MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 41, 5 November 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) SCIENTISTS STUDYING TWO BIG CRATERS ON EARTH FIND TWO CAUSES University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign release 2) COMPUTER MODEL SUGGESTS FUTURE CROP LOSS DUE TO POTENTIAL INCREASE IN EXTREME RAIN EVENTS OVER NEXT CENTURY NASA/GSFC release 3) SOUNDING EUROPA ON THE CHEAP: EAVESDROPPING ON ICE From SpaceDaily 4) BUSTING A SOD ALONG THE OLD CAMBRIAN WAY From SpaceDaily 5) METHANE RICH GREENHOUSE BOOSTED EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS From SpaceDaily 6) EVOLUTION UPSET: OXYGEN-MAKING MICROBES CAME LAST, NOT FIRST From SpaceDaily 7) CHINA STEPS UP ASTRONAUT TRAINING By Leonard David 8) FIRST SPACE DOG DIED WITHIN HOURS, REPORT SAYS By Richard Stenger 9) SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MARS: FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT NASA/JPL/LPI release 10) BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN IMPACT CRATERS--10TH ESF IMPACT WORKSHOP By Charles Cockell 11) CONDON NAMED ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR ASTROBIOLOGY AND SPACE PROGRAMS NASA/ARC release 02-113AR 12) NOBEL LAUREATE TO DELIVER ASTRONOMY LECTURE NASA/ARC release 02-113AR 13) WORLD AGRICULTURE FACES MAJOR WATER CRISIS BY 2025 From Agence France-Presse and SpaceDaily 14) ASTRONOMERS FIND LIFE ON EARTH Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics release 02-23 15) THE TREE OF LIFE: COLD START? By Stephen Hart 16) HALLOWEEN ASTEROID By Tony Phillips 17) FIRST INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION TURNS TWO NASA release 02-212 18) THE RIO SCALE By Seth Shostak 19) SPACE SHUTTLE RETURNS FIRST SOYBEANS GROWN ON SPACE STATION IN COMMERCIAL FARMING EXPERIMENT NASA/MSFC release 02-278 20) CHARTING COURSE: LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE From Astrobiology Magazine 21) SAVING CAJUN COUNTRY By Patrick L. Barry 22) PUBLIC SPACE TRAVEL: PLAYGROUND FOR THE RICH? By Leonard David 23) HOT SPRINGS HIGH IN THE ANDES (LICANCABUR EXPEDITION JOURNAL: PART III) By Henry Bortman 24) NASA'S STARDUST COMET-CHASER PASSES ASTEROID TEST NASA/JPL release 2002-204 25) BACTERIAL BLASTING ACROSS SPACE By Morris Jones 26) CHINA PREPARES SHENZHOU IV SHAKEOUT FLIGHT By Leonard David 27) INTERVIEW WITH STATION RESIDENTS From Spaceflight Now 28) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 29) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 30) CASSINI-HUYGENS MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 31) CASSINI SPACECRAFT CAMERA SIGHTS SATURN By Lori Stiles 32) TODAY ON GALILEO NASA/JPL release 33) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION EXPEDITION FIVE SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS NASA/MSFC release 02-279 34) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 35) STARDUST MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL releases _____________________________________________________________________ SCIENTISTS STUDYING TWO BIG CRATERS ON EARTH FIND TWO CAUSES University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign release 25 October 2002 Two of the three largest impact craters on Earth have nearly the same size and structure, researchers say, but one was caused by a comet while the other was caused by an asteroid. These surprising results could have implications for where scientists might look for evidence of primitive life on Mars. Susan Kieffer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Kevin Pope of Geo Eco Arc Research and Doreen Ames of Natural Resources Canada analyzed the structure and stratigraphy of the 65 million-year-old Chicxulub crater in Mexico and the 1.8 billion-year-old Sudbury crater in Canada. Chicxulub is well preserved, but buried, and can be studied only by geophysical means, remote sensing and at a few distant sites on land where some ejecta is preserved. In contrast, Sudbury has experienced up to 4-6 kilometers of erosion, and is well exposed and highly studied by mining exploration companies because of its rich mineral resources. By working back and forth with data from the two craters, the researchers were able to re-create the structures and then estimate the amount of melt in each structure. The amount of melt is critical for determining if long-lived hot-water circulation systems that might host life forms could have been formed after the impacts. In their field studies, the researchers found that both craters were about 200 kilometers in diameter. In addition, they identified five ring-shaped structures with similar character and dimensions. A sixth ring--the peak ring in the central basin--was present at Chicxulub, but had been eroded away at Sudbury. "While the size and structure of the two craters were similar, they differed greatly in the amount of impact melt that was produced," said Kieffer, who presented the team's findings at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, held October 27-30 in Denver. "Through field studies, we determined that Chicxulub has about 18,000 cubic kilometers of impact melt, approximately four times the volume of water in Lake Michigan," Pope said. "Sudbury has about 31,000 cubic kilometers of impact melt, approximately six times the volume of lakes Huron and Ontario combined, and nearly 70 percent more than the melt at Chicxulub. These differences in volume have significant implications about the amount of heat available to drive hot-water circulation systems." The researchers then used an analytical cratering model to examine possible causes for the huge difference in melt. According to the simulation results, the difference in melt volume could be readily explained if Chicxulub--the impact crater that doomed the dinosaurs-- was formed by an asteroid and Sudbury was formed by a comet. "Our calculation of 18,000 cubic kilometers of impact melt at Chicxulub agreed well with model estimates for an asteroid striking at a 45 degree angle," said Kieffer, the Walgreen Professor of Geology at Illinois. "None of the comet impact examples came close to agreeing." In contrast, the Sudbury impact melt volume of 31,000 cubic kilometers fell between model estimates for a comet striking at an angle of 30-45 degrees, Kieffer said. "Similarly, none of the asteroid impact examples came close to agreeing with the Sudbury melt volume." Another clue to the craters' origins lies in the impact melts themselves. The majority of the excess melt at Sudbury is in the form of a melt-rich breccia--called suevite--inside the crater. This material tends to form in impacts where the crustal target rock contains a lot of water. Sudbury has much more suevite in the preserved crater than Chicxulub. "The mystery was that there probably wasn't a lot of water in the original rocks at Sudbury to account for the excess suevite," Kieffer said. "But in a comet impact of this size, somewhere around 1,400- 2,000 cubic kilometers of water from the comet gets mixed into the impact melt, and that could play a major role in disrupting the melt and creating the excess suevite." There is other independent evidence for an asteroid impact at Chicxulub, the team said, including the purported find of an asteroid fragment in an oceanic drill core, the amount of iridium spread around the world at the time of impact, and a telltale chromium 53 isotopic signature. By studying the origin and structure of large impact craters on Earth, scientists might narrow the search for life on Mars. At Sudbury, for example, "there is evidence of a huge hydrothermal system that was driven by the heat of the impact melt," Ames said. "As a result, there was widespread hot spring activity on the crater floor possibly capable of supporting life." The researchers are interested in "extrapolating these conclusions about comet and asteroid impacts to martian conditions and asking where we might go to look for similar hydrothermal systems that could have hosted primitive life forms on Mars," Kieffer said. "Our next step is to model these hot-water circulation systems that were set up by the impact melts with fluid flow controlled by structures (fractures) inside the crater, and then extrapolate the results to martian conditions." The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County funded this work. Contact: Jim Kloeppel, Physical Sciences Editor News Bureau University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, Illinois Phone: 217-244-1073 E-mail: kloeppel@uiuc.edu _____________________________________________________________________ COMPUTER MODEL SUGGESTS FUTURE CROP LOSS DUE TO POTENTIAL INCREASE IN EXTREME RAIN EVENTS OVER NEXT CENTURY NASA/GSFC release 28 October 2002 An increased frequency of extreme precipitation events has been observed over the last 100 years in the United States. Global climate models project that similar trends may continue and even strengthen over the coming decades, due to climate change. Now, a study using computer climate and crop model simulations predicts that U.S. agricultural production losses due to excess rainfall may double in the next 30 years, resulting in an estimated $3 billion per year in damages. Cynthia Rosenzweig and Francesco Tubiello, researchers at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University, New York, and the other authors of this study, found that current assessments of the impacts of climate change on agriculture have not accounted for the negative impacts on crops from increased precipitation and floods. In an effort to close this information gap, the researchers modified an existing crop computer model to simulate the extent to which excess soil moisture from heavy rain might damage crop plants. "The impacts of excess soil moisture due to increased precipitation need to be taken into account because of associated crop losses and potential financial damages," Rosenzweig said. The researchers argue that while droughts receive the most attention when it comes to assessing the impacts of climate change on agriculture, excess precipitation should also be a major concern. The 1993 U.S. Midwest floods, for example, caused about $6 to 8 billion in damages to farmers, accounting for roughly half of the total overall losses from the flood, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Overall precipitation and extreme rain events are projected to increase in the future because of stronger water cycle dynamics associated with global warming. Global climate model simulations used in the study project increases in total precipitation and in the number of extreme precipitation events in the Corn Belt and on average for the continental United States. Over the Corn Belt states, the average number of extreme precipitation events was 30 percent above present levels in the 2030's, and 65 percent higher in the 2090's. The same climate projections were used for a 2001 U.S. national assessment report on potential consequences of climate change. The researchers also modified an existing crop model, called CERES- Maize, in order to simulate the effects of excess soil moisture from heavy precipitation on corn crops. The model calculates plant development, growth and final yield based on weather, crop genetic traits and management practices. The researchers modified CERES- Maize by adding in a function that limited the simulated plant's ability to grow roots after three consecutive days of soil saturation. The model simulated corn growth in nine U.S. Corn Belt states, including Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin, which represent 85 percent of total U.S. corn production. The modified model showed that the probability of crop damage due to water-logged soils could be even greater than the projected increases in heavy precipitation--corresponding to 90 percent more damage in the 2030's, and 150 percent more damage by the 2090's, compared to present conditions. To relate the climate and crop model results to economic losses, Rosenzweig and her colleagues used USDA economic data to estimate that damages to U.S. corn production due to excess soil moisture currently amount to about $600 million per year. The researchers then estimated that potential future damages to major U.S. crops due to excess soil moisture could lead to total losses of up to $3 billion per year by the 2030's, on average. The study appears in the current issue of Global Environmental Change. The research was conducted at the Climate Impacts Group of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University and was supported by Environmental Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency. For more information, see http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20021022cropdamage.html. Contact: Krishna Ramanujan Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD Phone: 301-286-3026 E-mail: Kramanuj@pop900.gsfc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ SOUNDING EUROPA ON THE CHEAP: EAVESDROPPING ON ICE From SpaceDaily 28 October 2002 Forget drilling. A simpler and cheaper way to search for an ocean under Europa's glacial surface is to land a solitary electronic ear on the Jovian moon, and listen to the echoes of cracking ice. By applying a technique already tested on Arctic sea ice, a single "geophone" listening device could reveal how the icy moon's surface flexes, cracks and quakes with tidal forces. Just how the resulting vibrations bounce around inside the Moon-sized world could reveal the depth of the ice and extent of the potentially life-sustaining liquid ocean underneath. Nick Makris will present the advantages of putting an ear to Europan ice at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America on Wednesday, October 30, in Denver, CO. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/jupiter-europa- 02e.html. _____________________________________________________________________ BUSTING A SOD ALONG THE OLD CAMBRIAN WAY From SpaceDaily 28 October 2002 If you've ever had to scrape a barnacle, you can blame a trilobite for your trouble. The advent of trilobite-tilled, worm-worked muck a half-billion years ago may have helped feed an explosive evolution of early animal life in the oceans--including the sort of critters that today attach themselves to boats and piers. In the placid days before what's called the Cambrian Explosion of animal life, seafloor sediments were laid down in neat, firm layers, coated by microbial mats and remained undisturbed. Animals had no need to attach themselves to anything because the seafloor was firm and reliable. Then along came animals that had figured out how to mine the seafloor for food, changing the course of evolution forever. David Bottjer of the University of Southern California will explain the pivotal evolutionary role of what he calls the Cambrian "sod busters" at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America on Monday, October 28, in Denver, CO. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02zu.html. _____________________________________________________________________ METHANE RICH GREENHOUSE BOOSTED EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS From SpaceDaily 28 October 2002 What constrained the evolution of life during the very hot early Earth? Was a simple drop in temperature largely responsible for the emergence of cyanobacteria, a large and varied group of bacteria with chlorophyll that carry out photosynthesis in the presence of light and air with concomitant production of oxygen? Was it a reduction in carbon-dioxide levels? Geochemist David Schwartzman of Howard University and Ken Caldeira of the Climate and Carbon Cycle Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have a different view. Looking at how feedback operates in Earth systems, they propose that the transition from a carbon- dioxide dominated greenhouse world to one dominated by methane actually did the trick. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02zt.html. _____________________________________________________________________ EVOLUTION UPSET: OXYGEN-MAKING MICROBES CAME LAST, NOT FIRST From SpaceDaily 28 October 2002 Get ready to rewrite those biology textbooks--again. Although the "lowly" blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, have long been credited as one of Earth's earliest life forms and the source of the oxygen in the early Earth's atmosphere, they might be neither. By creating a new genetic family tree of the world's most primitive bacteria and comparing it to the geochemistry of ancient iron and sulfur deposits, Carrine Blank of Washington University has found evidence that instead of cyanobacteria being very ancient, they may have appeared much later, perhaps as much as a billion years later, than previously assumed. Blank will present the results of her research at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver on Tuesday, October 29. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02zr.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CHINA STEPS UP ASTRONAUT TRAINING By Leonard David From Space.com 28 October 2002 Space officials in China are reportedly stepping-up training of astronauts for human space travel. Two or three individuals are "expected to dart out from the Earth" and become the first batch of spacemen of China. Meanwhile, a large "aerospace city" is in use to prepare astronauts for space voyages. Located in Beijing's suburban area, the complex is cited as the third largest training center dedicated to human spaceflight in the world. According to the People's Daily, citing a weekly "outlook" report, preparations for sending Chinese astronauts skyward started several years ago. In 1996, two Chinese astronauts underwent training in Moscow. Today, a group of pilots are in training for China's first human space voyage. Each person has more than 1,000 hours of flying time and is being put through rigorous physical and expertise exams. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/shenzhou_update_021028.html. _____________________________________________________________________ FIRST SPACE DOG DIED WITHIN HOURS, REPORT SAYS By Richard Stenger From CNN 29 October 2002 The first living animal to orbit Earth did not survive nearly as long as thought after she blasted off into space 45 years ago, according to a Russian scientist. Laika overheated, panicked and died within hours of launch in the second spacecraft to circle the planet, contrary to Soviet reports that the dog had lived for up to a week, said Dimitri Malashenkov of the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow. The Soviets dispatched the canine in Sputnik 2 in November 1957, one month after performing another technological feat that stunned the world, launching the first artificial satellite into orbit, Sputnik. Get the full story at http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/10/29/russia.dog/index.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MARS: FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT NASA/JPL/LPI release http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/sixthmars2003/ 29 October 2002 Sixth International Conference on Mars July 20-25, 2003 Pasadena, California Sponsored by: California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lunar and Planetary Institute National Aeronautics and Space Administration Coveners: Hugh Kieffer - Viking Mission Matthew Golombek - Mars Pathfinder Mission Arden Albee - Mars Global Surveyor Mission Steve Saunders - Odyssey Mission Joy Crisp - MER Mission Richard Zurek - MRO Mission Daniel McCleese - Mars Program Contacts: Arden Albee, Meeting Organizer Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences Mail Stop 150-21 California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA 91125 Phone: 626-395-6367 Fax: 626-585-1917 E-mail: 6thMars03@gps.caltech.edu Mary Cloud, LPI Meeting Coordinator Publications and Program Services Department Lunar and Planetary Institute 3600 Bay Area Boulevard Houston, TX 77058-1113 Phone: 281-486-2143 Fax: 281-486-2123 E-mail: cloud@lpi.usra.edu Purpose and scope The Sixth International Conference on Mars will be held at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), July 20-25, 2003. At that time a flotilla of new missions either will be sending new data back from Mars or will be on their way to Mars. The first such conference was held in 1973 as data were being returned from Mariner 9. Conferences were convened in 1979 and 1981 as data were returned from the Viking missions. The fourth conference, in 1989, reviewed ten years of analysis of the Viking data and resulted in the publication of the classic 1498-page volume entitled Mars. The fifth conference was held in 1999 as Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor data became widely available. This conference will provide an opportunity to review and debate some of the key questions and controversies that have matured during the flood of MGS and Odyssey data. Abstracts should address such key topics as the following (listed in no particular order): * role of early water - oceans and/or aquifers * evidence for very recent liquid water * current extent/location of water * annual repeatability of atmosphere * basis for choice of MER landing sites * latest volcanism * polar cap processes * places where extremeophiles could survive on Mars * the "andesite" question * nature and origin of stratified deposits * paleoclimate - surface signatures and modeling * enigmatic landforms * strategies for future Mars exploration * dust "cycle" * carbon dioxide cycle * water cycle(s) and chronology * crustal magnetic fields Meeting format The program committee will establish the conference program on the basis of the abstract submittals. Each of the half-day sessions will include invited papers as well as shorter contributions, short comments, and posters. Contributors should assume that all attendees are quite familiar with the published data and ideas on Mars. The sessions will be held in Ramo Auditorium on the Caltech campus and poster sessions will be held in the adjacent gardens. Coffee breaks and box lunches will be available in the same area. Extended abstracts are strongly suggested, but must not exceed four pages including graphics, tables, and references. An abstract volume on CD-ROM will be prepared in a format similar to that established by the LPSC meeting. Complete details for preparing and submitting your abstract electronically will be posted on this web site [http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/sixthmars2003/]. Details on hotels, registration, and social events will also be posted on the web site. For special questions or suggestions, contact A. Albee. Schedule January 15, 2003: Indication of Interest forms or e-mail due. February 28, 2003: Second announcement with call for abstracts posted on web site. April 16, 2003: Deadline for abstracts to LPI. May 23, 2003: Final announcement and program with abstracts on web site. June 15, 2003: Preregistration deadline. July 20, 2003: Registration and reception at Caltech Athenaeum. July 20-25, 2003: Sixth International Conference on Mars. Future announcements Future announcements, including information for submission of abstracts, will be posted on this LPI Web site. Indication of interest To subscribe to a mailing list to receive electronic reminders and special announcements relating to the meeting via e-mail, please submit an electronic Indication of Interest form by December 13, 2002 (http://www.lpi.usra.edu/htbin/meetings/sixthmars2003.elec.iofi.pl). You may also send an e-mail with "Sixthmars 2003 Interest" in the subject line to meetings@lpi.usra.edu. Please include your name and affiliation within the body of the message. Also, include a valid e- mail address if you are sending it from an e-mail that is different from your own. (Do not send any important messages with "Sixthmars 2003 Interest" in the subject line; these e-mails will only be used for compiling a mailing list.) Please submit the Indication of Interest form even if you do not care about electronic notification of future announcements. The number of e-mails tallied will also serve to facilitate meeting planning by the Local Organizing Committee. _____________________________________________________________________ BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN IMPACT CRATERS--10TH ESF IMPACT WORKSHOP By Charles Cockell 29 October 2002 Biological Processes in Impact Craters--10th ESF Impact Workshop March 29 - April 1, 2003, Cambridge, UK The second announcement and registration materials are now available on the ESF web site (http://pssri.open.ac.uk/ESF/Main.htm). The workshop, to be held in Cambridge, UK from March 29 to April 1 next year will examine the ecological characteristics of impact craters and the biological processes that occur within them. The conference should be of interest to astrobiologists, impact scientists, geologists and others. As well as examining patterns of recovery in impact structures, the workshop will also explore themes such as the formation of hydrothermal vents within impact structures and the biological consequences. Contact: Dr. Charles Cockell British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK Phone: + 44 1223 221560 E-mail: csco@bas.ac.uk _____________________________________________________________________ CONDON NAMED ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR ASTROBIOLOGY AND SPACE PROGRAMS NASA/ARC release 02-113AR (part 1) 29 October 2002 NASA Ames Research Center has appointed Estelle Condon as associate director for astrobiology and space programs. Condon has served as acting director of the Astrobiology and Space Research Directorate since March 2002. She began her NASA Ames career in 1980 as a research scientist in the Space Science Division, where she worked on a variety of stratospheric and tropospheric airborne experiments. She was the first woman to fly an experiment on a NASA platform aircraft. In 1986, she became deputy project manager for the Stratospheric Tropospheric Exchange Project, which studied the tropical tropopause from Darwin, Australia. In 1987, Condon became project manager for the Airborne Antarctic Ozone Experiment, the first airborne experiment to study the chemistry and dynamics of the Antarctic ozone hole. This experiment determined unequivocally that human-made chemicals were involved in the destruction of ozone over the Antarctic and provided the scientific basis for the amendments to the Montreal Protocol, which banned the manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons. In 1989, Condon became deputy chief of the Earth Science Division and in 1994, she assumed the duties of chief of the division. Contact: Ann Hutchison Phone: 650-604-3039 E-mail: ahutchison@mail.arc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ NOBEL LAUREATE TO DELIVER ASTRONOMY LECTURE NASA/ARC release 02-113AR (part 2) 29 October 2002 Dr. Arno Penzias, recipient of the 1978 Nobel Prize in physics, will give a non-technical illustrated talk on "A Personal View of the Big Bang," on Wednesday, November 13, at 7:00 PM PST. The free public lecture, the second in the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series 2003, will take place in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, El Monte Road and Highway 280, in Los Altos Hills, CA. The series is cosponsored by NASA Ames Research Center, the Foothill College Astronomy Program, the SETI Institute and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Penzias will describe how he and Dr. Robert Wilson used a sensitive radio telescope at Bell Laboratories in the 1960s to detect the "radiation echo" of the Big Bang, showing that the universe began in a hot, dense, explosive state. Penzias retired in 1998 from Bell Labs, where he served as research leader for 37 years. He currently is senior technical advisor for Lucent Technologies. Photographs and information about Penzias' life and work are available http://www.bell-labs.com/user/feature/archives/penzias. Further information about the lecture series is available on the series hotline at 650/949-7888. Contact: Kathleen Burton Phone: 650-604-1731 E-mail: kburton@mail.arc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ WORLD AGRICULTURE FACES MAJOR WATER CRISIS BY 2025 From Agence France-Presse and SpaceDaily 30 October 2002 A major water crisis will cause agricultural output to fall severely by 2025 unless remedial measures are taken quickly, an international research group warned here Wednesday. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in a report released in Manila said by 2025 the annual losses in cereal production due to water scarcity could amount to 130 million metric tons or double the annual US wheat crop. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of the world's use of water but with rising populations, industrialization, urbanization and affluence in the developing world, the amount of water available for irrigation will be reduced, Michael Rubinstein, spokesman of IFPRI said. Get the full story at http://spacedaily.com/news/021030090310.0no8aog9.html. _____________________________________________________________________ ASTRONOMERS FIND LIFE ON EARTH Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics release 02-23 http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0223.html 30 October 2002 Now that the discovery of extrasolar planets, or planets around distant stars, has become relatively routine, scientists are now tackling the next step: finding life-bearing worlds. To do this, observers must know what signs to look for in the feeble light from these faraway planets. Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), in collaboration with researchers at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, have identified key signatures of life by studying Earthshine-the light of the Earth reflected off the dark side of the Moon. They found clear signs of water and an oxygen atmosphere, as well as tentative signs of plant life. Their findings give a clear indication of what "fingerprints" to search for when seeking life on Earth-like worlds orbiting distant stars. "Our research is paving the way for future missions like the Terrestrial Planet Finder," says Smithsonian astronomer Wes Traub. "Hopefully, within the next 10 years astronomers will be able to confidently say that some as-yet-undiscovered planet is a living world like our own." Archetypal Earth So far, astronomers can only detect Jupiter-like planets around other stars because such planets are large and create strong gravitational signals. However, as technology continues to improve, astronomers soon will be able to locate Earth-like extrasolar planets and study their dim light to search for signs of life. To know what to look for, they must use the example of the one planet where life is known to exist: the Earth. To replicate the view that a distant astronomer would have if studying the Earth from another planet, Traub and his colleagues used the nearby Moon as a mirror. Using the Steward Observatory 90-inch telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, they measured both the light of Earthshine from the Moon and the light of the Moon itself, then corrected the Earthshine to determine how the Earth would appear to a faraway observer. They compared this measured spectrum to a model created by Traub and CfA's Ken Jucks. The team found that Earthlight shows strong evidence for water--a necessary ingredient for life as we know it--and for molecular oxygen, which must be continually replenished by the processes of life to remain in the atmosphere. They also found features that suggested the presence of chlorophyll, indicating the existence of land plants. The latter showed up as bright reflections in the far-red region of the visible spectrum. This "red edge" is a well-known signature of chlorophyll, which appears green to us only because our eyes aren't very sensitive at the red end of the visible spectrum. The team also suggests that changes for finding life-bearing worlds are improved because the signatures can develop early in a planet's history and last for a long time. Our home planet has maintained an oxygen atmosphere for the past two billion years, and has shown a "red edge" since the first land plants evolved 500 million years ago. "If someone out there is watching our solar system," Traub points out, "they could have detected plant life here long before any intelligent life appeared." Findings match Galileo These measurements complement those made by the Galileo spacecraft during a 1990 fly-by of Earth. As reported in the October 21, 1993 issue of Nature, instruments aboard the spacecraft also found evidence of gaseous oxygen and land plants. However, the Galileo measurements were made while it was close to the Earth and show conditions only in limited areas of the planet's surface. Studying Earthlight, on the other hand, yields a spectrum integrated over the entire visible surface of the planet, which matches the view that would be available to a distant astronomer in another star system. The measurements by Traub and his colleagues, reported in the July 20, 2002 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, were taken over two nights. The astronomers suggest that follow-up studies be conducted over a longer period of time to see how Earthlight changes as different areas of the planet rotate into view, and as cloud cover changes. An artist's depiction of our world when the Earthshine measurements were taken, enhanced to show the "red edge" from vegetation, is online at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/ep/pressrel/pr0223_image.html. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists organized into seven research divisions study the origin, evolution, and ultimate fate of the universe. Contacts: David A. Aguilar Director of Public Affairs Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Phone: 617-495-7462 E-mail: daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu Christine Lafon Public Affairs Specialist Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Phone: 617-495-7463, Fax: 617-495-7016 E-mail: clafon@cfa.harvard.edu Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0210/31earthlife/ http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02zw.html _____________________________________________________________________ THE TREE OF LIFE: COLD START? By Stephen Hart From Astrobiology Magazine 30 October 2002 In the late 1970s, Carl Woese, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, revolutionized our view of life on Earth. Comparing among many different organisms the sequence of a gene that encodes a ribosomal RNA (rRNA), Woese drew the first comprehensive tree of life. One surprise in the tree was the appearance of bacteria that thrive in high temperatures (hyperthermophiles), near or at the root of the tree. The tree, and supporting research from other fields, led to the speculation that life originated in very hot environments, perhaps in the hydrothermal vent systems found deep underwater around the globe. Woese's original tree, and the resulting speculation that life arose in a hot environment have become widely accepted among researchers, and have taken on the status of textbook explanations of the origin of life. "I've always felt uncomfortable with that," says Arizona State University geologist Jack Farmer. "You look at the RNA tree and you see that all of the deep branches are organisms that grow at temperatures above 80°C (176°F). A lot of people have taken that to mean life must have originated at high temperatures. But, for several reasons, I've felt that it's more likely that life originated at low temperatures. If we could find a low-temperature organism that's even more primitive, that would prove the point." Early in 2002, Celine Brochier and Herve Philippe may have given Farmer just that low-temperature organism, and a surprising one at that. They reported their results in the May 16, 2002 issue of the journal Nature. Brochier and Philippe, then both of Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, revisited the rRNA tree of life, correcting for an error that can creep into the computer programs used to convert the raw gene sequences into a tree diagram. Dubbed "long-branch attraction," the error can shift the apparent positions of certain organisms in the tree of life. Fixing the artifact "The effort to address long-branch attraction is enormous," says Philippe, now at the Universite de Montreal. "Presently, most phylogenetic papers discuss, at least a little, the problem. Much theoretical work is also done on this question." Brochier and Philippe approached reconstruction of the tree of life by paring down the parts of the rRNA gene to include in the analysis. They chose parts of the gene that changed the least over time. This decision sidesteps some of the errors that can affect less conservative approaches. Long-branch attraction arises because the assumptions in computer models used to construct evolutionary trees underestimate the rate of DNA change. If the part of a gene under study evolves more quickly than the average, the problem is even worse. Choosing slowly evolving locations helps match the data to the assumptions. The approach reduces systematic errors. The downside of using less data is that the approach increases random error. "This is why we plan to use more genes in the future," Philippe says. The tree they came up with differs in some striking ways from the one that has become standard. First, the hyperthermophilic bacteria do not appear near the trunk of the tree. Instead the reanalysis shows them up among the leaves, part of a large, bushy crown group that includes most of the bacteria. In a way, this result does not come as a surprise to Farmer. "There's a lot of adaptations required to live at high temperatures, designed basically to keep the molecules together. They tend to fall apart at high temperatures. So I've always felt more comfortable that it was a secondary set of adaptations some time after life had originated that allowed these organisms to radiate into high temperature environments," Farmer says. Philippe agrees. "One could have guessed from the discovery of hyperthermophilic organisms that they are specialized, and thus very evolved." In Philippe's analysis, the statistics for finding hyperthermophiles near the trunk of the tree are weak. Other research supports the doubt cast on hyperthermophiles as common ancestors. Research from a French and American group, Nicolas Galtier, Nicolas Tourasse and Manolo Gouy, suggests that the subunit, or nucleotide, makeup of rRNA in the earliest ancestral organisms is incompatible with life at high temperatures. Furthermore, a key enzyme that helps protect bacterial DNA in high- temperature environments was acquired by horizontal gene transfer from Archaea. When the genome of the hyperthermophilic bacterium Thermotoga maritima was completed, 24 percent of its genes showed more similarity to archaeal genes than to bacterial genes. Similar studies on other hyperthermophilic bacteria produced similar results. But the real surprise is the organism that did place close to the trunk of the tree of life in Brochier and Philippe's reanalysis: an unusual bacterial group called planctomycetes, which thrives only in moderate temperatures. Planctomycetes are intriguing because they combine features found in all three domains of life: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. The textbook distinction among the three domains of life goes like this: Eukaryotic cells all have their DNA packed into a nucleus with a double membrane; bacterial and archaeal cells have no nuclear membranes. And many biochemical differences separate Archaea and Bacteria, including a key component of their cell walls. Planctomycetes play differently. Instead of dividing in two like most bacteria, they reproduce by budding, a little like yeast. They lack that key cell-wall chemical found in all other bacteria, but not found in archaeans and eukaryotes. The punch line, though, is the presence in planctomycetes of a nuclear membrane. In some species, it's a single membrane, in others a double membrane. Brochier and Philippe point out that no common evolutionary origin, or homology, can be proved between the nuclear membrane in planctomycetes and the nuclear membrane in eukaryotes. But, he says, "Homology has not been ruled out." At the very least, the existence of the nuclear membrane in planctomycetes should change the textbook definition of "eukaryote" to include complexity beyond the mere presence of a nuclear membrane. What's next? Some bacteria are so easy to grow in a lab, or culture, that microbiology classes routinely culture species from the environment, as well as commonly studied laboratory strains. But our knowledge of bacteria is, in general, very narrow. Only about 5 percent of all known bacteria have been cultured. In many phyla, no species have been cultured. Scientists know about so-called "uncultured" bacteria only from the study of RNA contained in environmental samples. Philippe's current work excluded the uncultured groups. "Several people have asked us where these phyla would emerge in our reanalysis. We plan to do this soon. This is potentially an important problem, since at least 50 percent of the bacterial phyla contain only uncultured organisms," Philippe says. The team also plans to study more genes when the complete genomes of some planctomycetes species become available. Another possible approach, Philippe says, is to study the genome of a non-hyperthermophilic member of a group that is normally hyperthermophilic, to see whether the group is primarily or secondarily adapted to low temperature. And, of course, the reanalysis Brochier and Philippe presented in the May Nature paper must be confirmed. If it is, the odd, cool- temperature planctomycetes may have more to teach us about Earth's primitive organisms than do hyperthermophilic bacteria. "If our finding is verified," Brochier and Philippe conclude in the paper, "the origin of Bacteria should be seriously reconsidered." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article302.html. _____________________________________________________________________ HALLOWEEN ASTEROID By Tony Phillips From NASA Science News 31 October 2002 Five years ago astronomers had a fright. Jim Scotti, using the 36- inch Spacewatch telescope on Kitt Peak, spotted a dim speck of light moving through the constellation Cancer. It was an asteroid--dark, about 1 km wide, and it seemed to be heading for Earth. The Minor Planet Center named it "1997 XF11." Newspapers and magazines relayed the worst: 1997 XF11 might hit our planet on October 26, 2028. The impact, unleashing perhaps 2000 times more energy than the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested, would be a global catastrophe. There is, however, an old amusement park proverb, "Fear - Death = Fun." So it proved for 1997 XF11. Additional measurements showed that the asteroid would not hit Earth in 2028, although it will come close, about 2.5 lunar distances (954,000 km) away. A frisson of dread? Yes. A global catastrophe? No. The asteroid moved away from Earth after 1997 and it has since been generally forgotten. But the space rock hasn't really gone away. In fact, it's back. 1997 XF11 is gliding by Earth today--on Halloween-- for its closest encounter until 2028. "On October 31st, 1997 XF11 will pass 25 lunar distances (9.5 million km) from Earth. It's closer than it was when it was discovered in 1997," says Jon Giorgini, a member of JPL's Solar System Dynamics Group. There's nothing to fear. On the contrary, astronomers welcome the encounter because it is a good opportunity to study the asteroid up-close. "We started out knowing very little about this asteroid--only that it's approximately 1 km wide. 1997 XF11 has been circling the Sun in total anonymity for hundreds of millions of years. But now radar is revealing its nature." Giorgini is one of a team of astronomers led by JPL's Steve Ostro who are "pinging" the asteroid using NASA's Goldstone radar in the Mojave Desert. "The first radar measurement obtained last week," reports Giorgini, "reduced the uncertainty in the distance to the asteroid by a factor of 540 (from +/- 2210 miles to +/- 4 miles). We can now reliably predict Earth encounters for an additional 107 years into the future- -to the year 2209. There is no risk of 1997 XF11 hitting Earth during that time." The orbit of 1997 XF11 carries it from a point near the orbit of Venus out to the asteroid belt and back again. One complete trip around the Sun takes 1.73 years. These frequent visits to the inner solar system make 1997 XF11 harder to predict than some other asteroids. "1997 XF11 has many encounters with Earth and Venus through the years," says Giorgini. Gravitational nudges from the two planets perturb the asteroid's orbit. "For other asteroids one might obtain several centuries of predictability from a single radar measurement, but for 1997 XF11 our knowledge of its position is more quickly 'blurred.' The more radar data we get... the better," he says. Giorgini and colleagues will continue observing through November. Radar data accumulated over a period of time, says Giorgini, can be used not only to measure orbits but also to create 3-dimensional maps of asteroids. Some have weird forms: 216 Kleopatra, for example, looks like a dog bone. Learning the shapes of asteroids helps scientists understand how they're put together--valuable information in case we ever need to deflect one or blow it apart. Most asteroids (1997 XF11 included) are as dark as charcoal. They shine only because they reflect a few percent of the sunlight that hits them. When 1997 XF11 is closest to Earth today, it will glow like a 13th magnitude star--too faint to see with the unaided eye or even binoculars. Nevertheless amateur astronomers using 10-inch telescopes and CCD cameras will be able to detect 1997 XF11 as it glides through the constellation Capricornus. Optical observations, notes Giorgini, can tell us a great deal about the asteroid's rotation period and mineral composition. In 2028, when 1997 XF11 is only 2.5 lunar distances from Earth, optical telescopes will play a greater role in its study. The asteroid will brighten to 8th magnitude, which is within reach of binoculars. There's still much to learn. One thing, however, is already clear: we're safe from 1997 XF11 for at least another 200 years. This Halloween asteroid is not so scary after all. Additional information on this article is available at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/31oct_1997xf11.htm?list52260. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/halloween_asteroid_021031.html. _____________________________________________________________________ FIRST INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION TURNS TWO NASA release 02-212 31 October 2002 The "terrible twos" aren't so terrible for the International Space Station. The world's first international orbital outpost celebrates the second anniversary of continuous residency and permanent human presence in space Saturday, November 2. The anniversary marks an ambitious and virtually flawless year of expansion and research in space. Already the largest, most sophisticated and powerful spacecraft ever built, when its second year of occupancy began in 2001, the station has grown by more than 56,000 pounds in components added during the past 12 months. Over the last two years, the station has grown by more than 200,000 pounds, and its internal volume has increased from that of an efficiency apartment to a three-bedroom house. This year, construction began on the station's backbone, a truss structure that eventually will support almost an acre of solar panels to provide more power for orbital research than ever before. "The International Space Station was truly spectacular a year ago, but with each new assembly mission--almost one every month--it's further enhanced," said Bill Gerstenmaier, International Space Station Program Manager, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston. "Our success in the past two years has been phenomenal. We are blazing a trail in space and on Earth, through research and international cooperation, which can improve lives and expand exploration. We have many challenges ahead, but this team's continued hard work and dedication will build a final facility that eclipses even today's station," he said. By the end of 2002, the station's truss will stretch almost 133 feet. When completed in 2004, the truss will stretch 356 feet; longer than a football field. This year has seen assembly of the first "space railroad," including a mobile base on the truss for the station's Canadian robotic arm and a "hand car" for spacewalkers. As the station expands, so does its research capability. Experiments aboard the complex have attained more than 90,000 hours of operating time. Sixty-five U.S. investigations have been launched as well as numerous international studies. An example of Station-based research recently involved the first-ever soybean crop grown in space. After spending nearly 100 days aboard the Station and returning on a visiting Space Shuttle, the seeds are undergoing several months of chemical and biological tests on Earth to reveal whether their growth in a low-gravity environment changed their chemical composition. Soybeans are a leading source of protein in the human diet and are used in many products, from oil to crayons. Space Station research, in conjunction with commercial companies, in this area could lead to producing crops that support long-term human presence in space and possibly pave the way for improving crops grown on Earth. In the past 12 months, 33 people have visited or lived aboard the orbiting complex. A total of 112 visitors have been aboard the station since it was launched, including men and women from six nations. The first crewmembers docked with the Station to begin its permanent occupancy on November 2, 2000. Five three-person crews have lived aboard for durations ranging from four to more than six months. In its second year of occupancy, astronauts and cosmonauts have conducted 16 spacewalks for maintenance and assembly of the Station. More information about the Station is available on the Internet at http://spaceflight.nasa.gov. Contacts: Allard Beutel Dwayne Brown NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1726 James Hartsfield Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX Phone: 281-483-5111 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/iss_anniversary_021102.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/021102220754.vmzlajvd.html _____________________________________________________________________ THE RIO SCALE By Seth Shostak From Space.com 31 October 2002 Sometimes being close counts--in horseshoes and romance, for example. For SETI, however, it's hard to argue that a close call is any better than no call. After all, even if a signal mimics ET's expected emission, what good is it if we eventually learn that it was only the carrier from a telecommunications satellite, ricocheting off the backup structure of our antenna? Ergo, SETI is often described as a one-bit experiment: there are no partial discoveries. ...In astronomy, a situation that mimics a discovery--that's "close"- -frequently confuses both the public and the pros. Perhaps the most renowned of these in recent times is the matter of the martian meteorite, ALH 84001. Are there fossilized remnants of red planet residents in that meteorite--or not? The evidence is uncertain and so is the answer. ...A SETI detection could have important consequences for society too. So at the International Astronautics Federation's annual get- together in Rio de Janeiro two years ago, Hungarian astronomer Ivan Almar and SETI Institute researcher Jill Tarter proposed the Rio Scale for ranking both the importance and credibility of claims that evidence for extraterrestrial intelligence has been found. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_rio_scale_021031.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SPACE SHUTTLE RETURNS FIRST SOYBEANS GROWN ON SPACE STATION IN COMMERCIAL FARMING EXPERIMENT NASA/MSFC release 02-278 1 November 2002 Like farmers across the nation bringing in their crops this season, researchers in Wisconsin are carefully taking stock of a very special harvest--one grown aboard the International Space Station. They've measured and weighed plants, counted seeds, and collected additional physical information from the first-ever soybean crop grown aboard the orbiting research laboratory. Now, the research team will begin several months of chemical and biological tests on the plants that will reveal whether microgravity- -the low-gravity environment inside the Space Station--has changed the chemical make-up of the seeds. Soybeans--a leading source of protein in the human diet--are used in a wide variety of products, from oil to crayons. Finding improved varieties could have a significant economic impact on a soybean business worth billions of dollars each year. "We want to examine the seeds produced by plants grown on the Station to see if they have any unique, desirable traits," said Dr. Tom Corbin, a research scientist for Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., a DuPont subsidiary with headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, and the industrial sponsor for the experiment. "If we find changes, then we want to know if the positive traits can be inherited genetically by future generations of plants for the benefit of farmers and consumers." Space Shuttle Atlantis visited the orbiting laboratory this month during the STS-112 mission to deliver new experiment equipment and other supplies and return with the soybean plants and other completed experiments. "This experiment and others are paving the way for improving crops grown on Earth, as well as potentially feeding people living in space," said Mark Nall, director of NASA's Space Product Development Program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. The program has helped companies fly several experiments on the Station by working with one of NASA's 15 Commercial Space Centers located across America. "The Space Station is giving companies a chance to grow plants that require several months to mature," said Nall. NASA International Space Station Science Officer Peggy Whitson took care of the soybeans on the Station since the experiment began in June. In one of her e-mail letters to family and friends this summer, she reported, "The beans looked mature and the leaves are turning brown." The plants and seed pods were turning brown because scientists wanted them to dry out and be preserved for tests on Earth. It turned out to be a very good crop. "The first soybean crop grown in space returned in excellent condition, and a total of 83 seeds were harvested from 42 seed pods," said Dr. Weijia Zhou, director of the Wisconsin Space Center for Automation and Robotics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Since a plant's habitat plays a key role in determining the physiological and biological characteristics of the plant, we believe that reduced gravity may affect plant chemistry." The Wisconsin center is a NASA Commercial Space Center, and was responsible for building the Advanced Astroculture? plant growth chamber where the soybeans germinated and grew for 97 days. "We will analyze the oil, proteins, carbohydrates and secondary metabolites in the seeds produced in space," noted Corbin, whose company is the largest seed company in the world. "We will continue analysis of the soybeans at Pioneer's laboratory in Johnston, Iowa, and we anticipate having results in two to three months." NASA is interested in the technologies that enable production of commercially important crops like soybeans in space because these technologies will be needed to produce vegetable crops that support a long-term human presence in space. Can new varieties of crops be produced using seeds produced by space-grown plants? Do these space plants produce seeds with higher oil content or improved nutritional value? Can elite seeds be produced that will improve farmers' crop yields and the quality of plants products used in consumer products? Zhou and Corbin hope to begin answering these questions by analyzing the space-grown plants and seeds. On Earth, the development of naturally bred crop seeds is time consuming, usually taking several years. If this process can be accelerated with space-grown, plants, it would make the Station an attractive research laboratory for industry to use in crop development. "As a science company, DuPont knows that future research opportunities may come from totally different venues and needs as we look ahead," said Dr. Thomas M. Connelly, DuPont's chief science and technology officer. "The discovery process often requires exploring in unprecedented avenues to unleash the next wave of innovation, and we are committed to discovering new and meaningful innovation wherever it is." Growing plants in space could provide salads for future space crews, but they also may bring other psychological and biological benefits. When she first saw the growing soybeans, Whitson, an Iowa native, reported in an e-mail letter home to family and friends, "It was surprising to me how great soybean plants looked. I guess seeing something green for the first time in a month and a half had a real effect. I think it's interesting that the reaction was as dramatic as it was... guess if we go to Mars, we need a garden!" Over the next few months, Whitson will continue her gardening duties, tending a crop of mustard plants that will soon be growing inside the Plant Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus--designed and built by BioServe Space Technologies, a NASA Commercial Space Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, WI, and the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, which also has grown plants on the Station, and a consortium of industries, are partners on the experiment. "This is the first in a series of Space Station plant experiments that will study the role of gravity in producing lignin, a substance that affects the strength of plant stalks and stems," said Louis Stodieck, director of BioServe Space Technologies. "Identifying the genes that control lignin production in plants has broad applications in the timber and pharmaceutical industries." Plants need lignin for strength to stand upright under the force of Earth's gravity. But this chemical must be removed to produce paper- -a costly process that results in pollution. Reducing the lignin content of plants could make it less expensive to produce paper and reduce pollution. Another significant benefit of growing plants in space is the educational benefit. Space Explorers, Inc., a commercial firm in Green Bay, WI, produces Internet-based, space education programs. The company used data from the ADVANCED ASTROCULTURE? experiments to create the "Orbital Laboratory" educational software program. It allows students to design, conduct and analyze plant experiments on the Space Station. Then they can compare data through an online student experiment database. After the experiment is finished on the Space Station, students can use actual data from the experiment to recreate the experiment in a virtual environment. During Expedition Five, students from California to New York grew soybeans and dwarf wheat plants, similar to those already grown on the Station, under nine different growing conditions. Via the Internet, they shared their results and how those results might affect plants grown on long-term space missions. This and other Space Product Development experiments are sponsored by the Office of Biological and Physical Research at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Contacts: Steve Roy MSFC Media Relations Department Phone: 256-544-0034 E-mail: Steve.Roy@msfc.nasa.gov Anthony Farina DuPont Public Relations Phone: 302-774-4114 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/food-02k.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CHARTING COURSE: LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE From Astrobiology Magazine 1 November 2002 The National Academy of Science released this summer their pre- publication report on astrobiology, entitled "Life in the Universe". The Space Studies Board highlighted the major findings so far. Excerpts show the exciting directions for next milestones. The past few years have witnessed the discovery of planets around other stars, strong circumstantial evidence for a liquid water ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, controversial claims for biological activity in a martian meteorite, the discovery of life in extreme terrestrial environments, and a genuine revolution in our understanding and manipulation of the genetic mechanisms of the living cell. Significant scientific advances have occurred in the past 5 years in addressing some of the questions identified in the astrobiology roadmap. A few example areas that have borne particular fruit, with example references include the following: * Analysis of complex organic chemistry in interstellar clouds of gas and dust that give rise to new stars and solar systems;[1] * Direct study of extrasolar giant planets through transits and spectra;[2] * Discovery that living organisms, normally found on Earth's surface, can survive at extreme pressure;[3] * Evidence from geologic features that liquid water once flowed on the surface of the planet Mars;[4] * Indications from magnetic field geometry that liquid water likely exists today below the icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa;[5] * Ground-based studies of Titan indicating both temporal and spatial variability, and the presence of organic molecules;[6] * Chemical-isotopic hints that microbial life on Earth existed 3.9 billion years ago, almost to the period of early heavy cometary bombardment;[7] * Evidence that liquid water existed in the crust of the Earth some 4.3 billion years ago;[8] * Elucidation of the detailed history of evolution and the phylogenetic relationships among organisms;[9] and * In vitro evolution experiments that have come close to developing self-replicating systems in the laboratory.[10] The mix of flight programs, which run from Discovery missions (e.g., Mars Pathfinder, Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, and Stardust) through to flagship mission (e.g., Galileo and Cassini), provides a varied tapestry of flight-preparation times, risks, and rewards. Notable among these has been the spectacular exploration of the outer solar system, commencing with the Pioneer missions, through the Voyager discoveries about the satellite systems of the giant planets, and culminating in the Galileo discoveries about Europa and the promise of Cassini discoveries at Saturn. Laboratory studies have blossomed as well, because techniques developed to analyze the Apollo lunar samples have been applied to the large numbers of meteorite samples found, serendipitously, through Antarctic exploration. Among these samples are pieces of Mars and the Moon, and laboratory studies inspired the goal of directly collecting small body samples that is being realized through the ongoing Stardust mission. What's next? Perhaps most extraordinarily, the detection and now characterization of extrasolar planets has created a new intellectual realm within planetary science, and as well has produced profound synergies between observational planetary astronomy and its parental roots in large telescopic observations of the cosmos. Giant planets are being detected indirectly and, in a few cases, observed directly to allow analyses of their bulk and atmospheric properties. Flight opportunities range in scale from Explorer (microlensing) through Discovery (Kepler-transits) to flagship (Space Interferometry Mission) missions. Excitement has been high over the discovery of new planets and what this foretells for the eventual discovery of Earth-like planets. One cannot come away from the national astrobiology meetings without remarking how well the big questions are being addressed, how easy it is to explain to the informed layman what the research means, and the extent to which talented students are attracted to this research area. Additional information on this article, including a list of key publications, is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article303.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SAVING CAJUN COUNTRY By Patrick L. Barry From NASA Science News 1 November 2002 A 56-year-old blue-crab fisher, Michael Comardelle has lived in the Louisiana bayou almost all his life. His father, too, was born in the bayou, atop a low mound of earth that Native Americans once built as the foundation for a temple. Now the temple mound is gone, washed away along with much of the wetlands of the Louisiana coast. An epidemic of erosion, rising sea- levels, and slowly sinking land has been eating away at these wetlands at the rapid pace of 25 to 35 square miles each year (65 to 91 square km). With the wetlands goes the homeland of Comardelle's Cajun culture, as well as the buried relics of the Native American cultures that came before it. "That was our playground," Comardelle laughs. "The swamp and the bayou were right at our doorstep. That's just the way we lived. All that's eroding away so quick, so fast, it disappears in front of your eyes just about." "In my lifetime, I've seen [about] 50 percent of the area I used to go [crab fishing] in washed away," he says. Human alteration of the flow of the Mississippi is the primary culprit. Flood-control levees along its banks prevent the river from spilling out into the surrounding wetlands. Sediment from the river would normally build up the wetlands and help counter erosional processes. Levees, however, block the influx of sediment and erosion goes unchecked. The loss is particularly worrisome because southern Louisiana is home to 40 percent of the coastal wetlands in the 48 contiguous states. Beyond the natural functions that they serve as water purifiers and bastions of biodiversity, these marshes and estuaries are vital to the local fishing and tourism industries, and they provide a buffer against flooding by storm surges during hurricanes. For example, during the recent one-two punch of Tropical Storm Isidore followed a week later by Hurricane Lili, Comardelle says that, "people who've been living there 20 or 30 years have never seen storm surges come up that high." To counter this loss of wetlands, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources are spearheading an ambitious restoration project called Coast 2050. It will be a project of mammoth proportions: a budget of US$14 billion and a time frame extending 50 years into the future to try to restore 20,000 square miles of wetlands. Earthworks projects like these require detailed measurements of the landscape with which to plan, but surveying such a large area is not easy. That's why the Army Corps of Engineers is recruiting data from NASA satellites to help out. "These swamps and marshes are often very dense and hard to get around in," says Marco Giardino, a scientist at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi who's helping coordinate NASA's involvement in Coast 2050. "By using satellite imagery from NASA's fleet of Earth science sensors, we can supplement traditional surveying techniques and improve decision making," Giardino says. The first target will be the hundreds of ancient Native American sites scattered throughout the bayou. Most of these are visible only as wide mounds rising just a few feet in elevation, such as the temple mound on which Comardelle's father was born. The National Historic Preservation Act requires projects like Coast 2050 to identify such archeological sites and to evaluate them as candidates for the National Register of Historic Places. How can a satellite in orbit spot a subtle mound in the midst of a vast swamp? Actually, in much the same way that Comardelle does. Besides being a commercial blue-crab fisher, Comardelle is a knowledgeable amateur archeologist. In fact, Comardelle has been acting as a local guide for the scientists on the project, taking them out in the swamp and showing them around. From the bow of his boat, he can point out Native American sites just by noticing variations in the swamp's vegetation. Oak trees, swamp maples, palmettos, hackberry, and wax myrtle signal a slight rise in elevation that may be a remnant of the area's ancient inhabitants. "Sometimes it's [a] natural [feature like a levee], but most of the time it's an Indian feature," Comardelle says. Satellites can notice these changes in vegetation as well. The sunlight reflecting off a patch of swamp carries the "fingerprints" of the area's plant life embedded in its spectrum of colors. A patch of oaks will have a different spectral fingerprint than a patch of reeds or grasses. So by looking at the reflected light's spectrum, satellites like NASA's Terra, EO-1, and Landsat 7 can map out the raised areas in a large bayou or swamp, and thus identify archeological sites. If this method proves effective in the Barataria Basin test area, it will be used in future Coast 2050 efforts as well, says Joan Exnicios, an archeologist with the Army Corps of Engineers. "It will make it possible for archeologists to pinpoint areas to look at on the ground without having to first undertake extensive terrestrial surveys," says Dave Davis, an archeologist at Tulane University and a consultant for Coast 2050. NASA will also collaborate with the Army Corps of Engineers on other aspects of the project, such as freshwater diversions, marsh rejuvenation, and saltwater intrusion, but details are yet to be worked out. Taken together, these efforts will preserve habitat for thousands of species and restore the buffer between Gulf storm surges and inland cities. They will also help save the bayou that Cajuns like Comardelle call home, and preserve the heritage of Native Americans who called it home ages ago. Additional information on this article is available at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/01nov_coast2050.htm?list52260 . _____________________________________________________________________ PUBLIC SPACE TRAVEL: PLAYGROUND FOR THE RICH? By Leonard David From Space.com 1 November 2002 A Russian Soyuz rocket and its crew rumbled off toward the International Space Station on Wednesday. But left on Earth to croon a different tune was Lance Bass from the pop band 'N Sync. An unabashed space case, Bass had prepped for a seat aboard that 12- day Soyuz taxi mission for months. He learned Russian. He got an A- OK flight physical. He received high-tech tutoring by top-notch cosmonauts and astronauts not to touch certain buttons. However, Bass was unable to pay the "going rate" to become the third ever space tourist, running out of the time needed to pull together the hefty $20 million fee. In many ways being left at the launch pad, a few dollars short and hoping for better times is symbolic of status of public space tourism. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/news/futron_tourism_021101.html. _____________________________________________________________________ HOT SPRINGS HIGH IN THE ANDES (LICANCABUR EXPEDITION JOURNAL: PART III) By Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine 4 November 2002 This is the third in a series of four articles about a scientific expedition currently under way to explore the highest lake in the world. The lake lies inside the crater of Licancabur, a dormant volcano that straddles the border between Chile and Bolivia. The expedition hopes to learn how the organisms that live in the lake have adapted to the thin atmosphere and damaging high-UV environment there. Astrobiology news editor Henry Bortman conducted interviews on Tuesday, October 29th, with expedition team members Andy Hock and David Fike. Both are graduate students intrigued by the intersection of geology and biology. Hock, who studies at UCLA, focuses more on geophysics, specifically on the habitability of geothermal environments. Fike is at MIT. He uses DNA analysis to understand what microorganisms inhabit an environment. Hock and Fike spoke to Astrobiology Magazine from a stopover point known as "the Refuge," located 4200 meters (13,800 feet) above sea level, near the base of Licancabur. They and the other team members have spent the past week exploring the hydrothermal environment of the nearby lakes. Astrobiology News: Can you set the scene for those of us who aren't fortunate enough to be there with you? Andy Hock: Right now the sun has just set. On the horizon you have these gigantic and beautiful volcanoes and the sky is fading from a sort of pinkish purple to a light blue, and out in front of me is a sign that says, "Este es mi tierra, Bolivia. Bienvenidos. (This is my land, Bolivia. Welcome.)" And beyond that is Laguna Blanca and a couple of remaining hungry flamingos. AN: How has the expedition been going so far? AH: So far the experience has been tremendous. It's been physically challenging. We summitted a volcano called Tres Cumbres as a training exercise yesterday. That was a real challenge. So was our first climb up Licancabur. We went to the middle camp, about 600 or 700 meters (1970 to 2200 feet) short of the summit, to the place where we're going to spend one night. And that experience was not only physical, like Tres Cumbres, but also a very spiritual and emotional one. I've always thought of outdoors as being my chapel. And getting out on Licancabur for the first time a couple of days ago was really spectacular. And of course it's been absolutely intellectually stimulating. We just end up developing more and more questions as time goes on. I guess that's the way science works--you keep having more and more questions and the answers come in time. The thing that's been most interesting to me as a geophysicist is how this gigantic geothermal reservoir associated with all these volcanoes, this gigantic heat reservoir, how it plays into the biology of the area. The higher lake that I'm looking out on now [Laguna Blanca] is about a kilometer or two in length, maybe a half a kilometer in width and only about a meter deep at its deepest point. And it's full of flamingos. I guess it would be probably 5 or 6 miles (8 or 9 kilometers) around. I've walked around nearly the whole thing; it takes the better part of an afternoon to walk around. But everywhere I walk around, there's thermal water input. The lake is about 13 to 15 degrees C (55° to 59°F) on the whole, and these little spring outlets are maybe 15 to 22 degrees C (59° to 72°F). So all around the lake there's these little springs, and right by those springs, there's a tremendous amount of biomass: algae, bacteria. I came here with a big, big interest in the summit lake. But without even having been there yet, we've already discovered tremendous scientific potential with these lagunas. AN: David, can you describe some of these microbial environments? David Fike: At the hot springs where water comes up at about 37 Celsius, roughly body temperature (98.6°F), you have rich mats of bacteria and algae that are photosynthesizing and producing oxygen like crazy. And at other places we have cold springs, where water comes up at from 20 Celsius (68°F) to 15 Celsius (59°F), which is approximately the temperature of the lake, and you have much different communities of bacteria there, and almost no algae. Each spring seems to have its own different microbial community, based on visual inspection, which is incredibly fascinating. It would take years to try and actually understand it. AN: Have you been able to identify any of the organisms? DF: Not yet. We've been looking at some soil and water samples, but it's too soon to get any real data out of them. I'll have to wait 'til I get back to MIT to do some lab work before I can really understand them. It's really interesting to be here and to see the immense diversity of environments, but it's frustrating because I don't have the tools here with me to actually understand what those visual differences actually relate to in terms of microbial diversity. Some of the members of Team B are coming back on Wednesday and hopefully they'll be able to present the first analysis of the data they collected with us on their last visits. [Team B is working in a laboratory in Antofagasta, a city on the Chilean coast.] AN: What about Laguna Verde? DF: I haven't really had a chance to get over to Laguna Verde. It has much more mineral content to it. And it seems to have almost a uniform lack of algae and rich bacterial communities except for one area on its northern side where there's a small spring that feeds into the laguna, that's characterized by a rich algal and microbial community. AH: People say there's a high content of arsenic, copper sulfate, which is what I would guess would give it its aquamarine tint. But it's clearly very mineralized. The Inca legend goes that these lagunas were right along one of the prime Inca trade routes. And when you ask people around here why Laguna Verde is so mineralized, it's because when the Incas were traveling along this trade route with their pack animals and their gold and their sliver, and their copper, when the pack animals died, when they couldn't make the trip, they would always bury the pack animals with their burden. And so, the story goes around here--and for all we know, it may be true--that Laguna Verde is so mineralized because there's a whole bunch of old Inca metals, valuable metals, at the bottom. AN: There's also another lake not too far away, Laguna Colorado. AH: We visited there today. It's blood red with white borax mineral deposits, so it's a stark contrast of red and white. It's an extraordinary sight. Tons and tons of flamingos. Our driver told us today that they did a census on flamingos at Laguna Colorado and there were over 32,000. That's going to be a place we're going to really want to go back to. AN: What's been the most surprising thing being there? DF: The fact that everywhere I turn there's something interesting. In terms of science, there are areas of the lake, springs I don't understand, there's paleoshorelines that don't make any sense, there's weird rock formations I'm trying to analyze, but also I'm here on the border of Chile and Bolivia and I'm exposed to new cultures and it's really a broadening experience. AH: I think for me it would be the amount of thermal water that I see. I've never been to a place like this before, where you walk around the lake and every 10 meters or less you see a little spring outlet and biomass around it. I look around and I see what I think are old shorelines and what looks like a gigantic lake basin. And so the picture starts coming together of how this place used to have a much larger body of water and how there's evidence for hydrothermal alteration all over the place. So there's this picture that comes together of water, heat and life in this place that is otherwise the driest desert in the world and subject to huge UV flux and otherwise pretty harsh. So working together with the other members of the science team and sitting down after dinner and talking over the day's observations-- we're pulling together this picture from all of our observations. That's been the most surprising thing so far--that's been really great, especially for me as a young scientist. Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article306.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/licancabur3_021104.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NASA'S STARDUST COMET-CHASER PASSES ASTEROID TEST NASA/JPL release 2002-204 4 November 2002 All systems on NASA's Stardust spacecraft performed successfully when tested in a flyby of asteroid Annefrank on Friday, heightening anticipation for Stardust's encounter with its primary target, comet Wild 2, 14 months from now. As a bonus, Stardust discovered that Annefrank is about twice the size anticipated, but with a dimmer surface. The dimmer surface increased the challenge of sighting the object as the spacecraft approached. An image is available online at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02885. The Annefrank flyby offered a unique opportunity to thoroughly test all the operations planned for the encounter at Wild 2, where Stardust will collect samples from the cloud of dust around the comet for return to Earth. "We performed a full dress rehearsal with the cometary dust collector deployed, the spacecraft poised in its flyby attitude and with all science instruments on," said Stardust's principal investigator, Professor Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington, Seattle. The spacecraft passed within about 3,300 kilometers (2,050 miles) of Annefrank at 04:50 November 2, Universal Time (8:50 PM November 1, Pacific Time). Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, and at Lockheed Martin Space Systems- Astronautics, Denver, CO, ran the operation through the hours before and after the closest approach. The approach geometry was more difficult than it will be at Wild 2 because of the angles toward the Sun and Earth relative to the angle toward the asteroid. "The spacecraft performed every command perfectly," said Allan Cheuvront, Stardust spacecraft systems engineer at Lockheed. "Its performance under these severe conditions was outstanding." "It was a challenge for the navigation camera to see Annefrank during approach," said JPL's Ray Newburn, lead scientist for the camera. The predicted brightness of Annefrank was near the lower limit of what the camera can detect. Engineers tried techniques such as taking multiple long exposures and adding them together, said Dr. T. S. Mike Wang, optical navigation specialist at JPL. "Annefrank was not cooperating," Wang said. "It was just too dim." Contact: Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 _____________________________________________________________________ BACTERIAL BLASTING ACROSS SPACE By Morris Jones From SpaceDaily 4 November 2002 In 1996, the world was stunned by one of the greatest scientific controversies of the past decade. A team of scientists in the USA had announced evidence suggesting that a meteorite from Mars bore fossilized evidence of microorganisms. To many observers, it seemed that the first real traces of alien life had been uncovered. But the results were quickly called into question, and debate on the issue is still unresolved. The controversy also drew attention to the concept that meteorites could serve as natural spaceships, carrying life between the planets. If bacteria could survive the stresses of being dislodged from the planet, crossing space for eons and hitting the surface of another world, then life on Earth or Mars could have originally been imported from elsewhere. ...Dr. Mark Burchell from the University of Kent at Canterbury, England, is one scientist exploring the idea of life hitchhiking around the galaxy on meteorites. He is one of several researchers performing experiments that turn bacteria into microscopic crash test dummies. Small pellets containing bacteria are loaded into gas guns, and then fired at high velocities into different materials such as rock and aerogel, the soft, porous material being used to gently catch cometary particles on the Stardust mission. The ejecta blown out from these impacts, as well as the impact zones themselves, are then tested for any surviving bacteria. Amazingly, these tiny life- forms have demonstrated an ability to survive collisions at five kilometers per second! Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-02zx.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CHINA PREPARES SHENZHOU IV SHAKEOUT FLIGHT By Leonard David From Space.com 4 November 2002 Chinese space officials are reportedly ready to loft an unpiloted Shenzhou IV spacecraft--a key test prior to flying a crew next year. State-controlled news sources--the Xinhua News Agency and China Daily--both report Chinese space officials are busily readying Shenzhou IV and its Long March 4F booster for liftoff before year's end. Hu Hongfu, executive deputy general manager of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), said November 3 that things are progressing smoothly in readying the fourth unpiloted craft for blastoff. In August, Zhang Qingwei, president of CASC was quoted as stating that plans call for launching Shenzhou IV (meaning Divine Vessel IV) "in the remaining months of this year." Get the full story at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/shenzhou_update_021104.html. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERVIEW WITH STATION RESIDENTS From Spaceflight Now 5 November 2002 Spaceflight Now had an exclusive live interview with International Space Station commander Valery Korzun and NASA Science Officer Peggy Whitson on Monday. During the 18-minute chat, the two Expedition 5 crew members discussed the accomplishments of their five-month voyage, life away from the planet and much more. Video links QuickTime: http://qs240.pair.com/sfnvideo/video/0211/021104sfn_qt.html RealVideo: http://qs240.pair.com/sfnvideo/video/0211/021104sfn.rm _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 5 November 2002 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 2002. Astronomers find life on Earth. SpaceDaily. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 2002. "Earthshine" used to find life on Earth. Spaceflight Now. M. Jones, 2002. Bacterial blasting across space. SpaceDaily. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2002. Red freckles on Europa suggest "lava lamp" action. Spaceflight Now. A. J. S. Rayl, 2002. Update on astrobiology. The Scientist, 16(8):24. University of Colorado at Boulder, 2002. Life's the pits on Europa. SpaceDaily. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s2.html H. Bortman, 2002. Hot springs high in the Andes (Licancabur expedition journal: part III). Astrobiology Magazine. D. Siegel-Causey, 1998. Polar regions offer rich opportunities for research. The Scientist, 12(9):8. Human space exploration and microgravity effects articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html Agence France-Presse, 2002. The two-year space odyssey of the International Space Station. SpaceDaily and Agence France-Presse. J. Banke, 2002. NASA celebrates station's second anniversary of operations. Space.com. L. David, 2002. China prepares Shenzhou IV shakeout flight. Space.com. L. David, 2002. China steps up astronaut training. Space.com. L. David, 2002. Public space travel: playground for the rich? Space.com. K. Miller, 2002. How astronauts get along. NASA Science News. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, 2002. Soybeans back from space station. SpaceDaily. R. Stenger, 2002. Soviet account of space dog disputed. CNN. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s4.html P. Backus, 2002. Project Phoenix and the new search system. Space.com. S. Shostak, 2002. The Rio scale. Space.com. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html S. Hart, 2002. The tree of life: cold start? Astrobiology Magazine. SpaceDaily, 2002. Busting a sod along the old Cambrian way. SpaceDaily. SpaceDaily, 2002. Evolution upset: oxygen-making microbes came last, not first. SpaceDaily. SpaceDaily, 2002. Methane rich greenhouse boosted evolutionary process. SpaceDaily. Planetary protection articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s6.html T. Phillips, 2002. Halloween asteroid. NASA Science News. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology_b ooks.htm B. Bova, 2002. The Living Universe: The Science and Politics of Finding Life Beyond Earth. Sourcebooks Trade. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 24-30 November 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, October 30. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm. On board activities this week included clearing of the ACS high water marks, and an autonomous Solid State Recorder Memory Load Partition repair. Additional instrument activities included Radio and Plasma Wave Science High Frequency Receiver calibrations and a high rate cyclic, and an upload of new RADAR Flight Software (FSW). The existing version of the flight software will be maintained on board until after a checkout is performed in early November. After this activity the old version will be overwritten with the new version, ensuring that multiple copies of the newest FSW are available to the instrument. The 29th session of the Cassini Project Science Group meeting concluded this week. Principal investigators, co-investigators, operations technical leads, graduate students, and interested members of the flight team attended various working groups, team meetings, plenary sessions, demonstrations and training sessions over a 5-day period. The Navigation Ancillary Information Facility hosted a two day Spacecraft, Planet, Instruments, C-matrix, and Events kernels (SPICE) tutorial workshop with participants from Cassini, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Odyssey, Mars Express, Deep Impact, Mars Exploration Rover, Messenger, Space Infrared Telescope Facility, and LMA. SPICE is the ancillary information system that provides access to scientists and engineers for spacecraft orbit, attitude and similar information needed to determine observation geometry used in planning and analyzing space science observations. A delivery coordination meeting was held for Mission Sequence Subsystem version D8.0.4 software. Changes included updates to SSR Management Tool, SEQGEN and SEG, and a small change to the PC-version of the Science Opportunity Analyzer tool. The topic at this week's Mission Planning forum dealt with DSN requirements--what is the process for defining/enforcing them, how are we performing so far versus our DSN requirements, and what are the proposed updates for the next DSN allocation board meeting? Also discussed was a proposed constraint on waypoints. Can the waypoint strategy be waived on some occasions? Mission Assurance conducted a Risk Management Quarterly Team Meeting this week. Risks associated with Saturn Tour Operations were addressed and dispositioned. Action items to refine risk descriptions were assigned as needed. The next Quarterly Meeting will be conducted in January 2003, to discuss risks to Saturn Orbit Insertion. A meeting was conducted between Mission Assurance and Section 319 Problem Reporting System (PRS) representatives. The PRS group has been working on a new unified problem reporting system, to replace the current institutional one. Features of the new system were demonstrated and the possibility of migrating Cassini to the new system was discussed. Cassini is considering a transition to the new PRS to assist developers with actual user feedback and at the same time, benefit from some of the new functionality and reporting features. 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. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI-HUYGENS MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 1 November 2002 A successful test of the camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has produced images of Saturn 20 months before the spacecraft arrives at that planet. A color composite of the Saturn test images is available online from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02884 and from the Cassini imaging team's University of Arizona site at http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu . The image shows the shadow of the planet falling across its famous rings and includes Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The planet was 285 million kilometers (177 million miles) from the spacecraft when the images were taken last week, nearly twice the distance between Earth and the Sun. "Cassini has sighted the ringed planet looking distant, mysterious and serene," said Dr. Carolyn Porco, a planetary scentist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO, and leader of the science team using the Cassini camera. "Our anticipation has been building for years, so it's good to know our destination is in view." Dr. Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at JPL in Pasadena, CA, said, "This is an emotional event for the mission. We now have Saturn in our sights." Cassini camera-team member Dr. Alfred McEwen at the University of Arizona, Tucson, added, "Seeing the picture makes our science- planning work suddenly seem more real. Now we can see Saturn and we'll watch it get bigger as a visual cue that we're approaching fast. It's good to see the camera is working well." Fourteen camera-team scientists selected by NASA will use the camera to investigate many features of Saturn, its moons and its rings. Cassini will begin a four-year prime mission in orbit around Saturn when it arrives on July 1, 2004. It will release a piggybacked probe, Huygens, to descend through the thick atmosphere of Titan on January 14, 2005. Cassini-Huygens is a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Additional information about it is available online at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/cassini_saturn_021101.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0211/02cassini/ _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SPACECRAFT CAMERA SIGHTS SATURN By Lori Stiles University of Arizona release 1 November 2002 The Cassini Imaging Team today is releasing a color composite image of Saturn and its moon, Titan, 20 months before the Cassini spacecraft arrives at the planet. The image is available online from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03878 and from the Cassini Imaging Team's University of Arizona site at http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu The image shows the shadow of the planet falling across its famous rings and includes Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The planet was 285 million kilometers (177 million miles) from the spacecraft when the images were taken last week, nearly twice the distance between Earth and the Sun. The spacecraft has now crossed more than half the distance to Saturn from Jupiter, its last rendezvous. "Cassini has sighted the ringed planet looking distant, mysterious and serene," said Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO, and leader of the science team using the Cassini camera. Cassini camera-team member Alfred McEwen at the University of Arizona, Tucson, added, "Seeing the picture makes our science- planning work suddenly seem more real. Now we can see Saturn and we'll watch it get bigger as a visual cue that we're approaching fast. It's good to see the camera is working well." Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at JPL in Pasadena, CA, said, "This is an emotional event for the mission. We now have Saturn in our sights." The 14-member NASA-selected imaging science team will use the camera to investigate many features of Saturn, its moons and its rings. Cassini will begin a four-year prime mission in orbit around Saturn when it arrives on July 1, 2004. It will release a piggybacked probe, Huygens, to descend through the thick atmosphere of Titan on January 14, 2005. Cassini-Huygens is a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Additional information about it is available online at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Many UA planetary scientists and their students are directly involved in the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. In addition to McEwen, they include: * Robert H. Brown, team leader for the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS); * Jonathan I. Lunine, interdisciplinary scientist for the Cassini mission; * Martin Tomasko, principal investigator for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) that will be deployed to the surface of Titan on the Huygens probe; *Peter Smith, co-investigator on DISR; *Ralph Lorenz, member of the Cassini Radar Team and co-investigator on the Surface Science Package on the Huygens probe; *Donald Hunten, co-investigator on the Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer on the Huygens probe; * Roger Yelle, team member for the Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer. Contacts: Lori Stiles UA News Services Phone: 520-621-1877 Guy Webster JPL Media Services Phone: 818-354-6278 Alfred McEwen Cassini Imaging Team member Phone: 520-621-4573 E-mail: mcewen@pirl.lpl.arizona.edu _____________________________________________________________________ TODAY ON GALILEO NASA/JPL release 4-5 November 2002 Encounter with Amalthea Early Monday morning begins our sprint into the inner reaches of the Jupiter system to snatch the scientific secrets of that environment out from under the nose of the gas giant, and to skirt by the tiny inner satellite Amalthea. The science instruments that will focus on the inner magnetosphere are the Dust Detector (DDS), the Energetic Particle Detector (EPD), the Heavy Ion Counter (HIC), the Magnetometer (MAG), the Plasma Subsystem (PLS), and the Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS) instruments. The Galileo spacecraft, however, may be unique among NASA's planetary probes in being the only mission to add a science instrument to its payload after launch! The Attitude Control Star Scanner, an engineering system normally used to provide information about the orientation of the spacecraft by sensing the locations of stars, can double as a radiation sensor. Several years ago, engineers noticed that the pesky radiation-induced noise that interferes with the normal star sensing of the instrument could be used to provide a measure of the intensity of that radiation. The sensor mechanism is most sensitive to high-energy electrons. Though the instrument was never designed or calibrated to provide an absolute physical measure of the quantity of such electrons, when combined with the measurements taken by the other science instruments, the relative noise level seen by the Star Scanner can provide additional insight into the continuum of particles and other radiation in the environment sensed by Galileo. At midnight, the spacecraft is 20 Jupiter radii from the center of the giant planet (1.43 million kilometers or 888,000 miles) and the science instruments are studying the magnetospheric plasma sheet, which periodically waves past Galileo as the planet rotates. By 6:30 AM, PST, the radiation from Jupiter is becoming strong enough to cause a noticeable effect in the Star Scanner. At this point, the Attitude Control system is told to rely only on a single bright star for knowledge of the orientation of the spacecraft. The static in the sensor caused by the radiation is enough to mask the signals from fainter stars. The single bright star we are using for this encounter is Rigel Kentaurus, more popularly known as Alpha Centauri, the nearest bright star to the Sun. At 9:45 AM, the EPD instrument turns its power off and on again, and reloads its memory. During a small number of previous encounters, this instrument has suffered upsets which can only be cleared by this technique. Three times during this flyby the instrument is reset in this fashion, so that if an upset occurs, the instrument will be able to continue to collect science data without waiting for commands from Earth to correct the problem. At 1:02 PM, the Radio Science team begins an experiment to measure the gravity field of the small satellite Amalthea. Though we are still 10 hours away from the closest approach, the team uses this distant measurement of the radio signal to establish a baseline against which they can compare the changes seen as Amalthea's gravity tugs on Galileo during the later flyby. By measuring the extent and nature of this tug, the mass of Amalthea can be determined. In addition, the flyby's proximity will also yield knowledge of whether or not Amalthea has a dense central region or core. This information will give additional clues as to the composition of Amalthea and may also help us to understand its origin. At 2:55 PM, the spacecraft is again expected to pass through Jupiter's plasma sheet, and detailed Fields and Particles measurements are written to the tape recorder. The recorder is used to collect data faster than the spacecraft can transmit in real time. At this time the spacecraft is only 10 Jupiter radii from the planet (715,000 kilometers or 444,000 miles). After 45 minutes, the instruments revert to collecting data for real-time transmission to Earth. At 5:49 PM, the Fields and Particles instruments switch from transmitting all of their data in real-time to begin recording the data for later playback. This allows the instruments to collect more data at a higher time resolution than would be possible in real time. This recording continues for the next 10.5 hours, through the closest approach to Amalthea and Jupiter. At 6:07 PM, the spacecraft changes its telemetry system to put more power into the fundamental carrier frequency that is transmitted. This allows the 70-meter-diameter (230 foot) communications antenna located near Madrid, Spain, to better track the Galileo signal during the upcoming close flyby of Amalthea. It is the change in frequency (Doppler shift) of this transmitted signal that provides the Radio Science and Navigation teams the information about Amalthea's gravity field. At 7:18 PM, the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer begins a 5-minute period of real-time collection of engineering data. This peek into the signals generated by the instrument as the radiation level rises will help researchers understand detector behavior seen during observations taken on previous orbits. This information can be used to help engineers design instruments that will operate in similar radiation environments for future missions. At 7:41 PM, Galileo reaches the closest point to the volcanic satellite Io. At 45,250 kilometers (28,100 miles), this pass is over twice the distance that Voyager 1 flew by in 1979, and is a distant cousin to the 101-kilometer (63-mile) altitude at the previous encounter in January of this year. No observations of Io are planned during this passage. The spacecraft is passing Io's orbit at about 6 Jupiter radii (429,000 kilometers or 267,000 miles) from the planet on its way in to the inner system. The radiation at this point in the orbit is becoming fierce enough that even Alpha Centauri may no longer be seen by the Star Scanner, and the attitude control software would not be able to determine the orientation of the spacecraft. At 8:12 PM, the software is told to enter hibernation. In this state it will ignore the signals from the Star Scanner and remember its last calculated orientation and spin rate, relying on the fact that we don't plan to change it. This configuration will last for the next nine hours, while Galileo is within the distance of Io's orbit. Then, at 11:02:28 PM, Galileo reaches its closest point to Amalthea. This irregularly-shaped moon measures approximately 270 kilometers (168 miles) across its longest dimension. Galileo will fly by with its closest distance to the surface of the body of 160 kilometers (99 miles). The speed of the spacecraft relative to Amalthea is 18.4 kilometers per second (41,160 miles per hour) so it will take less than 15 seconds to pass by! At this speed, Galileo could circle the Earth (at sea level) in 36 minutes, not counting stops for the speeding tickets. Ten minutes later, at 11:14 PM, Galileo enters the shadow cast by Jupiter from the Sun, and eleven minutes after that, at 11:25 PM, the spacecraft passes behind Jupiter as seen from Earth. The spacecraft will remain out of view of ground controllers for about an hour, reappearing 23 minutes after midnight on Tuesday morning, having cleared Jupiter's shadow 10 minutes earlier. While the spacecraft is hidden from Earth, at eight minutes after midnight, it will reach this orbit's closest point to Jupiter. This is also the closest Galileo has ever come to the planet. Galileo will pass 71,500 kilometers (44,500 miles) above the visible cloud tops. This is three times closer than the previous Galileo record in 1995, which was set as we first entered Jupiter orbit. Pioneer 11 still holds the ultimate record, however, speeding by in 1973 only 43,000 kilometers (26,725 miles) above the clouds. For a period of about two hours, starting about the time Galileo passes Amalthea, the spacecraft will be passing through a region occupied by what is known as the Amalthea Gossamer Ring. This very tenuous band of dusty material circles Jupiter between Amalthea's orbit and the start of the more prominent main ring first noticed by the Voyager spacecraft in 1979. This offers a unique opportunity to study a planetary ring system from the inside! The Dust Detector instrument will be the primary student, but the plasma environment is also likely to hold some interesting surprises. On the outbound stretch of the Jupiter-Earth occultation, the Radio Science team will use the radio transmission from Galileo to probe the layers of the Jupiter atmosphere, studying how the signal changes as it passes through increasingly thinner gases as the spacecraft recedes from its closest point. At 12:20 AM, the EPD instrument reloads its memory again, as protection against a possible upset in the high radiation environment. During this single flyby the spacecraft may be subjected to up to 100 times the radiation dose that would be lethal to a human being. It has already received more than 4 times its planned spacecraft-lifetime dosage, and is still ticking away. At 12:37 AM, the Radio Science occultation experiment is over, and science telemetry is restored into the radio signal. For the past few hours, the Fields and Particles science data have been stored on both the tape recorder and in a computer memory buffer while the spacecraft has been out of sight. Now the buffered data can be sent to Earth. The continuous recording period ends at 4:04 AM. Recorded data from the encounter will be played back starting Thursday evening. At 4:15 AM, Galileo again crosses Io's orbit, this time outward bound, and the radiation levels have dropped to the point that the Star Scanner should again be able to recognize Alpha Centauri. At this time the attitude control software is told to come out of hibernation and re-establish its lock on that single bright star. By 6:30 PM, the radiation has dropped to the level that will allow fainter stars to be seen, and the software is told to look for the normal contingent of three stars. Finally, (has this really only been two days?) the tape recorder is slewed to a new position and a new series of plasma sheet observation recordings is begun at 11:07 PM Tuesday night. The high-intensity pace of the encounter has slowed to a more bearable crawl, the spacecraft has receded again to 20 Jupiter radii from the planet, and the final flyby of the mission is behind us. Note 1. Pacific Standard Time (PST) is 8 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The time when an event occurs at the spacecraft is known as Spacecraft Event Time (SCET). The time at which radio signals reach Earth indicating that an event has occurred is known as Earth Received Time (ERT). Currently, it takes Galileo's radio signals 44 minutes to travel between the spacecraft and Earth. All times quoted above are in Earth Received Time at JPL in Pasadena. 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 this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0210/30galileo/. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION EXPEDITION FIVE SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS NASA/MSFC release 02-279 1 November 2002 The crew of Expedition Five successfully completed a 15-day research program with the Zeolite Crystal Growth (ZCG) experiment in the past week and conducted an additional experiment with the Pore Formation and Mobility Experiment (PFMI). ZCG, located in EXPRESS Rack 2 in the Destiny laboratory module, completed its run on Sunday. The furnace was deactivated Monday, and NASA Space Station Science Officer Peggy Whitson removed the samples on Tuesday. Zeolite crystals form the backbone of the chemical processes industry, including the production of virtually all the world's gasoline. In space, commercial researchers are trying to produce larger, more perfect crystals for study. Other potential uses for zeolite crystals include carbonless printing and production of wires that transmit light instead of electricity for next-generation electronic devices. This experiment is one of several commercial investigations being sponsored by industry. These commercial studies are completed by companies that work with one of NASA's 15 Commercial Space Centers managed by the Space Product Development Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. On Sunday, Whitson and the ground science team began an unscheduled seventh run of the PFMI experiment that was completed early Monday. Only six PFMI tests runs were scheduled during Expedition Five. Inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox, PFMI melts and re- solidifies samples of a transparent modeling material. Through a video system, scientists who are working in a telescience center at the Marshall Center can 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. Next Sunday, Expedition Five Commander Valery Korzun and Whitson will conduct the Pulmonary Function in Flight (PuFF) experiment. The PuFF session includes five lung function tests for each crewmember. The focus is on measuring changes in the evenness of gas exchange in the lungs and on detecting changes in respiratory muscle strength caused by long periods in the absence of gravity. The results will help in maintaining crew health during long space missions. This is one of many human life sciences experiments being conducted on Expedition Five under the auspices of the Life Sciences program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. On Tuesday, selected members of the crew filled out the weekly Crew Interactions computer survey on a laptop computer. The study identifies important interpersonal and cultural factors that could affect performance during long space missions. On Wednesday, the crew collected background radiation dosimeter badge readings on the EVA Radiation Monitoring (EVARM) experiment in preparation for spacewalks during the STS-113 Shuttle mission set for launch on November 11. EVARM is the first radiation experiment to measure radiation dosages encountered by the eyes, internal organs and skin during specific spacewalks and relate it to the type of activity, location and other factors. Analysis of this information may help reduce potential exposure to spacewalkers in the future. Crew Earth Observation photography subjects for this week included air quality over the Eastern and Western Mediterranean, sediment plumes in the Mekong River delta following heavy rains last week, and the sediment plume of the Amazon River as it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. During the past week, the crew continued to perform daily maintenance and status checks on Station experiments. They also prepared the Station lab for the arrival of a Soyuz taxi ship this week and approximately eight days of European science experiments to be conducted in the Microgravity Science Glovebox. The Payload Operations Center at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, manages all science research experiment operations aboard the International Space Station. The center is also home for coordination of the mission-planning work of a variety of international sources, all science payload deliveries and retrieval, and payload training and payload safety programs for the Station crew and all ground personnel. Contact: Steve Roy Media Relations Department Phone: 256-544-0034 Steve.Roy@msfc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 28-31 October 2002 Kasei Vallis Island (Released 28 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021028a.html Holden Crater (Released 29 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021029a.html Impact crater (Released 30 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021030a.html The so-called "Face on Mars" at night (Released 31 October 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021031A.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, D.C. 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 MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL releases 1 November 2002 All commands related to Stardust's flyby of asteroid Annefrank have been transmitted to the spacecraft, and operations for the approach to Annefrank have begun. Stardust is using the November 2 flyby of Annefrank to test many of the procedures the spacecraft will use during the upcoming encounter with Comet Wild 2 in 2004. The spacecraft is operating in good health. It had two periods of radio contact with Earth this week through the antennas of the Deep Space Network. Command products for sequence 50, an upcoming portion of Stardust's journey toward Comet Wild 2, are in final review and will be sent to the spacecraft after the Annefrank flyby. About 3,500 educators had the opportunity to learn about Stardust during the California Science Teachers Association conference in San Francisco last week. New Stardust exhibits have been unveiled at the Fleishmann Planetarium in Reno, Nevada, and at the Technical Center in San Jose, California. The Deep Space Network has developed a Spanish-language postcard about Stardust and the network. Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, plans to update its "Tomorrow's Technology" display to include a new cube of aerogel. 2 November 2002 NASA's Stardust spacecraft successfully completed a close flyby of asteroid Annefrank early today as an opportunity for a full dress rehearsal of procedures the spacecraft will use during its Jan. 2, 2004, encounter with it primary science target, comet Wild 2. Annefrank is about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across. Stardust passed within about 3,300 kilometers (2,050 miles) of the asteroid at 04:50 today, Universal Time (8:50 PM November 1, Pacific Standard Time). Radio signals confirming the basic health of the spacecraft after the flyby were received about 30 minutes later via an antenna at the Canberra, Australia, complex of NASA's Deep Space Network, said Thomas Duxbury, project manager for Stardust at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. Stardust visually tracked the asteroid for 30 minutes as it flew by at a relative speed of about 7 kilometers (4 miles) per second, a major goal of this test opportunity. Although no dust was anticipated near the asteroid, the spacecraft's dust instruments were in use as they will be at Wild 2: the dust collector was open and the dust counter from the University of Chicago and dust mass spectrometer from Germany were turned on. Images and information from the flyby period are being transmitted from the spacecraft today and through the coming week. Stardust's scientists and engineers are analyzing the data to maximize the probability of success during the 2004 encounter with comet Wild 2. Stardust will bring samples of comet dust back to Earth in 2006 to help answer fundamental questions about the origins of the solar system. The mission's principal investigator is Prof. Donald Brownlee, an astronomer at the University of Washington, Seattle. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., built and operates the Stardust spacecraft. Additional information is available online at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov . Stardust is a part of NASA's Discovery Program of low-cost, highly focused science missions. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stardust-02b.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stardust-02d.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0211/02stardust/ http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0211/04stardust/ _____________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 9, Number 41.