. "We used to build structures that were just dumb, dead-weight holders for active parts, such as sensors, processors, and instruments," Marzwell explains. "Now we don't need that. The holder can be an integral, active part of the system." Imagine that the body of a spacecraft could also store power, removing the need for heavy batteries. Or that surfaces could bend themselves, doing away with separate actuators. Or that circuitry could be embedded directly into the body of the spacecraft. When materials can be designed on the molecular scale such holistic structures become possible. Spacecraft skins Humans can feel even the slightest pinprick anywhere on their bodies. It's an amazing bit of self-monitoring--possible because your skin contains millions of microscopic nerve endings as well as nerves to carry those signals to your brain. Likewise, materials that make up critical systems in a spaceship could be embedded with nanometer-scale sensors that constantly monitor the materials' condition. If some part is starting to fail-- that is, it "feels bad"--these sensors could alert the central computer before tragedy strikes. Molecular wires could carry the signals from all of these in-woven sensors to the central computer, avoiding the impractical bulk of millions and millions of today's wires. Again, nanotubes may be able to serve this role. Conveniently, nanotubes can act as either conductors or semi-conductors, depending on how they're made. Scientists have made molecular wires of other elongated molecules, some of which even naturally self-assemble into useful configurations. Your skin is also able to heal itself. Believe it or not, some advanced materials can do the same thing. Self-healing materials made of long-chain molecules called ionomers react to a penetrating object such as a bullet by closing behind it. Spaceships could use such skins because space is full of tiny projectiles--fast-moving bits of debris from comets and asteroids. Should one of these sand- to pebble-sized objects puncture the ship's armor, a layer of self- healing material would keep the cabin airtight. Meteoroids aren't the only hazard; space is filled with radiation, too. Spaceships in low-Earth orbit are substantially protected by our planet's magnetic field, which forms a safe bubble about 50,000 km wide centered on Earth. Beyond that distance, however, solar flares and cosmic rays pose a threat to space travelers. Scientists are still searching for a good solution. The trick is to provide adequate shielding without adding lots of extra weight to the spacecraft. Some lightweight radiation-shielding materials are currently being tested in an experiment called MISSE onboard the International Space Station. But these alone won't be enough. The real bad guy is Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) produced in distant supernova explosions. It consists, in part, of very heavy positive ions--such as iron nuclei--zipping along at great speed. The combination of high mass and high speed makes these little atomic "cannon balls" very destructive. When they pierce through the cells in people's bodies, they can smash apart DNA, leading to illness and even cancer. "It turns out that the worst materials you can use for shielding against GCR are metals," Bushnell notes. When a galactic comic ray hits a metallic atom, it can shatter the atom's nucleus--a process akin to the fission that occurs in nuclear power plants. The secondary radiation produced by these collisions can be worse than the GCR that the metal was meant to shield. Ironically, light elements like hydrogen and helium are the best defense against these GCR brutes, because collisions with them produce little secondary radiation. Some people have suggested surrounding the living quarters of the ship with a tank of liquid hydrogen. According to Bushnell, a layer of liquid hydrogen 50 to 100 cm thick would provide adequate shielding. But the tank and the cryogenic system is likely to be heavy and awkward. Here again, nanotubes might be useful. A lattice of carbon nanotubes can store hydrogen at high densities, and without the need for extreme cold. So if our spacecraft of the future already uses nanotubes as an ultra-lightweight structural material, could those tubes also be loaded up with hydrogen to serve as radiation shielding? Scientists are looking into the possibility. Going one step further, layers of this structural material could be laced with atoms of other elements that are good at filtering out other forms of radiation: boron and lithium to handle the neutrons, and aluminum to sop up electrons, for example. Camping out in the cosmos Earth's surface is mostly safe from cosmic radiation, but other planets are not so lucky. Mars, for example, doesn't have a strong global magnetic field to deflect radiation particles, and its atmospheric blanket is 140 times thinner than Earth's. These two differences make the radiation dose on the Martian surface about one- third as intense as in unprotected open space. Future Mars explorers will need radiation shielding. "We can't take most of the materials with us for a long-term shelter because of the weight consideration. So one thing we're working on is how to make radiation-shielding materials from the elements that we find there," says Sheila Thibeault, a scientist at LaRC who specializes in radiation shielding. One possible solution is "Mars bricks." Thibeault explains: "Astronauts could produce radiation-resistant bricks from materials available locally on Mars, and use them to build shelters." They might, for example, combine the sand-like "regolith" that covers the Martian surface with a polymer made on-site from carbon dioxide and water, both abundant on the red planet. Zapping this mixture with microwaves creates plastic-looking bricks that double as good radiation shielding. "By using microwaves, we can make these bricks quickly using very little energy or equipment," she explains. "And the polymer we would use adds to the radiation-shielding properties of the regolith." Mars shelters would need the reliability of self-sensing materials, the durability of self-healing materials, and the weight savings of multi-functional materials. In other words, a house on Mars and a good spacecraft need many of the same things. All of these are being considered by researchers, Thibeault says. The folks back home Mind-boggling advanced materials will come in handy on Earth, too. "NASA's research is certainly focused on aerospace vehicles," notes Anna McGowan, manager of NASA's Morphing Project (an advanced materials research effort at the Langley Research Center). "However, the basic science could be used in many other areas. There could be millions of spin-offs." But not yet. Most advanced materials lack the engineering refinement needed for a polished, robust product. They're not ready for primetime. Even so, say researchers, it's only a matter of time. Eventually that car salesman will stop laughing, and start selling your space-age dream machine. Additional information on this article is available at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/16sep_rightstuff.htm?list5226 0. _____________________________________________________________________ TINY CAMERA OBSERVES WORMS SPINNING AT 100 TIMES EARTH'S GRAVITY By John Bluck NASA/ARC release 01-101AR 16 September 2002 Enduring spinning forces that would kill a human being, tiny worms are being observed by a student-designed video system in NASA studies seeking to explore how life adapts to gravity beyond Earth. Miniature worms, only 1 millimeter long and so small they are hard to see with the naked eye, are being spun in a centrifuge for as long as four days--at forces of 20- to100-times that of Earth's gravity (1 G). In contrast, human pilots not wearing anti-G suits can black out at as low as 3 Gs, and prolonged exposure at higher Gs can be life threatening. To examine the worms as they spin, scientists are using a video system designed and constructed by students at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA. The studies are taking place at NASA Ames Research Center in the heart of California's Silicon Valley. "By looking at what changes occur in the worms when they transition from high-G forces to normal gravity, we think we can predict what will happen to them when they experience near weightlessness during space flight," said principal investigator Catharine Conley, a biologist at NASA Ames. "In the future, we want to fly the worms in space, subjecting them to microgravity to see if our predictions are correct." Microgravity is close to zero gravity. "Radiation levels in space are much higher than they are on the Earth's surface," Conley said. "We know that elevated radiation increases the mutation rate of living things. Because these worms reproduce every four days, we can look quickly at many worm generations in space to see how radiation and microgravity may cause changes later," she explained. "Worms have already flown aboard the space shuttle, and it was found that they went through several generations without gross structural changes to their bodies," Conley said. "We want to test the gene expression in worms that have flown in space versus those that have not, to see if changes in worms are similar to changes seen in vertebrates that have experienced space flight." Expression is how a gene affects a characteristic such as eye color, or susceptibility to a disease or condition. During preliminary tests, scientists spun the 1 mm worms (technically known as Caenorhabditis elegans, a soil-dwelling nematode worm) in a large 20-G centrifuge at NASA Ames for four days, but they could see what happened to the worms only after the centrifuge, designed to carry human passengers, stopped. At 20 Gs, the worms are subjected to forces that are 20 times their normal weight. "Should our hypothesis prove correct, it will validate Caenorhabditis elegans as an extremely useful and cost-effective model organism for studying responses to space flight at the molecular, genetic and whole-organism levels," Conley said. When Conley was planning her current experiments that utilize a smaller, desktop centrifuge, she realized she would need a camera no bigger than an ice cube that could broadcast signals from the spinning apparatus to a TV monitor and recorder in real time. So she turned to the Student Engineering Clinic at Harvey Mudd College to produce the camera system. Five Harvey Mudd students spent an academic year on the project. They bought off-the-shelf components, but they had to overcome several engineering challenges to enable the system to work well. "The camera had to be supported to withstand the 100-Gs force," said Professor Joseph King, director of the clinic. "All this stuff is designed so it is compatible with the geometry of the centrifuge." The equipment also has two broadcast systems, an infrared system to control the camera, and a wireless, video transmission system to broadcast movies of the worms. "During spinning there are changes in the worms' gene expression that seem to help them compensate for the increased apparent gravity, allowing them to survive," Conley said. The worm has about 19,000 genes, and it has nerves, muscles and some of the same types of organs in people that are affected by weightlessness. Astronauts can suffer from motion sickness, bone loss, muscle degeneration (atrophy) and blood vessel problems during weightlessness. "By studying how the worms produce different levels of proteins that help the tiny organisms cope with high-G situations, we think we eventually can develop treatments, perhaps even oral drugs, for astronauts to serve as countermeasures to problems due to weightlessness." After the worms endure high G forces riding in a centrifuge, the animals' behavior alters. That is part of what the scientists look for to find out how the creatures handle changes in gravity's force. Normally, under 1-G conditions, the miniscule creatures look like small, clear wiggly rods that swim snake-style through a thin layer of water and nutrients in which they live in a laboratory environment. The worms commonly are found in soil and rotting vegetation, and have about a thousand cells. In addition to Conley's work, the Harvey Mudd Student Engineering Clinic program was involved in about 40 projects from various companies, institutions and sponsors this year. During past years, the clinic has participated in about 10 NASA projects, according to King. King may be reached at Joseph_King@HMC.Edu. More information about the clinic is available on the World Wide Web at http://emat.eng.hmc.edu Conley's research is detailed on her Web site at http://lifesci.arc.nasa.gov/conley/home. The NASA Fundamental Biology program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute fund the worms-in- space project. Life sciences research at Ames is supported by NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research, which promotes basic and applied research to support human exploration of space and to take advantage of the space environment as a laboratory. More information is available at http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/. Publication-quality images related to this release can be found at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2002/02images/worms/worms.html. Contact: John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-5026 or 604-9000 E-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 16 September 2002 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html J. Chela-Flores, 1998. Europa: a potential source of parallel evolution for microorganisms. In Instruments, Methods and Missions for Astrobiology, The International Society for Optical Engineering, Bellingham, Washington USA (R. B. Hoover, ed.), Proceedings of SPIE, #3441, pp. 55-66. J. Chela-Flores, 1998. A search for extraterrestrial eukaryotes: physical and biochemical aspects of exobiology. Origins of Life and Evolution Biosphere, 28:583-596. J. Chela-Flores, 2000. Terrestrial microbes as candidates for survival on Mars and Europa. In Journey to Diverse Microbial Worlds: Adaptation to Exotic Environments (J. Seckbach, ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 387-398. J. Chela-Flores, 2001. Implications of biological evolution outside habitable zones in solar systems. In J. Chela-Flores, T. Owen and F. Raulin, The First Steps of Life in the Universe, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 375-380. J. Chela-Flores, 2001. Search for microorganisms on Europa and Mars in relation with the evolution of intelligent behavior on other worlds. European Space Agency Special Report ESA SP 496:219-222. J. Chela-Flores, 2002. Can evolutionary convergence be tested on Europa? Second Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology, Graz, Austria, September 16-19, 2002. J. Horvath, F. Carsey, J. Cutts, J. Jones, E. Johnson, B. Landry, L. Lane, G. Lynch, J. Chela-Flores, T-W Jeng and A Bradley, 1997. Searching for ice and ocean biogenic activity on Europa and Earth. In Instruments, Methods and Missions for Investigation of Extraterrestrial Microorganisms, The International Society for Optical Engineering, Bellingham, Washington USA (R. B. Hoover, ed.), Proceedings of SPIE, #3111, 490-500. J. Seckbach, F. Westall and J. Chela-Flores, 2000. Introduction to astrobiology. In Journey to Diverse Microbial Worlds: Adaptation to Exotic Environments, (J. Seckbach, ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 367-375. SpaceDaily, 2002. A case for life on Mars. SpaceDaily. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s2.html H. Black, 2002. Extremophiles: they love living on the edge. The Scientist, 16(14):36. J. Seckbach and J. Chela-Flores, 2001. Frontiers of extremophilic microorganisms: from life on the edge to astrobiology. European Space Agency Special Report ESA SP 496:255-260. Human space exploration and microgravity effects articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html P. L. Barry, 2002. The right stuff for super spaceships. NASA Science News. P. L. Barry and T. Phillips, 2002. Silicon sidekicks. NASA Science News. A. J. S. Rayl, 2002. Bio-psycho-social: all relevant in space. The Scientist, 16(16):30. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s4.html J. Chela-Flores, 1999. Search for the ascent of microbial life towards intelligence in the outer solar system: cultural implications. International Symposium "Origin of intelligent life in the universe: Evolution, distribution and originality". Villa Monastero, Varenna, Italy. 28 September - 1 October 1998 (R. Colombo, G. Giorello and E. Sindoni, eds.), Edizioni New Press, Como, pp. 143- 157. D. Vakoch, 2002. The pulse of life: music of our world and beyond. Space.com. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html J. Chela-Flores, 1998. First steps in eukaryogenesis: origin and evolution of chromosome structure. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, 28:215-225. J. Chela-Flores, 1999. Eukaryogenesis: the search for an evolutionary transition towards intelligence in an extreme environmental habitat of the outer solar system. In Enigmatic Microorganisms and Life in Extreme Environmental Habitats (J. Seckbach, ed.), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, pp. 63-71. J. Chela-Flores, 2000. Testing the Drake equation in the solar system. In A New Era in Astronomy (G. A. Lemarchand and K. Meech, eds.), ASP Conference Series, San Francisco, #213, pp. 402-410. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 5-11 September 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, September 10. 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 Radio and Plasma Wave Science High Frequency Receiver calibrations, a Composite InfraRed Spectrometer functional test and power-off, clearing of the ACS high water marks, uplink of the Probe Checkout (PCO) mini-sequence, and Solid State Power Switch trip algorithm enable/disable in support of PCO. Proposed changes to the C34 preliminary sequence integration and validation products were distributed to the Sequence team. Review comments have been received and incorporated into the package for next week's preliminary approval meeting. Multi-mission Image Processing Laboratory personnel met with representatives from the Planetary Data System (PDS), and Instrument Operations archiving to resolve issues relating to Level 1A product labeling, compliance with PDS standards, and Science Archive Working Group plans. ACS delivered Flight Software version A8.6.3 for testing. This is expected to be the last version change for ACS A8. The Spacecraft Operations Office completed a Project Review for ACS and CDS Flight Software in-flight checkout. DSN tracking requests for the February - April '03 timeframe are currently being negotiated. A Delivery Coordination Meeting was held to release the PC version of the Science Opportunity Analyzer (SOA) tool. With the exception of Opportunity Search and APGEN communication, this version of SOA provides the same functionality, and limitations, of the Solaris release. Support for Opportunity Search on PCs is being pursued. There are no plans to include APGEN communication. Co-Is will be able to download the software from the Cassini Web server. Personnel from System Engineering and Mission Support and Services Office participated in a review of Navigation hardware requirements. The NAV team is in an evaluation phase with a goal of selecting and procuring an acceptable architecture/platform by early second quarter of FY03 to support tour operations. The NASA educational poster "Unveiling the Myth of Saturn" is available on NASA Spacelink. The poster cover is a depiction of the mythological story of Saturn combined with images of space-age exploration. Additional resources include information about the Cassini mission to Saturn, names and stories about the mythological god Saturn, and a classroom activity for students in grades 4-8. "Unveiling the Myth of Saturn" is located at http://spacelink.nasa.gov/products/Cassini- Unveiling.the.Myth.of.Saturn/ 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. _____________________________________________________________________ THE NEXT FOUR WEEKS ON GALILEO NASA/JPL release 9 September - 6 October 2002 The Galileo spacecraft is still healthy and active as it continues its long trek back in towards Jupiter for its final planned science pass in November. Galileo is now back within ranges that it has traversed before, reaching 250 Jupiter radii from the planet (17.9 million kilometers, 11.1 million miles) on Saturday, September 14, and 200 Jupiter radii (14.3 million kilometers, 8.9 million miles) on Wednesday, October 2. The spacecraft is still well outside the magnetosphere of Jupiter on the sunward side of the planet, and data collection by the Magnetometer, the Dust Detector, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer instruments continues to provide scientists with information about the interplanetary medium. Routine maintenance activities for the spacecraft in the coming weeks include exercise of the propulsion system on Tuesday, September 10, and Thursday, October 3, and a standard test of the on-board gyroscopes on Friday, October 4. On Saturday, September 21, Galileo executes a propulsive maneuver to alter its trajectory for the Amalthea flyby on November 5. This maneuver will establish the flyby altitude of 134 kilometers (83 miles) over the surface of the irregularly-shaped moon, whose longest dimension is about 135 kilometers. A series of weekly conditioning exercises for the on-board tape recorder continues, with the latest activity starting on Monday, September 9. With this test, we drive the recorder at high speed across the full length of the tape ten times. At the end of the high-speed motion, we perform a short series of small, slow-speed cool-down motions that will lessen the possibility of the tape sticking to the heads. Following this, the tape is put into a series of low-speed, full-track motions that will occupy the remainder of the week. Next on the recorder's agenda is to play back some data acquired during two previous Io flybys, one in October 2001, and the most recent in January 2002. These data will fill in gaps in a Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) October observation and provide enhanced visibility into spacecraft attitude during a January NIMS observation. With scarcely two months to go before the next encounter, the flight team is busy refining strategies, identifying contingency actions, and polishing the detailed sequence of activities to be followed by the spacecraft. For more information on the Galileo spacecraft and its mission to Jupiter, please visit the Galileo home page at one of the following URL's: http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/Galileo An additional article on the Amalthea flyby is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article270.html. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-226 11 September 2002 Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson completed the final three sample runs of a semiconductor materials experiment during the past week aboard the International Space Station. Whitson installed and activated the sixth sample September 4 in the Solidification Using a Baffle in Sealed Ampoules (SUBSA) experiment. On Saturday, she installed and started the seventh sample run of the Expedition and removed it Sunday after completing a normal 15-hour heating and cool-down cycle. On Tuesday, Whitson installed and initiated the eighth and final sample run of Expedition Five. She is scheduled to remove the sample today. The experiment was conducted in the Microgravity Science Glovebox facility in the Destiny laboratory module. SUBSA examines the solidification of semiconductor crystals from a melted material. For this investigation, tellurium and zinc--known as dopants--are added to molten indium antimonide specimens that are then cooled to form a single solid crystal. Uniform distribution of the tellurium and zinc are important in controlling the opto- electronic properties of the semiconductors. In the low gravity environment of the Station convection-driven fluid motion in the molten material is substantially reduced, giving scientists a better look at residual non-convective fluid transport during semiconductor material formation. The goal of SUBSA is to identify what causes the non-convective motion in melted materials processed in space and to reduce the magnitude of the motion so that more homogenous distribution of the dopants is achieved in the solidified crystal. "I would say our first Glovebox experiment has been very successful," said SUBSA Project Scientist Dr. Martin Volz, of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. "It's safe to say it's the first time in space that anybody has actually seen the processing of a semiconductor. Earlier space experiments were done in metal cartridges, while ours were done in clear quartz sample tubes, while we watched on video from the ground. It helped us figure out how hot we needed to get the furnace to melt just the right amount of semiconductor seed material. Without it, we would have had to rely on sensors that were not as accurate. The video has enabled us to see the real growth rate of the sample, whether it's constant and whether microgravity affects the growth rate." The samples will be stored onboard for return on a future Space Shuttle mission, Volz said. Some initial x-ray analysis will be conducted at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, a short distance from the Shuttle landing strip before the samples are returned to Principle Investigator Dr. Aleksandar Ostrogorsky, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, for more detailed study. Volz added that the Glovebox also proved itself in supporting Station research. "These kinds of experiments that involve potential hazards to the crew or the Station wouldn't have been possible without the high level of containment and safety provided by the Microgravity Science Glovebox," he said. Also today (Wednesday), Whitson will begin onboard familiarization and setup for the Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI) in the Glovebox. She will install the new experiment today.. After reconfiguring the Glovebox for the new experiment and conducting a series of checkout tests, including a non-sample test run commanded from the ground, the crew is expected to begin the first PFMI tests on September 17 and 19. PFMI also uses a furnace to process materials. It will melt and resolidify samples of a transparent modeling material, succinonitrile and succonontrile water mixtures, to observe how bubbles form in the samples and study their movement. Bubbles that become trapped in metals or crystals can form defects that decrease the material's strength and usefulness. Scientists hope to gain insights that will improve solidification processing in a microgravity environment and similar processes on Earth. On Saturday, the crew took documentation photos of the Advanced Astroculture experiment. This commercial experiment is growing soybean plants during Expedition Five to determine if the space-grown plants produce seeds with unique chemical composition that could be beneficial to agriculture. On Monday, the crew conducted the regular monthly session with the Pulmonary Function in Flight (PuFF) experiment. This ongoing research focuses on lung function both inside the station and following spacewalks. On Thursday, the crew is scheduled to conduct a 21-day pre-spacewalk background radiation check with the EVA Radiation Monitoring (EVARM) experiment, which records radiation levels received by specific parts of the human body inside the Space Station and during spacewalks outside the Station. On Friday, selected members of the crew are scheduled to participate in the Crew Interactions experiment. Based on the results of the weekly surveys of both Station crews and ground teams, the study will examine issues involving tension, cohesion and leadership roles in the crew in orbit and in the ground support crews. Photography subjects for the Crew Earth Observations project this week included: Perth, Australia, landslides in the Cornish moors of the United Kingdom, Damascus, Syria, Saharan dust along the Libyan and Tunisian coastlines, Barcelona, Space, Puerto Rico, Saint Croix, the lower Amazon River basin, the Pilcomayo swamplands in Paraguay and Argentina, and Necker Island in the Hawaiian chain. Automated experiments involving biological materials, space construction materials, the station's vibration environment, and plant growth continued to function well aboard the Station, while liver cell, petroleum processing and drug delivery experiments have been completed and are stored for return to scientists on Earth. The crew continued its daily payload status checks to make sure that all experiments and payload facilities continue to operate properly. 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. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 9-13 September 2002 Crater in Cydonia (Released 9 September 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020909a.html Reull Vallis (Released 10 September 2002 http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020910a.html Palos Crater (Released 11 September 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020911a.html Geological Time on Display in Arabia Terra (Released 12 September 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020912a.html Western Portion of Acheron Fossae (Released 13 September 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020913a.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 13 September 2002 All of Stardust's subsystems are performing normally. The spacecraft had two periods of radio contact through JPL's Deep Space Network this week. Approximately 60 percent of a recent image from the Navigation Camera has been received. The image is of the camera's calibration lamp. Preliminary indications suggest that some contamination has reappeared on the camera's light-sensing electronic surface--the charge-coupled device. The amount of contamination is significantly less than on previous occasions. If deemed necessary, heaters will be used to remove it. Only one day of heating was needed to remove the last, more severe, contamination. The Spacecraft Test Laboratory performed its first Comet Wild 2 encounter test run. 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 34.