MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 37, 7 October 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) ASTRONOMER SPEAKS UP FOR ET By Morris Jones 2) SPACE MEDICINE By Karen Miller 3) NEEDLE-FREE BLOOD AND TISSUE MEASUREMENTS National Space Biomedical Research Institute release 4) UPDGRADES TO BOOST SETI@HOME ALIEN SEARCH By Diana Jong 7) HOMING SIGNALS: SYNCHRONIZED SETI From Astrobiology Magazine 8) AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS RAMP UP TO DISCOVER TRANSITS OF EXTRA-SOLAR PLANETS NASA/ARC release 02-104AR 9) EARTH PLAYING COSMIC ROULETTE WITH ASTEROIDS U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science release 107- 295 10) CORNELL ASTRONOMER TELLS CONGRESS IT SHOULD SPEND $125 MILLION FOR NEW TELESCOPE TO DETECT EARTH-THREATENING ASTEROIDS Cornell University release 11) HIGH TIDE ON EUROPA By Cynthia Phillips 12) FIRST WORDS ON MARS COMPETITION By Adrian Hon 13) STUDYING EVOLUTION WITH DIGITAL ORGANISMS By Henry Bortman 14) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 15) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL releases 16) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-247 17) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 18) MARS ODYSSEY RELEASES FIRST DATA ARCHIVE TO SCIENTISTS NASA/JPL release 19) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ ASTRONOMER SPEAKS UP FOR ET By Morris Jones From SpaceDaily 29 September 2002 While some scientists cautiously plan for ways to reply to extraterrestrial transmissions, others haven't waited for a signal to start talking. Sending messages from Earth into space to announce the existence of the human race is somewhat rare and controversial. Digital transmissions have been beamed into space from radio telescopes, and four spacecraft currently leaving the solar system bear messages for anyone who finds them. The official position of the SETI Institute in the USA, and many other astronomers working in SETI, is to remain silent and passively listen for signals. But as message designer Dr. Douglas Vakoch noted in his earlier interview with SpaceDaily (Doug Vakoch's And Lands Beyond Beyond, August 23 2002), this policy is not legally binding on anyone. Russia's Professor Alexander Zaitsev is one astronomer with a different perspective. He has implemented his own message transmissions from one of the world's most powerful deep space transmitters, and has even coordinated a message transmission project known as TAM (Teen Age Message) with Russian students. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/seti-02b.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SPACE MEDICINE By Karen Miller From NASA Science News 30 September 2002 Traveling can be tough on the body. Think about driving all the way from, say, Washington to Wisconsin. By the time you ease yourself from behind the wheel, your back hurts, your eyes ache, your hands are cramped. And the farther you go, the more your body suffers. If you fly to France, you're hit by radiation. If you visit the space station, you lose gravity. Now imagine you're heading for Mars: low gravity, radiation exposure, a six month trip spanning millions of kilometers. Without some kind of "countermeasures" to protect you, your muscles will shrivel, your bones could weaken, your genes might be damaged and confused. When you arrive, you might find it hard to even get out of your spaceship without stumbling and hurting yourself. When you take a long car trip, you just have to get out every now and then to stretch your legs. [What about] countermeasures for a trip to Mars? Well, they're going to be a tad more elaborate than that. Nevertheless, countermeasures do exist--or at least they can be developed. One of the biggest problems in keeping astronauts fit and healthy as they travel through the solar system is simply preventing the physiological changes caused by weightlessness, says Dave Williams, director of Space and Life Sciences at the Johnson Space Center. Muscle atrophy and bone loss are perhaps the best known alterations, but they're hardly the only ones. Weightlessness causes a loss of blood volume, which means that astronauts newly-landed on a planet (Earth or Mars, say) tend to feel lightheaded when they stand up. Weightlessness also alters the sense of balance so that, for a while after astronauts return to 1-g, they feel like the world is spinning whenever they move their heads. Even subtler changes are beginning to be discovered. Here on Earth, we have no trouble sensing the position of our limbs: if you decide to lift your arm, you know where it is, and how much farther you need to move it to get it where you want it to be. But in space, this "proprioceptive" ability doesn't seem to work as well. And there may be other problems: slower wound healing and immune system weaknesses, for example. Right now, the chief countermeasure recommended by space doctors is simply exercise. Astronauts on the International Space Station work out about two hours a day, using treadmills, exercise bikes, and an IRED--a device specially developed to allow astronauts to do resistive or strength training. Medications, too, may help with some problems: biphosphonates, for example, used on Earth to slow the rate of bone loss in osteoporosis patients may prove useful for astronauts, too. These countermeasures seem to work well enough for short stints in space. For long-term exploration, an entirely different approach might work better: artificial gravity. "It's very compelling as a solution," says Williams. In theory, providing artificial gravity is easy. Ordinary laboratory centrifuges do it all the time. When they spin, their contents are pressed outward away from the axis of rotation. It's a force that feels like gravity. Rotating an entire space ship, however, can be both costly and complex. That's why researchers at the NASA Ames Research Center have been developing a small, human-powered centrifuge. It's essentially an exercise track, in which an astronaut pedals a bike up and around a 360 degree circle. By peddling the bike around the track, explains Williams, you turn yourself into a human centrifuge. "Depending on the speed at which you're going, and the size of track, you'll experience a pseudo- force... a gravity substitute." This kind of human-powered device would provide an intermittent exposure to artificial gravity. Researchers must still figure out how much of this pseudo-gravity is needed to keep astronauts fit. Furthermore, the force created by such a device would feel stronger at the astronauts' feet than at their heads! But it might be enough like home to counteract the effects of zero-g. Bicycles won't solve everything, though, because weightlessness is only one problem. Radiation is another. Right now, the countermeasure for radiation is limiting astronaut exposure--which means limiting the amount of time they're allowed to be in space. But on an long-term mission of exploration, the astronauts will have to be in space for months on end, and, importantly, the type of radiation in deep space is more damaging than the kind in low earth orbit. An exploration class spaceship will have to include shielding that can absorb cosmic rays. The best material to block high-energy radiation is hydrogen, explains Frank Cucinotta, astronaut radiation health officer and manager for Space Radiation Health Research at the Johnson Space Center. "But you can't make a shield out of pure hydrogen, so we look for materials than have a high hydrogen content, like polyethylene, a common plastic, which is 1 carbon and 2 hydrogens." Water, he says, with one oxygen and two hydrogens, would be almost as good, but it's awfully heavy and expensive to launch. To completely block radiation, hydrogen-rich shields would need to be a couple of meters thick--impractical, because of the weight and volume. But, oddly, 30 to 35 percent of the radiation can be blocked by shields just five to seven centimeters thick. That, suggests Cucinotta, might be the most efficient choice. Astronauts would still need to cope with the 70 percent of the radiation that's getting through the shields. So Cucinotta and his colleagues are looking at other solutions, like medication. Antioxidants like vitamins C and A can help by sopping up radiation- produced particles before they can do any harm. NASA scientists are also looking for ways to help the body after the damage has been done. One, for example, may have found a way to instruct a damaged, abnormal cell to destroy itself. Another researcher is exploring the cell cycle: as a cell divides, it pauses occasionally, to check its genes for any kind of damage and to repair errors. With pharmaceuticals that lengthen this part of the cycle, researchers believe they can give the cell more of a chance to fix its own problems. Even if we could prevent the damage caused by radiation and weightlessness, that would still be only part of what's needed to explore Mars and beyond. "The other element," says Dave Williams, "is the diagnosis and treatment of disease." Because, as healthy and fit as astronauts are, the possibility exists that some medical problem could arise during long missions. Astronauts will need to treat any such illness or accident by themselves, using only the tools they've carried with them. This means developing technologies that are as smart and as capable as possible. It means developing expert systems that can work effectively regardless of the training of the people who are operating them. (A doctor would be a key part of any long-term mission, of course, but what if the doctor got sick or disabled? Other members of the crew would have to help.) Millions of miles from the nearest hospital, space doctors will need advanced medical technology: miniaturized devices to perform minimally invasive surgeries; robot helpers with super-steady hands; smart medical systems that can diagnose, and perhaps even treat, illnesses; and telemedicine capabilities that will allow the ship's chief medical officer to consult with experts back on Earth. In fact, many of these devices are already being developed on Earth. External defibrillators are a good example, says Jim Logan, manager for the Medical Informatics and Health Care Systems Office at the Johnson Space Center. These devices, which use electrical shocks to restart a patient's heart, are good examples of a smart medical system. "The expertise," says Logan, "is all local, resident in the machine." The device itself can decide whether it's been hooked up correctly, whether the patient needs to be defibrillated, and if it decides that the answer is yes, it just goes ahead and provides the treatment. That kind of capability, which contains all its expertise in a tiny, lightweight, easy-to-use package, is a key part of what's needed to provide clinical care on a long-term exploration mission. Robotically assisted surgery might also play a role. In space, minimally invasive surgery will be important. You don't want to make large incisions: wounds may be slower to heal and fluids like blood harder to control. By using robots, which can make steadier, more even movements that a human hand, surgeons can make smaller, finer incisions than they could on their own. Telemedicine will be a another key tool, and that too is already being explored. "We have at JSC a teledermatology clinic based on the principles of space flight medicine," says Williams. "If you come into the clinic with a skin rash, we take a high-resolution digital image of the rash and send it to an expert over the Internet. The dermatologist gives a diagnosis, and recommends treatment." The patient doesn't need to be seen in person. For all the doctor knows, they could be on Mars. Possible technologies abound. Consider a device that could produce medicines from stored substrates--only when the medicines were needed. Long term exploration missions are likely to exceed the life of many pharmaceuticals, explains Logan. But if you could produce pharmaceuticals as you needed them, he says, then shelf life might be much less problematic. This so-far hypothetical device would solve another problem, too. "Say someone invented a new antibiotic after you had already left Earth. You can't upload [pills], but you can upload software. So if you had the capability of manufacturing your medications on the fly, you could simply upload the structure of the new drug, and make it right there." The technologies needed for long term exploration of the solar system are the same that are needed to provide quality medical care to an isolated rural community or to treat soldiers in the field. Many of these capabilities already exist, at least in some early form. But researchers want to make them smaller, lighter, more power-efficient, smarter, and more effective. "Our goal," says Williams, "is to extend the distance that humans can go in space, and to increase the time that they can stay there." Space is a tremendous driver for the development of new technologies, he believes. "And the technologies that we develop to move beyond low earth orbit are truly going to change the way we practice medicine here on Earth." Additional information on this article is available at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/30sept_spacemedicine.htm?list 52260. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-02n.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NEEDLE-FREE BLOOD AND TISSUE MEASUREMENTS National Space Biomedical Research Institute release 1 October 2002 Whether 240 miles above in the International Space Station or firmly grounded on Earth, medical testing without needles wins everyone's vote. Refinements under way to current near infrared (NIR) spectroscopic techniques will expand the range of non-invasive blood and tissue chemistry measurements. These changes also will provide accurate readings unaffected by skin color or body fat. "Once complete, this device will allow chemical analysis and diagnosis without removing samples from the patient. It will be useful for monitoring surgery patients, assessing severity of traumatic injury, and evaluating injuries in space," said Dr. Babs Soller, researcher on the National Space Biomedical Research Institute's smart medical systems team. Patients may now encounter NIR spectroscopy at the doctor's office. The pulse oximeter, used for measuring oxygen saturation, employs a small clip placed on the finger or ear to measure the amount of oxygen carried by the blood, along with pulse rate. "Light in the near infrared region has slightly longer wavelengths than red light. It is important for medicine because those wavelengths, for the most part, actually pass through skin and to some extent bone, allowing you to get chemical information about tissues and blood," said Soller, a research associate professor of surgery at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. To refine the technology for more varied measurements, Soller and colleagues are gathering data from patients. Study participants include cancer, cardiac surgery and trauma patients. "We're measuring hematocrit, tissue pH and tissue oxygenation using our device and standard techniques," she said. "These data will give us the information needed to derive equations to calibrate the new NIR instrument." The blood and tissue measurements will provide key information, such as whether a patient is anemic and whether there are adequate levels of oxygen and blood flow to muscle tissue cells. To make the device accurate regardless of skin color or body-fat content, Soller's group is gathering data from 100 subjects representing five ethnic groups--African-American, Asian, Caucasian, Hispanic and Mediterranean. "NIR light is absorbed by pigment in darker skin, so we are collecting data and developing equations that remove the influence of skin color and fat content on measurements," Soller said. "Our technique will take this human variability into account. Once we adjust for these variables, we can take measurements on the arm or leg or even sew sensors into clothes." The final step will be to develop clinical guidelines for the measurements, so that physicians know the significance of the readings. "Tissue pH and oxygenation are new medical parameters, so we have to determine specific values that, based on the readings, allow us to identify when a person is in shock or in need of treatment. We also see this device as a means to assess the adequacy of the treatment employed," Soller said. Since the technology is being designed to meet the lightweight, low- power and portable requirements of the space program, it will also be useful in ambulances, helicopters and emergency rooms. "The beauty of the non-invasive technique is that it allows physicians to take measurements continuously, once a second if you want," she said. "We think these measurements might help prevent serious complications from traumatic injuries by providing early indications of low oxygen availability." Soller feels the device will be particularly useful for treating patients with shock caused by excessive bleeding or heart attack, patients with internal bleeding, and pediatric patients, where it can be difficult to take multiple blood samples. The technology also has potential use in exercise and endurance training. "Tissue pH can measure how hard a person's muscles are working. The device could be used to determine when the muscles are exhausted, so you could use it to develop a personal training program," she said. The prototype device currently uses two optical fibers, one shining the light into the patient and the other carrying the reflected light back to a device that analyzes the data. However, it still needs to be smaller for space use. "We're actively looking for a commercial partner to build a miniature version of the device," she said. The NSBRI, funded by NASA, is a consortium of institutions studying the health risks related to long-duration space flight. The Institute's 95 research and education projects take place at 75 institutions in 22 states involving 269 investigators. A related photo is available at http://www.nsbri.org/NewsPublicOut/20021001.html. Contact: Kathy Major Phone: 713-798-5893 E-mail: major@bcm.tmc.edu _____________________________________________________________________ UPDGRADES TO BOOST SETI@HOME ALIEN SEARCH By Diana Jong From Space.com 1 October 2002 The world's most popular ET-hunting program for home users is about to get upgrades of both its software and the telescope that feeds data into it. For three years, SETI@home has used the spare processing power of computers across the world, in the guise of a screensaver, to examine radio telescope data for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The data comes from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which can scan only a 30-degree patch of the sky in the Northern Hemisphere. Starting early next year, the Arecibo recorder will be shut off and a new but similar recorder will be turned on at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, which can observe 70 degrees of the sky--and a more advantageous part of the sky, too. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/seti_021001- 1.html. _____________________________________________________________________ HOMING SIGNALS: SYNCHRONIZED SETI From Astrobiology Magazine 2 October 2002 Sending signals across the galaxy is always a question of where and when. If it is desirable to be seen or more likely heard, the signal can be sent out as a beam or a sphere (omnidirectional). Timing such a signal similarly relies on either a burst (the "beep") pattern or a continuous broadcast. Like any radio station, the final decision comes down largely to a question of available power and costs. A highly-advanced broadcaster might find it easy to do the expensive job of a spherical, continuous, high-power option. If the transmitter wants to be heard anywhere, how such a civilization chooses their signature broadcast hinges on just such a tough balance between direction, power and timing. Crafting a better radio conversation is part of the research recently accepted for publication in the Astrobiology journal from Dr. Robin Corbet of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Universities' Space Research Association. Knowing when to pick up Historically, the few deliberate transmissions from Earth have been beamed in only one direction at a time and sent as extremely short beeps. Indeed a message sent from the large Arecibo Radio Telescope (Puerto Rico) in 1974 in the direction of the globular cluster M13 lasted only 169 seconds. But if powerful enough, the chances improve to stand out over the low-background of natural noises, pops and chirps that typically get picked up from large radio telescopes like Arecibo. (For illustration of power requirements, if the Arecibo 1 MW planetary radar is operated continuously then this corresponds to the same energy costs as accelerating 1 kg masses to 1% of the speed of light approximately every 50 days.) So for exploration in the best case, both the transmitter and receiver are tuned and synchronized to send and receive together, once they allow for time delays and know where to point in the sky. Along with Corbet's previous (1999) paper entitled "The Use of Gamma- ray Bursts as Direction and Time Markers in SETI Strategies", his forthcoming work has revisited the strategy proposed by a number of authors: how exactly to synchronize by using natural events as markers? Duty cycles and a primer Dr. Corbet notes: "Essentially all of the current SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) observing programs make only brief observations of any particular part of the sky. This means that transmitters with low duty cycles are very unlikely to be detected. " In his paper "Synchronized SETI - The Case for Opposition", he writes: "In the simplest scheme omnidirectional signals would be transmitted at the occurrence of some particular event such as a nova outburst, maximum flux of a long period variable, specific binary phase or supernova occurrence. A signal would then be detected at the Earth delayed by a time corresponding to the difference between the event/Earth distance and the event/transmitter multiplied by the transmitter/Earth distances. "In other words, a smart civilization might triangulate with a big flash, in just such a way that we might know that it is an interesting time to tune in. So knowing this inherent efficiency boost, one might increase success by listening in for just such "low-duty cycle", transmitting civilizations. He noted, "Without synchronization it will be very unlikely that the potential recipient will detect the signal". Conserving and tapping natural powers One assumption of the synchronization strategy is that a civilization will need to conserve its power. It thus would have already seen the wisdom in mainly sending beeps, or short beamed pulses. But the lack of a continuous broadcast also has the drawback that a primer signal or preface must be commonly "readable" for the transmission to work at all. According to Corbet, "techniques that would both save energy costs and use less time with transmission facilities that could be used for other purposes would become more important." In addition to big natural events like supernovae, a relatively recent astronomical candidate of much interest is gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). On average, about once per day, somewhere in the celestial sky, a bright flash of intense, high-energy gamma particles reaches Earth. The source then disappears except for a much fainter afterglow. While no one can yet predict where or when such a burst will occur, they are frequent and among the brightest sources in the sky in any wavelength region. Corbet proposed that gamma-ray bursts are "the best of the known potential synchronizers that are available primarily because of their large apparent luminosities and very brief durations." Just in time delivery Since the GRBs are short-term (ranging from about 3/100ths of a second to over 1000 seconds), says Corbet, "The transmitter ideally needs to be able to respond on the time scale of the burst. I don't think that need be too difficult. However, this involves trying to guess what technology is available to the transmitter which seems impossible except that it's almost certainly much more advanced than ours! Being able to predict when a GRB was going to occur in advance might help but I don't think it's required at all." While "the origin of GRBs is completely separate, and irrelevant to its use for synchronization", one striking feature that since their 1967 discovery, has surprised gamma-ray astronomers was that the signals don't seem to come from a known stage of a star's life cycle (unlike old stars that supernova). Instead, they come from all (random) directions, and not necessarily just from where the stars are (or civilizations might be) most concentrated. Dr. John Horack, who led the assembly, testing and calibration program for scientific space flight hardware on NASA's Compton Gamma- Ray Observatory, noted that "you'd expect the 'distribution of civilizations in galactic coordinates' to have a very high quadrupole moment..." or to be spatially flattened "(like the disk of the galaxy, because that's where the stars are). So any observation 'in the plane' is much more likely to yield a civilization than anything out of the plane. There are simply more stars per steradian on the sky." So where are they? "Searches for emission at around 1.4 GHz have covered essentially the entire sky and no persistent source has been found (see review by Tarter, 2001). While this may simply mean that extraterrestrial transmissions were too faint to be detected in these surveys, or that transmissions are not being made near this frequency, an alternative explanation may be that transmissions exist but only have low duty cycles," notes Corbet. Keeping the sun to your back As early as 1924 an attempt was organized by David Todd, an associate of Percival Lowell, to listen for artificial radio signals from Mars during the time of opposition (when the Earth-Sun-Mars system is aligned and the receiver and transmitter are on the same side of the Sun). This, apart from the much smaller distance involved which makes signal travel time much less important, is very close to the proposal to look for transmissions from around other stars at opposition. So one scheme discussed by Dr. Corbet's paper is to look for Gamma- Ray Bursts as the universal timing marker, taking account of transmission delays, and look for very smart civilizations that know enough about us to synchronize to the Earth's orbit around the Sun (at opposition). As Horack notes: "Looking in the direction of the burst, you're going to have to pull their signal out of some subsequent radio emission which dominates after about two weeks, once the burst region gets optically thin to the radio. Looking in the opposite direction, you have no time problems, since you'll have several thousand years, minimum, to wait for the burst to pass the Earth, hit the other civilization, and for them to beam back in the direction of the burst." But "with two or three per day, you'd have one heck of a job if you were the transmitting civilization. Let's say you want to broadcast for two years after a burst--try 1,000 pointable transmitters, all spitting signals out into space in isotropically distributed directions". So while a synchronized SETI program makes the receiver's chances higher, the transmitter civilization carries the burden of making the right connection and any ensuing conversational success. What's next? The remarkable progress made already in extrasolar planet discovery (100+ to date) helps refine the feasibility of a synchronized SETI plan. NASA missions propose to detect Earth-like planets in the next decade using the SIM (Space Interferometer Mission) and Terrestrial Planet Finder mission. The European Space Agency (ESA) similarly is planning two missions called GAIA and Darwin. Concludes Corbet: "It is anticipated that within about the next 10 to 20 years it will be possible to directly detect nearby extra-solar planets of approximately terrestrial mass. As any extraterrestrial transmitters are expected to have significantly more advanced technology it is therefore not unreasonable to expect that these transmitters would be able to detect the presence of the Earth and measure its orbit at even greater distances." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article285.html. _____________________________________________________________________ AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS RAMP UP TO DISCOVER TRANSITS OF EXTRA-SOLAR PLANETS NASA/ARC release 02-104AR 3 October 2002 Astronomers at NASA and the University of California at Santa Cruz have launched a Web-based project that has amateur astronomers lining up to have a chance to discover extra-solar planets that "transit" or pass in front of their parent stars. Of the more than 100 known extra-solar planets discovered so far, only one (called HD 209458 b) is known to pass in front of its star, as seen from Earth. The small dimming of a star during such a transit will allow amateur astronomers to perform valuable measurements that can aid scientists by determining the planet's size, and potentially reveal the planet's atmospheric composition and the presence of rings or moons in orbit around it. "We welcome the assistance of a large number of dedicated and experienced amateur astronomers around the world to add to our understanding of the nature of extra-solar planets," said Dr. Tim Castellano, an astronomer based at NASA Ames Research Center and co- investigator of the Web project. During the nights of October 5 and October 30, backyard sky-watchers will get their chance. On those dates, a planet twice as big as Jupiter, orbiting the star HD 68988, has an 8 percent chance of passing in front of its star, giving amateur astronomers the chance to confirm the existence of a Jupiter-sized planet outside our solar system. The star, located near the Big Dipper in the northern sky, is too faint to see without a telescope. The basic search technique used by the amateurs scanning the autumn skies this month will involve taking a night-long series of electronic images of the star HD 68898 and surrounding stars. The astronomers will use these images and specialized software to look for small changes in brightness characterizing a planet's transit, a technique called "transit photometry." Candidate stars such as HD 68898 for the amateur astronomers to observe, are chosen using the "wobble method," by which the first extra-solar planet was detected in 1995. With this method, professional astronomers use large telescopes to watch for the minute "wobble" (the Doppler shift) of a star caused by the tug of an unseen planet orbiting it. "The participation of dozens of astronomers means that more planet- bearing stars can be scrutinized during the intervals when possible transits are predicted," said the site's co-creator, Dr. Greg Laughlin, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Having observers in various locales around the world will provide 24-hour availability and reduce the dependence on local weather, he said. "The signature of a planetary transit is very subtle, so multiple simultaneous observations provide a vitally needed redundancy." The two researchers work as a team, with Laughlin serving as the theorist, calculating transit times and probabilities based on the radial velocity data from the California Planet Search team. Castellano is the observer, who demonstrated that the necessary measurements can be made with only a small backyard telescope. He will provide guidance on observing and data analysis to the amateur astronomers. Requirements for astronomers who want to sign up for an observing shift are a computer-controlled telescope, a charge coupled device (CCD) camera and personal computer, and software to record and analyze the small changes in stellar brightness that will be produced by a planet. Previous experience measuring the brightness of variable stars and success in observing the known transit of HD 209458 with a CCD camera also are highly recommended, the researchers say. Interested participants should visit www.transitsearch.org for exact transit time predictions and further details. The development of the Web site was partially supported through the NASA Ames Research Center's Director's Discretionary Fund, via a grant of two-year startup funds. In December 2001, NASA selected the Kepler Mission, a project based at NASA Ames, as one of the next NASA Discovery missions. The Kepler Mission, scheduled for launch in 2006, will use a spaceborne telescope to search for Earth-like planes around stars beyond our solar system. Contact: Kathleen Burton NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-1731 or 604-9000 E-mail: kburton@mail.arc.nasa.gov An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article287.html. _____________________________________________________________________ EARTH PLAYING COSMIC ROULETTE WITH ASTEROIDS U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science release 107-295 3 October 2002 Scientists are making progress in cataloguing and tracking large near-earth objects (NEOs), but a serious threat still remains from smaller objects, an expert panel told the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee today. These smaller asteroids (200-500 meters wide) could potentially demolish a city with a direct hit or cause a tsunami capable of wiping out entire coastal areas if they land in the ocean. NASA has catalogued nearly 50 percent of asteroids 1 kilometer wide and larger. Astronomers estimate that between 900 and 1300 of the larger asteroids exist while there could be as many as 50,000 in the smaller range. Subcommittee Chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) stated, "The threat posed by incoming asteroids and comets is a serious, potentially life-threatening topic. Given the number of near-earth objects in space, it is a matter of time before we are faced with an event unparalleled in human history. I hope that my legislation, H.R. 5303 [http://www.house.gov/science/press/107/107-286.htm], passed by the House on Tuesday will strengthen existing government capabilities for tracking natural space objects by encouraging private citizens to observe asteroids and comets." Subcommittee Ranking Member Bart Gordon (D-TN) added, "NASA's Mission Statement says that part of its mission is '...to protect our home planet.' I hope NASA will heed the message of today's hearing and work with other agencies of the U.S. government to craft a timely, cost-effective plan to detect and catalog as many as possible of the Near-Earth asteroids and comets that could potentially threaten our population. We cannot afford to be complacent." Dr. David Morrison, senior scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, discussed NASA's goals and accomplishments in monitoring NEOs through the "Spaceguard" program. Morrison noted that Spaceguard was halfway to its goal and he expected that by 2008 NASA will have 90 percent of large, kilometer-sized threatening asteroids catalogued. Morrison added, "Our objective should be to find a large impactor far in advance, and thus provide decision-makers with options for dealing with the threat and defending our planet from cosmic catastrophe." NEOs also pose a serious concern for the military, Brigadier General Simon P. Worden testified. Worden told of an asteroid that entered the atmosphere and exploded above the Mediterranean during last year's India-Pakistan conflict. U.S. satellites detected an energy release and shockwave comparable to the Hiroshima bomb, and Worden explained that had the event taken place at the same latitude two hours earlier and mistaken for a nuclear detonation it could have had devastating consequences. Worden added, "I believe there is considerable synergy between national security requirements related to man-made satellites and global security requirements related to NEO impacts." Witnesses also debated the merits of continuing the cataloging effort on smaller NEO's once the Spaceguard program is completed. Dr. Brian Marsden, Director of the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, testified that handling the large amount of data from surveys of smaller NEOs would be a challenging, but feasible, task. Dr. Joseph Burns, a member of the Solar System Exploration Survey Committee of the National Research Council, testified that NASA should partner with the National Science Foundation to build and operate a large ground-based survey telescope because of NSF's expertise in ground based astronomy and NASA's traditional support of ground-based solar system observations that support space missions. Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science, disagreed saying, "I feel that it is premature to consider an extension of our current national program to include a complete search for smaller-sized NEOs." He also noted that NASA did not feel the agency "should play a role in any follow-on search and cataloging effort unless that effort needs to be specifically space-based in nature." Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) said, "For too long we've assumed that the worst asteroid risk would come from Hollywood--in the form of a sequel to flops like Deep Impact or Armageddon. But the threat posed by Near Earth Objects is real, and if we can plow $100 million into a summer flick, we can certainly give NASA the means to make us safer from real life blockbusters." Witness testimony and an archived web cast of the proceedings can be found at http://www.house.gov/science/ Committee on Science U.S. House of Representatives 2320 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 202-225-7858 Hearing: The Threat of Near-Earth Asteroids Thursday, October 3, 2002, 10:00 AM 2318 Rayburn House Office Building On Thursday, October 3, 2002, at 10:00 AM in room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics will hold a hearing on the threat of Near-Earth Asteroids. The hearing will examine the status of the current national survey of asteroids and comets known as Near-Earth Objects ("NEOs"), the threat of a NEO impact, future goals for the survey, and the national policy regarding NEOs. Asteroids and comets with orbital distances from the sun similar to Earth's are designated as NEOs. While many of these pose no threat of collision with the Earth, a subset known as "Earth-crossing asteroids" (ECAs) and "potentially hazardous asteroids" (PHAs) have orbits with the potential for a close encounter or collision with the Earth. The Earth is bombarded by small meteorites every day, but most of these objects are less than 50 meters in size and burn up in the atmosphere. Larger objects impact the Earth less frequently but can cause enormous damage depending on their size, as described in Figure 1. For example, scientists now generally believe that the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, which included dinosaur extinction, was the result of climate and ecosystem disruption from a massive asteroid impact off the Yucatan peninsula. The fossil record includes a layer of extra-terrestrial material, churned up and distributed by the impact around the globe, at exactly this time-period. More recently, the asteroid impact of 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia flattened 2000 square kilometers of forest with impact energy 1,000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Thus the potential for disaster by an asteroid impact has already been demonstrated in our planet's history. The threat of hazardous Near-Earth Objects has gained greater attention in the public and press recently, in part as a response to several close encounters with asteroids discovered by the current national survey for such objects. Currently NASA is surveying large NEOs with a goal of finding and cataloging 90 percent of objects larger than one kilometer by 2008. Over 600 of these large objects have already been found (Figure 2). In addition to examining the status and results of this survey and the NEO threat, this hearing will explore the question of next steps beyond this survey goal, including the costs, benefits, and technical challenges of extending the survey to include smaller, yet still potentially very hazardous, objects. Agency roles, interagency cooperation, and the possibilities for international contributions to the NEO survey effort will be discussed. In particular, the important role of amateur astronomers in the NEO survey and tracking effort will be highlighted. Amateur astronomers are responsible for much of the important tracking of NEOs after they are discovered. Earlier this year, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) introduced the "Pete Conrad" bill, H.R. 5303. This bill would establish awards for U.S. amateur astronomers who contribute the most toward the discovery and tracking of Near-Earth Asteroids. Full text of the hearing charter is available at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/space02/oct03/charter.htm Witness list Dr. David Morrison Senior Scientist NASA Ames Research Center Full text of statement is available at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/space02/oct03/morrison.htm Dr. Edward Weiler Associate Administrator for Space Science NASA Headquarters Full text of statement is available at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/space02/oct03/weiler.htm Dr. Joseph Burns Irving Porter Church Professor of Engineering and Professor of Astronomy Cornell University Full text of statement is available at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/space02/oct03/burns.htm Dr. Brian Marsden Director, Minor Planet Center Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Full text of statement is available as PDF file (72KB) at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/space02/oct03/marsden.pdf Brigadier General Simon "Pete" Worden Deputy Director for Operations United States Strategic Command Full text of statement is available at http://www.house.gov/science/hearings/space02/oct03/worden.htm Contacts: Heidi Mohlman Tringe E-mail: Heidi.Tringe@mail.house.gov Jeff Donald Phone: (202) 225-4275 E-mail: Jeffrey.Donald@mail.house.gov _____________________________________________________________________ CORNELL ASTRONOMER TELLS CONGRESS IT SHOULD SPEND $125 MILLION FOR NEW TELESCOPE TO DETECT EARTH-THREATENING ASTEROIDS Cornell University release http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct02/Burns.earthimpacts.deb.htm l 3 October 2002 A Cornell University astronomer told a House of Representatives space subcommittee today that Washington should spend $125 million for a new type of ground-based telescope that could detect hundreds of asteroids and numerous comets that pose a potential threat to the Earth from space over the next century. Reporting on a government- commissioned review of solar system exploration by some of the nation's leading scientists, he said that the new wide-field telescope is needed to produce a weekly digital map of the visible sky in order to track space rocks called near-Earth objects (NEOs), the great majority of which have yet to be discovered. There is, he said, a 1 percent probability of an impact with Earth by a 300-meter- diameter (350 yards) body in the next 100 years, resulting in many deaths and widespread devastation. The astronomer, Joseph Burns, the Irving Porter Church Professor of Engineering and professor of astronomy at Cornell, in Ithaca, NY, is a member of the Solar System Exploration Decadal Survey's steering group. His comments to the House Science Committee panel came during his presentation of a small portion of the findings of the survey, which had been commissioned by the National Research Council (NRC) at the behest of NASA. The impact of an object of this size, he said, would deliver a thousand megatons of energy and (assuming an average population density of 10 people per square kilometer) result in a million fatalities. The damage caused by an impact near a city or into coastal water would be "orders of magnitude higher." As of November 2001, he said, 340 objects larger than a kilometer had been cataloged as "potentially hazardous asteroids," and the number of new comets with impact potential "is large and unknown." Burns quoted a section of the survey report (titled New Frontiers in the Solar System): "Important scientific goals are associated with the NEO populations, including their origin, fragmentation and dynamical histories, and compositions and differentiation. These and other scientific issues are also vital to the mitigation of the impact hazard, as methods of deflection of objects potentially on course for an impact with Earth are explored. Information especially relevant to hazard mitigation includes knowledge of the internal structures of near-Earth asteroids and comets, their degree of fracture and the presence of large core pieces, the fractal dimensions of their structures, and their degree of cohesion or friction." However, Burns said, a survey for potentially threatening NEOs "demands an exacting observational strategy," and to locate most of the objects with diameters as small as 300 meters requires a capability a hundred times better than that of existing survey telescopes. Because NEOs spend only a fraction of each orbit in Earth's neighborhood, "repeated observations over 10 years would be required to explore the full volume of space occupied by these objects." Such a survey, said Burns, would discover NEOs at the rate of about 100 per night and obtain astrometric information on the much larger, and growing, number of NEOs that it had already discovered. (Astrometry is the technique used to calculate the orbits of NEOs and assess the hazard that each poses to Earth.) "Astrometry at weekly intervals would ensure against losing track of these fast-moving objects in the months and years after discovery," said Burns. To do this, he said, requires construction of an entirely new type of telescope, the large-aperture synoptic survey telescope (LSST) "to survey the entire sky relatively quickly, so that periodic maps can be constructed that will reveal not only the positions of target sources, but their time variability as well," the Cornell astronomer said. The LSST would be a 6.5-metre-class, very-wide-field (3 degrees) telescope that would produce a digital map of the visible sky every week, and carry out an optical survey of the sky far deeper than any previous survey. Such a telescope, he said, "could locate 90 percent of all near-Earth objects down to 300 meters in size, enable computations of their orbits and permit assessment of their threat to Earth. It would discover and track objects in the Kuiper Belt, a largely unexplored, primordial component of our solar system." A previous NRC astronomy and astrophysics survey also had recommended the building of an LSST. The new survey, however, recommends that NASA and NSF pay equally for the telescope's construction and operations, said Burns. The new survey, he said, projects the costs of the LSST at $83 million for capital construction and $42 million for data processing and distribution over five years of operation, for a total cost of $125 million. Routine operating costs, including a technical and support staff of 20 people, are estimated at approximately $3 million per year, he said. The construction of the LSST, Burns told the legislators, "would provide a central, federal-sponsored location" for tracking the potentially threatening objects. Contact: David Brand Phone: 607-255-3651 E-mail: deb27@cornell.edu An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/house_neo_021003.html. _____________________________________________________________________ HIGH TIDE ON EUROPA By Cynthia Phillips From Space.com 3 October 2002 In a previous article we discussed Jupiter's moon Europa as part of a mini-solar system consisting of the four large Galilean satellites orbiting Jupiter. Europa is worthy of special consideration because of the possibility that the right conditions exist on this small icy moon, either in the past or at the present, for life. One of the requirements for life is liquid water. But how could liquid water exist on such a small world, so far from the Sun? The answer is tidal heating, which could provide sufficient energy to maintain an ocean of liquid water beneath Europa's icy surface that is greater in volume than all the oceans of Earth combined! Get the full story at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_tidal_europa_021003.html. _____________________________________________________________________ FIRST WORDS ON MARS COMPETITION By Adrian Hon 4 October 2002 First Words, an international competition asking people what they think the first words on Mars will be, was launched today by the Mars Society. Coinciding with the start of the United Nations World Space Week (October 4-10), First Words aims to raise public awareness of the possibility of manned exploration of Mars. Bestselling fantasy author, Terry Pratchett, offered up the snappy words, "This time, let's do it right," while British Member of Parliament Lembit Öpik opted for a lengthier and most profound entry, "I do not stand on this landscape of iron, this red desert, alone, but with all mankind and all who gazed at this Sphere of Fixed Stars and dreamed one day of touching it." Offering five categories (Most Historic, Most Humorous, Most Original, In Five Words and Out of Context), entrants can win over $300 in prizes. The competition is open to all age ranges and countries. First Words is organized by Adrian Hon, an undergraduate at Cambridge University. "First Words offers people around the world a chance to have fun and think about what will be said when a human first sets foot on the surface of Mars. The first words spoken on the Moon echoed for centuries and inspired billions. What will the first words on Mars be?" The Mars Society (http://www.marssociety.org) is an international non-profit organization advocating the exploration and settlement of Mars. With a rapidly expanding membership of over 2000 scientists, educators, space professionals and advocates, members include many well-known personalities, including Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Apollo 11 astronaut and Dr. Geoff Briggs, director of the Center for Mars Exploration at NASA Ames Research Center. Find out more about the Mars Society at www.marssociety.org. Volunteers from the New Mars magazine of the Mars Society (http://www.newmars.com) are specifically responsible for the First Words project. Contacts: UK, Adrian Hon (e-mail: media@newmars.com) USA, Bill White (phone: 630-927-2014) http://www.newmars.com/firstwords _____________________________________________________________________ STUDYING EVOLUTION WITH DIGITAL ORGANISMS By Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine 7 October 2002 All biological organisms compete for limited resources. The successful ones reproduce, and their species survive to another generation. And when species are in direct competition, the one that wins is the one that reproduces fastest--according to the traditional rules of population genetics. But recent research indicates that rapid reproduction may not always be the winning evolutionary ticket. When mutation rates are low, says Chris Adami of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the standard rule applies. But when mutation rates are high, a different principle applies, which Adami and his colleagues call "survival of the flattest." Adami hasn't come to this conclusion by studying biological organisms, however. The organisms that he and his colleagues study are digital. Researchers at Caltech's Digital Life Laboratory and Michigan State University's Center for Biological Modeling use a software program called Avida, to create their digital creatures. The organisms exist as sequences of self-replicating computer code. The code determines how the organisms reproduce and how they utilize the available resources: memory and processor cycles. To survive, the organisms have to find a way to increase, or at least to maintain, their share control over these resources. Built-in to their code is the ability to change, or mutate. The code, says Adami, is their genome. Adami believes that valuable lessons about evolution can be learned by studying how digital organisms adapt and survive. Humans create the digital creatures by writing their initial computer code. But, says Adami, "They usually shed that coding after a few tens of generations, basically because it's inane as far as they're concerned. They just throw it away immediately and come up with something that is much more adapted to the kind of conditions that they live in." The researchers had found that organisms exposed to high mutation rates, over time, developed a "robustness," or tolerance to mutation. And they suspected that in a high-mutation environment these robust organisms would beat out more-prolific but less-robust competitors. By adjusting mutation rates, they evolved 40 pairs of species, from which they used 12 to test their theory. Each pair began as a single species. But one organism in the pair evolved under low mutation, the other under high mutation. After many generations, two distinct species had descended from the original one. In each of the 12 selected pairs, one species (the one evolved under low mutation) was at least 1.5 times as fast at replication, while the other (evolved under high mutation) was slower but more robust. The researchers then let each pair of species compete. When the competition took place with a low mutation rate, the fast replicator won, as predicted by population genetics. But when faced with a high mutation rate, being fast didn't help. Even though the faster replicator produced more offspring, most of them couldn't survive. The more robust species ultimately won out. The results of the research were published in the July 19, 2001, issue of the journal, Nature, in an article co-authored by Adami, Claus Wilke and Jialan Wang (Caltech); and Richard Lenski and Charles Ofria (MSU). How the robust species manage to prevail is a bit of a mystery, says Adami. "We believe they do it by rearranging their code, in a sense spreading it out over the genome so that they are less vulnerable to mutations. However, we haven't done an extensive study of it, so we have to say that right now we don't know how they do it." Taking the low road Scientists sometimes represent competition among species within an ecosystem as a landscape with peaks of different heights. Each species is shown as inhabiting a "fitness peak" that sticks up above the baseline, much as a mountain rises above a plain. Species well adapted to survival under low mutation rates--this is the typical state of affairs in nature--appear as tall, thin peaks. But for such a species, change can be disastrous. If the mutation rate suddenly increases due to some environmental stress, many organisms become ill adapted and fail to reproduce. In terms of the fitness landscape, they are seen as falling off their peak. If the mutation rate gets high enough, the entire species can be threatened. So many offspring in each generation become unfit for reproduction that the remaining offspring can't reproduce quickly enough to maintain a viable population. Recall, though, that a species exposed to a high mutation rate-- assuming the species survives--responds over time by developing resistance to damaging mutations. While any individual organism might not survive any particular mutation, the "cloud" of organisms that make up the population will contain some individuals that can survive. Adami refers to this cloud as a "quasi-species" because no one organism contains the genome for the species. Rather, a range of genomes exists, and it is this variety that enables the quasi-species to survive in the face of harmful mutations. On a fitness landscape, such species are represented by lower, flatter peaks--hence the concept of survival of the flattest. But are they alive? These digital experiments may be interesting, but can code strings really be considered alive? Can they tell us anything useful about the way evolution works in organisms with RNA and DNA? Benton Clark, an astrobiologist with the University of Colorado and Lockheed Martin, isn't so sure. "The nomenclature 'digital organisms' might be somewhat confusing or misleading," says Clark. "I consider such things as potentially being 'artificial, simulated organisms' or 'virtual organisms.'" He doesn't think digital organisms qualify as true life forms because they "do not have physical essence and physical entities are neither reproduced nor created." "These organisms are in no way simulated," Adami counters. "While it's true that we simulate a world, we certainly do not simulate the population that actually exists and has to fight in order to survive. The information that is the genetic sequence of these digital organisms is coded in a physical manner in voltage differences in the memory of the computer. And, as such, they are as physical as the information coded in a nucleic acid sequence." Moreover, Adami adds, "Darwinian evolution is a process that does not refer to nucleic acid bases [DNA] for the very obvious reason that Darwin didn't know about nucleic acids, since they hadn't been discovered yet." And because the process of evolution doesn't depend on "whether it happens in nucleic acids or bit strings, the type of dynamics we observe will be predictive of other types of organisms also." Viruses, for example, exhibit the kind of quasi-species behavior that the more robust of his digital organisms do, says Adami. "In virus evolution, you clearly have mutation rates on the order of those that we have played around with. It is clear that a virus is not one particular sequence. Viruses are not pure species. They are, in fact, this cloud, this mutational cloud, that lives on flat peaks. They present many, many, many different genotypes." Adami suggests that this understanding could be useful in designing effective anti-viral treatments. What's next? Adami believes that his research may also prove useful in the search for extraterrestrial life. One of the difficult questions that astrobiologists struggle with is how they will be able to recognize the biosignature of life forms on other worlds that may have a different chemical foundation than life on Earth. Adami thinks his digital organisms can help. As he points out, "We're the only ones who have an alien form of life at our disposal." He has found, for example, that digital organisms that have evolved through many generations display a curious pattern of instructions. "Some instructions are used much more often and some other instructions are used much, much, much less than their random occurrence." A similar pattern can be seen among amino acids on Earth. Wherever life is at work, the amino acids favored by biological organisms appear in much higher concentrations than they do in the absence of life. Even if you knew nothing about the chemistry of life on Earth, Adami suggests, seeing an atypical abundance of some amino acids, regardless of their specific chemistry, could signal that some type of life was present. Adami, who is working with Ken Nealson at JPL's Center for Life Detection and Evan Dorn at Caltech, believes that understanding life's patterns in this generalized, abstract way can help researchers develop a non-Earth-centric approach to the search for life on other worlds. "If you are interested in discovering life on other planets, then clearly you would like to be as non-specific as you can about how you go about it," Adami says. "Because you can't assume that life [elsewhere] is coded in nucleic acids and proteins just as it is on Earth." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article288.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/digital_life_021 007.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 7 October 2002 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html C. Phillips, 2002. High tide on Europa. Space.com. Human space exploration and microgravity effects articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html K. Miller, 2002. Is there a doctor onboard? SpaceDaily. K. Miller, 2002. Space medicine. NASA Science News. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s4.html Astrobiology Magazine, 2002. Homing signals: synchronized SETI. Astrobiology Magazine. M. Jones, 2002. Astronomer speaks up for ET. SpaceDaily. M. Jones, 2002. Doug Vakoch's and lands beyond beyond. SpaceDaily. D. Jong, 2002. Updgrades to boost SETI@home alien search. Space.com. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html H. Bortman, 2002. Studying evolution with digital organisms. Astrobiology Magazine. Planetary protection articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s6.html J. Bates, 2002. Asteroid-hunting telescope proposed at congressional hearing. Space.com. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology_b ooks.htm J. Cohen and I. Stuart, 2002. What Does a Martian Look Like? The Science of Extraterrestrial Life. J. Wiley and Sons, New York. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL releases 19-25 September 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, September 24. 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/. The C33 sequence concluded this week and C34 began nominal execution. Instrument activities this week included Radio and Plasma Wave Science High Frequency Receiver calibrations, and start of a 10-day Cosmic Dust Analyzer activity to continue investigation of the dust down-stream of Jupiter. Due to transmitter problems at Deep Space Station 25, the scheduled command to clear the ACS high watermarks was not sent. The command will be sent next week. The Huygens Probe team reported a successful execution of last week's Probe Checkout #10. During the 5-hour checkout the Probe is put through all possible stages of the actual descent sequence. Each instrument is turned on for the periods it will be used as the probe descends. Data is taken by each instrument and then sent to Cassini for transmission to Earth. The checkout allows each instrument and subsystem, such as power, computers, and transmitter to be evaluated. The data engineer for the Planetary Data System Planetary Plasma Interactions Node data visited Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer team members last week at the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, and the University of Michigan to work on archive plans. Uplink Operations has released a draft of the Tour Science and Sequence Update Process Operations Plan to System Engineering. The document has been distributed for review within the program. Uplink Operations has used a version of SEG to generate a keyword file to be used in next week's Project Interface Test. DSS-26 has been upgraded with new Network Simplification Project software and the test will prove that SEG can generate a file that can be correctly read by the station. The D8.0.4 version of the SSR Management Tool has been released for user acceptance testing. Updates have been made in response to user feedback and the software re-released for further testing. Mission Support and Services Office personnel presented the Cassini web architecture plan at the System Engineering Round Table meeting. Topics discussed included development, test and operational environments; how the Mid-Tier and database connections work; and outstanding issues and concerns. The presentation was well received. The developers and System Engineering seemed satisfied that the architecture is sound and that MSSO is doing a good job designing and supporting Web services. The New Cassini Web site has been completed and awaits approval of the JPL Office of Communication and Education prior to release. A new slide set is available to order through Finley Holiday Films. The set, identified as JPL-55, highlights the joint Cassini-Galileo Jupiter encounter of December 2000. Sets can be ordered directly from Finley Films at http://www.finley-holiday.com. Project members can request sets for presentation purposes directly through the Galileo and Cassini Outreach offices. 26 September - 2 October 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, October 1. 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/. Instrument activities this week included loading of a Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) Instrument Expanded Block (IEB) to prepare the instrument for Flight software (FSW) upload and Beta Gru observation activities, upload of VIMS FSW, Radio and Plasma Wave Science periodic instrument maintenance, a Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS) shade test, and a Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) IEB load and Time to Digital Data Converter (TDC) test. The CIRS shade test activity tests how much heating is caused by various amounts of sunlight on the CIRS radiator. Data will be used to update the CIRS radiator flight rule, and should allow for more flexibility and greater ease in planning science observations. The CAPS TDC test cycled through the threshold values for the TDC and gathered statistics regarding the background data. This information will then be incorporated into future FSW updates to improve processing. The Science Planning Team development for the C35 sequence concluded this week. A handoff package will be passed to Uplink Operations for inclusion in next week's kick-off for sequence generation. An independent review board was convened for the purpose of reviewing the options that the Program has developed on the issue of visibility into spacecraft performance during the SOI period. The spacecraft design does not permit the degree of visibility desired without a substantial cost in science acquired and propellant used. The board assessment was that the set of options developed was complete and recommended an option that provides Doppler shortly prior to and during part of the burn, but doesn't give real-time telemetry. A presentation of the options was made to NASA HQ this week. A tentative decision was for the same option, but some additional information was requested prior to making a final decision. Two Delivery Coordination Meetings were held this week, one for the updated Navigation Ancillary Information Facility / Spacecraft, Planet, Instruments, C-matrix, and Events kernels Toolkit, N0053, and the other for Inertial Vector Propagator (IVP)/Kinematic Prediction Tool (KPT) Version 8.1 The topic of discussion at this week's Mission Planning Forum was rolling and rocking downlinks. Mission Planning and ACS personnel from the Spacecraft Operations Office discussed the needs and feasibility of rolling downlinks during tour. Mission Planning provided some analysis on the number of rocking downlinks needed. 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 02-247 The Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI) science team completed its third and fourth experiment runs this week in an effort to learn more about how bubbles can weaken materials such as those used in semiconductors and jet engine turbine blades. Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson initiated the third run on Monday. After it was completed on Tuesday, Whitson removed the sample for return to Earth and installed a fourth sample that was completed early Wednesday. When scientists melt metals on earth, bubbles that form in the molten material usually rise to the surface, pop and disappear. However, some may remain and decrease a material's strength and usefulness. In microgravity, bubbles may move only slightly, making the Space Station a good place to study their movements and interactions. PFMI employs a furnace to melt and re-solidify samples of a transparent modeling material called succinonitrile that allows scientists to watch bubbles form and control the conditions that affect bubble formation. Information collected from PFMI is expected to provide insights into the processing of metals and alloys in space and on Earth. The experiment is housed in the Microgravity Science Glovebox--a major new research facility delivered to the Station last spring-- that safely contains potentially harmful materials during experiment operations. It has a large front window with built-in gloves that allow astronauts to work safely with experiments and samples. Dr. Richard Grugel of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is the principal investigator for PFMI. "Our first two experiment runs were composed of pure succinonitrile," Grugel said. "Samples 3 and 4 this week are 'alloys'--pure succinonitrile to which 0.38 percent water has been added. We expect to see different structures as a result." Also on Monday, the crew took documentation photos of the soybean plants in the Advanced Astroculture (ADVASC) experiment. Plants, including mature seeds, grown during the mission will be returned to the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for study. The center is collaborating with Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. to study whether the space-grown plants produce seeds with different genetic properties useful in agriculture on Earth. On Tuesday, Whitson and Commander Valery Korzun conducted their regular Pulmonary Function in Flight (PuFF) lung function test. Scientists are using the experiment to understand how the lungs can be affected by long-term exposure to microgravity, as well as the low-pressure environment of a spacesuit. Selected crew members Wednesday filled out their weekly Crew Interactions survey on the Human Research Facility laptop computer. Interactions is a computer- based questionnaire intended to identify and characterize important interpersonal and cultural factors that may affect the performance of the crew and ground support personnel during Station missions. Crew Earth Observation photography targets for this week included Congo-Zimbabwe biomass burning, the Nigerian coastal city of Lagos, and urban development in the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo and La Paz. The crew continued its daily payload status checks of automated science payloads to make sure that all experiments and payload facilities continue to operate properly. The launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis has been postponed to no earlier than Monday, October 7, while weather forecasters and the mission management team assess the possible effect Hurricane Lili may have on the Mission Control Center located at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., 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 27 September - 4 October 2002 Floor of Hellas Basin (Released 27 September 2002 http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020927a.html Late Afternoon Sun (Released 30 September 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20020930a.html Tempe Terra (Released 1 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021001a.html Terra Sirenum (Released 2 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021002a.html Terra Cimmeria highlands (Released 3 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021003a.html Impact Crater (Released 4 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021004a.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. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY RELEASES FIRST DATA ARCHIVE TO SCIENTISTS NASA/JPL release 1 October 2002 NASA has released the first set of data taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft to the Planetary Data System, which will now make the information available to research scientists through a new online distribution and access system. "This release is a major milestone for Mars scientists worldwide, since the first validated data from our instruments are now available to the entire scientific community," said Dr. R. Stephen Saunders, the Odyssey project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. "There are fundamentally new kinds of information in these data sets, including day and night infrared images, maps of hydrogen in the soil, and radiation hazard data for future Mars missions." The information includes the first six weeks of mapping data through the end of March, as well as the observations made during the cruise phase to Mars. The archive consists of formatted instrument data from the gamma-ray spectrometer and high-energy neutron spectrometer; Mars maps from the neutron detectors; about 800 visible and infrared images taken by the camera system; and radiation measurements from the martian radiation environment experiment. New data will be released to the science community every three months. The Odyssey data are available through a new online access system established by the Planetary Data System at http://starbrite.jpl.nasa.gov/pds/. The Odyssey data release, coupled with the availability of this new system, marks a significant improvement in access to data from solar system exploration missions. Beginning today, validated data from all Odyssey instruments will be available for search and retrieval immediately upon delivery to the Planetary Data System. The system will soon integrate data sets from all Mars missions so researchers can obtain all the data they need at a "one-stop shopping" Internet site. A guide to the Odyssey data sets can be found at the Planetary Data System Geosciences Node at http://wufs.wustl.edu/missions/odyssey. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, DC. Investigators at Arizona State University in Tempe, the University of Arizona in Tucson and NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, operate the science instruments. Additional science partners are located at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and at Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL. Additional information about the 2001 Mars Odyssey is available on the Internet at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/ Contact: Mary Hardin Phone: 818-354-0344 _____________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 4 October 2002 Stardust had two periods of radio contact through JPL's Deep Space Network this week. The spacecraft is in good health and continuing to collect interstellar particles. Playback of images taken by the Navigation Camera on September 3 has not yet been completed because of the large amount of image data and the low data replay rate. The Spacecraft Test Laboratory is continuing to test a patch for Stardust's nucleus-tracking flight software. An education and public-outreach representative for the mission presented a paper September 27 at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans. 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 37.