MARSBUGS: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 22, 2 June 2003. Editor/Publisher: David J. Thomas, Ph.D., Science Division, Lyon College, Batesville, AR 72503-2317, USA. dthomas@lyon.edu 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 editor, except for specific articles, in which instance copyright exists with the author/authors. The editor does not condone "spamming" of subscribers. Readers would appreciate it if others would not send unsolicited e-mail using the Marsbugs mailing lists. Persons who have information that may be of interest to subscribers of Marsbugs should send that information to the editor. E-mail subscriptions are free, and may be obtained by contacting the editor. Information concerning the scope of this newsletter, subscription formats and availability of back-issues is available from the Marsbugs web page at http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/. [http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/06/02/index.html] This color-enhanced composite of Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) wide angle images shows dust-raising events--small dust "storms" and a few very large dust devils--in the Syria/Claritas region around 2:00 PM (1400) local time on May 21, 2003. The region is southwest of the Labyrinthus Noctis, near 14°S, 108°W. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the left; winds were blowing from the west/southwest when the picture was taken. This composite was constructed from a full-resolution (240 meters per pixel) red wide angle image and a much lower resolution (7.5 km per pixel) blue wide angle image acquired at the same time. Mars Express, the first of three probes to be launched this month, lifted off from Baïkonur Cosmodrome today. Image credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1) DUNE--IS THERE MARTIAN MUD IN RUSSELL CRATER? From Astrobiology Magazine 2) PLANETS COULD FORM IN 3 MILLION YEARS From Reuters and CNN 3) MASSIVE TSUNAMI SWEEPS ATLANTIC COAST IN ASTEROID IMPACT SCENARIO FOR MARCH 16, 2880 University of California at Santa Cruz release 4) NASA OPENS APPLICATIONS FOR NEW ASTRONAUT CLASS NASA release 03-183 5) BORN UNDER THE SUN: UV LIGHT AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE BioMed Central release 6) EARTH-SIZED PLANETS CONFIRMED, BUT THEY'RE DEAD WORLDS By Robert Roy Britt 7) THE VIKING FILES From Astrobiology Magazine 8) NASA HAS MARS MISSIONS PLANNED THROUGH DECADE By William Harwood 9) GONE TO SEED By Tony Phillips 10) SETI AND ASTROBIOLOGY By Thomas Pierson 11) ARTIFICIAL CELLS By Karen Miller 12) WHEELS IN THE SKY--NASA'S MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM NASA/JPL release 13) HARPOONING A COMET From Astrobiology Magazine 14) EUROPA DIARY IV: WALKING ON THIN ICE By Matt Pruis 15) U.S. PARTNERS SHARE IN EXCITEMENT OF EUROPE'S MARS MISSION NASA release 2003-079 16) HUMAN MISSION TO MARS: THE SECOND AURORA WORKING MEETING From ESA News 17) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 18) CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 19) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 20) MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS: SPACECRAFT AND EXPENDABLE VEHICLES STATUS REPORT By George H. Diller 21) MARS EXPRESS--HOW TO BE THE FASTEST TO THE RED PLANET ESA information release 12-2003 22) MARS EXPRESS EN ROUTE FOR THE RED PLANET ESA release 36-2003 23) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 24) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 25) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release ________________________________________________________________________ DUNE--IS THERE MARTIAN MUD IN RUSSELL CRATER? From Astrobiology Magazine 23 May 2003 A pair of German scientists have examined martian dune images and found what appears to resemble terrestrial mudflows. On Earth, particularly in alpine and arctic regions, such a debris trail is left behind when fine-grained soil mixes with liquid water from intense rainfall or sudden melting of surface ice. The researchers--Dennis Reiss and Ralf Jaumann--published their findings in a recent edition of the Geophysical Research Letters. In Berlin, they are scientists at the Institute of Space Sensor Technology and Planetary Exploration, German Aerospace Center. The article's title, "Recent debris flows on Mars: Seasonal observations of the Russell Crater dune field", suggests the intriguing location--Russell Crater--for some of the best images of martian erosion patterns. Mudflow? But such patterns can come from avalanches, wind or shifting geology. How can satellite photos reveal the true cause? At least for the dunes of Russell Crater, however, the researchers conclude that: "liquid water may be stable over a limited period around noon/early afternoon in late spring/early summer under current climatic conditions,"--and likely within the last thousand years. The close-up images are taken from a 3 kilometer patch (1.8 miles), on the downslope side of a dune in Russell Crater [in the Southern Hemisphere, 54.5 S and 12.7 E]. Similar erosion patterns are seen on several smaller dunes in Green Crater and Kaiser Crater--all in the south. Depending on when Russell Crater is photographed, it may appear shrouded by dust and haze, or show remarkably clear erosion patterns on its sculpted dunes. But the seasonal change shows the effects of temperature (and thawing) on the dune flows. The summer peak temperature is around 17 degrees Celsius (or 62 degrees Fahrenheit, 290 Kelvin), but drops back below water freezing at night. Reiss and Jaumann concluded that this steep temperature rise in daylight summer and the surface brightness (or albedo) could distinguish what part of the dune was covered in dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) and what part was covered by frozen water ice. The key photograph is part of a much larger satellite library, and labeled M1901170, which shows orbital details at a resolution of 2.78 meters per pixel. Bright frost During the martian autumn and winter, both carbon dioxide (dry ice) and water vapor freeze out of the atmosphere and frost the top few centimeters of the Russell Crater dunes. When spring arrives, dry ice turns directly to vapor first, particularly since the thin martian atmosphere is nearly 100 times less dense than Earth's. But for a few hours during summer noon, enough frozen ice may melt to induce liquid water flows, according to the scientists. They suggest that like on the arctic and alpine slopes of Earth, fine-grained soil then may flow downslope from the dune's crest. The slurry of fine soil, they call debris flows. The debris flows run out the dune base without showing depositional fans. The thin, channel- like tracks show a fine dendritic pattern, and originate from alcoves. But the main channel can stretch up to 2 km long (1.2 miles), with a thickness of 8 to 17 meters. The researchers also set out to try to answer why the erosion only occurs on one side of the dune, and tends to flow poleward. They concluded that "bright frost remains only at the protected colder, poleward facing dune slopes, the areas in which the erosion features occur... The amount of condensed H2O-ice in the near subsurface of the dune is unclear, but it is likely that the H2O-ice would persist longer into the spring on the protected, colder dune slopes." Unlike other Mars erosion patterns, the distinct embankments are unique. The channels also end without a spill apron, but a few show a dam-like ridge at terminus. While a full explanation is ambiguous, the scientists note that the two key ingredients--seasonal thawing, sandy soil with slopes--seem consistent with what may be a brief and relatively recent summer noon of liquid water in Russell Crater. The sinuous erosion in Russell Crater is also distinct from the avalanches seen elsewhere on martian dunes, according to Reiss and Jaumann. Based on the lack of small craters in the dune fields, the team estimates its surface age at 100 to 10,000 years--a recent soil pattern. Satellite images The episodic melting and freezing leave behind erosion patterns that can be viewed using satellite images from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), and its onboard Mars Orbital Camera (MOC). The Mars Global Surveyor has been orbiting the red planet since September 12, 1997. Its mission has examined the entire Mars surface and provided a wealth of information about the planet's atmosphere and interior. A new batch of high resolution photos, taken between February and July 2002, were added online and they bring the total number of images in the online gallery to more than 123,800. The images are available from the Mars Orbiter Camera Gallery. The American Geophysical Union summarized Reiss and Jaumann's findings based on MGS images: "Erosion along a martian dune slope may be caused by seasonal melting of water ice normally frozen within the fine-grained surface material... Their analysis shows frost forming at various times on the planet's surface, leading them to estimate that liquid water could become stable for a limited time during the summer in the southern hemisphere. The explanation offers an alternative to theories that propose that frozen carbon dioxide may have produced the flows or that geothermal heating could have reached the surface in the past." What's next? All three Mars missions planned for June launch will look for evidence of ancient water. On June 2, the European Space Agency will launch its Mars Express mission from the Russian Cosmodrome. On June 8 and June 25, NASA will launch its two Mars Exploration Rovers on Delta II rockets from Cape Kennedy. All three landers will blitz the martian equator around January 2004. The Mars Orbital Camera experiment on the Global Surveyor is in excellent health and continues to return a wealth of new information every day. The Global Surveyor will support the planned landing missions by observing the sites and monitoring the weather on Mars. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article479.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-03h.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030530024748.mmofitqb.html ________________________________________________________________________ PLANETS COULD FORM IN 3 MILLION YEARS From Reuters and CNN 26 May 2003 Recipe for an "instant" Earth-like planet: scrape up cosmic dust swirling around a newborn star and wait a mere three million years. Even the building blocks for giant gas planets like Jupiter might form just as quickly, about three times faster than many scientists believe, a team of astronomers reported on Monday. Three million years may sound like a long time when set against the human life span, but it is a relative blink of the eye in cosmic time. Earth is considered a middle-aged planet at about 4.5 billion years or so, and compared to Earth, these theoretical 3-million-year-old planets would be formed when the star they orbit is the equivalent of a 1-week- old baby. Read the full article at http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/05/26/space.planets.reut/index.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MASSIVE TSUNAMI SWEEPS ATLANTIC COAST IN ASTEROID IMPACT SCENARIO FOR MARCH 16, 2880 University of California at Santa Cruz release 27 May 2003 If an asteroid crashes into the Earth, it is likely to splash down somewhere in the oceans that cover 70 percent of the planet's surface. Huge tsunami waves, spreading out from the impact site like the ripples from a rock tossed into a pond, would inundate heavily populated coastal areas. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States. The researchers based their simulation on a real asteroid known to be on course for a close encounter with Earth eight centuries from now. Steven Ward, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCSC, and Erik Asphaug, an associate professor of Earth sciences, report their findings in the June issue of the Geophysical Journal International. March 16, 2880, is the day the asteroid known as 1950 DA, a huge rock two-thirds of a mile in diameter, is due to swing so close to Earth it could slam into the Atlantic Ocean at 38,000 miles per hour. The probability of a direct hit is pretty small, but over the long timescales of Earth's history, asteroids this size and larger have periodically hammered the planet, sometimes with calamitous effects. The so-called K/T impact, for example, ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. "From a geologic perspective, events like this have happened many times in the past. Asteroids the size of 1950 DA have probably struck the Earth about 600 times since the age of the dinosaurs," Ward said. Ward and Asphaug's study is part of a general effort to conduct a rational assessment of asteroid impact hazards. Asphaug, who organized a NASA-sponsored scientific workshop on asteroids, last year, noted that asteroid risks are interesting because the probabilities are so small while the potential consequences are enormous. Furthermore, the laws of orbital mechanics make it possible for scientists to predict an impact if they are able to detect the asteroid in advance. "It's like knowing the exact time when Mount Shasta will erupt," Asphaug said. "The way to deal with any natural hazard is to improve our knowledge base, so we can turn the kind of human fear that gets played on in the movies into something that we have a handle on." Although the probability of an impact from 1950 DA is only about 0.3 percent, it is the only asteroid yet detected that scientists cannot entirely dismiss as a threat. A team of scientists led by researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported on the probability of 1950 DA crossing paths with the Earth in the April 5, 2002, issue of the journal Science. "It's a low threat, actually a bit lower than the threat of being hit by an as-yet-undiscovered asteroid in the same size range over the same period of time, but it provided a good representative scenario for us to analyze," Asphaug said. For the simulation, the researchers chose an impact site consistent with the orientation of the Earth at the time of the predicted encounter: in the Atlantic Ocean about 360 miles from the U.S. coast. Ward summarized the results as follows: The 60,000-megaton blast of the impact vaporizes the asteroid and blows a cavity in the ocean 11 miles across and all the way down to the seafloor, which is about 3 miles deep at that point. The blast even excavates some of the seafloor. Water then rushes back in to fill the cavity, and a ring of waves spreads out in all directions. The impact creates tsunami waves of all frequencies and wavelengths, with a peak wavelength about the same as the diameter of the cavity. Because lower- frequency waves travel faster than waves with higher frequencies, the initial impulse spreads out into a series of waves. "In the movies they show one big wave, but you actually end up with dozens of waves. The first ones to arrive are pretty small, and they gradually increase in height, arriving at intervals of 3 or 4 minutes," Ward said. The waves propagate all through the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. The waves decay as they travel, so coastal areas closest to the impact get hit by the largest waves. Two hours after impact, 400-foot waves reach beaches from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, and by four hours after impact the entire East Coast has experienced waves at least 200 feet high, Ward said. It takes 8 hours for the waves to reach Europe, where they come ashore at heights of about 30 to 50 feet. Computer simulations not only give scientists a better handle on the potential hazards of asteroid impacts, they can also help researchers interpret the geologic evidence of past events, Ward said. Geologists have found evidence of past asteroid impact tsunamis in the form of inland sediment deposits and disturbed sediment layers in the seafloor that correlate with craters, meteorite fragments, and other impact evidence. An important feature of Ward's simulation is that it enabled him to calculate the speed of the water flows created by the tsunami at the bottom of the ocean--more than 3 feet per second out to distances of several hundred miles from the impact. "That's like a raging river, so as these waves cross the ocean they're going to stir up the seafloor, eroding sediments on the slopes of seamounts, and we may be able to identify more places where this has happened," Ward said. He added that the waves may also destabilize undersea slopes, causing landslides that could trigger secondary tsunamis. Ward has also done computer simulations of tsunamis generated by submarine landslides. He showed, for example, that the collapse of an unstable volcanic slope in the Canary Islands could send a massive tsunami toward the U.S. East Coast. A tsunami warning system has been established for the Pacific Ocean involving an international effort to evaluate earthquakes for their potential to generate tsunamis. Ward said that asteroid impact tsunamis could also be incorporated into such a system. "Tsunamis travel fast, but the ocean is very big, so even if a small or moderate-sized asteroid comes out of nowhere you could still have several hours of advance warning before the tsunami reaches land," he said. "We have a pretty good handle on the size of the waves that would be generated if we can estimate the size of the asteroid." Planetary scientists, meanwhile, are getting a better handle on the risks of asteroid impacts. A NASA-led campaign to detect large asteroids in near-Earth orbits is about half way toward its goal of detecting 90 percent of those larger than 1 kilometer in diameter (the size of 1950 DA) by 2008. "Until we detect all the big ones and can predict their orbits, we could be struck without warning," said Asphaug. "With the ongoing search campaigns, we'll probably be able to sound the 'all clear' by 2030 for 90 percent of the impacts that could trigger a global catastrophe." Rogue comets visiting the inner solar system for the first time, however, may never be detected very long in advance. Smaller asteroids that can still cause major tsunami damage may also go undetected. "Those are risks we may just have to live with," Asphaug said. A movie of the tsunami simulation can be viewed at http://es.ucsc.edu/~ward/1950-DA(5).mov. Images can be downloaded from the web at http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/download/. Additional information about the asteroid 1950 DA is available at: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/1950da/. The article by Ward and Asphaug in the Geophysical Journal International is available online at http://es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/gji_final_35N.pdf. Contact: Tim Stephens Phone: 831-459-2495 E-mail: stephens@ucsc.edu Reporters may contact Ward at (831) 459-2480 or ward@uplift.ucsc.edu, and Asphaug at (831) 459-2260 or asphaug@es.ucsc.edu. Read the original news release at http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/text.asp?pid=355. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article482.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deepimpact-03i.html ________________________________________________________________________ NASA OPENS APPLICATIONS FOR NEW ASTRONAUT CLASS NASA release 03-183 27 May 2003 NASA is accepting applications for mission specialist and pilot astronaut candidates to join the 2004 Astronaut Candidate Class. To obtain an application package, call the Astronaut Selection Office in Houston at: 281-483-5907; or write to the Johnson Space Center, Astronaut Selection Office, Mail Code AHX, Houston, Texas 77058-3696. Application forms and additional information about the Astronaut Candidate Program are available electronically through the Astronaut Selection Office Web site at http://www.nasajobs.nasa.gov/astronauts/. Typically, successful applicants for the mission specialist astronaut positions have significant qualifications in engineering or science, while pilot candidates must have extensive experience flying high- performance jet aircraft. Following an intensive six-month period of evaluation and interviews, the final selections will be announced in early 2004. Astronaut candidates will report to the Johnson Space Center during the summer of 2004 to begin the basic training program to prepare them for future spaceflight assignments. The application deadline is July 1, 2003. Applications received after July 1 will not be considered for the 2004 class but will remain on file for subsequent selection cycles. The Astronaut Candidate Class of 2004 also will include educator astronauts, teachers who will join NASA's astronaut corps and encourage students to pursue studies in math and science. The Educator Astronaut Program (EAP) was announced in January, and applications closed April 30. More than 1,100 EAP applications have been processed. Information about the Educator Astronaut Program is available on the Internet at http://edspace.nasa.gov. For more information about NASA and the Human Space Flight Program on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov. Contacts: Al Feinberg NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-4504 Doug Peterson NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX Phone: 281-483-5111 ________________________________________________________________________ BORN UNDER THE SUN: UV LIGHT AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE BioMed Central release 28 May 2003 Early evolution of life as we know it may have depended on DNA's ability to absorb UV light. This insight into the early moments of life on Earth comes from research published today in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. The research fills in one of the major gaps in our understanding about the origins of life: how single molecules were able to join together to create the self-replicating long chain molecules of RNA, the precursors of DNA. It "sheds new light on the earliest steps of evolution," write Armen Mulkidjanian and his colleagues from Osnabrück University, Germany and National Institutes of Health, USA. With no ozone layer the primordial Earth was a hostile place. This was especially true for long-chain molecules that would be broken up by UV radiation, which was at 100 times today's level. Most existing theories about how life evolved involve hiding the first life forms away from the light. Instead, Mulkidjanian and his colleagues have investigated the idea that high levels of UV light hitting the primordial earth were vital to RNA's survival. The researchers used computer-modeling technology to assess the ability of RNA to form from its constituent parts, sugar phosphates and nitrogenous bases, with and without high levels of UV light. They found that the ability of nitrogenous bases to absorb and disperse UV radiation could protect the backbone of primordial RNA from breaks. Under high levels of UV, RNA molecules were more stable than other large molecules and the small molecules that join together to create the RNA. This gave RNA molecules a selective advantage, so that their levels then increased through the simulated process of natural selection. Moreover, part of the energy from the absorbed UV light could have driven the elongation of RNA chains. "The suggested mechanism turns the high UV levels on primordial Earth from a perceived obstacle to the origin of life into the selective factor that, in fact, might have driven the whole process", write the authors. "It seems quite unlikely that the extremely effective UV-quenching by all major nitrogenous bases is just incidental. We can assume that these bases were selected to perform the UV-protecting function before they became involved in the maintenance and transfer of genetic information. In this (primordial) world the nitrogenous bases served just as protecting units. Accordingly these units were replaceable and variable. Exactly this variability could have paved the way to the variability of the future genomes". Three of the four nitrogenous bases that protected RNA from UV on primordial Earth are the same as those that make up the genetic code of DNA. Ironically, the ability of DNA to absorb UV light is now responsible for many skin cancer deaths. When the bases of DNA absorb UV light they often suffer structural damage, although the DNA backbone remains intact. If this damage occurs within a gene it can lead to the alteration of that gene, which may cause cancer. This article is freely available online at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/3/12/abstract according to BioMed Central's policy of open access to research articles. BMC Evolutionary Biology (http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcevolbiol/) is published by BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com), an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate free access to peer-reviewed biological and medical research. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science. In addition to open-access original research, BioMed Central also publishes reviews and other subscription-based content. Contacts: Gemma Bradley BioMed Central Limited London, UK Phone: +44 (0) 20 7323 0323 E-mail: press@biomedcentral.com Dr. Mulkidjanian Phone: +49-541-969-2871 E-mail: mulkidjanian@biologie.uni-osnabrueck.de Dr. Galperin Phone: +1-301-435-5910 E-mail: galperin@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ________________________________________________________________________ EARTH-SIZED PLANETS CONFIRMED, BUT THEY'RE DEAD WORLDS By Robert Roy Britt From Space.com 29 May 2003 There are three planets beyond our solar system about the same size as Earth. Found more than a decade ago, you might not have heard about them as their discovery was clouded in controversy. But today the dispute is over, the planets are still there, and astronomers have pinned down their sizes with much more precision. The planets are dead worlds, orbiting a dying star where there is no chance for anything interesting to happen, biologically. Because of this, most planet hunters have shown little interest in them. In fact, it is common for these worlds to be ignored when researchers make lists of known planets. It is seldom mentioned that they were indeed the first-ever extra-solar planets ever discovered. The roughly Earth-sized planets orbit a neutron star, a dense stellar corpse that's just a hop, skip and a jump from a black hole, density-wise. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/aas_earthsize_020329.html. ________________________________________________________________________ THE VIKING FILES From Astrobiology Magazine 29 May 2003 In 1998, NASA's Associate Administrator Wesley Huntress, Jr., stated, "Wherever liquid water and chemical energy are found, there is life. There is no exception." Could there, then, be life on Mars? In the mid-1970s, the Viking Lander mission's Gas Exchange Experiment detected strong chemical activity in the martian soil. Liquid water seems to be the one element needed for the equation of life on Mars. The presence of water there, however, is still hotly contested. Many scientists believe that liquid water does not and cannot exist on the surface of Mars today. Although surface water may have been plentiful in Mars' past, they say, the current conditions of freezing temperatures and a thin atmosphere mean that any water on Mars would have to be deep underground. Moreover, if any water ice existing on Mars were somehow warmed, it still wouldn't melt into water. The thin martian atmosphere instead would cause the ice to sublime directly into water vapor. But Dr. Gilbert Levin of Spherix, Inc., and his son, Dr. Ron Levin of MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, believe differently. They say that liquid water in limited amounts and for limited times can exist on the surface of present-day Mars. They have based their theory on data collected from the Viking landers and on the 1998 Mars Pathfinder mission. This father-son team has suggested a diurnal water cycle on Mars: water vapor in the air freezes out by night, then during the day the ice melts. As the day progresses, the heat of the Sun causes this liquid water to evaporate back into the air. It has already been established from Viking photographs that a thin frost does form overnight on certain areas of the martian surface. Unlike many scientists, the Levins believe that this frosty layer does not instantly revert back into water vapor when the Sun rises. They suggest that, in the early hours of the martian morning, the atmosphere more than one meter above the martian surface remains too cold to hold water vapor. So the moisture stays on the ground. Data from the Mars Pathfinder support this theory, as the Pathfinder temperature readings noted that temperatures one meter above the surface were often dozens of degrees colder than the temperatures closer to the ground. This layer of cold air, say the Levins, provides a form of insulation, trapping the water moisture below. Since the atmosphere is too cold to hold the water as vapor and the ground is warm enough to melt the ice, the water melts into a liquid. This liquid water, the Levins believe, remains on the surface until the temperature of the atmosphere rises enough to allow the water to evaporate. In this way, they argue, the martian soil becomes briefly saturated with liquid water every day. "The meteorological data fully confirm the presence of liquid water in the topsoil each morning," says Gilbert Levin. "The black-and-white as well as the color images show slick areas that may well be moist patches." Such a scenario is certainly possible, admits Christopher McKay. McKay is a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA, and a member of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. "At the surface the frost may melt to form a very short-lived layer of liquid," says McKay. "The experiments show that this is the case." But, he cautions, "how long it persists is not yet accurately determined." "There have been several attempts to look at the problem of frost evaporation and melting on Mars theoretically," says McKay. But Levin's analysis, he says, is "badly flawed. The way to address this question," he says, "is with experiment." The Levins look to tests conducted in Death Valley, CA, for support of their theory. Soil samples taken from the top one to two millimeters of the Californian sand dunes and analyzed by soil scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory were reported to contain 0.9% moisture, comparable to the moisture levels found in the martian soil by the Viking mission. These desert samples from California also contained aerobic microorganisms. No clear evidence has yet been found, however, that there is life in the topmost layer of the martian soil. Mars may, indeed, contain such forms of [microscopic] life. The Levins point to a study published in the Federation of European Microbiological Societies Reviews in 1997 by Elena Vorobyova, et al., entitled "The Deep Cold Biosphere: Facts and Hypothesis." This study reported that permafrost conditions provide a constant and stable environment to permit microbial communities to survive for millions of years. The Levins cite this research as direct evidence for adaptive physiological and biochemical processes in microorganisms during long exposure to cold. While these findings refer to terrestrial microorganisms, the Levins believe they might also apply to Mars. McKay does not believe these analogies to terrestrial environments prove anything about Mars, however. "Mars is still much drier and much colder than even the Atacama Desert in Chile or the dry valleys of Antarctica," argues McKay. "And Death Valley is not that dry. It rains there 25 millimeters a year." Gilbert Levin is a long-time proponent of life on Mars. He worked on the Viking missions in the mid-1970s and steadfastly believes that the Viking Lander's Labeled Release (LR) experiment proved that primitive life does exist on present-day Mars. The LR experiment dropped liquid nutrient into a sample of martian soil, then measured the gases that were released by the mixture. If martian bacteria had consumed the nutrients and had begun to multiply, certain gases would have been released. When the LR experiment was conducted on both Viking Landers, some of the gases emitted seemed to suggest that microbes were ingesting the released nutrients. But, overall, the results were ambiguous. Many in the scientific community believe that the LR results can be explained non-biologically. One such explanation is that the LR experiment showed the surface of Mars to contain oxides. When the nutrients mixed with the oxides, a chemical reaction not a biological one occurred. Moreover, these oxides would actually prevent life from forming on the martian surface. Gilbert Levin isn't swayed by this reasoning. After examining all the non-biological possibilities and looking at the new findings about life in extreme environments on Earth, Levin now firmly believes that the LR experiment did find microbial life on Mars. His new model for the formation of liquid water, he argues, "removes the final constraint preventing acceptance of the biological interpretation of the Viking LR Mars data as having detected living microorganisms in the soil of Mars. It comes at a time when a growing body of evidence from the Earth and space are supporting the presence of life not only on Mars, but on many celestial bodies." For McKay, the Viking experiments do not prove or even suggest that life could exist on the surface of Mars. "I support a chemical explanation for the Labled Release experiment and the other Viking instruments, such as the Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer and the Gas Exchange experiment," he says. The Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer (GCMS) was designed to measure organic compounds in the martian soil. Organic compounds are present in space (for example, in meteorites), but the GCMS found no trace of them on the surface of Mars. Gilbert Levin believes, however, that the GCMS instrument sent to Mars could easily have missed biologically significant amounts of organic matter in the soil, as it had in a number of tests on Earth. The Gas Exchange (GEX) experiment submerged a sample of martian soil in a nutrient mixture, and incubated the soil for 12 days in a simulated martian atmosphere. Gases emitted by organisms consuming the nutrients would have been detected by the gas chromatograph. While the GEX experiment did detect some gases, it also got results with the control sample soil that had been heated to sterilize it of any possible life. In other words, non-biological processes may have been at work. Subsequent laboratory experiments on Earth demonstrated that similar results were obtained when water was added to highly-reactive oxidizing compounds, such as the oxides or superoxides now believed to be present in martian soil. "A biology explanation [for the Viking test results] is inconsistent, ecologically, with what we know about Mars' surface environment," says McKay. What next? This June, NASA will send two rovers to Mars to hunt for signs of water in the rocks and surface soil. In the same year, the European Space Agency will launch Mars Express, which will include a lander. The Lander, dubbed Beagle 2, will contain a scientific payload dedicated to detecting signs of biogenic activity on Mars the first such payload to be sent to Mars since Viking. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article480.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA HAS MARS MISSIONS PLANNED THROUGH DECADE By William Harwood From Spaceflight Now 29 May 2003 The Mars Exploration Rovers represent the next step in an ambitious, on- going program to explore the Red Planet, to map out its structure, composition and meteorology and to determine whether it ever harbored life. NASA plans to follow the 2003 rover missions with launch of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in August 2005, a 1,900-kilogram (4,200-pound) spacecraft loaded with nine state-of-the-art instruments and cameras that are "truly an order of magnitude beyond that which we've done with Odyssey and MGS," said James Garvin, NASA's chief Mars scientist. [Additional missions will follow at each 26-month launch window.] Read the entire article at http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/030529future.html ________________________________________________________________________ GONE TO SEED By Tony Phillips From NASA Science News 29 May 2003 [http://science.nasa.gov/ppod/y2003/images/gonetoseed_med.jpg] Image credit: NASA/ISS Expedition 7 crew. One month ago, these peas were full of life and vivid green. Now they're brown and dry; they've "gone to seed." It happens in gardens on Earth all the time. These seeds are special, however, because they were grown in space, inside the Russian Lada greenhouse onboard the International Space Station (ISS). On May 16th, ISS commander Yuri Malenchenko took the brown plants (pictured above is just one of many) and stored them whole in ziplock bags filled with silica gel. Later they'll be taken out again, the seeds harvested and planted to grow a second generation of space-peas. If all goes well they'll become the first legumes to reproduce in Earth- orbit. This is the fifth "seed-to-seed" experiment conducted by Russian researchers. They've grown Arabidopsis onboard a Salyut spacecraft, turnip greens and wheat onboard Mir, and now peas on the International Space Station. There's a reason for testing such a variety of plants. Dr. Vladimir Sychev of the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow explains: "Advanced life support systems will eventually include different kinds of plants to provide crews with diverse and well balanced foods. This is why we think it's important to experiment with many species and to understand whether there is a correlation between plant species and their capability to grow and bear fruit in microgravity." Can space-faring peas produce viable seeds? We'll soon find out. Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/ppod/y2003/28may_gonetoseed.htm. ________________________________________________________________________ SETI AND ASTROBIOLOGY By Thomas Pierson From Space.com 29 May 2003 On any dark clear night, it's easy to gaze at the thousands of visible stars and imagine that there are other worlds orbiting those distant suns, and, perhaps, life on those other worlds. This is an ancient idea, but today we have the scientific tools that enable humans to ask more than speculative questions about the existence of life beyond the bounds of Earth. Biologists, geologists, astronomers, and planetary scientists pursue evidence of life "out there" using different methods and strategies. Seeing an opportunity for truly interdisciplinary research, NASA established the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) in 1998 as one element of its research program in astrobiology. Today, NAI is composed of 15 Lead Teams, which together represent over 700 investigators across the United States, and it has international partnerships with astrobiology research organizations around the world. As astrobiologists, these scientists are working at the frontier of our understanding of life. For example, teams study life in extreme environments on Earth, look for the molecular precursors for life in the interstellar ices and meteorites, participate in the exploration of Mars, and seek evidence of extrasolar planetary systems. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_astrobiology_030529.html. ________________________________________________________________________ ARTIFICIAL CELLS By Karen Miller From NASA Science News 30 May 2003 Red blood cells are great at carrying oxygen. Unfortunately, that's about all they do. Let's face it: with a little bit of help, they could be a lot more useful. Imagine, for example, blood cells that could carry all kinds of things-- medication as well as oxygen. Imagine blood that could be dehydrated, and stored for months or even years at a time. It could be carried by medics onto a battlefield--or by astronauts into outer space. Imagine blood that could be used for transfusions with no risk of AIDS or any other disease. A group of university researchers is helping NASA develop an artificial cell that can do all this and more. Bioengineers Dan Hammer and Dennis Discher of the University of Pennsylvania and Frank Bates of the University of Minnesota have created a special kind of molecule--a polymer--that forms something very like a cell membrane, and they've been able to coax these membranes into artificial cells, or polymersomes, that are stronger and more easily manageable than the real thing. A polymer is simply a chain of smaller molecules that have been linked together. The cellulose in plants and the wool on sheep are natural polymers. Man-made polymers can be found in everything from nylon stockings to car parts to furniture stuffing. The polymers used in polymersomes are larger and heavier than the natural molecules in cell membranes. They've got a molecular weight of over 3600, compared to about 750 for phospholipids, the fatty acid molecules used by cells. Manmade molecules can be crafted with an important characteristic, which many naturally occurring molecules share; they can be engineered to be amphiphilic, where one end seeks water, and the other end avoids it. In a water-based solution, such molecules spontaneously arrange themselves into a double-layer with their hydrophobic (water fearing) tails in the middle and their hydrophilic (water loving) heads on the outside. "That was our insight," said Hammer. "We realized that there's nothing that prevents a polymer from forming a bilayer like a phospholipid would." But polymersomes have one huge advantage; they can be controlled. By adding in different molecules, researchers are learning to manipulate their abilities and make them do things that biological cells just can't manage. For example, polymersomes can be made strong. While it's true that the phospholipids in natural membranes hold together, they don't bond with each other very tightly. They move around within the cell membrane, and, without the pressure of a watery environment, they fall apart. Polymersomes, on the other hand, can be designed so that they cling to each other tightly. Their atoms can bond not only within a single polymer, but also to the polymers next to them. This is called cross- linking, and it vastly increases the strength of artificial cells. (It's cross-linking that stiffens the curls in a beauty-shop permanent enough to keep the shape of the hair-do.) In fact, between cross-linking and the increased molecular weight of the polymers, polymersomes are a thousand-fold stronger than phospholipid cells. "Probably the main advantage from NASA's point of view," says Hammer, "is that once the polymersomes are crosslinked, the cells become durable enough to be dehydrated into a powder." They can be stored easily, for a long time, and without taking up much space. In other words, it would be a perfect way to carry extra blood for medical emergencies on long distance voyages in outer space. That, in fact, is the use that he and his colleagues initially envisioned, says Hammer. But they quickly realized that the polymersomes could be used for transporting other things. Hammer explains: It's easy to encapsulate many kinds of molecules with polymersomes; such artificial cells could then be sent throughout the body. Because their outer membrane consists of molecules that don't interact with cells, polymersomes are invisible to the immune system. They can travel unhampered through the bloodstream. Polymersomes can also be engineered so that some types of cells do react to them. Hammer, Discher and colleagues can add to their polymersomes particular molecules that latch onto the cells they're targeting. Typically, says Hammer, the polymersomes float through the bloodstream for about 18 hours before they reach their destination and grab onto the target cells. The key word is "target." Doctors using polymersomes wouldn't have to pepper the entire body with medications. They could be targeted--sent only to the places they're needed. Arthritis medications, for example, could be sent only to a patient's swollen fingers, without the risk of causing reactions elsewhere. Polymersomes could carry cancer-zapping pharmaceuticals directly to a tumor. They could incorporate imaging agents like iron oxide particles, which can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging. If these particles are encapsulated into polymersomes designed to latch onto cancer cells, they'd be able to locate small tumor cells that have migrated through the body. Polymersomes could theoretically be designed to carry both the imaging agents that locate a problem, and the medication that treats it. Using manmade materials to produce an artificial cell is "a highly novel concept," says Hammer. "I think that NASA saw this as a wonderful material, and they wanted to see how far it could evolve." In some conditions, he says, polymersomes take on shapes that are very reminiscent of the ones biological cells take on when, for instance, they're dividing. And Hammer and his colleagues are still exploring the possibilities. They're experimenting with different types of polymers, to see how the capabilities of artificial cells can be expanded. The most exciting applications of polymersomes, believes Hammer, are still to come. Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/29may_polymersomes.htm. ________________________________________________________________________ WHEELS IN THE SKY--NASA'S MARS EXPLORATION PROGRAM NASA/JPL release 30 May 2003 When Chris Voorhees thinks about wheels, he doesn't imagine the rubber hitting the road, but aluminum crawling across the surface of Mars. In fact, he has already seen some of his handiwork making its way across the red planet. One of the first jobs Voorhees was handed as an intern was stamping out over 1,000 stainless steel cleats for the Sojourner rover on NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission. Fast-forward six years and tack on a 365-pound weight-gain and mobility specialists are dealing with a whole new animal--the large twin "robot geologists" known as the Mars Exploration Rovers, launching in early summer 2003. "We started with the Sojourner wheels as a base to work from," Voorhees said. "Because of many different engineering demands on the wheels, the wheels for our new rovers didn't mature until late in the game." Mobility engineers were tasked with making the wheels lightweight, so as not to add any more weight to an already hefty spacecraft; compact, so that when the rover is stowed in the lander they would fit; and capable, so the twin geologists can maneuver off of the lander safely and climb rocks up to ten inches high. Basic parameters were set, based on the weight of the rover and the contact area on the surface and then the challenge began to make the wheels deliver on all requirements. A design to keep on turnin' The rocker-bogie suspension that was developed for Sojourner, the first vehicle to rove on another planet, will be used again in a modified design. This flexible mobility system allows the wheels to conform to obstacles like rocks, strengthening their grip and maximizing their ability to clear any "road blocks." At 26 centimeters in diameter (a little over ten inches), these aluminum wheels are twice the size of those on Sojourner and are missing the recognizable sharp cleats. "A big challenge is to be able to get enough traction to get through soil and over rocks but also to be benign enough to get off of the lander without getting entangled in the deflated airbags," Voorhees said. The design is "basically like a paddlewheel that is machined onto the outside of the wheel, providing both safety and capability." Each wheel has its own drive and steering actuators, which control movement and direction. The internal volume that each wheel can hold was increased to house both systems within the wheel's crown-shaped design. When steered, the wheel's unique shape bears the load continuously from inside to outside and prevents it from riding up on its outside edge. Hubcaps to minimize the shock Inadvertently adding to the rovers' panache are the spiral flectures. The futuristic-looking "hubcaps" were chosen over dozens of other flecture and spoke options and are designed to absorb shock and to protect the rest of the vehicle during driving. Next Intent, a company in San Luis Obispo, California that specializes in machining complex shapes, manufactured the wheels. The overall wheel design allowed them to machine each wheel from one piece (or billet) of aluminum. Being able to use just one piece of aluminum minimizes what's called scar mass, or useless leftover material where parts would join and makes the wheel stronger, Voorhees noted. The outside of the wheels are anodized, or covered with a black coating, to provide additional strength. This smooth surface also minimizes the threat of the wheels getting caught up in the deflated airbags. The "orange filling" between the spaces in the spiral flecture is an open-cell foam called Solimide. It was cut into crescent shapes and bonded to the wheel. "The idea came from a concern that because the wheel has an open geometry design to the drive and steering actuators, it could pick up rocks and debris and cause a problem," Voorhees said. "We needed to fill the gaps but still be flexible--we couldn't use a solid for shock absorption. Solimide maintains its flexibility even at very low temperatures so it's ideal for conditions on Mars." Test tracks: a race against time Planning such a complex mission is, as Voorhees said, a race against time. Designs are fluid and subject to intense testing and subsequent change. While nothing can substitute for being on Mars, the next best thing is to run trials in simulated martian environments at the JPL's test beds. An obstacle course dubbed the "rock gauntlet" challenged test wheels to scale everything from small rocks to concrete blocks. Engineers also conducted airbag interaction tests in which they drove the wheels into the deflated airbags again and again until they had enough information to proceed with wheel design changes. The mobility team and the assembly test and launch operations team gathered to conduct ramp tests with the flight rovers to make sure the rover brains were communicating effectively with its legs and wheels. Preparing for the rover's first "steps" Preparing a robot to perform to exact specifications on a harsh planet 460 million kilometers (286 million miles) away is no easy task. Still the excitement of sending a spacecraft to another planet has not waned. While engineers are anxious to see Mars through the eyes of a rover again, they know that the deployment process will be slow and precise once the rovers land on Mars in January, 2004. Once the lander petals open and the rover "wakes up," it may take up to five days for it to drive off the lander. "It's hard to explain the minutiae--everything has to work exactly as you plan," Voorhees said. "After every command sequence we give the rover, we have to wait to make sure everything is working properly before we proceed. And due to the delay in sending and receiving signals from Earth to Mars and back, it's like taking 20 minutes just to talk to yourself!" When ground controllers confirm that all systems are working as they should, they will tackle the decision of which direction to go. Nearby obstacles like rocks or deflated airbags will determine the safest route to leave the tetrahedron-shaped lander. As it emerges from the lander, its interplanetary cocoon, the rover will not be breaking any speed records to conduct its research. Top speed for the rovers is five centimeters (two inches) per second. However, as many scientists and engineers are quick to point out, the goal is not to travel as far and fast as possible, but to uncover the most interesting science wherever it presents itself. And as long as the wheels do their job, Voorhees and the mobility team can live without wheelies. During Mars Exploration Rover hardware development, Chris Voorhees was one of two cognizant engineers for the rover's mobility system. In preparation for the launches, he is currently serving as the Assembly Test and Launch Operations integration engineer for the MER-2 rover at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Read the original news release at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/spotlight/wheels01.html ________________________________________________________________________ HARPOONING A COMET From Astrobiology Magazine 1 June 2003 Europe is set to try to do something no-one has ever done before--to chase and land on a comet. The Lander science will focus on the in situ study of the composition and structure of the nucleus material. Comet- chasing mission Rosetta has refocused its sights on Comet Churyumov- Gerasimenko. During its meeting on May 13-14th 2003, ESA's Science Program Committee decided Rosetta's new mission baseline. The spacecraft will be launched in February 2004 from Kourou, French Guiana, using an Ariane-5 G+ launcher. The rendezvous with the new target comet is expected in November 2014. Delayed indefinitely earlier this year to troubleshoot launch issues, ESA's Rosetta lander, is now back on track to be the first man-made object to land on a comet. Hampered by rocketry concerns, the landing phase presented planners with another set of challenges altogether. "Firstly, we don't know anything about how rough the surface is," said Rosetta Project Scientist Gerhard Schwehm. "It could be covered with fluffy snow like the Alps or it could be hard rocks and craters. We can, however, be sure that it will not be smooth and flat resembling parking lots." Scientists designed Rosetta's landing gear to cope with most nasty surprises as soon as it is to touch down on its selected target. Two harpoons will anchor the probe to the surface. The self-adjusting landing gear will ensure that it stays upright, even on a slope. The lander's feet will drill into the ground. These devices will help counteract the fact that there is no appreciable gravity on a comet. The choice of a new comet has required intensive efforts, including observations by telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the ESO Very Large Telescope to ensure scientists know as much as possible about the new target. Scientists will now investigate an alternative launch to this comet, in February 2005, as a back-up plan. Rendezvous with the comet, Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is now expected in November 2014. En route to the comet it will inspect two asteroids (Otawara and Siwa) at close quarters. Measurement goals on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko include the determination of the elemental, molecular, mineralogical, and isotopic composition of the cometary surface and subsurface material. Highest priority is given to the elemental and molecular determinations as it is believed that some mineralogical and isotopic measurements can be carried out adequately by orbiter science investigations. In addition properties like near-surface strength, density, texture, porosity, ice phases and thermal properties will be derived. Texture characterization will include microscopic studies of individual grains. What's next? On Valentine's Day, 2001, the Near-Shoemaker spacecraft successfully landed on the asteroid, Eros. Its remarkable journey--to soft-land on a peanut shaped asteroid--about 176 million kilometers (109 million miles) from Earth, prompted Andrew Cheng, NEAR Project Scientist, to note: "On Monday, 12 February 2001, the NEAR spacecraft touched down on asteroid Eros, after transmitting 69 close-up images of the surface during its final descent. Watching that event was the most exciting experience of my life." On January 2, 2004, another NASA spacecraft called Stardust will fly within 75 miles of a cometary main body (called Wild-2)--close enough to trap small particles from the coma, the gas-and-dust envelope surrounding the comet's nucleus. Stardust will be traveling at about 13,400 miles per hour (mph) and will capture comet particles traveling at the speed of a bullet fired from a rifle. Its main camera, built for NASA's Voyager program, will transmit the closest-ever comet pictures back to Earth. Launched in February 1999, Stardust was designed to capture particles from Wild 2 and return them to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft already has collected grains of interstellar dust. It is the first U.S. sample-return mission since the last moon landing in 1972. In the next 5 or so years, there will be several encounters of spacecraft with comets and asteroids. All the following missions are funded, though not all have been launched yet. 2004 January 1, Stardust, Comet Wild 2 (coma sample return) 2005 July 3, Deep Impact, Comet Tempel 1 (big mass impact) 2005 September, Muses-C, Asteroid 1998 SF36 (sample return) 2014 November, Rosetta, Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (flyby and landing) Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article483.html. Additional articles are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030528174507.dazzbj28.html ________________________________________________________________________ EUROPA DIARY IV: WALKING ON THIN ICE By Matt Pruis From Astrobiology Magazine 2 June 2003 The Europa Focus Group is a collaboration of scientists who study Jupiter's moon, Europa. This ice-covered world may be one of the few places in our solar system other than Earth that has a water ocean, and liquid water is believed to be one of the key factors in the development of life. Astrobiologists and other scientists eager to learn more about Europa recently headed to Alaska's North Slope. The scientists studied the region's unique terrain, providing insight for future missions to the icy landscape of Europa. Flying in small aircraft to study geographical features, driving snowmobiles over glacial terrain, digging bore holes to get a glimpse of ice history--all the activities pursued by these hardy adventurers may someday be duplicated on the surface of Europa by robotic spacecraft. Matt Pruis, a support scientist with NorthWest Research Associates in Seattle, Washington, attended the North Slope conference and kept a journal of the events. Saturday, April 26, 2003 Today is the final day of the Europa Focus Group's Arctic Ice Field Conference. We met this morning to discuss a gauntlet of exciting and controversial topics, such as "Snowball Earth:" the theory that several times in the history of our planet, the Earth was enshrouded in sheets of ice from the equator to the poles. But Europa's ice shell was, of course, the main focus of the morning. In trying to unravel the history of Europa's icy features, various interpretations have been suggested. One interpretation is that there may be convection of "warm" ice within a thick Europan ice shell. According to this theory, slightly warmer ice moves up like an elevator through colder ice. Such convection might allow any microbes from the deep ocean or warmer ice below to travel up to the surface of the moon, where there is sunlight and possible organic nutrients. The ice surface gets intensely irradiated because of Europa's proximity to Jupiter's magnetic field, and this relentless radiation bombardment may produce organic and other oxidant molecules at a sufficient rate to provide an energy source for a Europan biosphere. Although we don't currently understand the process, this solar-derived organic "soup" on Europa's harsh surface may get drawn back down into the ice below, potentially ending up in the deep ocean. This proposed cycling of Europa's icy crust may mean that the signatures of life can be found everywhere on Europa. Or, conversely, they may be concentrated into very small regions, making them difficult to detect (unless you know where to look). After the morning's thought-provoking conjectures, we spent the afternoon at the Iñupiat Heritage Center. There we were greeted by Kenneth Toovak, an Iñupiat Elder and a board member of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC). Kenneth has been helping researchers study the ice for decades; he has a deep understanding of the polar environment and a wealth of personal experience. As we look toward studying the icy surfaces of other worlds, Kenneth urged us not to forget to monitor the conditions of our own planet. He's concerned that the climate on the North Slope is changing, and he wonders what those changes will mean for his people. Changing habitats could affect the seals, walruses and whales on which they depend, and changes in the snow pack and erosion of the coastline would affect their homes and hunting camps. He related several stories of how, in the last couple of years, there has been less anchor ice to keep the ice floes from drifting out to sea. The whale hunters use the ice edge for a launching platform on their expeditions. A couple of years ago, 140 people were trapped on a floe that detached from shore, and they had to be rescued by helicopter. Kenneth told us an amazing story of a young man who was caught on the wrong side of one of these detachments in the 1930s or 40s. After a cold night on the ice floe, floating continually further from shore, a thin (less than 10 centimeter thick) skim of ice formed, extending towards the shore. The young man had a stick for testing ice, and he found that the ice was too thin for safe passage. However, he heard a voice urging him to go forward. For the next 24 hours the voice kept urging him, and he managed to keep moving over this thin ice. Finally, the next morning he reached the near-shore ice and safety. I could imagine the young man making this trip, since in this morning's discussions Hajo Eicken had related a story of seeing polar bears moving over thin ice. Thin ice is somewhat elastic, so if you keep moving and redistributing your weight, it may be able to support you during your journey. Polar bears move across this thin ice on their broad, snowshoe-like paws. When the ice gets thinner still, the bear will resort to crawling on its knees and elbows to make it across. But if the bear stops its motion, the ice fractures and the polar bear gets to swim. This is not such a worry for the polar bear, with its thick fur and layer of insulating fat, but it would have been the end of the young man who performed the long walk. In some ways, using Earth's ice fields as an analog of Europa is like "walking on thin ice." We take the risk of assuming that the features we see on Europa have a similar formation history as features on Earth. But sometimes different features, while seemingly quite similar in structure, have vastly diverse histories. As we move forward in our quest to understand Europa's icy realm, new information will generate new theories. We will shift our stance if our position becomes untenable. That's the nature of scientific progress. In thinking over the events of the last few days, I now appreciate how different the Arctic Ocean actually is from the surface of Europa. The Arctic ice pack is 1 to 5 meters thick. It has extremely high gradients of temperature, from the frigid Arctic air above to the comparatively warm upper ocean below. The ice weakens, cracks and is deformed by interaction with the ocean and air currents. It is generally believed that the ice shell on Europa is significantly thicker than this--that it is perhaps 20 to 100 kilometers thick. With thick ice, processes within the Europan ice shell become important. For instance, this additional thickness would allow the ice to support "loads" such as ice ridges or ice mountains many times larger than those seen on Earth. Yet we don't see such large loads on Europa. Europa only has about one- fourth the gravity of Earth, so features on Europa could be very large. The planet Mars, for instance, has one-third the gravity of Earth, and volcanoes on Mars reach immense sizes. The largest volcano on Mars-- Olympus Mons--is 24 kilometers high (higher than three Mount Everests) and 550 kilometers in diameter (about the size of Arizona). Such large volcanoes can exist on Mars both because of the low gravity and the lack of surface tectonic motion. Since Europa has even less gravity than Mars, it is quite a quandary why the ice features on Europa are only a couple hundred meters tall. Perhaps the low relief of the features is due to the ice relaxing over long geologic time scales. This is just one instance of the limitations we face in trying to interpret what we see on Europa. Even if we incorporate everything we know about Earth's ice features in our Europa models, for true understanding we will need to include data that goes beyond our own planet. By constantly moving forward in our search for knowledge, by continuing in our quest for exploration, we hope to move past the "thin ice" of Earth-Europa conjecture. We'll have to wait for a spacecraft to visit the icy moon to get some final answers, and that won't happen until 2011 at the earliest. Our journey will be long and perilous, but just imagine how thrilled we'll be when we finally reach the far-off shore of Europa! Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article484.html. ________________________________________________________________________ U.S. PARTNERS SHARE IN EXCITEMENT OF EUROPE'S MARS MISSION NASA release 2003-079 2 June 2003 Americans are participating several ways in the European Space Agency's first mission to Mars, launched today from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The mission, Mars Express, will reach the red planet on December 27 then examine it both from an orbiter with seven instruments and on the surface with a lander named Beagle 2. The orbiter will point ground- penetrating radar at Mars for the first time, probing for evidence of underground water. Beagle 2 will conduct biochemical and geological tests at a different site than the two areas where NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers will land in January 2004. "The exploration of Mars is an international adventure," said Dr. Cathy Weitz at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. "Our rover missions have key participants in Europe, and there are U.S. scientists on the teams for every instrument on Mars Express." Weitz serves dual coordinating roles as project scientist for NASA's participation in Mars Express and as program scientist for the Mars Exploration Rovers. "This year's European and NASA missions to Mars truly complement each other in the added understanding they may give us about the present and past environments on that planet," said Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration. U.S. roles in Mars Express include navigational support from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, and communication support from the JPL-managed Deep Space Network, which operates antenna stations in California, Spain and Australia. NASA supplied major components for the orbiter's radar experiment. "We have very little information about the crust of Mars more than about a meter below the surface, but with this instrument we hope to probe as deep as 5 kilometers" (3 miles), said JPL's Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, who, as co-principal investigator for the instrument, collaborates closely with Professor Giovanni Picardi, principal investigator at the Universita di Roma in Rome, Italy. "With the radar, we will try to detect boundaries between layers of different types of material," Plaut said. "If there is a boundary between a rock-ice mixture at the surface and a rock-water mixture at depth, it will reflect the radio waves and we hope to detect it. We'll be looking for aquifers--subsurface reservoirs of liquid water--but nobody really knows whether Mars has them." The radar instrument, named the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding, might also detect other types of layer boundaries, such as between sediments and underlying volcanic rock, or between the polar ice caps and underlying liquid water. This type of instrument, carried by aircraft, has detected vast lakes under polar icecaps on Earth. It has not been used on another planet, though a similar instrument flew on an Apollo mission, said Richard Horttor, project manager for NASA's roles in Mars Express. Of the instrument's NASA-funded components, the University of Iowa, Iowa City, built the transmitter, JPL built the receiver, and Astro Aerospace, Carpinteria, CA, built the 40-meter (131-foot) antenna. Italy provided the instrument's digital processing system and software, and integrated the parts together. One major question about Mars, and about instability of a planet's environment, is what became of the water that once apparently flowed in abundance on Mars' surface. NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft now orbiting Mars has located ice mixed into the top meter (about 3 feet) of Mars surface. Theories differ as to how much more water--frozen or melted-- lies deeper and how much may have dissipated from the planet's upper atmosphere. Mars Express will investigate the second possibility as well as the first. The radar instrument will examine the structure and variability of the ionosphere--the atmosphere's top layer. Other instruments will study atmospheric chemistry and structure, and the interaction of the ionosphere with the solar wind of charged particles speeding outward from the Sun. Additional instruments on the orbiter include a high-resolution stereo color camera and an infrared mineralogical mapping spectrometer. The Beagle 2 lander will look for chemical signs of life on Mars and use a mechanical "mole" to dig up samples from as far as 1.5 meters (nearly 5 feet) away from the lander, among other experiments. Cooperation between American and European Mars missions extends to plans for using Mars Odyssey to relay communications between Beagle 2 and Earth when Mars Express is not in good position to do so. The Mars Exploration Rovers will use Mars Express as a relay at least once as a demonstration for even broader international interdependence in future exploration of Mars. Information is available online about Mars Express at http://sci.esa.int/home/marsexpress and at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/express, about the radar experiment at http://www.marsis.com, about Mars Exploration Rovers at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer, and about NASA at http://www.nasa.gov. Mars Express is managed by the 15-nation European Space Agency's science and technology center at Noordwijk in the Netherlands. JPL, a division of California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages Mars Odyssey, the Mars Exploration Rover missions, and NASA's participation in Mars Express for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Contacts: Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 ________________________________________________________________________ HUMAN MISSION TO MARS: THE SECOND AURORA WORKING MEETING From ESA News 2 June 2003 While final preparations continue for the launch of ESA's Mars Express-- the Agency's first mission to explore the Red Planet--European scientists and engineers are also looking towards the future, to a time when humans are able to set foot on the rust-red sands of our neighboring world. Preliminary planning for this giant leap in space exploration is well underway as part of ESA's Aurora Programme, and some 60 members of industry, national space agencies and ESA came together on 14-15 May to receive a progress report on current activities and discuss the way forward. During the first session, representatives of the four contractors (EADS, Alenia Spazio, Astrium and Alcatel) gave brief updates about their ongoing parametric analyses of a human mission to Mars, including studies undertaken by other agencies. By combining these companies' expertise in space technologies with earlier human mission reference designs and other studies, it is expected that ESA will be able to identify the essential "trade-offs" in mass, crew number, mission duration etc. for such an expedition, before beginning the first tentative studies of mission architecture. "ESA is mediating and integrating the design effort, but the companies are doing independent studies and evaluations of the technologies for a human mission, based on their existing expertise," said Loredana Bessone, ESA's Human Mission Design Study/Manager. "Obviously there are a number of major constraints that must be taken into account," she said, "one of these is cost; the more mass we have to carry to orbit, the more costly the mission. Mission duration and crew size are important factors because they affect the consumables and power we need, but they also have an impact on the mass of the spacecraft." The second session included a presentation by astronaut Jean-Pierre Haigneré, a veteran of two spaceflights, about the importance of human spaceflight in the exploration of the solar system. This was followed by an animated discussion about the objectives of the first human mission to Mars. "We are trying to get a clear idea of what will be required and what we can contribute to an international project to send humans to Mars," said Franco Ongaro, head of the Aurora Programme. "In order to do this, we must investigate how far Europe's present day assets in human spaceflight can be advanced so that it can make important contributions to international exploration missions to the Moon and Mars in the decades to come." Parametric studies There are 16 parametric studies related to the human Mars mission currently being undertaken by four industrial contractors. These are: * the martian logistic infrastructure (rovers, trucks, labs etc.) * required resources needed by the crew (water, oxygen, food etc.) * power for the Mars base * crew environment (radiation, dust, microgravity) * launchers * assembly in orbit * trajectories for journeys to and from Mars * type of propulsion and power for the transfer * strategy to arrive at Mars * entry, descent and landing * communications * navigation * ascent from Mars surface * quarantine/Planetary protection * Earth re-entry * robotics and automation Related news * Calling all students and universities http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM5KU1A6BD_Expanding_0.html * Green light for Aurora Flagship missions http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM8QJ1A6BD_Expanding_0.html * Technologies on the road to Mars http://www.esa.int/esaCP/ESASTY7708D_Expanding_0.html * Liftoff for Aurora: Europe's first steps to Mars, the Moon and beyond http://www.esa.int/esaCP/ESAONKTHN6D_Expanding_0.html More information * Aurora http://www.esa.int/export/esaMI/Aurora/ * Mars http://www.esa.int/esaHS/ESA9I50VMOC_future_0.html * Asteroids http://www.esa.int/esaHS/ESAOSG0VMOC_future_0.html * The Moon http://www.esa.int/esaHS/ESA8N21VMOC_future_0.html * Extraterrestrial life http://www.esa.int/esaHS/ESA7721VMOC_future_0.html * Living off the land http://www.esa.int/esaHS/ESAMUP0VMOC_future_0.html Images supporting this article are available at http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMJBLS1VED_Expanding_1.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology.html 2 June 2003 Astrobiology, exobiology and terraformation articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles1. html Astrobiology Magazine, 2003. The Viking files. Astrobiology Magazine. T. Pierson, 2003. SETI and astrobiology. Space.com. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles2. html M. Pruis, 2003. Europa diary IV: walking on thin ice. Astrobiology Magazine. Human space exploration and microgravity effects articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles3. html T. Phillips, 2003. Gone to seed. NASA Science News. Evolutionary biology and chemistry articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles5. html M. Levy and A. D. Ellington, 2003. Exponential growth by cross- catalytic cleavage of deoxyribozymogens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100(11):6416-6421. A. Y. Mulkidjanian, D. A. Cherepanov and M. Y. Galperin, 2003. Survival of the fittest before the beginning of life: selection of the first oligonucleotide-like polymers by UV light. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 3:12. Planetary protection articles http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/online_articles6. html University of California at Santa Cruz, 2003. The 601st Earth asteroid impact. Astrobiology Magazine. University of California at Santa Cruz, 2003. Sweeping civilization away in a single wave. SpaceDaily. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/webdata/users/dthomas/astrobiology/astrobiology_book s.htm National Research Council, 2003. Space Studies Council Annual Report 2002. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 2 June 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/05/27/sprj.colu.microgravity.science. ap/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/05/26/sprj.colu.rescue.possible.reut/ index.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_ap_030523.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_fl_030523.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_caib_030528a.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_caib_030528b.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_caib_030529.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03y.html http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030523rescue/ http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030528requal/ http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=1&u=/ap/2 0030529/ap_on_sc/shuttle_investigation ________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 22-28 May 2003 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, May 28. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm. On-board activities this week included the Engine Gimbal Actuator exercise and Backup ALF Injection Loader maintenance portions of ACS Periodic Engineering Maintenance, clearing of the ACS high-water marks, and participation in a DSS-25/ DSS-26 array demonstration. Instrument activities included Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) high rate observations, a high rate Magnetometer Subsystem Science Calibration Subsystem calibration, and uplink and execution of commands to perform normalization of instrument flight software for RPWS, RADAR, and Cosmic Dust Analyzer. DSS-43 was declared red due to a hardware failure on Saturday, May 24. As a result, data from the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) flight software checkout and most of the CIRS Remote Sensing Pallet heater test to be played back over that pass was lost. A plan is being worked to re-run the flight software checkout and play back the data. There is no plan to recover the heater test. The Radio Science Subsystem quiet test originally planned for C37, and lost as a result of the May spacecraft safing event, has been rescheduled to execute during C39. The Multi-mission Image Processing Laboratory processed and delivered 57 Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) wide-angle camera dark frame images from the C37 sequence. ISS has no more scheduled science activities until C39. Five manuscripts based on ISS observations taken during the Jupiter flyby have been submitted for publication. One paper was submitted to the Astronomical Journal, three to a special issue of Icarus, and one a draft version of a soon-to-be-submitted paper to Icarus. The official port#1 products for Science Operations Plan implementation of tour sequences S7/S8 were delivered to Science Planning. The products were then merged and handed off to ACS for end-to-end-pointing validation. Target Working Teams and Orbiter Science Teams have delivered integrated products for Revs 39-46. The Science and Sequence Update Process (SSUP) portion of the Uplink Verification & Validation (V&V) activity kicked off this week. The Sequence Team (ST) met to review the ten-week schedule to be used to create the final uplinkable sequence for the V&V activity, and reviewed the actions remaining after the Science Operations Plan Update (SOP U/D) V&V. The ST lead accessed the merged products produced during the SOP U/D V&V activity, and split out and distributed the subsequences for each team. The teams have begun updating their products per the actions listed in the SOP U/D to SSUP hand-off package. 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. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS: SPACECRAFT AND EXPENDABLE VEHICLES STATUS REPORT By George H. Diller NASA/KSC release 27 May 2003 Mission: Mars Exploration Rover (MER-A) Launch Vehicle: Delta II Launch Pad: 17-A Launch Date: June 8, 2003 Launch Time: 2:05:55 PM - 2:44:07 PM EDT The MER-2 rover, mated to the upper stage booster and contained within its payload transporter rolled out of the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility this morning at 2:20 AM. It arrived at Pad 17-A at 4:30 AM. It was hoisted atop the Boeing Delta II rocket at 9:15 AM. A spacecraft state of health check is scheduled to occur on Wednesday and the integrated vehicle/spacecraft Flight Program Verification test will follow on Thursday. Installation of the fairing around the spacecraft is scheduled to occur this Saturday, May 31. Fueling of the Delta second stage with its complement of storable hypergolic propellants is currently planned to occur June 5. Some additional schedule margin is being added to complete the management reviews required prior to launch. Therefore, launch is being retargeted to occur no earlier than June 8. A final decision on the launch date will be made next Monday, June 2. MER-A will have two launch opportunities each day during the launch period that closes on June 19. Arrival at Mars is set for January 4, 2004, regardless of the launch date within that period. The Delta first stage for MER-A was erected on Pad 17-A on April 23. The second stage erection was completed on April 28, and the fairing was installed in the white room on April 30. The solid rocket booster erection began on May 13 with the first set of three motors being attached to the first stage. The second set of three was erected on May 14, and the final set was hoisted into position on May 15. The Simulated Flight Test, an electrical test of the vehicle's systems used during powered flight, was successfully completed on May 21. Mission: Mars Exploration Rover (MER-B vehicle/MER-1 rover) Launch Vehicle: Delta II Heavy Launch Pad: 17-B Launch Date: June 25, 2003 Launch Time: 12:38:16 AM - 1:19:19 AM EDT Fueling of MER-1 began today and will be completed tomorrow May 28. Spin balance testing will begin the next day on May 29 and is to be followed by mating to the Delta third stage (upper stage booster) on June 14. Transportation to the launch pad is scheduled for June 15. The MER-B vehicle's first stage is on Pad 17-B. Erecting the nine solid rocket boosters in sets of three a day was completed May 22. The second stage will be hoisted atop the first stage tomorrow, May 28. The MER-B launch period closes July 15. Contact: George H. Diller NASA Kennedy Space Center Phone: 321-867-2468 Read the original news release at http://www- pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/status/paylstat/2003/may/5-27-03p.htm. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/mer_update_030527.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030527204025.3ojtslob.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/030527delay.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/030529preview.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/030529landing.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/030529future.html ________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPRESS--HOW TO BE THE FASTEST TO THE RED PLANET ESA information release 12-2003 2 June 2003 ESA's Mars Express is a pioneering mission for several reasons. It is the first European voyage to Mars, it has been built at much less than the usual cost, and in record time. Mars Express is the first example of ESA's new style of developing scientific missions: faster, smarter and more cost-effectively, but without compromising reliability and quality. However, there have been no cuts in tests and pre-launch preparations. Mars Express will face important technical challenges during its trip to the Red Planet and ESA engineers have worked hard to make sure it meets them. "With Mars Express, Europe is building its own expertise in many fields. This ranges from the development of science experiments and new technologies--new for European industries--to the control of a mission that includes landing on another planet. We have never done this before," says Rudi Schmidt, Mars Express Project Manager. Quicker, smarter... safe! Mars Express's design and development phase has taken about four years, compared with about six years for previous similar missions. Also, Mars Express has cost 300 million Euros, much less than other comparable planetary missions. The "magic" lies in the new managerial approach being used. This new approach includes the reuse of existing hardware and instruments. Also, the mission was developed by a smaller ESA team, who gave more responsibility to the industry. Mars Express has been built by a consortium of 24 companies from ESA's 15 Member States and the United States, led by Astrium as prime contractor. However, mission safety was never compromised. "Although we had high time pressure towards the end of the project, we did not drop any of the planned tests to save time. I call this a fast design phase, followed by thorough testing activity," says Schmidt. This new streamlined development method will continue with Venus Express and probably other future missions. Launch Mars Express will be launched on 2 June 2003 on board a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The mission consists of an orbiter and a lander, called Beagle 2. In its launch configuration, Mars Express is a honeycombed aluminium box that measures 1.5 by 1.8 by 1.4 metres (excluding solar panels), and weighs 1223 kilograms in total. The Beagle-2 lander travels attached to one side of the spacecraft, folded up rather like a very large pocket watch. Arrival at Mars is scheduled for late December this year, when Beagle 2 will land while the orbiter will be entering into orbit around Mars. The last actions of an intense launch campaign are taking place in Baikonur at this very moment. Mars Express arrived at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on 20 March 2003. The spacecraft, fuelled with 457 kilograms of propellant, was mounted onto the Soyuz launcher on 24 May 2003 in a process called "marriage" by the Russians. The whole structure will be rolled out to the launch pad on 29 May 2003, four days before launch. The fastest possible trip to Mars One of the reasons scientists had to develop Mars Express so quickly arises from the fact that, this summer, Mars and the Earth will be especially close to each other. Although launch opportunities to go to Mars occur every 26 months--when the Sun, Earth and Mars form a straight line--this year the planets will be in their closest positions which occurs every 15 to 17 years. On top of that, calculations had shown that the best combination of fuel expenditure and travel time could only be achieved by launching Mars Express in the period between 23 May and 21 June. The Mars Express team had to work very hard to meet this launch window. As a tribute from one high-tech European organization to another, Mars Express is carrying a small container of Ferrari red paint to the Red Planet. After the launch Mars Express will separate from the Soyuz Fregat upper stage 90 minutes after liftoff. Then the solar arrays will open and the spacecraft will make contact with ESA's ground station in New Norcia, Western Australia. On the way to Mars, Mars Express will be traveling away from Earth at a speed of 3 kilometers per second. A crucial operation at this early stage of the trip will be to release Beagle-2 launch clamps three days after launch. These clamps are extra gears to make sure that the lander stays securely attached to the spacecraft during the launch, but once in space they are not needed anymore. A pyrotechnic device is then activated to release them. It will be a key step, necessary to eject Beagle 2 when the spacecraft arrives at Mars. However, all efforts have been made to ensure things go smoothly. Schmidt says: "We have tested all aspects of the Mars Express mission well enough to be confident that there will be no errors or trivial mistakes. Mars Express has been developed in a record-breaking time, but there have been no compromises in testing, including the ground segment." Orbiting and landing on Mars Six days before arrival at Mars, the lander will be released. This operation is regarded as one of the most complex of the Mars Express mission. Beagle 2, which weighs only 65 kilograms, is too light to carry a steering mechanism and it is not designed to receive commands during cruise and landing. So Beagle 2 can only reach its planned landing site by relying on the orbiter to place it into the correct trajectory, and by dropping it at a very precise point in space and with a determined speed. The ground control team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany, will guide this maneuver. To be ready for the approach to Mars and the ejection operations, engineers have been training for months with simulators that resemble sophisticated computer games. Tests will continue after Mars Express's launch. Approaching Mars, the orbiter ejects the lander and will be left on a collision course with the planet. In another key maneuver, ground controllers will have to adjust its trajectory, reducing its speed by 1.8 kilometers per second. At that speed, the planet's gravity will be able to "capture" the Mars Express orbiter and put it into Mars orbit. Ground controllers will still have to perform several maneuvers to set the spacecraft into its final operational state--a highly elliptical polar orbit--from where the scientific observations can begin. In the meantime, Beagle 2 will have landed on Mars. The landing area covers a large ellipsis, 300 kilometers long and 150 kilometers wide, on an equatorial region called Isidis Planitia. The landing spot has been chosen also taking into account the strong martian winds, and the relatively smooth surface of the site. The lander will deploy parachutes, and then large gas-filled bags will protect it as it bounces to a halt on the surface. Once landed, Beagle 2 will emit a "beep", a signal that will allow operators at the United Kingdom's Jodrell Bank radio telescope station to know that it touched down safely. This 9- note call sign was composed for the Beagle-2 team by the British pop group, Blur. Mars Express will investigate the martian surface, subsurface, and atmosphere for at least two years. The lander will operate on the surface for about six Earth months, relaying its data to Earth through the orbiter. Mars Express will contribute to answering the fundamental questions about Mars, such as the presence and quantity of water, and possible signs of present or past life. In the worldwide effort to explore the Red Planet in recent years, the European Mars Express mission represents the most thorough investigation of Mars attempted so far. Contact: ESA Communication Department Media Relations Office Phone: +33 (0)1 5369 7155 Fax: +33 (0)1 5369 7690 Read the original information release at http://sci.esa.int/content/news/index.cfm?aid=9&cid=32&oid=32376. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/marsrover/ http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/mars_express_030530.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030529035027.3d8iefq2.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-03g.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/030528overview.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/030528beagle2.html ________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPRESS EN ROUTE FOR THE RED PLANET ESA release 36-2003 2 June 2003 The European Mars Express space probe has been placed successfully in a trajectory that will take it beyond the terrestrial environment and on the way to Mars--getting there in late December. This first European Space Agency probe to head for another planet will enter an orbit around Mars, from where it will perform detailed studies of the planet's surface, its subsurface structures and its atmosphere. It will also deploy Beagle 2, a small autonomous station which will land on the planet, studying its surface and looking for possible signs of life, past or present. The probe, weighing in at 1120 kg, was built on ESA's behalf by a European team led by Astrium. It set out on its journey to Mars aboard a Soyuz-Fregat launcher, under Starsem operational management. The launcher lifted off from Baïkonur in Kazakhstan on 2 June at 23.45 local time (17:45 GMT). An interim orbit around the Earth was reached following a first firing of the Fregat upper stage. One hour and thirty-two minutes later the probe was injected into its interplanetary orbit. "Europe is on its way to Mars to stake its claim in the most detailed and complete exploration ever done of the Red Planet. We can be very proud of this and of the speed with which have achieved this goal", said David Southwood, ESA's Director of Science witnessing the launch from Baikonur. Contact with Mars Express has been established by ESOC, ESA's satellite control center, located in Darmstadt, Germany. The probe is pointing correctly towards the Sun and has deployed its solar panels. All on-board systems are operating faultlessly. Two days from now, the probe will perform a corrective maneuver that will place it in a Mars-bound trajectory, while the Fregat stage, trailing behind, will vanish into space--there will be no risk of it crashing into and contaminating the Red Planet. Mars Express will then travel away from Earth at a speed exceeding 30 km/s (3 km/s in relation to the Earth), on a six-month and 400 million kilometre journey through the solar system. Once all payload operations have been checked out, the probe will be largely deactivated. During this period, the spacecraft will contact Earth only once a day. Mid- journey correction of its trajectory is scheduled for September. There in time for Christmas Following reactivation of its systems at the end of November, Mars Express will get ready to release Beagle 2. The 60 kg capsule containing the tiny lander does not incorporate its own propulsion and steering system and will be released into a collision trajectory with Mars, on 20 December. It will enter the martian atmosphere on Christmas day, after five days' ballistic flight. As it descends, the lander will be protected in the first instance by a heat-shield; two parachutes will then open to provide further deceleration. With its weight down to 30 kg at most, it will land in an equatorial region known as Isidis Planitia. Three airbags will soften the final impact. This crucial phase in the mission will last just ten minutes, from entry into the atmosphere to landing. Meanwhile, the Mars Express probe proper will have performed a series of maneuvers through to a capture orbit. At this point its main motor will fire, providing the deceleration needed to acquire a highly elliptical transition orbit. Attaining the final operational orbit will call for four more firings. This 7.5 hour quasi-polar orbit will take the probe to within 250 km of the planet. Getting to know Mars--inside and out Having landed on Mars, Beagle 2--named after HMS Beagle, on which Charles Darwin voyaged round the world, developing his evolutionary theory--will deploy its solar panels and the payload adjustable workbench, a set of instruments (two cameras, a microscope and two spectrometers) mounted on the end of a robot arm. It will proceed to explore its new environment, gathering geological and mineralogical data that should, for the first time, allow rock samples to be dated with absolute accuracy. Using a grinder and corer, and the "mole", a wire- guided mini-robot able to borrow its way under rocks and dig the ground to a depth of 2 m, samples will be collected and then examined in the GAP automated mini-laboratory, equipped with 12 furnaces and a mass spectrometer. The spectrometer will have the job of detecting possible signs of life and dating rock samples. The Mars Express orbiter will carry out a detailed investigation of the planet, pointing its instruments at Mars for between half-an-hour and an hour per orbit and then, for the remainder of the time, at Earth to relay the information collected in this way and the data transmitted by Beagle 2. The orbiter's seven on-board instruments are expected to provide considerable information about the structure and evolution of Mars. A very high resolution stereo camera, the HRSC, will perform comprehensive mapping of the planet at 10 m resolution and will even be capable of photographing some areas to a precision of barely 2 m. The OMEGA spectrometer will draw up the first mineralogical map of the planet to 100 m precision. Only a start to exploration This mineralogical study will be taken further by the PFS spectrometer-- which will also chart the composition of the martian atmosphere, a prerequisite for investigation of atmospheric dynamics. The MARSIS radar instrument, with its 40 m antenna, will sound the surface to a depth of 2 km, exploring its structure and above all searching for pockets of water. Another instrument, ASPERA, will be tasked with investigating interaction between the upper atmosphere and the interplanetary medium. The focus here will be on determining how and at what rate the solar wind, in the absence of a magnetic field capable of deflecting it, scattered the bulk of the martian atmosphere into space. Atmospheric investigation will also be performed by the SPICAM spectrometer and the MaRS experiment, with special emphasis on stellar occultation and radio signal propagation phenomena. The orbiter mission should last at least one martian year (687 days), while Beagle 2 is expected to operate on the planet's surface for 180 days. This first European mission to Mars incorporates some of the objectives of the Euro-Russian Mars 96 mission, which came to grief when the Proton launcher failed. And indeed a Russian partner is cooperating on each of the orbiter's instruments. Mars Express forms part of an international Mars exploration program, featuring also the US probes Mars Surveyor and Mars Odyssey, the two Mars Exploration Rovers and the Japanese probe Nozomi. Mars Express may perhaps, within this partnership, relay data from the NASA rovers while Mars Odyssey may, if required, relay data from Beagle 2. The mission's scientific goals are of outstanding importance. Mars Express will, it is hoped, supply answers to the many questions raised by earlier missions--questions concerning the planet's evolution, the history of its internal activity, the presence of water below its surface, the possibility that Mars may at one time have been covered by oceans and thus have offered an environment conducive to the emergence of some form of life, and even the possibility that life may still be present, somewhere in putative subterranean aquifers. In addition the lander doing direct analysis of the soil and the environment comprises a truly unique mission. Mars Express, drawing heavily on elements of the Rosetta spacecraft, waiting to be launched to a comet next year, paves the way for other ESA-led planetary missions, with Venus Express planned for 2005 and the BepiColombo mission to Mercury at the end of the decade. It is a precursor too for continuing Mars mission activity under Aurora, the program of exploration of our solar system. Contact: ESA Media Relations Service Phone: +33.(0)1.5369.7155 Fax: +33.(0)1.5369.7690 Read the original news release at http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMIKNS1VED_index_0.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 22-28 May 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Earth, Moon, and Jupiter, as Seen From Mars (Released 22 May 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/22/index.html Ridges and Sand Dunes (Released 23 May 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/23/index.html Layered Walls of West Candor (Released 24 May 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/24/index.html Gullied Crater Wall (Released 25 May 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/25/index.html Eroded Sedimentary Rock (Released 26 May 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/26/index.html Wind-Eroded Terrain in Tharsis (Released 27 May 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/27/index.html May Dust Storm in Acidalia(Released 28 May 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/05/28/index.html All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are archived at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/index.html. Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 26-30 May 2003 Crater in the Mangala Valles Region (Released 26 May 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030526a.html Old geology and new geology (Released 28 May 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030528a.html Grooved Terrain (Released 29 May 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030529a.html Lava flows (Released 30 May 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030530a.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 30 May 2003 The Stardust team had four periods of communications with the spacecraft in the past week. Telemetry relayed from the spacecraft indicates it is healthy and all subsystems continue to operate 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. Over the next three weeks the Spacecraft Test Laboratory will run a series of test cases designed to stress the spacecraft's Attitude Control Subsystem. This will be accomplished by simulating dust particle hits (up to 1 centimeter in size) on different parts of Stardust's protective Whipple Shield. The first of these many tests was performed in the Spacecraft Test Laboratory by exercising the "bang- bang" controller. The "bang-bang" controller is the name for the attitude control strategy the spacecraft will use while inside the coma of Comet Wild 2. The controller has the authority to engage Stardust's primary and secondary thrusters in the event of a large dust particle impact on the spacecraft. 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 22.