MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 9, Number 46, 9 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) HUBBLE MAKES PRECISE MEASURE OF EXTRASOLAR WORLD'S TRUE MASS Space Telescope Science Institute release STScI-PR02-27 2) REVOLUTIONARY NEW THEORY FOR ORIGINS OF LIFE ON EARTH Royal Society release 3) RIPPLES IN TIME By Leslie Mullen 4) MARS SOCIETY TO BUILD OBSERVATORY AT MDRS Mars Society release 5) NEW CU-NASA RESEARCH BELIES PREVIOUS IDEA THAT MARS WAS ONCE WARM, WET PLANET University of Colorado release 6) EXPOSED WATER ICE DISCOVERED NEAR THE SOUTH POLE OF MARS USGS release 7) INTERSTELLAR SIGNAL FROM THE 70S CONTINUES TO PUZZLE RESEARCHERS By Seth Shostak 8) NASA SELECTS FOUR MARS SCOUT MISSION CONCEPTS FOR STUDY NASA release 02-238 9) CANDIDATE MISSION WOULD SCAN MARS ATMOSPHERE FOR SIGNS OF LIFE NASA/JPL release 2002-219 10) NASA TO UNVEIL NEW THEORIES ABOUT MARS, EARTH AT AGU MEETING NASA/ARC release 02-129AR 11) NASA SCIENTIST TO DISCUSS WHY SOME WOMEN QUIT SCIENCE CAREERS NASA/ARC release 02-128AR 12) SUMMARY REPORT FOR MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION CREW 8 By Ed Fisher 13) SPACE SCIENCE FOR LIFE ON EARTH: FUTURE ASTRONAUT DIAGNOSTICS FOR THE ISS BRINGS ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY FOR TELEMEDICINE ESA release 76-2002 14) NASA'S REVEALING ODYSSEY NASA release 2002-221 15) SATURN'S MOON TITAN MAY HOLD CLUES TO ORIGIN OF LIFE By Agnieszka Baier 16) ANYBODY OUT THERE? PART I By Oliver Sacks 17) 2003 NASA ACADEMY By Brian Roberts 18) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 19) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 20) INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-304 21) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 22) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 23) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release _____________________________________________________________________ HUBBLE MAKES PRECISE MEASURE OF EXTRASOLAR WORLD'S TRUE MASS Space Telescope Science Institute release STScI-PR02-27 3 December 2002 An international team of astronomers used the NASA Hubble Space Telescope to help make a precise measurement of the mass of a planet outside our solar system. The Hubble results show that the planet is 1.89 to 2.4 times as massive as Jupiter, our solar system's largest orbiting body. Previous estimates, about which there are some uncertainties, place the planet's mass at a much wider range: between 1.9 and 100 times that of Jupiter's. The planet, called Gliese 876b, orbits the star Gliese 876. It is only the second planet outside our solar system for which astronomers have determined a precise mass. The observations were made by George F. Benedict and Barbara McArthur (University of Texas at Austin), members of the international observing team led by Thierry Forveille (Canada-France- Hawaii Telescope Corporation, Hawaii and Grenoble Observatory, France). The results are being published in the December 20 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. Gl 876b is the more distant of two planets orbiting Gliese 876. It was originally discovered by two groups, led by Xavier Delfosse (Geneva/Grenoble Observatory) and Geoffrey Marcy (U.C. Berkeley and San Francisco State University). To see and read more about Gliese 876b, please click on: http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pr/2002/27 http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/latest.html http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html http://hubblesite.org/go/news The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). Contact: Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD Phone: 410-338-4514 E-mail: villard@stsci.edu Rebecca Johnson University of Texas, Austin, TX Phone: 512-475-6763 E-mail: rjohnson@astro.as.utexas.edu _____________________________________________________________________ REVOLUTIONARY NEW THEORY FOR ORIGINS OF LIFE ON EARTH Royal Society release 4 December 2002 A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin of life on Earth, is set to cause a storm in the science world and has implications for the existence of life on other planets. Research* by Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr. Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, claims that living systems originated from inorganic incubators--small compartments in iron sulfide rocks. The new theory radically departs from existing perceptions of how life developed and it will be published in Philosophical Transactions series B, a learned journal produced by the Royal Society. Since the 1930's the accepted theories for the origins of cells and therefore the origin of life, claim that chemical reactions in the earth's most ancient atmosphere produced the building blocks of life- -in essence--life first, cells second and the atmosphere playing a role. Professor Martin and Dr. Russell have long had problems with the existing hypotheses of cell evolution and their theory turns traditional views upside down. They claim that cells came first. The first cells were not living cells but inorganic ones made of iron sulfide and were formed not at the earth's surface but in total darkness at the bottom of the oceans. Life, they say, is a chemical consequence of convection currents through the earth's crust and in principle, this could happen on any wet, rocky planet. Dr. Russell says, "As hydrothermal fluid--rich in compounds such as hydrogen, cyanide, sulfides and carbon monoxide--emerged from the earth's crust at the ocean floor, it reacted inside the tiny metal sulfide cavities. They provided the right microenvironment for chemical reactions to take place. That kept the building blocks of life concentrated at the site where they were formed rather than diffusing away into the ocean. The iron sulfide cells, we argue, is where life began." One of the implications of Martin and Russell's theory is that life on other planets or some large moons in our own solar system, might be much more likely than previously assumed. The research by Professor Martin and Dr. Russell is backed up by another paper "The redox protein construction kit: pre-last universal common ancestor evolution of energy-conserving enzymes" by F. Baymann, E. Lebrun, M. Brugna, B. Schoepp-Cothenet, M.-T. Giudici- Orticoni & W. Nitschke, which will be published in the same edition. *"On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells", by Professor William Martin, Institut fuer Botanik III, University of Dusseldorf and Dr. Michael Russell, Scottish Environmental Research Centre, Glasgow. For further information, PDF file, and media password to access files direct, please contact Elaine Calvert (0776 461 4113 or +44 (0) 7241 6227, e-mail: elaine.calvert@lineone.net) To read more about this forthcoming issue, http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/phil_bio/news/genomics.html. Contact: Soccy Ponsford Press and PR Office The Royal Society Phone: 020 7451 2508 E-mail: socorro.ponsford@royalsoc.ac.uk http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk _____________________________________________________________________ RIPPLES IN TIME By Leslie Mullen From Astrobiology Magazine 4 December 2002 It's a bright, clear day in the Proterozoic. A microbial mat is basking in the sand, happily soaking up the sun's rays. The bacteria that make up the mat are using the sunlight to produce some much- needed food. The only thing missing is something cool to drink-- there often is some water in this sandy depression, but the last bit evaporated a few days ago. However, there are storm clouds on the horizon, and soon some rain will fall. Wait a minute--life on land during the Proterozoic? That can't be right--everyone knows that life only existed in the oceans during this period of Earth's history, 2.5 billion to 550 million years ago. Life isn't supposed to hit land until the Silurian, 440 million years ago, or possibly during the Ordovician, 490 million years ago. Until then, the continents were barren, lifeless wastelands. But emerging evidence is beginning to suggest that life may have come ashore much earlier than previously thought. Scientists have found geochemical evidence that indicates microbial life could have been on land as early as 2.7 billion years ago. A molecular clock study conducted by Blair Hedges of Penn State University found that mosses appeared on land about 700 million years ago, and lichens around 1.3 billion years ago. Many scientists are skeptical about molecular clock data, however, and geochemical evidence indicating life also can be controversial. Fossils, like it or not, are still considered the ultimate hard evidence for any paleontological theory. Yet fossils dating back to the Proterozoic are hard to come by. Life forms during this era were soft-bodied, which don't preserve as easily as the later hard-shelled life forms. However, Tony Prave of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland recently found some rocks that may prove life not only arrived on land early, but it also may have been widespread. In a paper published in the journal Geology, Prave describes features he discovered in 1 to 1.2 billion-year old sandstone deposits in Scotland's Torridon hillsides. Prave believes the sandstone features are the remnants of microbial mats. The organic material of the mats has long since decayed, but sand grains that were bound up in the mat's sticky mucus layers still remain. These sand grains show evidence of mats that tore, possibly due to rainstorms. They indicate how small pieces of the mat were carried away, becoming curled up into sausage-like shapes. Where chunks of the mat tore away, the sandy soil beneath was suddenly exposed to the elements. These newly exposed areas developed ripples, probably from the same water action that tore the mat in the first place. Pieces of the torn maps settled over these newly formed ripples and became embedded in the muck. "It's like you have a perfect green lawn, and then a storm blows a chuck of sod away," says Dave Bottjer, professor of geological sciences at the University of Southern California. "The loose soil underneath then becomes exposed to the storm, and ripples form when water washes over it. Perhaps pieces from your neighbor's lawn also fall onto the soil." Prave says that the microbial mats developed well away from wet areas like shorelines or fluvial channels. They may have existed in temporary pools of water, but since the water tended to evaporate these microbial mats can be considered the earliest known life to exist on land. Prave says he has no way of knowing what the original elevation of the land was, but anything further up than a river's edge or ocean shoreline would have been, for life at this time, dramatically high and dry. "Even if the rocks were deposited near sea-level, if my interpretations are correct than microbial biota had expanded to at least those 'dizzying' heights," says Prave. Making the leap to land Throughout most of the Proterozoic, life was single-celled. Some of these organisms developed photosynthesis and began to produce oxygen as a waste product. Still, the atmosphere during the Proterozoic was mostly nitrogen, with a little water vapor and carbon dioxide. Oxygen didn't become a major component of the atmosphere because it tended to react chemically with iron and other elements. The introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere was important for the development of an ozone layer. For ocean-dwelling organisms, the ozone layer isn't that important because the water acts as a protective shield against UV radiation. But for any organisms trying to make the transition to land, an ozone layer would've been necessary to prevent them from being fried alive. The first life forms to poke their head out of the water and brave the Sun's rays may have been cyanobacteria living in inter-tidal environments. These bacteria create microbial mats that can stack up to form large rock-like structures known as stromatolites. As sediment collects in the mat's sticky layers, sunlight is prevented from penetrating and photosynthesis can't occur. The bacteria then migrate up to create a new layer on top of the old. This process occurs again and again, creating multiple sediment layers over time. Such biologically produced stromatolites have been found dating back to at least 2.2 billion years ago (there are stromatolites dating back to 3.5 billion years ago, but whether they were produced by life or by other means is still under debate). Stromatolites can still be found in highly saline shoreline waters today, in such places as Australia's Shark Bay. Because there is no organic material remaining in the Scottish sandstone features, it's not possible to tell what sort of organisms made up the presumed microbial mat. But Prave thinks the most reasonable assumption is that they were similar to the cyanobacteria that were forming stromatolites. "Microbes were inhabiting near-shore marine environments, including shoreline and tidal settings, for a couple billion years prior to the time of deposition of the Torridonian rocks," says Prave. "In all that time, isn't it conceivable that the microbial biosphere could have adapted to and migrated up river systems and into lacustrine settings? Or, to turn that around--especially given what we know about extremeophile lifestyles--isn't it more unlikely to think that microbes stopped at the shoreline for all that time?" Dave Bottjer says the presumed microbial mats reported by Prave may be very similar to microbial life found in desert topsoil. These organisms--mostly cyanobacteria, lichens and mosses--create what is known as cryptobiotic soils. They have sticky filaments that adhere to soil particles, producing an intricate mat of fibers that make the soil resistant to wind and water erosion. "If you go out to the Desert Parks of the West, such as Arches National Park in Utah, there are now signs posted asking you not to step off the path onto the desert soil," says Bottjer. "When the soils get stepped on, they can take centuries to reform. People had always looked out on desert surfaces and said there's nothing there-- no life. We've only just realized that instead, there is life. Microbes are what holds the desert topsoil together." Likewise, the traditional view of the Proterozoic was that there was no life on the land. Bottjer says that instead, he can envision the Proterozoic continents covered with microbially-bound soils similar to those in the desert. "You and I wouldn't have seen them--the land would have looked barren just as it does in the desert," says Bottjer. "But if we were worms, then we would've seen a lot of life." What's next? Prave plans to follow up his Geology paper by examining other localities where similar rocks are exposed. He hopes to find more evidence that the rippled features resulted from microbial activity. "More importantly, though," says Prave, "I would hope that the paper generates enough excitement--or irritation--that it would cause other geologists to go out and re-examine their favorite non-marine Precambrian rocks. My personal feeling is that as more and more effort goes into examining the Precambrian sedimentary rock record, more such discoveries are likely." Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article324.html. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS SOCIETY TO BUILD OBSERVATORY AT MDRS Mars Society release 4 December 2002 The Mars Society announced today that it will build an astronomical observatory at its Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in southern Utah. Funding to establish the observatory was provided by a major donation by a Mars Society member who wishes to remain anonymous. The other prime sponsor of the observatory is Celestron, which has donated a high quality computerized eleven inch Schmidt Cassegrain Nexstar11GPS telescope for initial operations. Celestron has begun production of its new fourteen inch Schmidt Cassegrain system which includes a newly designed heavy-duty computerized German equatorial mount. This system, known as the CGE 1400, will be the finest instrument ever produced for the advanced amateur and university astronomy market. The Mars Society is in discussions with Celestron to obtain one of these systems for the Mars Society Desert Observatory as soon as one becomes available. Construction of the Mars Society Desert Observatory will begin with MDRS Crew Rotation 10, which will commence December 21, 2002. Design of the observatory system is being led by Peter Detterline, a founding Mars Society member and the Director of the Boyertown Planetarium in Pennsylvania. In his work designing the observatory, Detterline has had the active support and donated expertise of the Lehigh Valley Amateur Astronomical Association, one of the most accomplished amateur astronomical societies in the United States. Actual construction operations on site will be overseen by Mars Society project architect Frank Schubert, who led the building of Flashline Station on Devon Island in 2000 and the MDRS in Utah in 2001. We anticipate that first light will be seen by the observatory by Christmas, with regular operations beginning shortly after the New Year. Once established, the Mars Society Desert Observatory will be available on many nights for students, amateurs, and professional astronomers around the country to control via communication to the crew over the Internet. Eventually, direct Internet control of the observatory from remote sites will be implemented. The MDRS is located in an excellent dark-sky site, being some 3.5 hours south of Salt Lake City. The observatory will serve a number of important objectives. 1. It is an extended operations research experiment, investigating the feasibility, benefits, and impact on crew operations of working and maintaining a complex human-tended scientific instrument by the crew of a Mars base. 2. It is also an important human factors experiment. Mars and Utah both frequently have excellent skies, but the crew inside the hab never gets to see it. A telescope, which can be operated remotely from inside the hab (as this one will) provides a possible important recreational activity for the crew. 3. It is a demonstration of an important scientific activity that could be carried out crews of extraterrestrial bases more generally. 4. It will be used to support ongoing astronomical research. A telescope of this class located in a site as good as MDRS can make real contributions to astronomy, for example supporting the study of variable stars. The Mars Society is in contact with astronomer Dr. Robert Stencel of the Mount Evans Observatory and discussing how the telescope could be used in this way. 5. The observatory will be used to bring the excitement of science to students around the country, particularly to those in urban areas where people never really get to see the sky. Thus, on a given night, kids from a public school in places like the Bronx or Los Angeles will be able to operate a first class telescope in a first class viewing site, and possibly or the first time in their lives, get to see the universe for themselves. Not only that, they will be doing it in the context of participating in a human Mars exploration field exercise. It is our hope that this may inspire numerous young people to a greater interest in science, space, and engineering, and possibly influence them to start moving along a path that will open up careers to them in those areas. The Mars Society Desert Observatory is the second major addition to the Mars Desert Research Station being implemented during the 2002- 2003 field season. The first was the establishment of the Greenhab or "Living Machine." which uses greenhouse grown plants to recycle the water of the crew. This is the first time that a bioregnerative life support system has ever been field tested in support of a crew engaged in actual mission simulations. Observing time available! Observing time will be publicly available starting in January. Schools, professional astronomers, or amateur astronomy groups wishing to obtain observing time should send their requests by email to astronomy@marssociety.org. To find out more about the Mars Society, visit our web site at marssociety.org, or contact info@marssociety.org. _____________________________________________________________________ NEW CU-NASA RESEARCH BELIES PREVIOUS IDEA THAT MARS WAS ONCE WARM, WET PLANET University of Colorado release http://www.colorado.edu/NewsServices/NewsReleases/2002/2092.html 5 December 2002 A new study led by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers indicates Mars has been primarily a cold, dry planet following its formation some 4 billion years ago, making the possibility of the evolution of life there challenging at best. Led by CU-Boulder doctoral candidate Teresa Segura and her adviser, Professor Owen B. Toon, the team used Mars photos and computer models to show that large asteroids or comets hit the planet some 3.5 billion years ago. These impacts apparently occurred about the time major river channels were formed on the Red Planet, said Segura. According to the available evidence, roughly 25 huge impactors, each about 60 miles to 150 miles in diameter, slammed into Mars roughly every 10 million to 20 million years during the period, blowing a volume of debris equivalent to a global blanket hundreds of yards thick into the atmosphere. The material is believed to have melted portions of subsurface and polar ice, creating steam and scalding water that rained back on Mars at some six feet per year for decades or centuries, causing rivers to form and flow, according to the study. But the study belies the warm, wet, Mars theory of rivers and oceans embraced by many planetary scientists, since such impactors were so infrequent. "There apparently were some brief warm and wet periods on Mars, but we believe that through most of its history, Mars has been a cold, dry planet," said Segura, currently a visiting researcher at NASA-Ames in California. A paper by Segura, Toon, CU-Boulder graduate Anthony Colaprete--now at NASA-Ames--and Kevin Zahnle of NASA-Ames, will appear in the December 6 issue of Science. "When the river valleys on Mars were confirmed in the 1970s, many scientists believed there once was an Earth-like period with warmth, rivers and oceans," said Toon, director of CU-Boulder's Program in Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences and a professor at the University's Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Physics. "What sparked our interest was that the large craters and river valleys appeared to be about the same age." In between such catastrophic events, the planet was likely very cold, dry and inhospitable to any life forms, said Toon. "We definitely see river valleys, but not tributaries, indicating the rivers were not as mature as those on Earth." The rare, hot rains pelting Mars that likely came from water in asteroids and comets hitting the planets and the evaporation of some ice from polar caps and ice beneath the impacts would have been spectacular, said Segura. "We believe these events caused short periods of a warm and wet climate, but overall, we think Mars has been cold and dry for the majority of its history." According to Toon, previous theories that carbon dioxide gas and clouds warmed Mars during its early history "just have not worked out quantitatively." There is no evidence on Mars of large limestone deposits from the first billion years, which would be directly linked to large amounts of CO2, a greenhouse gas, he said. There also is no evidence that another greenhouse gas, methane--which can be created naturally by volcanic eruptions or produced by primitive life--was present in the martian atmosphere. But even CO2 and methane combined would not be enough to warm the planet as greenhouse gases did on Earth and Venus in their early histories, Toon said. "Hypotheses of a warm, wet Mars, based on the presumption that the valley networks formed in a long-lasting greenhouse climate, imply that Mars may once have been teeming with life," wrote the authors in Science. "In contrast, we envision a cold and dry planet, an almost endless winter broken by episodes of scalding rains followed by flash floods. "Only during the brief years or decades after the impact events would Mars have been temperate, and only then might it have bloomed with life as we know it," they wrote. Although temperatures in the subsurface of martian soil may have exceeded the boiling point during the impact period and provided a possible refuge for life underground, the short duration of warm periods predicted by the researchers would have made it difficult for life to ever establish itself on Mars, the team concluded. Contacts: University of Colorado at Boulder Teresa Segura Phone: 650-604-0321 E-mail: segurat@colorado.edu Owen B. Toon Phone: 303-492-1534 E-mail: toon@lasp.colorado.edu Jim Scott Phone: 303-492-3114 The Science article is available at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/298/5600/1977. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_impacts_021205.html. _____________________________________________________________________ EXPOSED WATER ICE DISCOVERED NEAR THE SOUTH POLE OF MARS USGS release http://www.usgs.gov/public/press/public_affairs/press_releases/pr1693 m.html 5 December 2002 Surface water in the form of ice exposed near the edge of Mars's southern perennial polar cap has been discovered for the first time, according to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research released today in the journal Science. There is evidence that the surface water ice in this region may be widespread--from a half-mile to six miles around the entire southern polar ice cap. USGS space scientist Timothy Titus and his colleagues Hugh Kieffer of USGS and Philip Christensen of Arizona State University noted that although it has long been known that water ice should be present in the southern polar region of Mars, until recently little evidence for water ice had been found. Previously, surface water ice had been documented on the northern polar cap of Mars, but this is the first time exposed water ice has been documented on the southern polar cap of the solar system's fourth planet. Titus and his colleagues used images from the Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) and temperature data from the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) to confirm the presence of water ice at the surface of the southern polar cap. In addition, the Mars Odyssey Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) observations showed that there is quite a bit of water ice buried beneath the surface in the southern polar region, but because GRS could not "identify" exposed water ice at the surface when the ice is only a few miles wide, scientists were not sure if exposed water ice existed at the surface of the southern polar regions of Mars. Enter THEMIS and TES--with their high-resolution images and sensitive temperature-monitoring data, THEMIS was "able" to tell the scientists where to look for possible water areas. "When we first saw the images from THEMIS, we noticed that areas that were dark were not all the same temperature, which suggested that the areas were composed of different stuff, perhaps even water ice," Titus said. The scientists then looked at TES data that overlapped the THEMIS images and found that in one area, called Unit I, the water ice warmed up slowly in the summer after the dry ice covering had sublimated away. (Under martian conditions water ice does not melt, it goes directly from solid to a gaseous state, a process called sublimation.) The temperature remained under about -90 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest martian ice gets and about the temperature of the northern summer ice cap on Mars, which is composed of dirty water ice (ice mixed with dirt and dust). "On the southern polar ice caps, the differences between daytime and nighttime temperatures were small, which also suggested to us that the "stuff" might be water ice," Titus said. Titus and his colleagues also examined unit S, located adjacent to unit I. It showed a different trend in temperatures than unit I. In unit S, as temperatures warmed early in the Mars summer, the dry ice covering changed from solid ice to gas much earlier than in unit I, and in a matter of a few days or so. Suddenly, said Titus, daytime temperatures jumped and the nighttime temperature stayed the same, which told us that as the dry ice sublimated, probably what was left behind was a 2-7 mm layer of dust over ice. "This suggests that the top layer changed from dirty water ice to dry dust," Titus said. "The cool nighttime temperatures are what one would expect from having a layer of water ice underneath the thin layer of dust." Titus and his colleagues are excited about the implications of these findings. "In some ways, this water ice may just be the 'tip' of the iceberg," Titus said. "The speculation is that there may be a whole mass of water ice underneath the southern polar cap." Determining the abundance and distribution of surface and near- surface water ice is fundamental for both understanding the water cycle of Mars and for the future exploration of Mars, Titus noted in the paper. Water ice, at or near the surface, is available for surface interactions and exchange with the atmosphere, causing, for example, atmospheric changes such as water vapor and water ice clouds. In addition, water ice that is in the top few inches of soil will most likely be accessible to future robotic probes and, ultimately, human exploration. For more information on this and other thermal observations of the Mars polar region, please visit http://www.mars-ice.org. The USGS serves the Nation by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize the loss of life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological, energy and mineral resources; and enhance and protect our quality of life. The Science article is available at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1080497v1. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_ice_021205.htm l. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERSTELLAR SIGNAL FROM THE 70'S CONTINUES TO PUZZLE RESEARCHERS By Seth Shostak From Space.com 5 December 2002 Of the many "maybe's" that SETI has turned up in its four-decade history, none is better known than the one that was discovered in August, 1977, in Columbus, Ohio. The famous Wow signal was found as part of a long-running sky survey conducted with Ohio State University's "Big Ear" radio telescope. The Wow signal's unusual nomenclature connotes both the surprise of the discovery and its sox-knocking strength (60 Janskys in a 10 KHz channel, which is more than 50 thousand times more incoming energy than the minimum signal that would register as a hit for today's Project Phoenix.) But is the Wow signal's notoriety merely the triumph of marketing over substance? Could this momentary cosmic burp have really been ET, or was it just random terrestrial interference dressed up with a sexy moniker? For a decade, Robert Gray, a long-time, independent SETI researcher from Chicago, has been trying to find out. Get the full story at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_shostak_wow_021205.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NASA SELECTS FOUR MARS SCOUT MISSION CONCEPTS FOR STUDY NASA release 02-238 6 December 2002 In the first step of a two-step process, NASA selected four proposals for detailed study as candidates for the 2007 "Scout" mission in the agency's Mars Exploration Program. NASA's Mars 2007 Scout selection process is the first fully competed opportunity for scientific missions to the Red Planet. "This Scout selection will serve as a trailblazer for what we plan to be a continuing line of a small, yet exciting, class of Mars missions," said Orlando Figueroa, Director for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. "These four outstanding proposals represent innovative ideas for exploring Mars on a modest budget to answer several priority questions about the Red Planet," said Dr. Ed Weiler, Associate Administrator for Space Science at NASA Headquarters. "I'm very pleased that this competition produced such a wide range of incredibly exciting ideas and I congratulate all members of the science teams involved," he said. Following detailed mission-concept studies, due for submission by July 2003, NASA intends to select one of the mission proposals by August 2, 2003, for full development as the first Mars Scout mission. The mission developed for flight will be launched in 2007. The selected proposals were judged to have the highest science value among 25 proposals submitted to NASA in August 2002 in response to the Mars Scout 2002 Announcement of Opportunity. Each will receive up to $500,000 to conduct a six-month implementation feasibility study focused on cost, management and technical plans, including educational outreach and small business involvement. "Each of the selected missions pursues some of the greatest unknowns about potential biological activity on Mars, including such issues as the presence of organic molecules or their byproducts," said Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA's Lead Scientist for Mars Exploration in Washington. The selected mission concepts, and the Principal Investigators, are: * SCIM (Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars): Professor Laurie Leshin, Arizona State University, Tempe. A sample-return mission using aerogel and use a "free-return trajectory" to bring the samples back to Earth. Such samples could provide breakthrough understanding of the chemistry of Mars, its surface, atmosphere, interior evolution and potential biological activity. * ARES (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey): Dr. Joel Levine, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. ARES offers to provide the first in situ measurements of the near-surface atmospheric chemistry within the Mars planetary-boundary layer, thereby providing critical clues to the chemical evolution of the planet, climate history, and potential biological activity. * Phoenix: Dr. Peter Smith, University of Arizona, Tucson. This mission proposes to conduct a stationary, in situ investigation of volatiles (especially water), organic molecules and modern climate. It aims to "follow the water" and measure indicator molecules at high-latitude sites where Mars Odyssey has discovered evidence of large ice concentrations in the martian soil. * MARVEL (Mars Volcanic Emission and Life Scout): Dr. Mark Allen, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. This mission proposes to conduct a global survey of the martian atmosphere's photochemistry to search for emissions that could be related to active volcanism or microbial activity, as well as to track the behavior of water in the atmosphere across a full annual cycle. The Mars Scout competition is designed to augment or complement, but not duplicate, major missions being planned as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program or those under development by foreign space agencies. The selected Scout science mission must be ready for launch before December 31, 2007, within a total mission cost cap of $325 million. The Mars Scout Program is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for the Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Contact: Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1727 An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0212/06marsscouts/. _____________________________________________________________________ CANDIDATE MISSION WOULD SCAN MARS ATMOSPHERE FOR SIGNS OF LIFE NASA/JPL release 2002-219 6 December 2002 A possible mission to Mars in 2007 would scrutinize the martian atmosphere for any chemical traces of life, or even environments supportive of life, anywhere on the planet. An international team led by Dr. Mark Allen, an atmospheric chemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, developed the mission proposal named Mars Volcanic Emission and Life Scout, or Marvel. Today, NASA announced that Marvel is one of four finalists in competition for the first Mars Scout Mission for the 2007 launch opportunity. Final selection by the NASA associate administrator for space science, Dr. Edward Weiler, will be made by late next summer. "One of the most exciting questions people ask is whether life exists elsewhere," Allen said. "A lot of us on this team think that if life ever existed on Mars, there is a good chance life still exists if there is any place warm and wet." Scientists in recent years have been developing strategies for how life on planets around other stars might be detected from what's in a planet's atmosphere. Allen's team turned that thinking toward Mars. For example, many types of microbes, including those living in cows' guts, produce methane. "Marvel will have such great sensitivity that if you had just three cows anywhere on Mars, we would be able to detect the amount of methane added to the atmosphere," he said. The mission would equip a Mars orbiter with two types of instruments that have proven useful in studying Earth's atmosphere from Earth orbit. One, an infrared solar occultation spectrometer, would look sideways through Mars' atmosphere toward the setting or rising Sun for an extremely sensitive reading of what chemicals are in the thin air that the sunlight passes through before hitting the instrument. The other, a submillimeter spectrometer, would look through any dust in the atmosphere to seek localized atmospheric concentrations of the chemicals of interest. "By the end of this decade, Marvel could either detect and localize any existing life and active volcanism on Mars or put extremely stringent limits on their existence," Allen said. The submillimeter spectrometer would also be used to seek localized concentrations of water vapor in the atmosphere, a strategy to identify places where subsurface water sources are actively venting. As one novel feature of the mission, the submillimeter spectrometer could be re-tuned from Earth to enable detection of interesting substances that the occultation spectrometer discovers in trace amounts. The instrument would then map the occurrences of the substance globally. JPL would manage the Marvel mission and would build both spectrometers. A third instrument, a camera for showing the context of cloud conditions during the atmospheric measurements, would be supplied by the Canadian Space Agency. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, CO, would build and operate the spacecraft. Designs for the mission, the spacecraft and operations draw heavily from the successful 2001 Mars Odyssey mission, now in orbit at Mars. A 20- member international science team has worked with Allen to plan how to achieve the research goals. If selected as NASA's first Mars Scout mission, Marvel would launch in the third quarter of 2007, arrive at Mars about a year later, use aerobraking to achieve the best shape for its polar orbit pattern, and then begin its primary science mission in October 2008 to examine Mars for a full 22-month martian year. The other three Mars Scout mission concepts selected and their principal investigators are: Sample Collection for Investigation of Mars, led by Professor Laurie Leshin of Arizona State University, Tempe; the Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey, led by Dr. Joel Levine, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA; and Phoenix, led by Dr. Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Scout Program for the NASA Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Additional information is available at http://jpl.convio.net/site/PixelServer?j=ZYEBMNW_hGlO-3BCLCXxIg. Contact: Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 _____________________________________________________________________ NASA TO UNVEIL NEW THEORIES ABOUT MARS, EARTH AT AGU MEETING NASA/ARC release 02-129AR 6 December 2002 The mystery of Mars river formations, study of coral reefs on Earth and why women sometimes quit science, are a few of the diverse topics that more than 60 local NASA scientists will discuss at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) that begins today in San Francisco. Scientists from NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley are joining thousands of colleagues December 6-10 to discuss Earth and planetary research at the AGU's biggest yearly meeting at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center (MCC). There will also be several news conferences highlighting geophysical and planetary research. "We think the river valleys and large craters on Mars, which are about the same age geologically, must be related, and our paper describes a possible connection," said Teresa Segura, a graduate student at the University of Colorado based at NASA Ames and author of a paper, "Environmental Effects of Large Impacts on Mars," that appears in today's issue of Science magazine. Segura will present a synopsis of this research at an AGU special session open to the media, "Mysteries of the Martian Rivers," to take place today from 2:00-4:00 PM PST in the MCC Theatre, Exhibit Hall C. This session will highlight new research on Mars. Scientists from NASA and the University of Colorado say the bombardment of Mars by comets and asteroids caused cycles of rain. The rain cycles led to global flooding, the formation of Mars' river valleys and other water-sculpted features, more than 3.8 billion years ago. For more information, see http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2002/02_126AR.html. Other AGU presentations by scientists from NASA Ames include: Saturday, December 7: Dr. Nathalie Cabrol, of the SETI Institute and Ames, will present preliminary observations and results of a recent expedition to Chile's Licancabur Volcano during the Planetary Analogs Session, P61D06, to be held in MCC 131 at 10:05 AM. Saturday, December 7 at 11:15 AM, Dr. David Blake and others will present a paper discussing characterizing and sampling California's ocean crust as analogs for microbial systems on Mars. Sunday, December 8: NASA scientist Liane Guild will discuss, "Clues to Coral Reef Health," a new method of remotely monitoring marine environments at 8:30 AM, in Hall D. Sunday, December 8: NASA scientist Azadeh Tabazadeh will discuss, "Reasons Why Some Women Quit Science," at 9:30 AM, in Hall D. NASA scientists also will present their findings, during several press conferences and key conference sessions. The topics of the press conferences and the conference sessions listed below are some of the most noteworthy of hundreds of NASA-funded research findings being presented during individual sessions. All times are Pacific Standard Time. For more information about AGU, contact Harvey Leifert at hleifert@agu.org or 202-777-7507. Contacts: Kathleen Burton NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650/604-1731 or 650/604-9000 E-mail: kburton@mail.arc.nasa.gov John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-5026 or 650-604-9000 E-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov An additional article on these subjects is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0212/05mars/index.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NASA SCIENTIST TO DISCUSS WHY SOME WOMEN QUIT SCIENCE CAREERS NASA/ARC release 02-128AR 6 December 2002 Women scientists often feel intimidated when they begin their careers and have to balance work and family demands, according to a NASA scientist who will make a presentation December 8 in San Francisco at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. NASA scientist Azadeh Tabazadeh will discuss "Reasons Why Some Women Quit Science" at a poster session from 9:30 AM to 10:30 AM PST in Hall D of the Moscone Convention Center. "I think young women should celebrate their accomplishments and learn from their mistakes," said Tabazadeh, a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "If something disappointing happens, like rejection of a technical paper, or a woman doesn't get a job for which she applies, then she should not give up because there are high and low points in science," she added. "Azadeh Tabazadeh is one of our young, top-notch atmospheric scientists at NASA Ames, and she is well received by her peers," said Warren Gore, chief of the Atmospheric Physics Branch at NASA Ames. "Women are under-represented in geophysics compared to other disciplines," Tabazadeh said. Nearly half of all graduate students majoring in various disciplines of science today are women, yet men still predominate the faculty makeup at most universities and research institutions. "The question is: 'why do so many women decide to major in science but not to pursue a career in science?'" she said. "Over the years I have seen highly capable women quit science for two main reasons. First, intimidation can be very difficult to deal with when someone is just starting a career in science." To overcome intimidation, Tabazadeh recommends that young women make a sincere effort to surround themselves with colleagues who are both knowledgeable and considerate. "Keep in my mind that women have a choice to choose their future collaborators, so they need to make some smart choices early on and throughout their careers," she said. "Second is the need to balance the demands of work with those of family life. Personally, I don't believe a tenure system is fair to young women who wish to have children," Tabazadeh said. The level of stress can be very high, which prevents women from applying for positions where they are given only a few short years to prove themselves, according to Tabazadeh. "Women should try not to make radical decisions (i.e., quit science) if they are too stressed," she advised. "They should talk to more senior women in the field to learn how to better deal with their stress. After all, a career in science has many ups and downs, and to survive, one needs to balance the good and bad days." Contact: John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-5026 or 650-604-9000 E-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ SUMMARY REPORT FOR MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION CREW 8 By Ed Fisher 6 December 2002 The second crew of the current field season, commanded by John "Dusty" Samouce, with Ed Fisher (Executive Officer and Communications), Phil Turek (Engineering), Derek Smith (Geologist), and Sini Merikallio (Planetary Scientist) has just completed its rotation. We experienced a number of unexpected events here that have allowed us to make some unique observations. First was the loss, early in the rotation, of our sixth crew member, Sara Goudarzi (Environmental Engineer). Sara had unexpected, urgent family matters back on "Earth", which forced her to leave the simulation. We were sorry to see her go, but we fully supported her decision. Sara's loss, however, gave us a unique opportunity, of observing how an exploration crew might deal with the loss or incapacity of a member. Sara's specialty was the Living Machine in the H.T. Odum Greenhouse, and we now had to adapt to fill the loss of that expertise. Phil Turek stepped in admirably, and educated himself on the theory and practice of the Living Machine's operations, using both on-board reference materials and input from Mission Support and the Greenhab team (which had designed and built the Living Machine). In addition to operating the Living Machine, Phil was able to make a number of improvements and completions, working from punchlists supplied by the Greenhab team. The five-person crew now left us short handed, relative to other crews. We found that three person surface excursions seemed optimal, which left only two people at the hab. With one person tied relatively close to the radio base station which was our communication link to the ground team, there was only one person left free at the hab. This limited the scope of projects which could be accomplished while an excursion was out, because many are two-person jobs. In the hazardous environment of martian surface exploration, you would always want to work in teams, and our odd number reduced us from three possible teams to two. Many proposals have been advanced regarding the optimal size of a human Mars Mission; our experience here has convinced us that six is the minimum. Our second unexpected event was the loss of satellite communications for most of our rotation. During a computer upgrade scheduled for our incoming transition weekend, the satellite internet link from the hab was lost. Troubleshooting over a number of days by our crew at the hab and various people at Mission Support failed to resolve the problem. So we improvised. We set up our communications base in nearby Hanksville, traveling into town each evening to maintain a brief communication window with Mission Support. In one sense this violated the simulation, but in another sense it validated it. Yes, we had to break seal constraints to go into town. But a crew on Mars, having lost communication, would have no compunctions about using alternate means to communicate with Earth. Under the Mars Direct plan, several backup facilities would be within reach of the Mars explorers, and they would certainly make use of them, as we did. Taken together these events showed the adaptability of humans when faced with the unexpected. We re-organized our resources and sought alternate solutions, which humans do much more effectively than robots. One of the prime considerations behind the creation of the Mars Desert Research Station is to learn how to explore on Mars; that includes dealing with the unexpected, which we did with success. Despite the unexpected difficulties, we generally succeeded in meeting our project goals. The salient exception was a test of new database and communication software, which was dependent on internet communication. Derek completed his spatial database, which we hope will be a significant resource for following crews. Dusty made several trial runs with his telescopes as a precursor to the new astronomical observatory which will soon be installed here. Phil was able to realize a long held dream of imaging what the first greening of Mars might look like. Ed made good progress on organizing the engineering information about the hab. We probably learned as much about ourselves here as we did about exploring Mars- what is it really like to share a small space and rugged living conditions with four others, how does it actually feel to be the first to trod new ground. Would we actually go to Mars if we had the chance? Each of us will have to discover that answer for ourselves. To find out more about the Mars society, visit our web site at www.marssociety.org, or contact info@marssociety.org. _____________________________________________________________________ SPACE SCIENCE FOR LIFE ON EARTH: FUTURE ASTRONAUT DIAGNOSTICS FOR THE ISS BRINGS ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY FOR TELEMEDICINE ESA release 76-2002 6 December 2002 On Thursday 5 December 2002 an ESA-coordinated demonstration in medical telediagnostics was carried out on board the French hospital ship Sirocco. In a project initiated by ESA in association with the Department of Space Medical Physiology at the University of Tours, the Vision and Robotics Laboratory at Bourges, Sinters Toulouse, and CNES, this was the first real-time demonstration of the use of a teleoperated robotic arm for echographic diagnosis in a remote situation. The objective of the project was to demonstrate how teleoperated echographic diagnosis can be carried out on patients at remote locations. A radiologist at St Anne's Hospital in Toulon used the teleoperated robotic arm to diagnose a test patient on board the ship stationed at sea. With the robotic arm, videoconferencing equipment and satellite communications, the radiologist was able to assess the severity of medical problems from the remote site. This has important implications for spaceflight and research as it means that astronauts on board the international space station can receive diagnostic attention without returning to Earth. Medical telediagnostic research also has important implications for life on earth. It expands the range of remote echographic diagnosis and this can contribute significantly to the delivery of efficient medical care in small rural hospitals in Europe where access to radiologists is limited or in situations where second opinions are needed. Remote echographic diagnostics also has a role to play in remote and emergency situations such as in many parts of the third world, the polar regions and at sea. The project has been funded by ESA for several years as part of its Microgravity Applications Programme and Technology Transfer Programme, with support from the Directorate of Technical and Operations Support. It is an example ESA's sustained efforts to involve universities and industry in the development of space-related research which can serve to improve the quality of life on earth. "The project reflects ESA's continued commitment to the advancement of space science for life," said Jörg Feustel-Büechl, ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight, "and aims to contribute to the development of further cooperation on telemedical research among European scientific communities and industry." The demonstration was carried out in conjunction with the conference on telemedicine held in Toulon on 5 and 6 December. For specialists interested in discussing telemedicine with project managers and scientists, ESA is holding an Internet Forum on Thursday 12 December from 14.00 to 15.00 which can be accessed via www.esa.int/spaceflight Contact: Dr. Didier Schmitt Head of Life Sciences Unit ISS Utilisation and Promotion Division Directorate of Human Spaceflight European Space Agency Phone: +31-71-565-48-88 Mobile: +31-6-22-77-91-90 Fax: +31-71-565-36-61 E-mail: Didier.Schmitt@esa.int _____________________________________________________________________ NASA'S REVEALING ODYSSEY NASA release 2002-221 7 December 2002 The latest observations from NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft, highlighting water ice distribution and infrared images of the Red Planet's surface, are being released this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. "The Odyssey science mission is going exceptionally well," said Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, the Odyssey project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The instrument teams have already collected a huge volume of data, and the presentations at this conference are the most extensive and illuminating of the mission so far." In mid-October the frozen carbon dioxide, which seasonally caps Mars' north pole, evaporated enough to give Odyssey's scientists their first chance to look there for ice. "We are really excited about what we are seeing in the north polar region of Mars. With the seasonal carbon dioxide frost gone, we can see evidence of massive amounts of water ice in the soil, even more than we found in the south," said Dr. William Boynton, principal investigator for Odyssey's gamma-ray spectrometer suite at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "The infrared and visible images have revealed a wonderful diversity of surface types and features. Nighttime temperature images show complex patterns of rock layers, rocky debris, sand and dust produced by impact cratering, wind erosion and deposition," said Dr. Philip Christensen, principal investigator for Odyssey's thermal-infrared imaging system at Arizona State University, Tempe. "Color infrared images of Mars show variations in rock layers similar to those seen in the layered rocks of the Grand Canyon. The visible color images show Mars to be a dusty place, with most of the surface covered by a thin layer of bright orange-red dust." "The Martian Radiation Environment Experiment has observed very different space weather near Mars than has been seen during the same period by satellites near Earth," said Dr. Cary Zeitlin, principal investigator for that experiment at the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, Houston. "Variations in space weather are caused by solar activity, including solar flares. To help us understand these events, we compare data from Odyssey to data from similar instruments in orbit around Earth. The recent observations are particularly exciting because Earth and Mars have been on opposite sides of the Sun," he said. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C. Investigators at Arizona State University in Tempe, the University of Arizona in Tucson and NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, operate the science instruments. Additional science partners are located at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and at Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, the prime contractor for the project, developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL. Additional information about the 2001 Mars Odyssey is available on the Internet at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=k71IioUymEJO- 3BCLCXxIg. Contacts: Mary Hardin Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-0344 Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1727 An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0212/08odyssey/. _____________________________________________________________________ SATURN'S MOON TITAN MAY HOLD CLUES TO ORIGIN OF LIFE By Agnieszka Baier University of Arizona release December 7, 2002 Enshrouded in an atmosphere impenetrable to the visible light, Saturn's largest moon has never revealed its surface. No one has been able to see through the orange-brown atmospheric haze and admire the unknown world below. Still, researchers know that Titan is a planet-size organic reactor where "building blocks" of life are being generated as they might have been created 4 billion years ago on Earth. In some ways, Titan resembles early Earth. Its dense atmosphere is mostly composed of nitrogen and some methane. Scientists once believed that early Earth's atmosphere was reducing like Titan's and that it allowed fast assembly of long organic molecules. Today many argue that Earth's primordial atmosphere contained nitrogen and a lot of carbon dioxide. "This type of atmosphere is neutral for oxidation and reduction reactions and does not allow an easy and direct formation of long chains of organic molecules," says University of Arizona planetary sciences Professor Jonathan I. Lunine. "Some particular circumstances may be required to create them. Although there isn't much carbon dioxide on Titan, if we see that complex organic molecules are created on Titan, it would be a very important lesson about the early Earth and the environment in which life originated." "Titan has organics, but in what form and how much is not clear. These molecules are generated in the atmosphere and over time are deposited on the moon's surface. Until recently, researchers have been very careful in their speculations about what might be happening after these molecules get to the surface of Titan," Lunine says. The atmospheric pressure at Titan's surface is 50 percent higher than on Earth, which is pressure comparable with pressure at the bottom of a 10-foot-deep swimming pool. Titan's thick atmosphere protects the surface and organics from harmful cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation. The NASA Cassini spacecraft launched in 1997 with the mission to study Saturn and its moons will reach its target in 2004. It carries the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which will descend through Titan's atmosphere and land on the surface. The Cassini-Huygens mission will conduct a 4-year survey of Titan's surface and atmosphere through remote sensing and in-situ techniques. "The Cassini mission has the potential to teach us as much about Titan as we know about Mars today. We will learn about the surface composition, find out more about the atmosphere, and see what the surface looks like. The Cassini orbiter will measure the shape of Titan's gravitational field, which will help determine the nature of Titan's interior," Lunine says. "Titan will be full of surprises. One of them will be organic chemistry processes on the surface. It would be interesting to see what their products might be," he adds. "I also hope that Cassini- Huygens will tell us if there are places on Titan where the organic molecules look different, and therefore, might be modified over time. Particularly exciting would be finding out if there are any variations in the apparent organic composition that are correlated with impact carters or sites of volcanism. If that turns out to be true, these should be the places to visit in the future," he says. Could Titan host primitive life? "It is not the right place, it is too cold," Lunine says. "Others have argued that life could exist in the deep interior of Titan where liquid water may be available all the time. It is possible, but finding it would be extremely difficult. I do not see Titan as the place to search for life. But it certainly is the place to explore the chemistry that may have led to its origin." For life to be possible, Titan would need liquid water, which is not stable for long because Titan is too cold. However, many of the large icy moons in the outer solar system host active water volcanism. Most of them contain a lot of liquid water, which flows across their surfaces in the same way lava does on Earth. Their internal heat initiates a melt that rises to the surface. These moons also contain various substances that are antifreezes (e.g. ammonia or formaldehyde). They are mixed into the water which lowers the density of liquid water and helps the water come up to the surface through the more dense icy crust. Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system, and if it hosts such volcanic processes, then water exists temporarily on the surface. Titan can also be heated with large impacts. In the early 1990s, Carl Sagan and W. Reid Thompson of Cornell University suggested that impacts on the surface of Titan would melt the icy crust and produce liquid water. Lunine and a colleague from Moscow have been modeling impacts on Titan to see what fraction of the crater would become liquid due to an impact. They calculate that an impact of a one- kilometer-diameter comet can turn about 5 percent of a craterıs interior into liquid. Their simulations also show that the areas potentially containing organic matter would not be heavily shocked in an impact. Organic material survives such events and would be tossed in the crater where the liquid water would exist. When life on Earth originated about 4 billion years ago, large impacts were frequent. "An organic soup on Earth did not have much uninterrupted time to form products relevant to life. Undoubtedly, the environment was changing dramatically, as young Earth was struck by other impacts or altered by volcanism," Lunine says. Although today the solar system is relatively a quiet place, a one- kilometer-diameter object could hit Titan once every 10 million - 50 million years. "There should be areas that haven't been changed in geologically recent time and where the products of organic processes that happened after that impact should be preserved. These may not be possible to investigate with the Cassini-Huygens probe, but could be done with the following missions. We are very optimistic that there are places on Titan where organic matter might be dropped into the liquid water at the bottom of the crater after an impact. This water can be available for hundreds or even up to a thousand years," Lunine says. A thousand years is very short on a geologic time scale, but it's a long time for organic chemistry. "No scientist has a thousand years, so we can't proceed at this time scale in the laboratory. Though we don't have a chance to see organic reaction on Titan in action, we may find the products of organic chemistry if we go to the right place," he adds. "If Cassini finds that organic matter looks the same everywhere on the surface, then this probably did not happen. But we need to go and see." The chance that the Huygens probe will land in the right place is infinitesimal, but the Cassini orbiter can map the surface and tell if amino acids or peptides might be present. "We have been designing miniature laboratory equipment that may be eventually sent to Titan to analyze the properties of organic molecules on the surface," Lunine says. The search would be for fossil organics, not fossil life, that have been modified at the bottoms of craters. Contacts: Agnieszka Baier UA News Services Phone: 520-621-1877 Jonathan Lunine Phone: 520-621-2789 E-mail: jlunine@lpl.arizona.edu An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0212/07titan/. _____________________________________________________________________ ANYBODY OUT THERE? PART I By Oliver Sacks From Astrobiology Magazine 9 December 2002 One of the first books I read as a boy was H. G. Wells' 1901 fable, The First Men in the Moon. The men land in an apparently barren and lifeless crater, just before the lunar dawn; then, as the sun rises, they realize there is an atmosphere; they spot small pools and eddies of water, and then little round objects scattered on the ground. One of these, as it is warmed by the sun, bursts and reveals a sliver of green ("'A seed,' says Cavor... and then, very softly, 'Life!'"). They light a piece of paper and throw it onto the surface of the moon--it glows and sends up a thread of smoke, indicating that the atmosphere, though thin, is rich in oxygen, and will support life as they know it. This, then, was how Wells conceived the prerequisites of life: water, oxygen, and a source of energy (sunlight). "A Lunar Morning," the eighth chapter in his book, was my first introduction to astrobiology. If Wells envisaged the beginning of life in The First Men on the Moon, he envisaged its ending in The War of the Worlds, where the Martians, confronting increasing desiccation and loss of atmosphere on their own planet, make a desperate bid to take over the Earth (only to perish from infection by terrestrial bacteria). Wells, who had trained as a biologist, was very aware of both the toughness and the vulnerability of life, and all the vicissitudes, which could befall it. It was apparent, even in Wells' day, that most of the other planets in our solar system were not possible homes for life. But Mars was a solid planet of reasonable size, in stable orbit, at a reasonable distance from the sun, and with a temperature range, it was thought, which would allow liquid water to exist; so, it seemed, a fair bet for life. But free oxygen gas--how would this survive in a planet's atmosphere without being mopped up by ferrous iron and other oxygen-hungry chemicals on the surface... unless it were pumped out in huge quantities, continually, enough to oxidize all the surface minerals, and then to keep the atmosphere charged? The obvious raw materials for oxygen production are water and carbon dioxide, but the photochemical decomposition of water (to yield oxygen) requires not only energy but metal-containing catalysts or enzymes, such as only occur in living matter. Thus the presence of free oxygen in a planet's atmosphere would be an infallible marker of life. It was the blue-green algae, the cyanobacteria, which over a vast period infused the earth's atmosphere with oxygen, a process that took between a billion and two billion years. The fossil record shows that blue-green algae go back three and a half billion years, but, amazingly, some still thrive today, in odd corners of the world, forming strange, cushionlike colonies called stromatolites. It is an extraordinary experience to go to Shark Bay in Australia, where stromatolites flourish in the hypersaline waters, to watch them slowly bubbling oxygen, and to reflect that this, three billion years ago, was how the earth was transformed. (Oxygen, of course, is a mere by-product, a waste product, so far as the blue-green algae are concerned. The virtue of photosynthesis for them is that it enables them to use the sun's energy to bond carbon and hydrogen and oxygen together to form complex molecules sugars, carbohydrates which can then be stored and tapped for their energy as needed.) But astrobiologists should not see atmospheric oxygen as a necessity for life. Planets, after all, start without free oxygen, and may remain without it for all of their lives. But this does not negate the possibility of life. Anaerobic bacteria swarmed before oxygen was available, perfectly at home in the reducing atmosphere of the early Earth, converting nitrogen to ammonia, sulfur to hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide to formaldehyde, etc. (From formaldehyde and ammonia, they could make every organic compound they needed.) There may be planets in our solar system (and elsewhere) that lack an atmosphere of oxygen but are nonetheless teeming with anaerobes. And such anaerobes need not be on the surface of the planet; they could occur well below the surface, in boiling vents and sulfurous hot pots (as they still occur on the Earth today), to say nothing of subterranean oceans and lakes. (There is such a subsurface ocean on Europa, locked beneath a kilometers-thick shell of ice, and its exploration is one of the astrobiological priorities of this century. One would like to think of it teeming with great squids and whales-- or the equivalent of these in an alien evolution--but it would be exciting enough even it if just contained bacteria. Curiously, Wells, in The First Men on the Moon, imagines life originating in a central sea in the middle of the moon, and then spreading outwards to its inhospitable periphery.) It is not clear whether life has to "advance," whether evolution has to take place, if there is a satisfactory status quo - brachiopods, lampshells, for example, have remained virtually unchanged since they first appeared in the Cambrian. But there does seem to be a drive to gain ground, to become more widespread, more efficient, if this is possible. Thus the primitive anaerobes that represent the first signs of life we can find on the earth consisted of very small and simple cells, cytoplasm bounded by a cell wall, but without any internal structure at all. Such prokaryotes, as they are called, survive to the present day, along with the more complex organisms that arose from them. (Primitive as they are, these prokaryotes are still highly sophisticated, with formidable genetic and metabolic machinery. They contain around 3000 proteins, and their DNA upwards of a million base pairs. It is certain that still more primitive life forms must have preceded them perhaps, as Freeman Dyson has suggested, organisms capable of metabolizing, growing, and dividing, but lacking any genetic mechanism for precise replication. But we have, as yet, no evidence concerning such precursors, nor of the abiotic chemical cycles that must have come still earlier, in the primordial sea.) But by degrees this happened with glacial slowness--prokaryotes became more complex, acquired internal structure, nuclei, mitochondria, etc. (such nucleated cells are called eukaryotes) and acquired the capacity to utilize what was originally a noxious poison: oxygen. (Lynn Margulis, in the 1970s, championed the astounding suggestion that eukaryotes arose by incorporating other bacteria, which eventually became symbiotic--functioning parts, organelles, of their hosts. This certainly seems to be true of mitochondria, etc., which are genetically different from the rest of the cell.) These evolutionary changes--from prokaryote to eukaryote, from anaerobic to aerobic--occupied the better part of two billion years. And there than had to pass another 1200 or 1300 million years before life rose above the microscopic, and the first "higher," multicellular organisms appeared. (c)2002 Oliver Sacks, reprinted by permission of the NASA Arts Program. Additional information on this article is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article327.html. _____________________________________________________________________ 2003 NASA ACADEMY By Brian Roberts The NASA Academy provides undergraduate and graduate students an unparalleled opportunity to spend the summer working with scientists and engineers at NASA centers through a group project, guided laboratory research, seminars and colloquia, field trips, posters and presentations, and meetings with prominent professionals. The curriculum balances engagement in advanced science and engineering R&D with an awareness of the system of managerial, political, financial, social, and human contexts of aerospace programs. Students choose from the Space Flight Academy at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, June 1 - August 8, or the Astrobiology Academy at Ames Research Center and Stanford University in California, June 22 - August 29. Further descriptions, contact information, and an online application are available at http://www.nasa-academy.nasa.gov. The application is due January 31, 2003, and requires an essay, letters of recommendation, and sponsorship by a state Space Grant office or other as explained on the web site--so don't wait until the last minute! _____________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.h tml 9 December 2002 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s1.html R. A. Kerr, 2002. A smashing source of early martian water? Science, 298(5600):1866. O. Sacks, 2002. Anybody out there? Part I. Astrobiology Magazine. T. L. Segura, O. B. Toon, A. Colaprete, and K. Zahnle, 2002. Environmental effects of large impacts on Mars. Science, 298(5600):1977-1980. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s4.html S. Shostak, 2002. Interstellar signal from the 70's continues to puzzle researchers. Space.com. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_article s5.html A. Baier, 2002. Saturn's moon Titan may hold clues to origin of life. Spaceflight Now. L. Mullen, 2002. Ripples in time. Astrobiology Magazine. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 26 November - 4 December 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 . The C34 sequence concluded this week with the completion of the Probe Relay Test #5, uplink of the C35 background sequence, Radio and Plasma Wave (RPWS) Science High Frequency Receiver calibrations and high rate cyclics, a Reaction Wheel Assembly (RWA) slow-speed readout, clearing of the ACS high-water marks, and an autonomous Solid State Recorder Memory Load Partition repair. The Probe Relay Test was considered to be a limited success. All transmissions to the spacecraft were received and processed properly, but problems at the DSN station prevented all test objectives from being fully met. The C35 background sequence began execution on Saturday, 30 November. Initial spacecraft activities included a number of RWA activities including transition from Reaction Control Subsystem to RWA control, an RWA unload, a slow speed readout, and an exercise of RWA #4. Engine Gimbal Actuator and Backup ALF Injection Loader maintenance were also performed. Instrument activities included uplink of the RPWS looper program, a Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer and Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph solar port observation, exercising of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) Low Energy Magnetospheric Measurement Subsystem motor, restoration of the MIMI Ion and Neutral Camera HV levels, a Cosmic Dust Analyzer high rate detector calibration, and a number of Radio Science Subsystem activities. During the final pass before the end of C34 and the beginning of C35, Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) had a channel go into alarm for low temperature. Subsequent analysis determined that the commands to bring CAPS out of sleep after the Probe test were built incorrectly. An Immediate/Delayed Action Program was built and sent to the instrument to stop the actuator, reset it, and set the RAM to zero. After uplink the CAPS team reported that the transition sequence was triggered and successfully re-configured the instrument. CAPS is now running in a fully configured and nominal state. The Cassini Program hosted a week of Huygens meetings at JPL. Events included the Huygens Descent Trajectory Working Group meeting, a Probe Checkout #10 Review, and a Quarterly Progress meeting. Some of the topics discussed included activities status, entry angle issues, mission timeline and schedules, and navigation and pre-heating implementation studies. Rescheduling of the SIRTF launch to mid April '03 has removed potential conflicts with DSN coverage for the Cassini ACS/CDS flight software checkout in C36. DSN schedule impacts in C37 are unknown. Mission Planning will track DSN coverage for that time frame as Trajectory Correction Maneuver 19 is scheduled to occur on May 1. Additionally, some Cassini trained ACE personnel with SIRTF may now be available to support tracks for the Gravitational Wave Experiment. An engineering prototype version of the electronic command request form (eCRF) v1 was released this week. The system will be used in parallel with Cassini's existing process. Full conversion to eCRF will occur in late 2003. Mission Assurance and European Space Agency (ESA) Risk Management personnel met this week to discuss the Risk Management process/philosophy on Cassini, and determine how best to work the ESA/Huygens Probe portion of the process. Probe Mission risks currently identified in the Cassini Significant Risk List clearly indicate a very orbiter-centric view. This was the first of several meetings to be conducted in the coming months in an effort to effectively capture and document risks from an ESA/Huygens Probe perspective. Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION SCIENCE OPERATIONS STATUS REPORT NASA/MSFC release 02-304 4 December 2002 Elements of the Microgravity Science Glovebox were packed aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour for return to Earth for repairs this week after extensive troubleshooting efforts by the crew of the International Space Station. Expedition Five Science Officer Peggy Whitson and Expedition Six Science Officer Don Pettit conducted a variety of tests--including electronic continuity checks--on the Glovebox on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The crew and control teams concluded that in-orbit repair was not possible on the Glovebox. The Power Distribution and Control (PDC) box and a related component, the Exchangeable Standard Electronics Module (ESEM) #3, were packed aboard Endeavour Sunday before undocking on Monday. Replacement parts are in the final stages of testing and will be ready for the next shuttle flight to Space Station in March. The returned parts will be examined for failure analysis. If there is an inherent design problem, a modification will be attempted prior to re-flight in March. The Glovebox experienced a loss of power on November 20 during sample processing on the Pore Formation and Mobility Investigation. Subsequent attempts to re-power the Glovebox were unsuccessful. Glovebox science activities will be deferred until the returned equipment can be repaired and ferried back to the Station. Before Shuttle undocking on Monday, the crews completed the transfer of new Expedition Six experiments to the orbiting lab and stowing completed Expedition Five payloads aboard the Space Shuttle. Five new experiments or additional samples for current experiments were stowed in the Destiny lab module. Plants and biological samples grown and processed during Expedition Five will be returned to science teams on the ground for analysis. Beginning today (December 4) and scheduled to continue through Saturday, Pettit, Nikolai Budarin and Ken Bowersox did the computer- based training, diet log and urine sample collections for the Renal Stone experiment. Pettit is scheduled to stow the experiment hardware on Sunday. The crew will do the Renal Stone research two more times during Expedition Six, in addition to daily ingestion of Potassium Citrate/Placebo pills as part of the countermeasure study. Also today, Pettit--together with the science team and controllers on the ground--installed a new computer hard drive into the Human Research Facility (HRF) laptop computer and upgrading the HRF rack operating software to support Expedition Six research operations. Ground controllers verified that the software upgrade worked correctly. Pettit today was also scheduled to download radiation data from the EVA Radiation Monitoring (EVARM) experiment to the HRF laptop, which were later sent to the ground. The data was collected by dosimeter badges worn in the U.S. EVA suits during three spacewalks to attach a new section of framework to the Station. The badges measure radiation absorbed by the eyes, skin, and blood-forming organs. On Friday, Pettit is scheduled to prepare and check out the HRF workstation to support the new Foot Reaction Forces During Space Flight (FOOT) experiment. This experiment will study the stress on the lower extremity bones and muscles during extended missions in microgravity. Experiment operations are planned for later this month. Crew Earth Observation subjects for this week included: lake levels in the Central Andes related to El Nino-related rainfall patterns, Central Andes Mountains, the El Chichon volcano in Mexico, Guatemala's Santiaguito and Pacaya volcanoes, the Peten rain forest, major coral reefs of the Yucatan coastline, panoramic views of Cuba, the Bounty Islands, North Island and Aukland in New Zealand, Honolulu, Hawaii, Lake Eyre in Australia, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the active volcano of Mount Cameroon, Bamako, Mali, Navassa Island in the Caribbean, and Mexico City. The Expedition Six crew this week continued to conduct daily status health and status checks on new and continuing research payloads. 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 MSFC Media Relations Department Phone: 256-544-0034 E-mail: Steve.Roy@msfc.nasa.gov _____________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 27 November 2002 Launch / Days since Launch = November 7, 1996 / 2212 days Start of Mapping / Days since Start of Mapping = April 1, 1999 / 1337 days Total Mapping Orbits = 16,635 Total Orbits = 18,318 Recent events The spacecraft is operating nominally in performing the beta- supplement daily recording and transmission of science data. The mm229 sequence executed successfully from 02-325 (11/21/02) through 02-327 (11/23/02). The mm230 sequence has performed well since it started on 02-328 (11/24/02). It terminates on 02-331 (11/27/02). The mm231 sequence, successfully uplinked on 02-330 (11/26/02), begins executing near the end of day on 02-331 (11/27/02). Fifteen Roll Only Targeted Observations (ROTOs) were performed successfully by the mz219, mz220, and mz221 mini-sequences. MGS has completed 418 ROTOs to date. Spacecraft health Spacecraft subsystems report good health and performance. Uplinks There have been 18 uplinks to the spacecraft during the past week, including new star catalog and ephemeris files, instrument command loads, the mz221, & mz222 ROTO mini-sequences, and the mm230 & mm231 background sequences. 7,214 command files have been radiated to the spacecraft since launch. Upcoming events ROTOs are planned for next week in the mz221, mz222, & mz223 mini- sequences. A DDOR experiment will be conducted on 02-332 (11/28/02). A Nav acceptance test is scheduled for 02-333 (11/29/02). The next series of Radio Science Occultation Egress measurements will occur from 02-336 (12/02/02) to 02-337 (12/03/02) as part of mz223. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 2-5 December 2002 Kasei Vallis (Released 2 December 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021202a.html Rest In Peace Mars Polar Lander (Released 3 December 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021203a.html Impact Crater (Released 4 December 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021204a.html Crater Upon Crater (Released 5 December 2002) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20021205a.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 6 December 2002 The Stardust flight team had one period of communication with the spacecraft using JPL's Deep Space Network this week. The telemetry relayed during this period indicated the spacecraft is healthy and all subsystems were running nominally. The interstellar dust collection continues, but will end on December 9th, when the Sample Return Capsule will be closed as scheduled. For more information on the Stardust mission--the first ever comet sample return mission--please visit the Stardust home page at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov. _____________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 9, Number 46.