MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 45, 2 December 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) FOCUS ON TITAN By David Lamb 2) CYBER LAB BREWING UP NEW PLANETS By Richard Stenger 3) TWO-BILLION-YEAR-OLD SURPRISE FOUND BENEATH THE AZORES From SpaceDaily 4) STITCHING TOGETHER GREEN GENES From Astrobiology Magazine 5) CREATING COMMERCIAL SPACECRAFT FOR SPACE TOURISM By Leonard David 6) JUPITER-LIKE PLANETS FORMED IN HUNDREDS--NOT MILLIONS--OF YEARS, STUDY SHOWS University of Washington release 7) READY TO DIG THE DIRT ON MARS University of Leicester release #264 8) ARE ALIENS A BUNCH OF SMARTY-PANTS? THAT DEPENDS ON HOW LONG IT TAKES TO GROW A BRAIN By Leslie Mullen 9) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 10) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 11) GALILEO MILLENNIUM MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 2002-213 12) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-300 13) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 14) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ FOCUS ON TITAN By David Lamb http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/news_stories/news_detail.cfm?ID=234 26 November 2002 Titan has been in the news quite a bit recently for its relevance to astrobiology research. But why all the attention? This week, Astrobiology Features takes a closer look that this frigid, haze- covered world. Conditions on Titan Long hailed as a natural astrobiology laboratory, Saturn's largest moon Titan is certainly on the minds of many scientists today. This moon is the second largest in the solar system (Jupiter's Ganymede is the largest); its diameter is about 3200 miles (larger than the planet Mercury), or approximately the distance across the United States. Titan is interesting because it is unique: it is the only moon in the solar system known to have a thick atmosphere. The composition of the atmosphere is largely nitrogen (about 90%). By comparison, Earth's atmosphere has a nitrogen content of about 78%. There are also smaller amounts of ethane and methane in Titan's atmosphere; these molecules are created when energetic ultraviolet light from the sun reacts with gasses (e.g. ammonia) released from its interior. Due to the very cold temperatures (about -290 degrees Fahrenheit!), scientists believe that these molecules could exist in liquid form and could thus drizzle out of the atmosphere onto the surface, creating perhaps large lakes of methane and ethane. Since Titan is so cold, it is devoid of the liquid water that makes life possible here. Thus, scientists skeptical that we will find life there, but they are just the same optimistic about learning more about the pre-biotic chemistry that might have occurred on our own planet. Titan can be regarded as a time machine: it will allow researchers to study the photochemistry and chemical reactions that were possibly taking place on early Earth. Early observations Titan was first discovered by Christian Huygens in 1655, and since that time, scientists have learned about its composition and structure from measurements at a distance. Ground based observations, coupled with measurements from Voyager and the Hubble Space Telescope, have already told us something about the nature of this moon. Scientists are confident of our and average density. However, they are less certain about the exact nature of the surface underneath the hazy shroud. The thick atmosphere (about 1.5 times the pressure of Earth's) precluded any direct images of the surface during the Voyager mission, although subsequent infrared imaging by the Hubble revealed lighter and darker areas on the moon. Getting a closer look Although there is still much that scientists don't know about Titan, many of the outstanding questions may soon become in reach. The Huygens Probe, an integral part of the Cassini mission to Saturn, will plunge through Titan's atmosphere early in 2005. Even though it took a seven-year voyage while piggybacked on the Cassini orbiter, it will only have a functional lifetime of about three hours. During this time, the probe will be very busy simultaneously collecting aerosols for chemical analyses, making spectral measurements, and measuring physical and electrical properties of the atmosphere. But before and after the demise of the probe, the Cassini orbiter will undertake several close fly-bys of the moon. With onboard radar and various spectrometers, the orbiter will give insights about the moon from a more global perspective. Some of the astrobiology-related science objectives for the Cassini-Huygens mission include: --Determine the relative amounts of different components of the atmosphere. --Observe vertical and horizontal distributions of trace gases; search for complex molecules; investigate energy sources for atmospheric chemistry; study formation and composition of aerosols. --Determine the physical state, topography, and composition of Titan's surface; characterize its internal structure. (taken from the JPL Cassini-Huygens web page) NAI's role Both during and after Cassini-Huygens, scientists will be pouring over the data from the mission. Many of these scientists will be also involved with the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Titan Focus Group, a collection of about 30 members from all over the country. This group, chaired by Jonathan Lunine of the University of Arizona, will have a functional lifetime of about three years. The Titan Focus Group's core objective is to "ensure the conceptualization and initial study of appropriate techniques for advanced organic analysis on Titan, after Cassini-Huygens." The members are especially interested Titan surface missions. Many important questions remain about Titan and what it can tell us about pre-biotic chemistry that occurred during early Earth evolution. It will take a close-up look and collaborations from several different scientists to effectively answer them. You can learn more about the mission and actively monitor the updates at JPL's Cassini-Huygens' homepage (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov). _____________________________________________________________________ CYBER LAB BREWING UP NEW PLANETS By Richard Stenger From CNN 26 November 2002 Biologists, astronomers and computer scientists are working together to construct planets from scratch to explore the variety of physical bodies that could host life. The ingredients for the new world stew will be mixed in a virtual laboratory managed by NASA, which would like to figure out what to look for when it launches planet-finding missions in the coming years. By simulating a range of planets, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, hopes to narrow the search to habitable planets. "We're trying to build a terrestrial planet inside a computer," said Vikki Meadows, main project scientist at the Virtual Planetary Laboratory. "This will help us determine what the signatures of life on an extra-solar planet will look like, once we have the technology to study them," she said earlier this month. Get the full story at http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/11/25/cyber.planets/index.html. _____________________________________________________________________ TWO-BILLION-YEAR-OLD SURPRISE FOUND BENEATH THE AZORES From SpaceDaily 26 November 2002 Geologists may have to revise their ideas about what goes on in the Earth's interior, following the publication today of new research in the journal Nature. It appears that contrary to previous belief, part of the interior has remained undisturbed for at least two-and-a- half billion years, in spite of the massive forces at work inside the planet. Like a saucepan of thick syrup being heated on the stove, huge convection currents within the Earth, generated by heat from the core, have stirred up the interior for most of its four-and-a-half billion year history. This has led geologists to believe that the interior is now well mixed. But Dr. Simon Turner and Professor Chris Hawkesworth from the Earth Sciences Department at Bristol University, with colleagues at the Open University, have new data that suggest the presence of extremely ancient material beneath the Azores. Get the full story at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/early-earth- 02h.html. _____________________________________________________________________ STITCHING TOGETHER GREEN GENES From Astrobiology Magazine Based on Arizona State University press release 27 November 2002 The development of the biochemical process of photosynthesis is one of nature's most important events, but how did it actually happen? This is a question that molecular biology has first posed, and now perhaps answered. "The process of photosynthesis is a very complex set of interdependent metabolic pathways," said Robert Blankenship, professor of biochemistry at Arizona State University. "How it could have evolved is a bit mysterious." Photosynthesis is one of the most important chemical processes ever developed by life--a chemical process that transforms sunlight into chemical energy, ultimately powering virtually all the living things and allowing them to dominate the earth. The evolution of aerobic photosynthesis in bacteria is also the most likely reason for the development of an oxygen-rich atmosphere that transformed the chemistry of the Earth billions of years ago, further triggering the evolution of complex life. After decades of research, biochemists now understand that this critical biological process depends on some very elaborate and rapid chemistry involving a series of enormously large and complex molecules a set of complex molecular systems all working together. "We know that the process evolved in bacteria, probably before 2.5 billion years ago, but the history of photosynthesis's development is very hard to trace," said Blankenship. "There's a bewildering diversity of photosynthetic microorganisms out there that use clearly related, but somewhat different processes. They have some common threads tying them together, but it has never been clear how they relate to each other and how the process of photosynthesis started, how it developed, and how we actually wind up with two photosystems working together in more complex photosynthetic organisms." In a paper in the November 22 issue of the journal Science, Blankenship and colleagues partially unravel this mystery through an analysis of the genomes of five bacteria representing the basic groups of photosynthetic bacteria and the complete range of known photosynthetic processes. The paper is co-authored by ASU doctoral student Jason Raymond, Olga Zhazybayeva and J. Peter Gogarten of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, and Sveta Y. Gerdes of Integrated Genomics in Chicago, Illinois. The analysis revealed clear evidence that photosynthesis did not evolve through a linear path of steady change and growing complexity but through a merging of evolutionary lines that brought together independently evolving chemical systems--the swapping of blocks of genetic material among bacterial species known as horizontal gene transfer. "We found that the photosynthesis-related genes in these organisms have not had all the same pathway of evolution. It's clear evidence for horizontal gene transfer," said Blankenship. The team examined the genes of five already sequenced photosynthetic bacterial genomes: a cyanobacterium known as Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803; Chloroflexus aurantiacus, a green filamentous bacterium; Chlorobium tepidum, a green sulfur bacterium; Rhodobacter capsulatus, a proteobacterium; and Heliobacillus mobilis, a heliobacterium. They found a set of 188 genes that appeared to be related (orthologous) between these organisms. The five species belong to very separate classifications, but since they share, to varying degrees, the same photosynthetic chemical systems, the team deduced that the photosynthesis-related genes must be among the shared genes. Blankenship and his colleagues then performed a mathematical analysis of the set of shared genes to determine possible evolutionary relationships between them, but they arrived at different results depending on which genes were tested. "We did a kind of tree analysis of all 188 genes to determine what the best evolutionary tree was. We found that a fraction of the genes supported each of the different possible arrangements of the tree. It's clear that the genes themselves have different evolutionary histories," Blankenship said. Gene recruitment Blankenship argues that this explains the how the complex biochemical machinery of photosynthesis could have developed. Different pieces of the system evolved separately in different organisms, perhaps to serve purposes different from their current function in the photosynthesis. Brought together either by fusion of two different bacteria or by the "recruitment" of blocks of genes, the new combination of genes resulted in a new combined system. Further evolution of the system and further re-combination probably occurred many times in different organisms. The team also compared the set of shared photosynthetic bacteria genes with known genomes from other bacteria and found that very few of the shared genes are actually unique to photosynthetic organisms. While a number of the widely shared genes are probably "housekeeping genes" that are basic to most bacteria, Blankenship thinks that many of the shared genes involve metabolic pathways in non-photosynthetic bacteria that have been recruited to be part of photosynthesis systems. "This kind of evolution in bacteria is kind of like what happens at a junk dealer," said Blankenship. "Bits and pieces of whatever there is out in the yard get hauled back and welded together and made into this new thing. All these metabolic pathways get borrowed and bent a bit and changed." What's next? Blankenship points out that nature's way of creating useful and complicated chemical systems through horizontal gene transfer also points to how human-directed biodesign might co-opt the process. "This work gives us some insights into how complex metabolic pathways originated and evolved, so this might give some ideas about how to engineer new pathways into microorganisms," he said. "These organisms could be designed to carry out new types of chemistry that may benefit mankind, such as multi-step synthesis of drugs." The research applies as well to collaborative efforts going on at ASU between the university's Center for the Study of Early Events in Photosynthesis and its membership in the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "A major focus of the astrobiology program is to try to figure out what path life might have taken on some other world besides Earth," he said "There are people that make the argument that it would be likely to have taken a similar trajectory. You have to have some kind of energetic source for organisms to live on and certainly sunlight is one of the most likely options, since it's a high quality flow of energy. Now we have a picture of how life has developed that source on our planet." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article320.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CREATING COMMERCIAL SPACECRAFT FOR SPACE TOURISM By Leonard David From Space.com 27 November 2002 If scads of surveys are correct, the public is hungry for ticket counter takeoffs to space. But ff you're hoping to experience a little sightseeing from Earth orbit anytime soon, you might have to delay buffing up your space helmet visor. The track record on building tourist-toting rockets is anything but stellar. Take for instance, Rotary Rocket's private effort that went south, not up. The company, like several other entrepreneurial groups no longer in action, was fueled by high-hopes but riding empty on cash. For its part, NASA has coughed up billions of taxpayer bucks for any number of "beyond shuttle" escapades. First there was the ill-fated X-33 prototype single-stage-to-orbit space plane. It went down in flames even before its set of fancy aerospike engines could ignite. More recently, NASA's highly flaunted Space Launch Initiative to build super-slick generations of reusable boosters dead-ended. Over the years, an array of contraptions to push cargo and humans into Earth orbit has been sketched out. (There is no doubt that the "ABV"--Air-Brushed Vehicle--art business is solid.) Nevertheless, an unwavering cadre of rocket engineers, space planners and tourism experts fully expect 21st century spaceliners are on the horizon. But how to get up there from down here remains up for grabs. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/tourism_spacecraft _021127.html. _____________________________________________________________________ JUPITER-LIKE PLANETS FORMED IN HUNDREDS--NOT MILLIONS--OF YEARS, STUDY SHOWS University of Washington release 28 November 2002 An accepted assumption in astrophysics holds that it takes more than 1 million years for gas giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn to form from the cosmic debris circling a young star. But new research suggests such planets form in a dramatically shorter period, as little as a few hundred years. The forming planets have to be able to survive the effects of nearby stars burning brightly, heating and dispersing the gases that accumulate around the giant planets. If the process takes too long, the gases will be dissipated by the radiation from those stars, said University of Washington astrophysicist Thomas R. Quinn. "If a gas giant planet can't form quickly, it probably won't form at all," he said. The standard model of planet formation holds that the spinning disk of matter, called a protoplanetary disk, that surrounds a young star gradually congeals into masses that form the cores of planets. That process was thought to take a million years or so, and then the giants gradually accumulate their large gaseous envelopes over perhaps another 1 million to 10 million years. But the new research, culled from a much-refined mathematical model, suggests that the protoplanetary disk begins to fragment after just a few spins around its star. As the disk fragments, clusters of matter begin to form quickly and immediately start to draw in the gases that form vapor shrouds around gas giants. "If these planets can't form quickly, then they should be a relatively rare phenomenon, whereas if they form according to this mechanism they should be a relatively common phenomenon," said Quinn, a UW research assistant astronomy professor. The existence of gas giant planets, it turns out, seems to be fairly common. Since the mid-1990s, researchers have discovered more than 100 planets, generally from the mass of Jupiter to 10 times that size, orbiting stars outside the solar system. Those planets were deduced by their gravitational effect on their parent stars, and their discovery lends credence to the new research, Quinn said. Lucio Mayer, a former UW post-doctoral researcher who recently joined the University of Zurich, is lead author of a paper detailing the work, published in the November 29 edition of Science. Besides Quinn, co-authors are James Wadsley of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and Joachim Stadel at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Their work is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Astrobiology Institute. Since the early 1950s, some scientists have entertained the notion that gas giant planets were formed quickly. However, the model, using a specialized fluid dynamics simulation, had never been refined enough to show what it does now. The Mayer-Quinn team spent the better part of two years refining calculations and plugging them into the model to show what would happen to a protoplanetary disk over a longer time. "The main criticism people had of this model was that it wasn't quite ready yet," Quinn said. "Nobody was making any predictions out of it, but here we are making predictions out of it." The new model explains why two other giant planets in our system, Uranus and Neptune, don't have gas envelopes like Jupiter and Saturn, Quinn said. At the time those planets were being formed, the solar system was part of a star cluster. The outer planets of Uranus and Neptune were too close to a nearby star--one that has since migrated away--and therefore lost whatever gas envelopes they might have accumulated. Neither the new model nor the standard model accounts for why most of the gas giant planets found outside the solar system are much nearer their suns than are Jupiter and Saturn, Quinn said. The most common belief currently is that the planets formed farther away from their stars and then migrated inward to the positions where they have been discovered. The new model also doesn't account for the formation of terrestrial planets, like Earth and Mars, near our sun. But Quinn suspects that perhaps the smaller terrestrial planets were formed over longer periods by processes described by the standard planet-formation model, while the new model explains how the larger gas giants came to be. "That's my bet at the moment," he said. For more information, contact Quinn at 206-685-9009 or trq@astro.washington.edu, or Mayer at 011-41-1-6355740 or lucio@physik.unizh.ch IMAGE CAPTION: [http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/images/disk- hr.jpg (23KB)] A computer simulation shows how a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star begins, in a relatively short time, to fragment and form gas giant planets with stable orbits. (Photo credit: Mayer, Quinn, Wadsley, Stadel) Contact: Vince Stricherz University of Washington Seattle, Washington Phone: 206-543-2580 E-mail: vinces@u.washington.edu The Science article is available at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5599/1756?ct. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0211/29planets/ http://www.astrobio.net/news/article322.html _____________________________________________________________________ READY TO DIG THE DIRT ON MARS University of Leicester release #264 28 November 2002 The University of Leicester has successfully completed construction and test of the flight Model PAW, the "eyes and hand" of the Beagle 2 Mars lander. The Beagle 2 project aims to send a UK-led lander to Mars in December 2003 as part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express Mission, due for launch at the end of May 2003. The robotic lander, controlled remotely from Earth, will sample the soil, rocks and atmosphere of Mars in its search for signs of past and present life. In addition it will examine the detailed geology and environment of the landing site (Isidis Planitia). The Beagle 2 probe is named after HMS Beagle, the ship in which Charles Darwin sailed. The Flight Model PAW (Position Adjustable Workbench) is an integrated collection of instruments and tools for Beagle 2 that has been constructed over the last five months and has just completed a vigorous test program. This program included a vibration and shock test to simulate the rocket launch and the landing on Mars and a thermal test to simulate martian temperatures at the European Space Agency's Technology Centre at Noordwijk in the Netherlands. The PAW is constructed around a lightweight cast aluminum structure and its own set of control electronics both designed and assembled at the University of Leicester. Mounted on the PAW are: * A stereo pair of cameras to image the landing site and identify nearby rocks--provided by a consortium led by Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London * A microscope to examine the microscopic structure of the rocks and soil--provided by the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy Lindau in Germany * A gamma-ray Mossbauer spectrometer to measure the oxidation state of iron minerals in the soil and rocks--provided by the University of Mainz in Germany * An x-ray spectrometer to measure the elemental composition of the rocks and soil--provided by the Leicester team led by Professor George Fraser * A rock corer/grinder provided by Hong Kong Polytechnic Hong Kong, China with technical assistance from Leicester based on a concept developed by TC Ng. * A mole, a self burying drill and soil collection device--built by a consortium led by DLR (German Aerospace Research Establishment) Koln. The cameras and microscope utilize identical camera heads provided by Space-X of Switzerland who also provided some of the optical elements of the cameras. Satellite Services BV of the Netherlands provided key parts of the test equipment. Dr. Mark Sims the Beagle 2 Mission Manager said, "This was very much a team effort led by the Instrument Manager Derek Pullan and the PAW Chief Engineer Shaun Whitehead at the University of Leicester. The flight PAW is the culmination of four years of effort by the Leicester team and the instrument providers. Following integration with the Beagle 2 lander at the Open University, the next time the PAW will be used is on Mars in December 2003". The FM PAW has now been delivered for integration and test with the flight structure and electronics of the Beagle 2 probe at the Open University. Beagle 2 will be delivered to the Mars Express project in January 2003. The construction and test of the Beagle 2 PAW at Leicester has been funded by the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and from internal resources at the University of Leicester. The Beagle 2 project is a consortium led by the Open University together with the University of Leicester and Astrium UK Ltd at Stevenage. Beagle 2 is funded in part by the UK Department of Trade and Industry (via the British National Space Centre), the European Space Agency, and from internal resources provided by the consortium members. Whilst the balance of the cost of the project has been underwritten, a proportion of the funding will be recouped by sponsorship and commercial advertising. Contact: Ather Mirza, Press Officer University of Leicester Phone: 0116 252 2415 E-mail: ara@le.ac.uk _____________________________________________________________________ ARE ALIENS A BUNCH OF SMARTY-PANTS? THAT DEPENDS ON HOW LONG IT TAKES TO GROW A BRAIN By Leslie Mullen From Astrobiology Magazine 2 December 2002 Spock: "To hunt a species to extinction is not logical." Gillian: "Whoever said the human race was logical?" Star Trek, The Voyage Home We expect aliens to be a whole lot smarter than us. Not only will they possess the wisdom of the ages, but they will travel at warp speed, have the ability to transform (or destroy) entire planets, and their civilizations will span across galaxies. Until we find alien life, however, we can only guess at how many intelligent civilizations may be out there. Frank Drake made a stab at guessing the number in 1961, when he formulated the "Drake Equation." According to this equation, there could be a million intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy, and probably billions of such civilizations throughout the universe. The Drake Equation is based, in part, on an estimate of the number of planets in the galaxy that might harbor life. Such planets would have to exist in "habitable zones"--those regions around stars that would best support life as we know it. These planets would be the most likely places where life capable of achieving intelligence is fostered and sustained. To understand how intelligence develops, we have only one example to study: the development of human intelligence on Earth. The first life on our planet probably arose about 3.8 billion years ago, less than a billion years after the Earth itself formed. But multi- cellular life didn't appear until nearly 3 billion years after that, and the first animal life didn't form until the Cambrian Explosion 600 million years ago. Intelligent life--which we broadly define as human civilization--didn't develop until a few tens of thousands of years ago. Christopher McKay, a planetary scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center, has defined intelligence as "the ability to build a radio telescope." If we go by McKay's definition, then truly intelligent life on Earth didn't show up until the twentieth century. Since intelligent life took a long time to develop on Earth, some believe it will take just as long on other worlds. The paleontologist Peter Ward and the astronomer Donald Brownlee expressed this belief in their book, Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe. Intelligent life on Earth, they say, is due to a long chain of events that greatly relied on happenstance. The odds of such a chain of events occurring on other worlds seem to be impossible. Thus, as the title of their book indicates, they believe that simple, microbial life may be common in the universe, but complex life will be rare. They certainly don't expect to find very many advanced alien civilizations out there. Other scientists disagree with this conclusion. They suggest that animal life--or something resembling it--may have developed more rapidly on other worlds. One proponent of this theory is McKay, who wrote the essay, "Time for Intelligence on Other Planets," in order to determine the shortest possible time it would take for intelligence to develop after the origin of life. Crunching the numbers Although the traditional view of evolution is as a constant push toward greater complexity, the fossil record on Earth shows instead that there were periods of rapid changes followed by long periods where nothing much happened at all. McKay says such a drawn-out style of evolution need not be universal. By removing what he calls evolution's "spurious" time periods, he says that intelligent life could take as little as 100 million years to develop. "Nothing in our understanding of evolution suggests that these periods of stasis are required," says McKay. "We believe they represent mere historical happenstance." Another limiting factor for evolution on Earth was a lack of oxygen. The early Earth had very little free oxygen until cyanobacteria and other photosynthetic life forms began producing it about 2 billion years ago. Oxygen may be the key to tissue multi-cellularity, and thus the formation of large, multi-celled organisms capable of developing a brain. The build-up of oxygen also led to the development of an ozone layer, shielding life on Earth from the Sun's harmful UV rays. But this need not be the case on other worlds. Perhaps some planets begin with substantial amounts of atmospheric oxygen. Slower tectonic activity would make more oxygen available, as would a less iron-rich geography. A planet with early access to oxygen might see life, and intelligence, evolve much faster than on Earth. Other factors affecting Earth's evolution were cataclysmic events such as asteroid impacts. Such events would kill off complex life, but these events could also clear the way for the development of more advanced forms of intelligence. The creatures with superior brains may have been better able to save themselves from the sudden changes in their environment caused by these events. Many of the factors that went into the development of life on Earth remain a puzzle to us, so there may be many other characteristics of a planet, or even a solar system, that affect the development of intelligence. For instance, some scientists have noted that intelligence did not arise on Earth until the Sun hit middle age. Perhaps, they suggest, intelligence cannot evolve until the planet's star reaches a certain stage in its own evolution. Chris McKay, however, says he has not heard a compelling argument as to why human level intelligence needed the Sun to be middle aged. "I would say that the build-up of oxygen is the only good environmental requirement," says McKay. Why only one? The Earth's fossil record indicates that, despite periods of stasis or of setbacks like asteroid impacts, most organisms evolve toward greater complexity. Some of Earth's life forms have gone extinct, while others became cornered in evolutionary dead ends. But as a whole, evolution has moved toward increasing the complexity of the central nervous system, culminating in the development of the brain. (The "brain" as an organ within the skull did not develop until the emergence of the first vertebrate animal.) Since evolution seems aimed towards the development of intelligence, a planet should be able to evolve not just one, but many intelligent species over time. Yet on Earth, humans were the only species who developed "radio telescope-building" intelligence. "It might be argued that among mammals, humans developed intelligence first and are thereby effectively precluding the development of intelligence in any other species," says McKay. "It follows from this argument that intelligence evolves once and only once on a planet, because once evolved it changes the rules of the interaction between species and effectively dominates the planet from then on." Human intelligence may never have developed if the dinosaurs had not gone extinct. During the age of the dinosaurs, our ancestors were small, rodent-like creatures scavenging for food in the low grass. Perhaps we had to wait for the dinosaurs to disappear before we could evolve beyond a certain point. However, says McKay, this theory still does not explain why the dinosaurs didn't become the Earth's first telescope-builders. They dominated the planet for over 150 million years, occupying all the niches mammals currently occupy. "That is more than twice the time between the end of the Cretaceous and the construction of the first radio telescope," says McKay. "One might speculate that perhaps Stenonychosaurus (also known as Troodon) or her progeny did build radio telescopes but their civilization was destroyed by some internal or external catastrophe. Perhaps the lifetime of their civilization was so short, compared to the resolution of the geologic record, that it is simply lost without trace in the depths of time. It is difficult to say what evidence would survive of human civilization--if it was terminated now--after 65 million years of tectonic activity, erosion, and sea level change." Since it seems that intelligence only evolved once on Earth, despite other opportunities to do so, perhaps not many forms of intelligence could evolve on other planets. McKay says that, considering the Earth's evolutionary history, the odds for developing intelligence elsewhere may be less than one in three (65/215). Still, given the potential number of habitable planets in our Galaxy alone, that could mean there are many millions of intelligent species out there. "The odds I computed are just a rough upper limit based on the history of Earth as we now know it," says McKay. "For us to be the only intelligent radio builders in the galaxy, the odds would have much lower--about 1 in million." What's next? Despite all the rationale behind one viewpoint or another, the question of how many intelligent civilizations are out there can only be answered if we discover alien life. NASA is planning to launch the Terrestrial Planet Finder in 2012. This satellite will operate for 6 years, searching for Earth-sized planets around distant stars. In the meantime, scientists with the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) continue to explore the electromagnetic spectrum for alien transmissions. The SETI Institute recently published "SETI 2020," a book detailing the focus of SETI strategies between now and the year 2020. Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article323.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 2 December 2002 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html R. Stenger, 2002. Cyber lab brewing up new planets. CNN. Human space exploration and microgravity effects articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s3.html L. David, 2002. Creating commercial spacecraft for space tourism. Space.com. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s4.html L. Mullen, 2002. Are aliens a bunch of smarty-pants? That depends on how long it takes to grow a brain. Astrobiology Magazine. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html Astrobiology Magazine, 2002. Stitching together green genes. Astrobiology Magazine. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 21-25 November 2002 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Monday, November 25. 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 Radio and Plasma Wave (RPWS) Science High Frequency Receiver calibrations and high rate cyclics, completion of the Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) Ka-band uplink exciter/transmitter tests, Cassini Plasma Spectrometer, Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, and RPWS transition to sleep mode in preparation for the Probe Relay test, and day one of the 3 day Probe Relay test. A Preliminary Sequence Integration & Validation (SIV) meeting was held for the Cruise 35 sequence. The Final SIV meeting will be held next week with the sequence uplinked to the spacecraft on Thanksgiving Day. Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) completed the fourth and fifth in a series of tests of the Ka-band uplink transmitter at DSS-25. The Ka-band transmitter did not trip during the data collection passes, and Ka-band 2-way data, and X-band 1-way and 2-way data were recorded. In addition, the Data Monitor and Display worked properly for monitoring the Ka-band transmitter ramp. The result of the tests is that RSS and DSS-25 are prepared for Gravitational Wave Experiment #2. System Engineering has begun a series of reviews and working groups to ensure that uplink processes are well understood prior to Verification and Validation activities next year. The intent is that teams take a final look at the high level process flow, then check to make sure they understand how their own internal processes and procedures fit within that flow. This week the group began reviewing Operations Interface Agreements for Science Planning. Mission Assurance participated in the 5th joint JPL/Aerospace Risk Management Workshop, at the Aerospace Corporation. These workshops have been conducted monthly for the past five months, in an effort to further the practice of Risk Management through collaboration. The group met and achieved consensus that there remains more work to be done to further the practice of Risk Management. A risk storybook has been started to look for common threads across risk management implementers and a benchmarking activity will be conducted in the coming months. Workshops will now be conducted quarterly and regularly scheduled monthly teleconferences will be used to keep the group on track. 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. _____________________________________________________________________ GALILEO MILLENNIUM MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 2002-213 25 November 2002 Flight controllers have returned NASA's Galileo spacecraft to normal operation after the spacecraft put itself into a precautionary standby mode about 16 minutes after flying near Jupiter's inner moon Amalthea on November 5. The veteran spacecraft is now functioning properly, except for its tape recorder, which is used for storing data for later transmission to Earth. The Galileo flight team is conducting tests to diagnose the problem with the tape recorder and developing possible commands to get it working again. "It appears that the tape recorder has taken a hit from the intense radiation Galileo passed through," said Dr. Eilene Theilig, Galileo project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. "Our efforts to restore the tape recorder may continue for a few weeks." During the Amalthea flyby, the orbiter sped through an environment of intense natural radiation close to Jupiter. Hits by radiation triggered Galileo's onboard computer to enter a "safe" mode, which causes the spacecraft to suspend most activities until receiving further instructions. At least five events occurred that each individually would have put the spacecraft into this standby mode. The problems were diagnosed and a new sequence of commands was sent to Galileo. Normal operations, including the real-time collection of scientific data from the magnetometer instrument, resumed on November 13. One possible cause for the tape recorder malfunction is radiation damage to a light-emitting diode or an optical transistor in the circuitry that controls the recorder's motor. Diagnostic tests indicate the situation is not the same as previous times when tape in the recorder has become stuck. In the hours before the Amalthea flyby and the minutes afterwards, Galileo's scientific instruments gathered information about the energy fields and charged particles of the magnetic environment close to Jupiter and about dust particles that make up a "gossamer" ring around the planet. Most of that information is recorded on the tape recorder, so getting the data into the hands of scientists depends on reviving the tape recorder. Information about Galileo's path of movement during the flyby is already on the ground. Researchers are analyzing it to determine whether it will give a clear indication of how Amalthea's gravity affected the spacecraft, which would provide an estimate of that moon's density and a clue to its composition. Galileo, launched in 1989, has been orbiting Jupiter since 1995-- nearly five years longer than planned for its original prime mission. Passes through Jupiter's radiation belts have exposed the orbiter to more than four times the cumulative dose of radiation it was designed to withstand. The Amalthea encounter was Galileo's final flyby. The spacecraft has nearly depleted its supply of the propellant needed for pointing its antenna toward Earth and controlling its flight path. While still controllable, it has been put on a course for impact into Jupiter next September. The maneuver prevents the risk of Galileo drifting to an unwanted impact with the moon Europa, where it discovered evidence of a subsurface ocean that is of interest as a possible habitat for extraterrestrial life. Additional information about Galileo and the discoveries is available at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=6kraTYJlWZ9O-3BCLCXxIg. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Contact: Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0211/26galileo/ http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/11/27/jupiter.galileo/index.html _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-300 15-27 November 2002 On November 20, the Microgravity Science Glovebox in the Destiny Laboratory experienced a loss of power. At the time researchers were processing a sample that is part of the Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation (PFMI). Subsequent attempts to re-power the glovebox were unsuccessful. A series of troubleshooting procedures was developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the NASA payload controllers and performed in sequence by ISS Science Officer Astronaut Peggy Whitson aboard ISS. This systematic process allowed engineers to narrow the problem to a power distribution and conversion (PDC) box that provides electrical power to the facility. The box was removed from the glovebox facility on November 23 and further on-orbit troubleshooting is being planned. Science activities this week aboard the International Space Station focused on transferring new Expedition Six experiments to the orbiting lab and stowing completed Expedition Five payloads aboard the Space Shuttle. "The arrival of the Space Shuttle at the Station marks the beginning of the third year of science aboard the orbiting research laboratory," Lead Increment Scientist Vic Cooley said. "To date, NASA has conducted more than 90,000 hours of scientific research there. We will continue to add to that total with 18 new or continuing experiments during the four-month mission of the Expedition Six crew." New experiments and other payload equipment scheduled for transfer this week included: * The Investigating the Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions (InSPACE) experiment, designed to obtain basic data on magnetorheological fluids--a new class of "smart materials" that can be used to improve or develop new brake systems, seat suspensions, robotics, clutches, airplane landing gear, and vibration damper systems. * The Coarsening in Solid-Liquid Mixtures-2 (CSLM-2) experiment, designed to investigate the interaction of small and large particles in a mixture that can have an effect on the strength of materials ranging from turbine blades to dental fillings and porcelain. * The Foot/Ground Reaction Forces During Space Flight experiment to characterize the load on the lower body and muscle activity in crewmembers while working on the Station. * The new Protein Crystal Growth Single-locker Thermal Enclosure System (PCG-STES) Unit 10 for growing biological materials that could contribute to insights in medicine, agriculture and other fields. * New samples for the Zeolite Crystal Growth (ZCG) experiment, which has applications in chemical processes, and electronic device manufacturing. The goal for Expedition Six is to study mixing procedures in microgravity using clear sample containers. Experiments and other payload equipment scheduled for transfer from the Space Station to the Shuttle for return are: * The Protein Crystal Growth Single Thermal Enclosure System (PCG- STES) Unit 7. * The Plant Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (PGBA), containing Arabidopsis plants for analysis. * The ARCTIC 2 freezer, being returned for repairs. Last week and again on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of this week, the crew collected background radiation readings on the EVA Radiation Monitoring (EVARM) experiment. The experiment consists of dosimeter badges worn by astronauts in the cooling undergarments of their spacesuits during spacewalks. Measurements taken inside the Station will be compared to radiation readings recorded after spacewalks. The EVARM badges will be worn next on the STS-113 Shuttle mission to the Space Station scheduled for November 26. EVARM is the first experiment to measure radiation received by specific parts of the body, including the eyes, internal organs and skin. The Space Station crew used a Space Shuttle launch delay last week to get ahead on upgrading the science capability of the Destiny laboratory. Whitson and Commander Valery Korzun on November 19 installed the Active Rack Isolation System (ARIS) in EXPRESS Rack 3. ARIS installation was previously scheduled for early 2003. ARIS is a vibration-dampening system to protect delicate microgravity experiments from tiny vibrations caused by crew movement, operating equipment, etc. EXPRESS Rack 2 was the first rack to be equipped with the vibration dampener. EXPRESS Racks and EXPRESS derivatives are used to house experiments and provide them with connections for power, data, fluids and other utilities. The crew completed and stowed the Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students (EarthKAM) experiment after several days of operations last week. EarthKAM allows students around the country to send commands via the Internet to a camera mounted in a window of the Station and take pictures of geographical or manmade features for various classroom studies. The automated EarthKAM system collected about 866 images using a 400-mm lens and 130 images with an 800 mm lens. Ten schools participated in last week's operations. On November 21, Whitson and Korzun, conducted the Pulmonary Function in Flight (PuFF) experiment. PuFF includes five lung function tests for each crewmember. The focus is on measuring changes in the evenness of gas exchange in the lungs and detecting changes in respiratory muscle strength caused by long periods in the absence of gravity. The results will help maintain crew health during long space missions. Also on November 21, selected members of the crew participated in the Crew Interactions research program. The experiment consists of a computer-based survey of roughly 70 questions. Scientists hope to identify and characterize interpersonal and cultural factors that could affect the performance of the crew, as well as ground support personnel also participating in the survey. 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 NASA/MSFC, Huntsville, AL Phone: 256-544-0034 _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 25-27 November 2002 Amazonis Planitia yardangs (Released 25 November 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021125a.html Tiu Valles (Released 26 November 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021126a.html Ismeniae Fossae (Released 27 November 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021127a.html All of the THEMIS images are archived at http://themis.la.asu.edu/latest.html. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. _____________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 27 November 2002 The Stardust flight team had two periods of contact (Wednesday, November 20, and Friday, November 22) with the spacecraft during the past week using the antennas of the Deep Space Network. During the first contact on November 20, the flight team performed some preventative maintenance. A software patch was successfully uploaded to correct what the team considered a potential minor problem in the operating system software. Although this problem has not been seen during the flight the Stardust team felt it could possibly manifest itself upon a reboot of the spacecraft's flight computer. Telemetry received from Stardust during both of this week's contacts indicated all the spacecraft's systems and instruments were operating properly. Collection of interstellar dust continues. For more information on the Stardust mission, including details of the recent flyby of asteroid Annefrank, please visit the Stardust home page at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov. _____________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 9, Number 45.