MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 12, 24 March 2003. 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) 15-FOOT HYPODERMIC NEEDLES PROVIDE EVIDENCE FOR VAST OCEANIC CRUSTAL BIOSPHERE University of Washington release 2) LAKESIDE LANDING By Henry Bortman 3) CALL FOR SPACE SETTLEMENT TO BE CORE GOAL OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT PROGRAM From SpaceDaily 4) MARS EXPRESS LEAVES FOR BAIKONUR ESA release 5) THE SPACE SETTLEMENT SUMMIT By John Carter McKnight 6) MARS TRIP POSTPONED INDEFINITELY By Robert N. Going 7) THE RHYTHM OF SETI: OBSERVING IN REAL-TIME By Peter Backus 8) AS CONFLICT BEGINS, RESEARCHERS WORK TO DEFINE HUMANITY'S ASPIRATIONS FOR ET By Douglas Vakoch 9) PASTEUR: PAYLOAD OPPORTUNITIES TO SEARCH FOR LIFE ON MARS ESA release 18-2003 10) SMALL WORLD By Stephen Hart 11) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 12) CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 13) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 14) MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS: SPACECRAFT AND EXPENDABLE VEHICLES STATUS REPORT By George H. Diller 15) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release ________________________________________________________________________ 15-FOOT HYPODERMIC NEEDLES PROVIDE EVIDENCE FOR VAST OCEANIC CRUSTAL BIOSPHERE University of Washington release 18 March 2003 Teeming with heat-loving microbes, samples of fluid drawn from the crustal rocks that make up most of the Earth's seafloor are providing the best evidence yet to support the controversial assertion that life is widespread within oceanic crust, according to H. Paul Johnson, a University of Washington oceanographer. Johnson is lead author of a report being published March 25 in the American Geophysical Union's publication Eos about a National Science Foundation-funded expedition he led last summer. Fifteen-foot-long hypodermic needles--strong enough to penetrate the volcanic rocks that make up the Earth's crust--were among the novel devices used to collect samples from sites on the Juan de Fuca plate 200 miles off the coast of Washington and Oregon. Scientists have known for 20 years of microorganisms that thrive in the acidic iron-, sulfur- and heavy-metal-rich fluid environments in areas where seafloor is being created at mid-ocean ridge spreading centers. These areas are subject to frequent volcanic eruptions and can have fields of hydrothermal vents that pour superheated water as hot as 750°F into the oceans. As visually spectacular as such areas can be, they represent only a tiny area of the seafloor. Far more of the seafloor is tens of millions of years old. "The types of seafloor environments we sampled last summer are found everywhere in the ocean. This argues, although it doesn't prove, that oceanic crust may be a microbial incubator of global proportions," he says. Scientists still haven't sampled widely enough to say for sure, and it was just January 3 when the first report of microbes living in 3.5 million-year-old crust was published in the journal Science by Johnson and co-authors from University of Hawaii, Oregon State University and University of Illinois. Now Johnson and another group of scientists report in Eos that they retrieved and are actively growing microbes from both old and young seamounts--"old" being 3.5 million years in age and "young" being new enough to be volcanically active. They also are culturing microbe samples from similarly old and young seafloor that is unaffected by the growth of seamounts or disturbed by fracture zones or tectonic forces--what Johnson refers to as "normal" seafloor. Ninety percent of the world's seafloor consists of normal seafloor or has seamounts similar to the types of crust recently sampled, Johnson says. And most of that--even seafloor that's much older, 100 million years or more--is similar to the 3.5-million-year-old sites sampled as far as porosity of the rock, the sediment cover and rock temperatures of between 100° and 160°F, he says. The rocks at the sites on the Juan de Fuca plate are at the higher end of the range for 3.5 million-year-old crust because sediments covered them at a very young age. University of Washington doctoral student Julie Huber and her advisor, John Baross, are working with samples of live microbes from the expedition. Some UW laboratory work shows bacteria extracted from seamount flanks grow best at hot temperatures, 190°F, which is considerably higher than the 68 F fluid they were collected with and the 140°F temperature of the rocks in that area. This means that the fluid and microbes are coming from deeper within the ocean crust, perhaps as deep as half a mile below the seafloor. Cell counts at most of the sites are higher than cell counts from normal seawater, a strong indication the scientists were sampling a crustal environment and that their samples were not contaminated with bottom seawater. Another important concern involves possible contamination from the process of drilling. This is a critical question even for a hole drilled by the International Ocean Drilling program in 1997 that has been gushing copious crustal fluids since then. There is a chance that drill hole, sampled for work reported in both the Science and Eos articles, was contaminated during drilling or that microbes being collected for these studies were growing in the artificial environment of the steel drill pipe in the bore hole. To try to avoid this Johnson and engineers with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory designed probes that look remarkably like giant hypodermic needles. The 15-foot-long stainless steel probes were driven into the summit of a 3.5-million-year-old seamount. Two of the hollow probes immediately began venting warm crustal fluid. The successful insertion of the probes and the development of a new barrel sampler meant scientists could take very large samples, 25 gallons at a time, of uncontaminated fluid to measure extremely dilute organic compounds that would tell how long the fluid was within the crustal rocks. These quantities are 200 times larger than normal hydrothermal fluid samples and the scientists may have accidentally spilled more hydrothermal fluid than is collected during other expeditions, Johnson says. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's new remotely operated vehicle Jason II was used for the seafloor work. All 24 scientists on the expedition are named as co-authors on the Eos paper. In addition to the UW, they represent NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, University of Victoria, Oregon State University, University of Chicago, Field Museum of Chicago, University of California Santa Cruz, University of South Carolina, Dartmouth University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. While work continues on the chemical and microbiological analyses, Johnson and his colleagues have been intrigued by research reported by Andrew Fisher of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and 12 co- authors in the February 6 issue of Nature. That work describes how two seamounts in the North Pacific appear to share the same underground plumbing so that cold seawater being taken in at one seamount is venting as warm hydrothermal fluid at another--and the two are 25 miles apart. The seamount at the venting end of this system is the one where Johnson and his team drove their hypodermic needles and found abundant microbial life. "If crustal fluid can flow over large distances in old oceanic crust and can nurture these large microbial populations," Johnson says, "then the chances are good that there is a global-scale biosphere living within the upper oceanic crust. This oceanic crustal biosphere would live at a wide range of temperatures and fluid flow rates, have different chemical environments, have unique entrance and exit ports and would have been exposed to completely different formation histories." "It's like finding an undiscovered world." [http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/images/probe.jpg] A probe able to penetrate the volcanic rock of the Earth's crust is lowered over the side of the ship. It is "hammered" into place using a 4,000 pound coring weight. Image credit: University of Washington [http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/images/map2.jpg] Locator map showing sampling sites on the Juan de Fuca plate, 200 miles off the coast of Washington and Oregon. Image credit: University of Washington. [http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/images/probe-diagram.jpg] Diagram of probe able to penetrate the volcanic rock of the Earth's crust. Image credit: University of Washington. [http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/images/probe-flow.jpg] After probe is inserted into a seamount it begins venting 68°F hydrothermal fluid. A remotely operated vehicle to the right prepares to install a fluid sampler connector. Image credit: University of Washington. Contact: H. Paul Johnson Phone: 206-543-8474 E-mail: johnson@oceans.washington.edu Sandra Hines Phone: 206-543-2580 E-mail: shines@u.washington.edu An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03n.html. ________________________________________________________________________ LAKESIDE LANDING By Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine 19 March 2003 NASA will soon launch two missions to Mars. Known, temporarily, as Mars Exploration Rover (MER) A and B, the two rovers will land in different regions of Mars to search for evidence of water in Mars's past. Scientists and engineers have whittled down an initial list of dozens of candidate landing sites to four finalists. Of these four, two are clear favorites among the scientists: Meridiani Planum and Gusev Crater. A previous article discussed Meridiani Planum; this article will focus on Gusev. Gusev Crater is almost exactly halfway around the red planet from Meridiani Planum. While the latter site is distinguished by the presence of hematite, a mineral typically formed by the long-term interaction of water with iron-bearing rock, Gusev is notable for its geologic setting. Gusev is a large crater basin, some 170 kilometers (105 miles) across. Most scientists believe it once was fed by water flowing through an enormous valley channel, Ma'adim Vallis. Snaking its way northward along the martian landscape for more than 900 kilometers (560 miles), Ma'adim Vallis is 1.5 times as long as the Grand Canyon. In images of Gusev taken by the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) aboard the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft, some exposed outcrops appear to show faint layering. The prevailing scientific theory is that Gusev Crater contains sediment washed down Ma'adim Vallis from the highlands to the south nearly 4 billion years ago. Some researchers also believe that landforms visible in MOC images of the mouth of Ma'adim Vallis, where it enters Gusev Crater, resemble landforms seen in some terrestrial river deltas. "Deltas of this nature take tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years on Earth to be formed," says Nathalie Cabrol of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center. "So here you have the place where water has been acting for a long time. And depositing and eroding sediments and shaping the landscape for--possibly that long." MOC images indicate that there may once have been a very large lake upstream of Gusev, near the source of Ma'adim Vallis. "This large lake could have provided water over a long period of time to Ma'adim, channeling the water into Gusev," says Cabrol. No one knows how much water flowed through Ma'adim Vallis, or for how long. Cabrol says there are several possibilities. It may have been a slow, continuous flow that lasted for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. It may have been a punctuated series of massive outbursts. Or it may have been a combination of these two processes. "When you look at the dynamic of a channel on Earth, usually because of climate change, because of changes in the source region, you will have a series of very different episodes, and all these dynamics will be recorded in the sediment. So our hope is that if this is fluvial, if this is related to water, then by looking at the sediment, the shape of the grain, the thickness of the deposits, we might be able to tell what really happened," says Cabrol. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, who is the principal investigator for the MER missions, agrees with Cabrol that Gusev would make an excellent landing site. "What you'd be looking for in Gusev is deep, possibly long-lived standing water bodies," he says. "I mean, a big lake. If Ma'adim Vallis was carved by running water--and I've heard no credible alternative to that hypothesis and there's an enormous amount of evidence to support it--there's just no way around the idea that Gusev had a great big lake in it. I mean, lots of water, and lots of sediments. "We know from years and years of work in sedimentary and aqueous environments on Earth," Squyres adds, "that those kinds of materials can be very, very good at preserving evidence of climatic conditions, what kinds of aqueous processes were going on, and whether there was any kind of prebiotic chemistry." There are those who see a different history written in Gusev's layered sediments. One alternative hypothesis for their origin is that they are "airfall deposits," dust and ash that has settled over time from the atmosphere. Some researchers believe the layering in Gusev is the result of a series of volcanic lava flows. Cabrol thinks these are unlikely explanations for the landforms that comprise Ma'adim Vallis and Gusev Crater. But, she concedes, if MER were to confirm one of these hypotheses, the discovery would be of great scientific value--and spark an intense round of new discussion. "If something like Ma'adim Vallis is actually a lava flow and looks so much like a fluvial channel, well, we better reassess what we think about the channels we're seeing on Mars," she says. "And if all the material we're seeing in Gusev is airfall deposits we're going to learn about the climate history of Mars." One potential problem with Gusev is that the sedimentary materials of interest, scientists believe, were mainly deposited 3.5 billion years ago, although there have been subsequent active episodes more recently. They may be buried too deeply to be accessible by MER's instruments. "There is the risk, frankly at any of these sites, that the stuff that you're interested in has been buried by some other stuff," says Squyres. Fortunately, he adds, nature has provided a possible solution to this dilemma: craters. "The good thing about the Gusev site," he says, "is that there are all these craters. Mother Nature has dug a bunch of holes for us in the form of impact craters, and Gusev has a pretty high density of craters. "The rover's mobility is key to taking advantage of craters. You're not necessarily going to land right next to a crater, but you can drive to one. Because of the fact that the crater density in Gusev is pretty high, the chances that these impacts have brought up from below the materials underneath are good enough that it has caused a strong community consensus behind this site as a high potential site to go to." Although Meridiani Planum and Gusev Crater are the clear landing-site favorites within the scientific community, the final decision on where the MER missions will land has not yet been made. Over the course of the next month, computer-simulated landing scenarios will be run repeatedly. If these simulations turn up an unexpectedly high risk of failure--for example, if the terrain at one of the sites is deemed too rough to land safely, or if models of Mars's air circulation indicate that high winds might cause the spacecraft to crash--Meridiani or Gusev could be replaced by one of the two alternate sites, most likely the site at Elysium Planitia. The final decision, which will be made by Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science, is expected in April, just weeks before the first of the two MER spacecraft is scheduled for launch. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article405.html. ________________________________________________________________________ CALL FOR SPACE SETTLEMENT TO BE CORE GOAL OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT PROGRAM From SpaceDaily 19 March 2003 In the wake of the Columbia tragedy America has been engaged in a discussion as to the need for such activities and the real goals of our space program. To answer these questions, a group of space leaders, opinion makers, entrepreneurs and financiers met in Los Angeles this month to seek common agreement on guiding principles for the U.S. human space flight effort and begin coordinating strategies to provide a direction for a currently rudderless U.S. space program. The result was the formation of a strong consensus that the nation's human space agenda needs a unifying central goal, that the current climate is hindering the opening of space, and that top level space policies must be changed if we are to ever open space to the people. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03w.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPRESS LEAVES FOR BAIKONUR ESA release 19 March 2003 Mars Express, the first European spacecraft to visit the planet Mars, has completed its tests at Toulouse, France. After six months extensive thermal environmental, mechanical and electric tests, the spacecraft with the Beagle 2 lander will leave for Baikonur, Kazakhstan on 19 March 2003 onboard an Antonov 124 aircraft. It will be launched early June 2003 onboard a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket. Mars Express, Europe's first mission to a planet, was built by Astrium, the prime contractor, with the involvement of more than twenty European companies. Building Mars Express presented a double challenge: designing a highly complex system within tight deadlines (to meet a fixed launch date) as well as being as economical as possible. Mars Express has been built for half the costs of similar, previous missions. The industrial team responded to the challenge by using off-the-shelf equipment and technology already developed for the Rosetta mission. New ways of project management and more responsibility at the initial stages of the collaboration with the European Space Agency, successfully kept the project within the allocated time limits and budgets. The spacecraft will benefit from an exceptionally favourable launch window in June 2003; at this date, the distance separating the planets Earth and Mars will be minimal, an opportunity only occurring all 17 years. From December 2003, Mars Express will be inserted into an elliptical quasi-polar orbit. Seven scientific instruments on the orbiter will perform the following tasks: global high-resolution imaging, global mineralogical mapping, global atmospheric circulation and mapping of the atmospheric composition, radar sounding of the subsurface structure, study of surface-atmosphere interactions, and interaction of the atmosphere with the interplanetary environment. Mars Express will also carry the Beagle 2 lander which will detach from the spacecraft and land on the martian surface. It will collect and analyze rock and soil samples on the spot. Read the original release at http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEM2DO8YFDD_index_0.html ________________________________________________________________________ THE SPACE SETTLEMENT SUMMIT By John Carter McKnight From SpaceDaily 20 March 2003 Some forty prominent members of the space community met earlier this month in Los Angeles to face the leadership challenge raised by the Columbia disaster. It's said of a dancing bear that what amazes isn't how well it dances, but that it dances at all. This Space Settlement Summit was no Russian ballet, but it did a creditable little cha-cha. The price of admission to the invitation-only event was agreement on permanent, open settlement as the ultimate goal of space-related efforts. The revolutionary nature of the very proposition was somewhat lost on us. An idea fundamental to the work and dreams of so many in that meeting room remains a long, long way from current Congressional and NASA policy, as well as from registering at all in general public discourse. Still, that shocking notion brought together financiers representing a truly impressive collective net worth, official representatives of space advocacy groups, entrepreneurial CEOs, former astronauts, longtime adversaries, and the odd crank columnist. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03y.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS TRIP POSTPONED INDEFINITELY By Robert N. Going 20 March 2003 So, I guess I won't be going to Mars after all. Absent the invention of some miracle age-reversing formula and the sudden need for NASA to develop a "Lawyers in Space" program, the destruction of the Columbia, it seems, has finally put Mars beyond my hope. It was so great to be a kid growing up at the dawn of the space age. Six at Sputnik, 8 when the Mercury astronauts were named, 9 for Gagarin and Shepherd, 10 for John Glenn. By then I had already absorbed Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Soon I would be devouring Ray Bradbury and his first, second, third expeditions to Mars and finally its exploration and colonization. Heady stuff. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03x.html. ________________________________________________________________________ THE RHYTHM OF SETI: OBSERVING IN REAL-TIME By Peter Backus From Space.com 20 March 2003 In real-time SETI, if you miss a beat the dance starts over. If you have to start over, you've just wasted precious telescope time and perhaps missed the most important discovery in history. That's why Project Phoenix follows up on potential Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) signals within minutes of the original detection. Most SETI programs scan the sky looking for strong signals. Any signals that are deemed interesting are put on a list for follow-up observations weeks, months--even years later. Long delays in verification of potential ET signals sometimes generate tantalizing, but ultimately frustrating, stories. The most famous is the "Wow Signal" detected at the Ohio State University Observatory in 1977. The signal was strong and had many of the characteristics that would be expected from a real ET signal. Over the quarter century since the detection, multiple attempts with greater sensitivity have found nothing. Yet for some people, the mystery remains. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_backus_rhythm_030320.html. ________________________________________________________________________ AS CONFLICT BEGINS, RESEARCHERS WORK TO DEFINE HUMANITY'S ASPIRATIONS FOR ET By Douglas Vakoch From Space.com 21 March 2003 As the world confronts another war waged between human and human, a group of artists, scientists, and other scholars will meet in Paris to decide how we could tell intelligence on other worlds about another side of humanity: our ambition to be an altruistic species. The workshop, "Encoding Altruism: The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition," will be held March 23 and 24. In their struggle to draft meaningful messages to aliens, workshop participants from many nations will also grapple with some of the most challenging topics addressed by science today, like the evolution of human behavior and the origins of language. The keynote speaker at the workshop, Canadian anthropologist Jerome Barkow, will draw on his experience as one of the founding fathers of evolutionary psychology, a discipline that attempts to explain behavior in terms of its adaptiveness. Introducing the workshop's central theme, he suggests that extraterrestrials might display either or both of two types of altruism: reciprocal altruism and nepotism. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_vakoch_030321.html. ________________________________________________________________________ PASTEUR: PAYLOAD OPPORTUNITIES TO SEARCH FOR LIFE ON MARS ESA release 18-2003 24 March 2003 Are we alone, or is there life beyond Earth? Has life ever existed on Mars? The European Space Agency (ESA) is now offering scientists a rare opportunity to answer these fundamental questions that have intrigued mankind for centuries. In order to determine whether life ever evolved on Mars, ESA intends to launch an exobiology mission, known as ExoMars, to the Red Planet in 2009. As part of ESA's long-term Aurora program to prepare for future human missions, ExoMars will deploy a high-mobility rover on the martian surface. The key to the success of this scientific quest will be the rover's Pasteur payload, a comprehensive suite of instruments that will characterize the martian biological environment. In order to be able to meet the 2009 launch opportunity, the Agency is already starting to define the experiments that will make up this payload. Accordingly, the Aurora Program Office has recently released a "call for ideas" from the scientific community for the ExoMars mission. This call for ideas is the first step in the process seeking to obtain the highest quality research for ExoMars and its Pasteur payload. It is also designed to foster international cooperation among multidisciplinary science teams and to avoid duplication of projects. "I very much hope that, as in the past, we can count on a strong contribution from the scientific community to the definition of this exciting mission," said Jorge Vago, ExoMars Study Scientist. The ExoMars-Pasteur payload opportunity is open to investigators from all countries. However, each proposal's team coordinator must be based in one of the ESA member states. No proposal will be accepted unless it includes scientific organizations from at least three European countries in the team behind it. Scientists responding to this call for ideas are requested to follow the guidelines provided on the ExoMars-Pasteur web site (see below). Initial expressions of interest must be received by 28 March 2003. The proposals themselves are due by 14 May 2003. Background As its name suggests, the ExoMars mission is expected to provide significant new insights into the surface environment of the Red Planet, with particular emphasis on exobiology, the search for signs of martian life, past or present. The configuration of the ExoMars mission is still being defined. As currently envisaged, the ExoMars orbiter will release a descent module and solar-powered rover onto the planet's pristine surface. Equipped with a drill and sampling system, this autonomous roving vehicle will spend many months exploring the hostile terrain and analyzing soil from sites that might be hospitable to primitive martian life forms. The Aurora Board of Participants recently authorized a phase A study of ExoMars that will also look into the possibility of combining the French Netlander mission with the European effort. The final decision on ExoMars will be taken at an ESA Ministerial Council meeting in late 2004. Full details of this call for ideas are available at http://www.spaceflight.esa.int/users/pasteur. Further information on the Aurora Program and the ExoMars mission in particular can be obtained at http://www.esa.int/export/esaMI/Aurora/. Contacts: Dr. Jorge Vago ExoMars Study Scientist Phone: +31(0)71.565.5211, Fax: +31(0)71.565.3661 E-mail: Jorge.Vago@esa.int ESA Media Relations Service Phone: +33(0)1.53.69.7155 Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690 ________________________________________________________________________ SMALL WORLD By Stephen Hart From Astrobiology Magazine 24 March 2003 "Nanobacteria"--the name sounds obvious enough. They're small. They're bacteria. You might assume they resemble the smallest archaean, Nanoarchaeum, or the smallest bacterium, Mycoplasma, in size. You might assume they resemble ordinary bacteria in nature. But instead of taking the prize as the smallest organism, nanobacteria-- a tenth the size of ordinary bacteria and half as large as Nanoarchaeum and Mycoplasma--have continued to cause controversy since their description in the early 1990s by a Finnish research team led by Olavi Kajander. The team avoided overstating their claim--"These autonomously replicating particles are tentatively named nanobacteria"--but the name stuck, and many of the team's publications state that nanobacteria are alive. The spheres, covered with a hard calcium phosphate coat, were found in various fluids used to grow cells in the laboratory, such as cow serum. Medical microbiologist Neva Ciftcioglu, now at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, her colleague Kajander and collaborators in the United States, Canada, the UK, Japan and Russia continue to research nanobacteria. But scientists in some labs say that, while they can produce the spheres and can see them with an electron microscope, they have been unable to confirm any sign of life in them. Other scientists raise a theoretical objection, saying that at 200 nanometers, nanobacteria are just too small to contain the machinery of life. "Generally," Ciftcioglu says, "we say that a microorganism should not be any smaller than 200 nanometers. So nanobacteria is within this range, however, there are some forms we detected that they are even 80 or 50 nanometers." These smaller forms, she says, may not be complete cells. "So the difficulty came with two reasons," Ciftcioglu says, "number one was naming; we called them bacteria before we characterized them and proved that they are bacteria. And the second difficulty was the size discussion." The debate heated up in 1998, when Kajander and Ciftcioglu published a paper in the July Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) linking nanobacteria with diseases involving calcification, such as kidney stones and hardening of the arteries. They didn't mince words, calling nanobacteria "the smallest cell-walled bacteria" and even showing where nanobacteria fit in the tree of life. Ciftcioglu says, "First of all I convinced myself that these things are living." National Institutes of Health research microbiologist John O. Cisar was one of many scientists intrigued by the 1998 PNAS paper. "We were quite convinced from Kajander's paper that nanobacteria may be real," Cisar says. Cisar and colleagues isolated the particles from several sources, including cow serum and both human saliva and dental plaque. They saw the particles increase in number very slowly, the same results Ciftcioglu reported. "We were very excited when we were able to reproduce their critical findings," Cisar says. But then Cisar's team proceeded to look for signs of life: proteins and nucleic acids. Cisar's team did find evidence of nucleic acid. Kajander and Ciftcioglu described a particular RNA sequence in the '98 PNAS paper and in another paper published in '98. To detect nucleic acids, researchers use an extremely sensitive method called the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. PCR makes millions of copies of short stretches of nucleic acid, copying over and over again even a single original molecule. On further examination of the RNA sequence found by both research teams, Cisar determined that it was identical to an RNA sequence belonging to a well-known bacterial contaminant often found in PCR experiments. "We are very confident of our interpretation of the PCR data in terms of pointing out where a mistake was made in the original report," Cisar says. "If you discount the PCR results from the original description of nanobacteria, you take away all molecular evidence for a new type of living organism." "It eventually became clear to us that we were chasing an artifact," Cisar concludes. He has not pursued nanobacteria further. But, he says, "If somebody would provide molecular evidence showing that nanobacteria are alive, we'd be happy to jump back into the problem." Ciftcioglu says techniques to grow nanobacteria in the lab are very exacting. "Unfortunately, [Cisar and colleagues] did not seek nanobacteria control cultures or the best available nanobacteria- specific reagents for use in their experiments." While the correct methods remain unpublished, Ciftcioglu says, she is more than willing to communicate with researchers about lab techniques. "I would be very happy to help them through e-mail to say treat your sample this or that way, that might be the reason you don't get results." Harold Morowitz, of George Mason University, in Fairfax Virginia, is a Mycoplasma veteran. "The first question is, do I theoretically think that something [that small] could be a self replicating cell? And the answer is, I'd be extremely doubtful." Back in the 1950s, Morowitz found colleagues charging that Mycoplasma was too small to be a cell, so he and his colleagues had to accumulate proof. "In the 1950s, we were growing Mycoplasma gallisepticum, and there were all sorts of things in the literature as to whether they were organisms," he says. The team responded by isolating cell structures such as ribosomes, finding functional enzymes and experimentally showing that Mycoplasma has a cell membrane. "I think the burden is on the people who say that they're alive to prove that [nanobacteria] fit the normal criteria of cellular biology: they are surrounded by a membrane, they have a genome (at least an RNA genome), and they have ribosomes and other structures that are associated with all life that we know," Morowitz says. Current research may be nibbling away at the theoretical size objections, Ciftcioglu says. Canadian researchers have published a description of bacteria in healthy human blood that measure in at a mere 200 nanometers in diameter (as measured in an electron micrograph), about the size of the larger nanobacteria. What's next? Ciftcioglu thinks the evidence is piling up. "The results are convincing that these things are living and they have metabolic activity, and they have nucleic acid," she says. But because of the controversy, she wants to dot every "i" and cross every "t" before publishing. "If you are working on controversial research, people are not looking with [a] loupe, they are looking at your research with [an] electron microscope and you have to be absolutely sure what you are talking about is scientifically correct and can be repeated," she says. "First you have to convince yourself what you are working with is not an artifact. Nobody wants to work full time with an artifact. You first want to understand if there is nucleic acid, this is number one. And number two, if they have membrane structure. They should have some metabolic activity. So we concentrated mostly on those three issues. And our biggest question was if they have unique protein structure. So far, we have pilot research for all of them." These days, Ciftcioglu works at JSC with David McKay. "We are working on biomarkers, what biomarkers we [should search for] on meteorites for being able to say there is life or not. And what is the definition of life. And what is the best way to analyze mineralized samples," Ciftcioglu says. Research into how to analyze mineralized meteorite samples will translate easily, she says, into work on nanobacteria. McKay and colleagues think nanobacteria research could aid understanding of the earliest cells on Earth and any possible cells on Mars. "Additionally, my colleagues in Mayo Clinic have some data on nanobacteria nucleic acids, so the collaboration is going on." Researchers interested in nanobacteria have met twice in international conferences. Ciftcioglu says plans are in the works for another conference. "In 2003, our plan is to come together and bring our so-far results because we are very sensitive to publish any results before we confirm each other." With results from several labs on the table, she hopes, clear evidence that nanobacteria are alive can finally be published. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article408.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.html 24 March 2003 Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles2. html University of Washington, 2003. 15-Foot needle samples life in oceanic crustal biosphere. SpaceDaily. Human space exploration and microgravity effects articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles3. html R. N. Going, 2003. Mars trip postponed indefinitely. SpaceDaily. J. C. McKnight, 2003. The spacefaring web 3.07: the space settlement summit. SpaceDaily. SpaceDaily, 2003. Call for space settlement to be core goal of human space flight program. SpaceDaily. Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles4. html P. Backus, 2003. The rhythm of SETI: observing in real-time. Space.com. Reuters, 2003. Searching for life in outer space. CNN. D. Vakoch, 2003. As conflict begins, researchers work to define humanity's aspirations for ET. Space.com. D. Vakoch, 2003. Computer code: an interstellar language? Space.com. D. Vakoch, 2003. Interstellar give-and-take: the idea of sharing. Space.com. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles5. html S. Hart, 2003. Small world. Astrobiology Magazine. J. M. Perkel, 2003. 5-Prime: non-ribosomal peptide synthesis. The Scientist, 17(6):12. Planetary protection articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles6. html University of Arizona, 2003. Worried about asteroid-ocean impacts? Spaceflight Now. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 24 March 2003 The investigation of the Columbia tragedy continues to make headlines in both space and general media. I have included (below) a non-exhaustive list of links to recent articles on the subject. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/03/18/sprj.colu.columbia.investigatio n.ap/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/03/18/sprj.colu.fixing.the.shuttle.ap /index.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_photoshop_030316.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_scenarios_030317.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_caib_030318.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_leftwing_030318.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_mystery_030319.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_oex_030319.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_families_030320.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_oex_030320.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_nait_030321.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_debris_030322.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_fl01_030322.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030320030546.dc8gl1lr.html http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030317hearing/ http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030319recorder/ http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030321nait/ ________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 13-19 March 2003 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Canberra tracking station on Wednesday, March 20. 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. Attitude Control Subsystem (ACS) Flight Software checkout continued this week with the following activities performed: restoration of the custom telemetry schedule to the nominal schedule, live Inertial Vector Propagation update demonstration, demonstration of Star ID suspend, turns while in Reaction Wheel Assembly (RWA) control, reloading of the ACS Backup Flight Computer with the new version A8 flight software, setting of Backup Trickle, RWA friction test, and several high water mark clears and fault protection log pointer resets. The Attitude Control Flight Software checkout has now very successfully concluded. The spacecraft hardware and new flight software have performed all checkout activities normally. Initial analysis shows that all objectives of the tests were met and the software will be able to meet all requirements for orbital operations. The Command and Data Subsystem (CDS) Flight Software checkout will begin a similar five-week checkout period on Monday. Two real-time command files will be uplinked for CDS to establish and verify the initial conditions prior to their CDS Flight Software checkout period. Preliminary Sequence Integration and Validation products for C37 have been released. A simulation coordination meeting will be held next week. The first three days of the sequence will be tested to ensure that the background sequence and the Trajectory Correction Maneuver block are well integrated. A NASA Independent Review Team (IRT) met with members of Cassini teams and offices this week. A draft report from the team contains positive findings with members of the board remarking on the progress of various teams since last year's IRT meeting. Also mentioned was the quality of the technical program, technical understanding, sound operations and development processes, and demonstrated problem solving ability of a very dedicated team. The use of dual solid-state recorders (SSR) in the remaining portion of cruise was discussed at the Mission Planning Forum. It was agreed that dual SSRs would be used for CDS flight software checkout, Trajectory Correction Maneuvers 19, 19a, 19b, and the Saturn Orbit Insertion demo. Permanent dual SSR use will begin with C43 in February of 2004. System Engineering hosted an Uplink Verification and Validation (V&V) readiness/kick-off meeting. Uplink V&V, beginning 3/31, is an end-to- end dry run of the tour uplink process to develop the final tour sequences sent to the spacecraft. Status items presented included team and tool status, test file deliveries and repositories, schedules, test trace matrices, success criteria, work remaining, and team readiness to go for the uplink V&V. Mission Assurance presented a paper entitled "Cassini Risk Management during Mission Operations and Data Analysis (MO&DA) - Application and Lessons Learned" at last week's IEEE Aerospace Conference. The talk illustrated how Cassini implemented risk management during MO&DA, some of the challenges that were encountered, and how lessons learned led to improvements. The paper was well received by the audience and there was good discussion among session participants. A Cassini image of Jupiter's Great Dark Spot was Astronomy Picture of the Day on March 19th. The image selected may be viewed at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030319.html. Outreach assisted with check-in of projects and Q&A for a science fair at Barnhart School in Arcadia, California. In the evening, telescopes supplied by Outreach and the Los Angeles Astronomical Society allowed students to view Jupiter, Saturn, M42, and a host of other early evening objects. Cassini project members participated in an outreach activity with the Aerospace Engineering department at California Polytechnic University (Cal Poly) in Pomona. They were invited to be part of a review board for student engineering projects with other representatives of the local aerospace industry. Fourth year students prepared material in response to a "request for proposal" for an asteroid reconnaissance mission. This review was the "preliminary design review" of their initial design solutions. The students will present their final designs at a "critical design review" in a couple months. 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, Calif., manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS: SPACECRAFT AND EXPENDABLE VEHICLES STATUS REPORT By George H. Diller NASA/KSC release 19 March 2003 Mission: Mars Exploration Rovers (MER-1/MER-2) Launch Vehicles: Delta II/Delta II Heavy Launch Pads: 17-A/17-B Launch Dates: May 30/June 25 Launch Times: 2:28 PM/12:34 AM EDT Final build-up of the two rovers is going well. A second functional test and mission simulation for MER-2 is scheduled to occur beginning tomorrow and last through the weekend. The initial functional test and mission simulation for MER-1 is planned for the last week of March. Processing of the cruise stage, lander and heat shield elements continues. The flight battery installation is complete. Once functional testing and mission simulation of the flight elements is complete, they will be integrated together. Each spacecraft will be mated to a solid propellant upper stage booster that will propel the spacecraft out of Earth orbit. After mating to the upper stage, the stack will undergo spin balance testing. Approximately ten days before launch the payload will be transported to the launch pad for mating with their respective Boeing Delta II rockets. The Boeing Delta II vehicle for the first launch of the two launches scheduled on May 30 is planned for erection on Pad 17-A at Space Launch Complex 17 beginning April 18. The Boeing and NASA review to assess readiness of the vehicle and the launch pad for the MER-A mission is underway today at the Boeing plant in Huntington Beach, CA. The Delta for the second launch on June 25 will begin its erection at Pad 17-B on May 1. Boeing's Delta II Heavy Design Certification Review for MER-B is scheduled for tomorrow, March 20. Contact: George H. Diller NASA Kennedy Space Center Phone: 321-867-2468 ________________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 21 March 2003 This past week, the Stardust flight team used the antennas of JPL's Deep Space Network on two occasions. Data relayed from the spacecraft during that contact indicated Stardust is healthy and all subsystems continue to run normally. Information on the present position and orbits of the Stardust spacecraft and comet Wild 2 may be found on the "Where Is Stardust Right Now?" web page located at http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/scnow.html. On the March 22 Deep Space Network pass, Stardust will transmit the remaining 27 images of the Pleiades star cluster stored in the spacecraft's memory. These Pleiades images were taken by Stardust's navigation camera and are being used to evaluate performance of the spacecraft camera's periscope. The Stardust team reports the 5 images already downloaded are of very good quality and calibration data obtained from these images is also very good. Back on March 13, Stardust Principal Investigator Don Brownlee gave another great lecture on the Stardust mission at the University of Colorado Center for Astrophysics and Astronomy. 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 10, Number 12.