Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 28, 14 July 2003. Editor/Publisher: David J. Thomas, Ph.D., Science Division, Lyon College, Batesville, Arkansas 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/2003/07/09/index.html] This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a fresh, young meteor impact crater on the martian surface. It is less than 400 meters (less than 400 yards) across. While there is no way to know the exact age of this or any other martian surface feature, the rays are very well preserved. On a planet where wind can modify surface features at the present time, a crater with rayed ejecta patterns must be very young indeed. Despite its apparent youth, the crater could still be many hundreds of thousands, if not several million, of years old. This impact scar is located within the much larger Crommelin Crater, near 5.6°N, 10.0°W. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the left. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1) UC BERKELEY-LED TEAM TO EXPLORE THE ELEMENTS NEEDED TO SUPPORT MARTIAN LIFE By Sarah Yang 2) MARS NEEDS MILLIONAIRES, BRITISH ASTRONOMER SAYS By Leonard David 3) NASA CONSIDERING NORWAY'S SVALBARD ISLANDS FOR MARS RESEARCH From Agence France-Presse and SpaceDaily 4) SNACK FOOD BETWEEN SPACE WALKS From SpaceDaily 5) NASA DATA MINING REVEALS A NEW HISTORY OF NATURAL DISASTERS NASA/ARC release 03-51AR 6) RAPTOR EVOLUTION ON A COSMIC SCALE: WHY THE OWL NEBULA LOOKS LIKE AN OWL National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) release 03-06 7) THE WORLD GOES TO MARS: EXPRESS, HOPE, SPIRIT, OPPORTUNITY From Astrobiology Magazine 8) SEARCHING FOR THE "REAL" WATERWORLD From ESA Science News 9) CONCERNED CITIZENS ASK FOR CONGRESSIONAL ACTION ON NEAR EARTH OBJECTS By Leonard David 10) THE END OF US MANNED SPACEFLIGHT LOOMS EVER CLOSER By Jeffrey F. Bell 11) ANCIENT PLANET From NASA Science News 12) SCIENTISTS, STUDENTS DIG HIGH AND LOW FOR "DIRT" ON SOIL MOISTURE NASA release 2003-097 13) MARS: WINDS OF CHANGE From Astrobiology Magazine 14) ROCK, SCISSORS, PAPER AND WATER Adapted from an ESA report 15) SIXTH INTERNATIONAL MARS CONFERENCE WILL INCLUDE PUBLIC EVENT Caltech release 16) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 17) CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 18) NEWLY LAUNCHED "OPPORTUNITY" FOLLOWS MARS-BOUND "SPIRIT" NASA release 2003-095 19) WHERE'S OPPORTUNITY RIGHT NOW? By Ron Baalke 20) MARS ROVER OPPORTUNITY MISSION STATUS NASA release 2003-096 21) BEAGLE 2 TESTS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED ESA release 6-2003 22) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 23) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 24) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release ________________________________________________________________________ UC BERKELEY-LED TEAM TO EXPLORE THE ELEMENTS NEEDED TO SUPPORT MARTIAN LIFE By Sarah Yang 25 June 2003 Could life once have existed on planets other than Earth, perhaps on Mars? A team of researchers led by the University of California, Berkeley, has joined the quest to find the answer. The NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) announced this week that UC Berkeley is one of 12 institutions that will receive funding to study the origin, evolution and future of life in the universe. The institute is awarding the UC Berkeley-led team $1.23 million for the first year of a five-year grant to study the biosphere of Mars, both ancient and recent. As part of the exploration of what was, is and may be in the martian world, the researchers will analyze the evolution of the planet's hydrosphere and surface topography, as well as reactions that may have contributed to an atmospheric shield that could have protected organisms from harmful ultraviolet radiation. "We chose to focus on Mars because it is the most accessible site in our solar system that could have reasonably supported life," said the principal investigator, Jill Banfield, a UC Berkeley professor in the departments of Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Five of the 10 team members are researchers at UC Berkeley's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. They are Banfield, Kristie Boering, Donald DePaolo, William Dietrich and Michael Manga. As part of the project, the researchers will study regions on Earth that have conditions analogous to those on the surface of Mars, such as dry, cold desert environments in Oregon and Idaho. "There are ecosystems among the basaltic rocks in these regions on Earth where microbial life is supported by inorganic chemicals rather than photosynthesis," said Banfield. "By understanding how certain microbes utilize iron and sulfur, common elements in martian geology, we can obtain clues as to how life may have emerged and thrived on Mars." The team includes an engineer who will study how robotics could be used to sample the martian surface, including areas with evidence of sustained water flow that could have sustained life. The NAI, founded in 1997, is a multidisciplinary research consortium that partners NASA with competitively selected major research organizations around the world. The institute's central offices are located at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-03c.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS NEEDS MILLIONAIRES, BRITISH ASTRONOMER SAYS By Leonard David From Space.com 7 July 2003 Future space exploration should be left to rich thrill seekers. That's the view of Martin Rees, Britain's astronomer royal and a Royal Society research professor at Cambridge University's King's College. In the July/August issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Rees questions the case for sending people into space. As a scientist, he's against it. "Most of what astronauts do in space can be done better and more cheaply now by computers and robots. Each advance in robotics and miniaturization only widens the efficiency gap between man and machine in space. Circling the Earth for months on end, the International Space Station is nothing more than a huge turkey in the sky. Now that only two astronauts are aboard the craft, the pursuit of any serious projects is even less likely; most of the work will involve routine maintenance and other housekeeping tasks. And, of course, the recent space shuttle tragedy has put even this program in jeopardy," Rees writes. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/news/rees_mars_030707.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA CONSIDERING NORWAY'S SVALBARD ISLANDS FOR MARS RESEARCH From Agence France-Presse and SpaceDaily 7 July 2003 The US space agency NASA is considering using Norway's Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean as a testing ground for future expeditions to Mars, Norwegian daily Aftenposten reported on Monday. NASA officials are keen to use the area to test robotic equipment and to train astronauts who would make the trip to Mars in the future, the paper said, quoting experts as saying that the Svalbard landscape resembles that of Mars. Aftenposten said NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe recently visited Svalbard to look into research possibilities, and a group of Norwegian and US researchers will travel to Svalbard this summer to conduct field work. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030707150638.v3hitwma.html. ________________________________________________________________________ SNACK FOOD BETWEEN SPACE WALKS From SpaceDaily 8 July 2003 Obstacles scientists overcome to make life in space attainable are seemingly innumerable, and NASA believes food science students at Chapman University in California may have the right stuff. Those students, led by department chair and Institute of Food Technologists food science expert Anuradha Prakash, Ph.D., have developed an elusive super-nutritious pizza snack intended for the delectable use by astronauts on future missions. As winners of this year's NASA food product development competition, these students and their product, Pizza Poppers, will be attending the 2003 IFT Annual Meeting & Food Expo, at Chicago's McCormick Place convention center, beginning July 13. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/food-03e.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA DATA MINING REVEALS A NEW HISTORY OF NATURAL DISASTERS NASA/ARC release 03-51AR 8 July 2003 NASA is using satellite data to paint a detailed global picture of the interplay among natural disasters, human activities and the rise of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere during the past 20 years. According to a new scientific study that appears in the July issue of the journal, Global Change Biology, scientists used satellite observations to estimate the amount of leafy cover worldwide and sudden decreases in "greenness." Greenness is a measure of the amount of chlorophyll in live plants. "Green leaf cover is probably the most fragile and vulnerable piece of Earth's ecosystem that scientists can easily monitor during ecological disturbances," said Christopher Potter, a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley, and the principal author of the technical paper. His co-authors include Pang- Ning Tan, Michael Steinbach and Vipin Kumar, all of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Steven Klooster and Vanessa Genovese, both of California State University--Monterey Bay, Seaside, CA; and Ranga Myneni, Boston University, Boston. "The new results come from a technique called 'data mining,' which sorts through a huge amount of satellite and scientific data to detect patterns and events that otherwise would have been overlooked," added Kumar, the principal investigator of a joint project of the University of Minnesota, California State University and NASA Ames to develop data- mining techniques to help Earth scientists discover changes in the global carbon cycle and climate system. The Earth's land cover is so vast that much of it in the tropics and the tundra is inaccessible to regular ground observations there, according to the study's scientists. "Many years of satellite observations of remote areas have revealed completely new pictures of ecological changes and disasters, but we have had to develop new formulas to clearly reveal sudden changes in greenness over extensive areas," said Potter. Detecting sudden changes from large amounts of global data required the development of automated techniques that take into account the timing, location and magnitude of such changes, according to Tan. Researchers then matched abrupt changes in plant greenness with records of large wildfires or massive crop losses to validate the study's conclusions. "The majority of the potential disturbance events that caused carbon to go into the atmosphere occurred in tropical savanna and shrub lands or in cold forest ecosystems," Klooster said. Scientists define an ecological disturbance as an event that disrupts the physical make-up of an ecosystem and how it works for longer than one growing season of native plants. Natural disturbances may include fires, hurricanes, floods, droughts, lava flows and ice storms. Other natural disturbances are due to plant-eating insects and mammals, and disease-causing microorganisms. Human-caused disturbances could happen as a result of logging, deforestation, draining wetlands, clearing, chemical pollution and introducing non-native species to an area, according to scientists. "Ecosystem disturbances can contribute to the current rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Potter said. Nine billion metric tons of carbon may have moved from the Earth's soil and surface life forms into the atmosphere in 18 years beginning in 1982 due to wildfires and other disturbances, according to the study. A metric ton is 2,205 pounds, equivalent to the weight of a small car. In comparison, fossil fuel emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year was about seven billion metric tons in 1990. Some of the carbon dioxide that goes into the air reenters the Earth's biosphere when plants recover this gas during "natural recycling." Scientists used the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer aboard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellites to measure monthly changes in leafy plant cover worldwide. Boston University used unique NASA computer codes to produce global greenness values. These codes removed interfering data from atmospheric effects. When statistics showed there was much less greenness in specific areas that lasted more than a year, scientists also found a high probability of ecological disturbances. "Watching for changes in the amount of absorption of sunlight by green plants is an effective way to look for ecological disasters," Potter said. "This study was literally a proof of concept because we learned how to use data mining to bring new knowledge out of existing Earth observation data," Klooster added. Follow-up studies using much higher resolution satellite images are likely to reveal more localized events, such as floods, hurricanes and major logging operations, according to the study's scientists. "This is important because many natural disasters in remote areas are not noticed and never recorded," Potter explained. "In the new era of worldwide carbon accounting and management, we need an accurate method to tell us how much carbon dioxide is moving from the biosphere and into the atmosphere," Potter said. "Global satellite images go beyond the capability of human eyesight. All we need to do is look at the data with the proper formulas to filter out just what we need," he concluded. Publication size images are on the World Wide Web at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2003/03images/datamine/datamine.ht ml. Contacts: John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-5026 or 604-9000 E-mail: John.G.Bluck@nasa.gov Ann Marie Menting Boston University, Boston, MA Phone: 617-358-1240 E-mail: amenting@bu.edu An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/earth-03s.html. ________________________________________________________________________ RAPTOR EVOLUTION ON A COSMIC SCALE: WHY THE OWL NEBULA LOOKS LIKE AN OWL National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) release 03-06 8 July 2003 Astronomers have assembled the first effective model for both the shape and evolutionary history of the Owl Nebula, the well-known planetary nebula in the constellation Ursa Major. Named for its ghostly similarity to the face of the carnivorous bird of prey, the Owl Nebula (NGC 3587) has a complex structure consisting of three concentric shells. The aptly named nebula boasts a faint outer halo, a circular middle shell, and a roughly elliptical inner shell. The inner shell houses a bipolar cavity that forms the owl's "eyes," and two areas of enhanced brightness are seen as the owl's "forehead" and "beak." In an article published in the June 2003 Astronomical Journal, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Spain, and Williams College in Williamstown, MA, present the first cohesive model for the appearance and evolution of the Owl Nebula. Using observations made with the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, Spain, and the 0.6-meter Burrell Schmidt telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, the researchers concluded that the halo of the Owl was formed when the parent star first underwent significant mass loss after the cessation of fusion in its core. The resulting instabilities then produced a stellar wind, driven by a combination of stellar pulsations and radiation pressure. Evolution of the Owl's parent star caused the stellar wind to intensify to a "superwind," driving even more gas and dust outward to form the middle shell. A subsequent faster stellar wind compressed the superwind to form the inner shell and bipolar cavity, but that wind has since ceased. The cavity is currently being back-filled with nebular material in the absence of the fast stellar wind, much as air flows back out of a balloon if you stop blowing into it. "Different evolutionary models can produce the same structure for the nebula, but until now none has been able to also account for its motion," says Martin A. Guerrero of the University of Illinois, the lead author of the recent study. "There are many investigations of physical structures of planetary nebulae, but most studies only look at one piece of data and tend to ignore the bigger picture." Other planetary nebulae show triple-shell structure similar to the Owl Nebula and it is likely that they followed this same evolutionary path, according to co-author Karen Kwitter of Williams College. "These nebulae form an illuminating sample to study, and the Owl Nebula is the nearest one, only about 2,000 light-years from Earth." Despite the name, planetary nebulae are not related to planets. Sir William Herschel gave these fascinating objects their misleading name in 1782 because, through his telescope, they resembled the appearance of Uranus and Neptune. In reality, planetary nebulae are shells of gas and dust ejected from aging stars. When the mass loss is finished, the hot core of the star is exposed, causing the ejected gas to glow. A newly processed image of the Owl Nebula from this study is available [http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0841.html]. The Burrell Schmidt telescope is part of the Warner and Swasey Observatory of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH. The telescope is located at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ, which is part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). NOAO is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/owl_nebula_030710.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/09owl/ ________________________________________________________________________ THE WORLD GOES TO MARS: EXPRESS, HOPE, SPIRIT, OPPORTUNITY From Astrobiology Magazine 9 July 2003 The pioneering science quartet is now en route to Mars. The latest Mars rover, Opportunity, launched July 7th, and its sister rover, Spirit, which was launched on June 10th, have begun challenging trips to act as robotic geologists. The twin launches begin journeys leading to an eventual three months of exploration on the martian surface. To help scientists determine whether there was ever enough water on Mars to sustain life, the motorized explorers will send back images of sediment and mineral deposits. Monday night's launch of the six-wheeled Opportunity rover--about the size of a large riding lawn mower--provides a vehicle loaded with equipment to analyze the martian surface. Ten times bigger than the highly successful 1997 Sojourner rover, these twin vehicles are equipped to traverse the planet's surface over a daily distance of about a football field. With 6,000 miles separating the two landing locations on Mars, both surface missions will begin in January, 2004 and continue for three months through April, 2004. Monday's take-off of Opportunity also successfully marked a remarkable joining of scientific cohorts to study the Red Planet. "It's one of the most intensive explorations of another planet in history," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Office of Space Science. The first launch of Spirit has so far performed its initial calibration maneuvers. It is currently more than 17 million miles from Earth. Those twin rovers are following two other probes already on their way to Mars. Japan's trouble-plagued Nozomi is scheduled to arrive in late December or early January. Nozomi, first launched five years ago, is Japan's first attempt to explore the Red Planet. After gaining insufficient velocity on its first sling-shot pass by Earth, it maneuvered for a second pass that will take it towards its scheduled end-of-year encounter. Scheduled to arrive at about the same time is the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and its British-built Beagle 2 lander. Sending back images to Earth now, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey are already circling the planet and awaiting the rovers' arrival in six to seven months. Weiler said, "Literally, the world is going to Mars." Closest approach Successful launches, complex orbital maneuvers, landings and remotely- controlled operations millions of miles away--those are just a short- list of challenges that await mission planners. Out of nine previous attempts to land on Mars, only three have succeeded because of the difficulty of traveling more than 300 million miles and landing on the windy, dust-covered planet. The cost of sending the two rovers to Mars is $800 million. "One for three is a good batting average in baseball," Weiler said. "But when these things cost so much it's not that great for space." "Every time I see the descent and landing video, I get nervous," said Weiler. "There are too many moving parts, too many things that can go wrong. We can do absolutely everything right... after the failure of Mars 99, but if we get a gust of wind that exceeds the limits [on descent in January], we can lose the lander." "There was a huge boulder next to Viking," noted Weiler, as he described the 1976 rocket-powered Viking spacecrafts' descent onto Mars. "All it takes is a boulder of the wrong size in the wrong place. Three [successes] out of 9 [attempts] aren't good odds." But in addition to multiple landers increasing the chances for success, the primary reason for the summer flurry of missions is a unique close approach between Earth and Mars. Mars is approaching Earth in what will soon be the closest the planets have been in 73,000 years--a confluence set officially for 5:46 AM, Wednesday, August 27, 2003. That night, the Red Planet will be the brightest object in the sky as it reaches its closest Earth encounter, or opposition, at 34,646,418 miles. At opposition Mars will be as close as it has been since September 12, 57,537 BC or one-third closer than the average opposition. The next approach this close is August 28, 2287 AD at 34,620,000 miles. The planet's bright magnitude should begin August 20 and continue through September 2 but fades rapidly thereafter as Earth pulls ahead of it and the Moon begins to grow full. Cornell University Professor Steve Squyres, lead principal investigator of the science packages called Athena, noted one advantage of this orbital closeness is faster communication: "At closest approach, the one-way transmission time is around 11 minutes." [In contrast, Viking in 1976-77 took around 19 minutes for one-way transmission]. The NASA rovers are nearly sisters, but not exactly so in an engineering or hardware sense. Comparing the twin rovers, Squyres indicated how the first and second surface missions differ: "The one intentional difference is they transmit on different frequencies. So we don't get confused which one we are talking to. The differences are very minor. One of the things we found, the actuator that moves the mirror on Opportunity is a little stiffer when it gets cold. So we have to be sure to warm up Opportunity slightly more than Spirit." Mars Express Compared to the twin NASA rovers, the European lander is smaller, less mobile, and more biologically-oriented in its testing protocols. "This is the first time Europe has gone to Mars," continued Weiler, noting that the European Space Agency, ESA, launched its own probe June 2nd, called the Mars Express, with a lander, named after the famous ship, HMS Beagle, that carried Englishman Charles Darwin on his world tour in search of how life evolved on Earth. "I sent an email after the successful Mars Express, wishing ESA luck," said NASA's Weiler. "After the [first Mars Exploration Rover] MER-A launch, ESA sent me a congratulatory email." "Beagle is a softlander," said Weiler. "It would be great to have multiple landers on Mars. The last time we had multiple landers on Mars was 1976." With a landed mass of less than 30 kg, Beagle 2 represents the most ambitious science payload-to-systems mass ratio ever attempted. Almost a third of the payload will carry out various types of analysis or be used to manipulate and collect samples for study on the surface of Mars. One of its main tasks will be the step-wise heating of martian soil in a kind of oven, to determine the elemental composition of any volatiles including organic compounds. Since its June 2nd launch from the Russian Cosmodrome, mission control for the European Space Agency has issued two status reports, noting the power-up and communication tests with their probe are proceeding. On June 24th, mission engineers summarized their status: "All operations planned for the Launch and Early Operations Phase (LEOP) have been completed and the near-Earth verification phase has commenced as planned. All operations are now being conducted via the high gain antenna, which is the nominal configuration. The performance of the ESA and [Deep Space Network] DSN ground stations supporting the mission is excellent throughout the communications passes. Spacecraft platform subsystems (power, thermal, attitude and orbit control, on-board data handling) behave in a nominal manner. Payload and platform commissioning continue in parallel. Just 3 weeks after the launch of Mars Express, initial checkouts reveal that the overall status of the Mars Express orbiter payload is nominal and very satisfying. One of the major upcoming activities will be the Beagle-2 lander checkout, planned for 4 and 5 July." Following their initially planned lander checkout, on July 8th, engineers continued to view the progress favorably: "Spacecraft platform subsystems (thermal, power, attitude and orbit control, on-board data handling) behave in a nominal manner. Spacecraft commissioning will continue into the end of July. Payload commissioning, including the Beagle-2 lander checkout, will be completed by mid-July. All orbiter payload instruments are in good health. The initial checkouts and calibrations have revealed very satisfying results. The Beagle-2 lander has been successfully switched on for the first time in flight on 4 and 5 July and has been communicating with the orbiter. On the 2nd of July, the Mars Express Science Working Team decided to modify the baselined reference orbit, adopting a G3u-type orbit [tuned for optimal low- altitude day and night-side viewing] starting with a pericenter at the equator. This new reference orbit is taking into account the post- launch delta-V[elocity] budget, and allows for an optimization of the science return from the Mars Express mission." Nozomi, Planet-B Nozomi, a Japanese (ISAS) Mars probe, has also completed its final Earth swingby operation on June 19 (JST), and is on its way to Mars. Nozomi, which means Hope, passed within 18,000 km of the Earth in a maneuver designed to use the planet's gravity to slingshot the probe toward Mars. Nozomi, launched in July 1998, is Japan's first attempt to explore Mars. Its mission is to orbit Mars and gather data on the martian atmosphere and its interaction with solar wind for up to two years. It was originally scheduled to reach its destination in October 1998, but an earlier Earth swingby failed to give it sufficient speed, forcing a drastic rescheduling of its flight plan. In April last year, a burst of solar flares damaged Nozomi's heating system and cut off most communication link between the probe and tracking stations on Earth. The computer control systems on the probe were intact, however, allowing engineers on Earth to repair the spacecraft. ISAS will begin trying to repair the electrical damage from July through November. If successful, it will arrive in late December, and will be thrown into orbit around Mars. What's next? Each of the quartet has its own challenges and rewards. Beagle is smaller and will perform some of the first biology detection experiments since the 1976 Vikings first injected microbial nutrients in hopes of seeing evolved gases and byproducts of martian metabolism. Beagle will be less mobile, relying on a mole-like digging tool to burrow for its soil samples just below the dusty top-layers. The Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, will have panoramic cameras and much greater mobility to travel beyond where they initially come to rest. Late this year and early next will give focus to the international science effort to explore whether the "wetter and warmer" Mars can be viewed up close. In looking back on the success of the 1997 Mars rover, Pathfinder project scientist, Dr. Matthew Golombek, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, reflected that: "Power for a solar spacecraft must be managed very carefully. Managing the lag in knowledge from one day to the next is also important. Better autonomy placing instruments against rocks and targets and more autonomous roving could help look at more materials on the surface and visit more sites. For deep space missions, all it takes is one mistake for the mission to fail. Every launch has a 5 times out of 100 chance of blowing up. Part of exploration is confronting the unknown and risk can never be removed completely. In cases like Pathfinder taking a little risk can result in an enormous payoff." Orbital projections of where Mars Express and the Mars Exploration Rovers are, right now, can be continuously monitored over their half- year journeys [at http://orbits.esa.int/orbits/science/app/mexp.htm and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/mission/spiritrightnow.html]. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article520.html. ________________________________________________________________________ SEARCHING FOR THE "REAL" WATERWORLD From ESA Science News 9 July 2003 Science fiction writers and movie-makers have imagined a world completely covered by an ocean, but what if one really existed? Would such a world support life, and what would this life be like? ESA could make science fiction become science fact when it finds such a world, if the predictions of a group of European astronomers are correct. The ESA mission, Eddington, which is now in development, could be the key. At the recent ESA co-sponsored "Towards Other Earths" conference, nearly 250 of the world's leading experts in planet detection discussed the strategy for finding Earth-like worlds. Alain Léger and colleagues of the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, France, described a new class of planets that could be awaiting discovery: "waterworlds." According to Léger and his colleagues, these waterworlds would contain about six times the mass of Earth, in a sphere twice as wide as our planet. They would possess atmospheres and orbit their parent star at roughly the same distance that the Earth is from the Sun. Most excitingly, an ocean of water entirely covers each world and extends over 25 times deeper than the average depth of the oceans on Earth. A hundred kilometers deep According to calculations, the internal structure of a waterworld would consist of a metallic core with a radius of about 4000 kilometers. Then there would be a rocky mantle region extending to a height of 3500 kilometers above the core's surface, covered by a second mantle made of ice up to 5000 kilometers thick. Finally, an ocean blankets the entire world to a depth of 100 kilometers, with an atmosphere on top of this. With twice the radius of the Earth, they will be easily spotted by the Eddington spacecraft, which is designed to detect planets down to half the size of the Earth. "A waterworld passing in front of a star, somewhat cooler than the Sun, will cause a dimming in the stellar light by almost one part in a thousand. That's almost ten times larger than the smallest variation Eddington is designed to detect. So, waterworlds--if they exist--will be a very easy catch for Eddington," says Fabio Favata, ESA's Eddington Project Scientist. The CNES/ESA mission Corot, which is a smaller, precursor mission to Eddington due for launch around 2005, may also be just able to glimpse them, if they are close enough to their parent stars. Origins of life Scientists are now asking if such worlds could support life, and what would it be like, especially since water is a prime ingredient for life on Earth. While waterworlds seem to have everything to sustain life, there is a big question mark over whether they could actually allow it to start in the first place. One of the leading theories for life's origin in deep oceans is that it requires hot springs on the ocean floor, heated by volcanic activity like the "black smokers" found here on Earth. On a waterworld however, 5000 kilometers of ice separate the ocean floor from any possible smokers. On the other hand, a water-surface origin may still be possible. Perhaps the only way to know if anything lives on a waterworld will be to study them with ESA's habitable-planet-finding mission, Darwin. When it launches in around 2014, this flotilla of spacecraft will look for tell-tale signs of life in the atmospheres of any planets, including waterworlds. Read the original article at http://www.esa.int/export/esaSC/SEMR96XO4HD_extreme_0.html. ________________________________________________________________________ CONCERNED CITIZENS ASK FOR CONGRESSIONAL ACTION ON NEAR EARTH OBJECTS By Leonard David From Space.com 9 July 2003 A distinguished group of Americans joined together to send a unique request to Congressional leaders Wednesday--a request that preparations be made to deal with the prospect of Earth being slammed by an asteroid or comet. In an "Open Letter to Congress on Near Earth Objects," the communication underscores the danger our planet faces from near Earth objects, also termed NEO's. The letter has been sent to President Bush and his cabinet, the Secretary General of the United Nations and to leaders around the globe. Included among those that urged action on the NEO issue were: Apollo 17 Astronaut, Harrison Schmitt; Neil Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium; Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Princeton University; Lucy Ann McFadden, NEO scientist at the University of Maryland; New York University professor and author, William Burrows; John Lewis, a scientist at the University of Arizona, Tucson; and Thomas Jones, former astronaut and veteran of four shuttle missions. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/neo_letter_030709.html. ________________________________________________________________________ THE END OF US MANNED SPACEFLIGHT LOOMS EVER CLOSER By Jeffrey F. Bell From SpaceDaily 10 July 2003 Once again, NASA has proposed to develop a replacement for the troubled Space Shuttle. This year's project goes by the ungrammatical moniker "Orbital Space Plane". An interim version of OSP called the CRV (Crew Rescue Vehicle) to be developed by 2010 will take over the International Space Station lifeboat task now done by Soyuz. An improved OSP called the CTV (Crew Transfer Vehicle) will assume the ISS crew exchange task now done by Shuttle in 2012. To minimize development costs, the OSP will be launched on one of the new EELV family of expendable boosters, Delta 4 or Atlas V. Sound familiar? It should. The OSP is only the latest of many "Shuttle replacement" programs that have all failed dismally. A close look at OSP shows that this program is also doomed to failure due to fundamental technical defects. It's no surprise that such usually reliable NASA boosters as "Space Coast" Congressman Dave Weldon and aerospace lobbyist Lori Garver have publicly attacked OSP. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience- 03zj.html. ________________________________________________________________________ ANCIENT PLANET From NASA Science News 10 July 2003 Long before our Sun and Earth ever existed, a Jupiter-sized planet formed around a sun-like star. Now, almost 13 billion years later, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has precisely measured the mass of this farthest and oldest known planet. The ancient planet has had a remarkable history, because it has wound up in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a globular star cluster. The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate as to the true nature of this ancient world, which takes a century to complete each orbit. The planet is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence the first planets were formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude planets may be very abundant in the universe. The planet lies near the core of the ancient globular star cluster M4, located 5,600 light-years away in the northern-summer constellation Scorpius. Globular clusters are deficient in heavier elements, because they formed so early in the universe that heavier elements had not been cooked up in abundance in the nuclear furnaces of stars. Some astronomers have therefore argued that globular clusters cannot contain planets, because planets are often made of such elements. This conclusion was seemingly bolstered in 1999 when Hubble failed to find close-orbiting "hot Jupiter"-type planets around the stars of the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. Now, it seems astronomers were just looking in the wrong place, and gas-giant worlds, orbiting at greater distances from their stars, could be common in globular clusters. "Our Hubble measurement offers tantalizing evidence that planet formation processes are quite robust and efficient at making use of a small amount of heavier elements. This implies that planet formation happened very early in the universe," said Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University. "This is tremendously encouraging that planets are probably abundant in globular star clusters," agrees Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. He bases this conclusion on the fact a planet was uncovered in such an unlikely place: orbiting two captured stars, a helium white dwarf and a rapidly spinning neutron star, near the crowded core of a globular cluster. In such a place, fragile planetary systems tend to be ripped apart due to gravitational interactions with neighboring stars. The story of this planet's discovery began in 1988, when the pulsar, called PSR B1620-26, was discovered in M4. It is a neutron star spinning just under 100 times per second and emitting regular radio pulses like a lighthouse beam. The white dwarf was quickly found through its effect on the clock-like pulsar, as the two stars orbited each other twice per year. Sometime later, astronomers noticed further irregularities in the pulsar that implied a third object was orbiting the others. This new object was suspected to be a planet, but it also could have been a brown dwarf or a low-mass star. Debate over its true identity continued through the 1990s. Sigurdsson, Richer, and their co-investigators settled the debate by at last measuring the planet's actual mass through some ingenious detective work. They had exquisite Hubble data from the mid-1990s taken to study white dwarfs in M4. Sifting through these observations, they were able to detect the white dwarf orbiting the pulsar and measure its color and temperature. Using evolutionary models computed by Brad Hansen of the University of California, Los Angeles, the astronomers estimated the white dwarf's mass. This in turn was compared to the amount of wobble in the pulsar's signal, allowing the team to calculate the tilt of the white dwarf's orbit as seen from Earth. When combined with the radio studies of the wobbling pulsar, this critical piece of evidence told them the tilt of the planet's orbit, too, and so the precise mass could at last be known. With a mass of only 2.5 Jupiters, the object is too small to be a star or brown dwarf and must instead be a planet. The planet is likely a gas giant without a solid surface like the Earth. A 13-billion year old planet orbiting a pair of long-dead stars in a crowded globular cluster: even for the Hubble Space Telescope, that's amazing! Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/10jul_psrplanet.htm. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article525.html http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/oldest_planet_030710-1.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/10planet/ ________________________________________________________________________ SCIENTISTS, STUDENTS DIG HIGH AND LOW FOR "DIRT" ON SOIL MOISTURE NASA release 2003-097 11 July 2003 A water-sensing satellite orbits high above Earth. Airplanes packed with research instruments, including one from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, circle 25,000 feet above three U.S. states and Brazil. Scientists, college students and other volunteers troop into the countryside, armed with sensors and notepads. It's all about "getting the dirt"--in this case, collecting detailed information about the soil. The objectives are two-fold--validating soil moisture data gleaned from satellites and working to find the optimum instrument for conducting soil moisture remote sensing. By learning how to better gauge the amount of moisture in the soil, scientists are pursuing the long-range goal of eventually helping to improve the accuracy of weather forecasts and better estimate crop yields through remote-sensing methods. Led by Dr. Thomas Jackson of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Soil Moisture Experiments in 2003 is a collaboration between NASA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, several U.S. universities and the Center for Hydrology, Soil Climatology, and Remote Sensing of Alabama A&M University in Huntsville. The campaign began June 22 in Huntsville and gathered data in Alabama and Georgia through July 2. It is continuing in Oklahoma through July 19 and concludes in Brazil September 16-26. "By gathering comprehensive soil moisture data from space, air and land, we hope to better understand how these measurements correlate and how the data can help farmers, weather forecasters and others who depend on Mother Nature for their livelihood," said Dr. Charles Laymon, a hydrologist and remote sensing scientist with Universities Space Research Association at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center in Huntsville. For example, an improved understanding of soil moisture could aid irrigation, allowing farmers to irrigate when and precisely where necessary. This is important, Laymon said, because simple ground observations don't always tell the whole story. That's why scientists leading the campaign will look skyward for much of their data. Aqua, a NASA satellite launched in May 2002, will fill in part of the puzzle. Orbiting 692 kilometers (430 miles) above Earth, its sensors collect information about Earth's water cycle--including water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, and snow and ice cover. The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System, a National Space Development Agency of Japan instrument, is the Aqua instrument scientists hope can provide information about soil moisture. A challenge will be taking the "big picture" offered by that Aqua radiometer instrument and filling in the gaps. "Aqua's Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observing System was designed primarily to monitor oceans and polar ice," Laymon said. "So the sensor provides a very broad view of terrestrial soil moisture. To get a more detailed look at soil moisture, we will use information from this campaign to fine-tune the radiometer's results, and more importantly, correlate the satellite data to imeasurements gleaned by airborne instruments in the sky and by people on the ground." The research aircraft are NASA's P-3B turboprop and DC-8 jet. Equipped with a suite of remote sensing instruments developed for airborne observations in support of satellite validation, including JPL's Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument, or Airsar, they will document patterns of surface moisture by measuring microwave energy in units of brightness temperature and power reflected off the surface. On the ground, teams of scientists, college students and volunteers--rain or shine--will disperse into the countryside daily, taking measurements that include soil moisture and temperature, ground cover type and plant height. One proposed soil moisture mission that the campaign will assist in the development of is the JPL-led Hydros remote global soil moisture and freeze-thaw state observing system. Hydros would provide soil moisture observations every three days or less over most of Earth's unfrozen, non-forested regions (dense vegetation limits the ability to sense the underlying soil moisture). The data would be used to better understand how water, energy and carbon are exchanged between Earth's land and atmosphere. Dr. Eni Njoku, a JPL scientist and co-organizer of the Aqua radiometer validation and Hydros development campaign components, said Airsar data will be combined with ground data on soil and vegetation conditions to develop the problem-solving procedures Hydros will use for generating global soil moisture maps. "We hope to be able to answer key questions, such as how well Hydros will be able to collect soil moisture data in vegetated areas," he said. "We also expect to gain insight into how to best combine radar and radiometer data to get the most accurate soil moisture maps possible." Participating NASA centers include the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, and JPL. Campaign aircraft are based at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA, and Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA. See http://hydrolab.arsusda.gov/smex03/ for more information. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Contacts: Alan Buis Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-0474 Steve Roy Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL Phone: 256-544-0034 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/eo-03zzd.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS: WINDS OF CHANGE From Astrobiology Magazine 13 July 2003 The milestone launches of NASA's latest Mars missions, called Spirit and Opportunity, provide the impetus to revisit the remarkable journey of the earliest martian missions. Excerpts from the lively debates that took place prior to the 1976 Viking missions give immediacy and perspective on both the rewards and challenges that the Red Planet offers. In this and forthcoming issues, Astrobiology Magazine is pleased to commemorate the descriptions offered in the words of then mission contemporaries. NASA historians have compiled these notes in their five-hundred page edition of On Mars: Exploration of the Red Planet. 1958-1978 (NASA HQ SP-4212). ______________________________________ As anticipated, the information relayed to Earth by the Viking spacecraft has greatly affected man's perceptions and understanding of the planet Mars. The increase in basic, directly confirmed knowledge of the Red Planet began even before the landings. Once in orbit, the spacecraft began transmitting the first of tens of thousands of images of the planet and its satellites. Heterogeneity was the most striking aspect of Mars as scientists identified a greater variety of terrains than known to exist on the moon or Mercury. Conway B. Leovy, a member of the meteorology team, noted: "Unlike the moon, whose story appears essentially to have ended one or two billion years ago, Mars is still evolving and changing. On Mars, as on the earth, the most pervasive agent of change is the planet's atmosphere, itself the product of the sorting of the planet's initial constituents that began soon after it condensed from the primordial cloud of dust and gas that gave rise to the solar system 4.6 billion years ago." Comparative planetology Some information about the nature of the martian atmosphere had been derived from telescopic observations and from earlier Mariner missions, but those sources of data were "unverifiable and subject to misinterpretation." With the exception of its significantly different composition and its being "less than a hundredth as dense as that of the earth," the atmosphere of Mars behaves much like that of our own planet. "It transports water, generates clouds and exhibits daily and seasonal wind patterns." Responding to seasonal changes in the heat generated by solar radiation, localized dust storms occur and sometimes grow in strength until they cover the entire planet, a fact with which Mariner and Viking specialists were familiar. Global dust storms appear to be a phenomenon unique to Mars, which lacks large bodies of water that would prevent their buildup. Atmospheric weathering of the primitive crystalline rocks on Mars has reduced them to fine particles that have oxidized and combined chemically with water to produce the reddish minerals so apparent in the color images returned from the Viking landers. Whereas on Earth the dominant weathering process has been from the movement of liquid water, on Mars the primary agent of change has been the wind. It erodes the landscape, transports the dust, and deposits it elsewhere on the planet. The Viking landing sites appear to have been "severely scoured by winds". In addition, pictures taken by the orbiter cameras reveal deep layers of wind-borne sediment in the polar regions, while dunefields of martian dust and sand much larger than those on Earth were observed near the north pole. The geologic history of Mars, according to orbiter imaging team leader Michael H. Carr, "shows evidence of floods and relatively recent volcanic eruptions, at least in the hundreds of millions of years that geology uses as a measure." There are also features that resemble terrestrial river systems. "Apparently tremendous floods occurred many times over Mars' history, indicating that the planet must have been drastically different in the past." Martian puzzles The large riverlike channels are one of the big martian puzzles. Carr and his colleagues believe there are two major kinds of water features: "There are the large flood features and then there are dendritic or branching drainage features that resemble terrestrial river systems. It appears from the crater counts that the fine terrestrial-like river channel systems are older than the flood features. It appears that the large flood features came in middle Mars history. There was a period of vast floods, then the flooding for some reason ceased or became less frequent because we don't have flood features with crater cutouts comparable to those we find on the Tharsis volcanoes. Very early in Mars' history, dendritic drainage patterns developed; in Mars' middle history it had a period of flooding, and then mostly after that the volcanics of Tharsis accumulated. This general picture has come out of the Viking data." A lot of skeptics didn't believe there had been any period of surface drainage. Some said all those things could easily have been formed by faulting and soon. "The Viking pictures are full of examples of dendritic channels. I can't believe there are many skeptics left. I think we have really established that there was this early period of surface drainage. There can be very little doubt about that," said Carr. The scientists are still left with explaining where all the water for the floods and rivers came from. More important, where did it go? Where did it go? Because of low atmospheric pressure at the surface, there are no contemporary large pools, rivers, or collection basins filled with water, and because of low temperatures the atmosphere cannot contain much water. However, there is probably a great quantity in the permanent polar caps and within the surface. The low pressure permits water to be present only in the solid (ice) or gaseous (water vapor) state. One possible explanation for the apparently contradictory vision of rushing rivers on Mars was presented by Gerald A. Soffen: "Broad channels formed when subsurface water-ice (permafrost) was melted by geothermal activity from deep volcanic centers. When the melting of the permafrost reached a slope the interstitial water suddenly released great flows, sometimes a hundred kilometers wide that modified the channels." Seasonal heating of the permafrost may have occasionally released large flows of water, as well-a possible explanation for the channels that originate in box canyons and spill onto the plains. The easiest method of accounting for the dendritic channels is to conjure up a martian rainstorm, but that suggestion raises many problems, all of which hinge on the basic question: "How is it possible that these ancient rivers could [have] existed and there be none today?" Obviously, atmospheric pressure would have to have been different during such a period. This hypothesis seems to be supported by studies of the martian atmosphere encountered by Viking. If the atmospheric pressure once was sufficient to permit the formation of liquid water, how long ago was that? This is still a subject of some debate. Harold Masursky and his colleagues estimated the relative age of the channels by counting the number and judging the age of the craters in and near the channels. The different kinds of channels appear to have been created in different epochs, or episodes, and all of them at least 50 million years ago and perhaps as long ago as several billion years. Permafrost: permanent or not? Shifting of the permafrost also is believed to have influenced the texture of the planet's surface. Investigators assume the existence of permafrost, sometimes to the depth of several kilometers and generally thought to have been present for billions of years. Carr stated: "To me one of the more exciting things we've observed is the abundant evidence of permafrost. The most striking features indicative of permafrost occur along the edge of old crater terrain. They form by mass movement of surface material probably aided by the freezing and thawing of ground ice. Another possible indicator of ground ice is the unique character of material ejected from impact craters that is quite different from the pattern on the Moon and on Mercury. We interpret the difference as due to ground ice on Mars. The impact melts the ground ice and lubricates the [ejecta] that is thrown out of the crater so when it lands on the ground it flows away from the crater in a debris flow and forms the characteristic features we have observed." Slow movement and a freeze-thaw cycle could account for the chaotic, jumbled terrain seen over vast stretches of the martian surface. Irregular depressions caused by localized collapsing of the crust when permafrost thawed could have formed the flat-floored valleys in Siberia and the table-lands of Mars. Large polygonal patterned regions on Mars resemble the ice wedges in terrestrial glacial areas. Polar caps One of the major questions posed by the Mariner 9 data was the composition of the residual polar cap left when the winter polar cap, made of frozen carbon dioxide, retreated in midsummer. A major controversy existed over whether this summer cap seas also frozen carbon dioxide or was frozen water. According to Viking data, the temperatures of the residual cap are near -68° to -63°C, making a case for water frost. Also. the brightness of the frost "indicates it has a lot of dirt mixed in with it. The dirty nature of the ice had also been seen now by the orbital imaging system." Apparently there is no permanent reservoir of carbon dioxide in the polar regions of Mars, a finding that tends to rule out the theory of a rapid climate change induced by the instability of the carbon dioxide on the planet. "This means we still don't have an adequate explanation of how the atmosphere could have been of sufficient density to sustain the liquid water that appears to have flowed at one time in streams and rivers on the surface of Mars," said Kieffer. Just as the evolution of Earth's atmosphere helped determine the nature of its environment, the evolution of Mars is linked with the development of its atmosphere. As Jerry Soffen concluded, "It appears that there was a considerably denser atmosphere in the past, somewhere between 10 and 50 times the present value of 7.5 millibars at the surface. This denser atmosphere would account for the possibility of the ancient river [beds] seen from the orbiter." Whatever explanation the scientific community comes to accept, Viking has made two points very clear-the Red Planet's environment has not been static, and in the past was very dynamic. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article523.html. ________________________________________________________________________ ROCK, SCISSORS, PAPER AND WATER Adapted from an ESA report From Astrobiology Magazine 13 July 2003 The classic game of "Rock, Scissors, and Paper" includes a circular hierarchy of winning plays. The rock crushes scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper covers the rock. Scientists seeking life elsewhere have a similar hierarchy to classify the habitability of distant planets. Their planet search will try to find rock, iron and organic stuff. This hypothetical earth needs a magnetic field, and thus an iron-rocky core, or it will quickly lose its atmosphere. It also needs organic material, much like the tree pulp of pressed paper, which elementally includes carbon. In the next few years, a powerful new planet detector, called Corot, will be launched by the European Space Agency, and offers the first telescopic "scissors" in orbit. Corot will act like scissors because it depends on a careful angle, or line of sight, between a planet and the star it orbits. But to finish their hierarchy, a new play must be added to the game: water. On such a detected planet, liquid water makes their search about finding life. Water may trump all other elements in the life detection game. While water erodes rock, it also dissolves paper or organics. That dissolution makes possible biological molecules, cell membranes, and nutrient metabolism. Indeed one of NASA's guiding policies in the search for life elsewhere is to "follow the water." While water is fairly common in the universe, found everywhere from vast interstellar dust clouds to the orange-red fields of Mars, most of this water is in the form of ice. 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." At a recent ESA co-sponsored "Towards Other Earths" conference, nearly 250 of the world's leading experts in planet detection discussed the strategy for finding Earth-like worlds. Alain Léger and colleagues of the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, France, described a new class of planets that could be awaiting discovery: "waterworlds." According to Léger and his colleagues, these waterworlds would contain about six times the mass of Earth, in a sphere twice as wide as our planet. They would possess atmospheres and orbit their parent star at roughly the same distance that the Earth is from the Sun. An ocean of water entirely covers each world and extends over 25 times deeper than the average depth of the oceans on Earth. Seeing deep into the deep According to calculations, the internal structure of this waterworld would consist of a metallic core with a radius of about 4000 kilometers (2400 miles). Then there would be a rocky mantle region extending to a height of 3500 kilometers above the core's surface, covered by a second mantle made of ice up to 5000 kilometers thick. Finally, an ocean blankets the entire world to a depth of 100 kilometers, with an atmosphere on top of this. All this speculation on size is important, when deciding what kind of telescope to build. With twice the radius of the Earth, the class or waterworlds will be easily spotted by the Eddington spacecraft, which is designed to detect planets down to half the size of the Earth. "A waterworld passing in front of a star, somewhat cooler than the Sun, will cause a dimming in the stellar light by almost one part in a thousand. That's almost ten times larger than the smallest variation Eddington is designed to detect. So, waterworlds--if they exist--will be a very easy catch for Eddington," says Fabio Favata, ESA's Eddington Project Scientist. Planet in transit The CNES/ESA mission Corot, which is a smaller, precursor mission to Eddington, is due for launch around 2005, and Corot may also be just able to glimpse waterworlds, if they are close enough to their parent stars. The Corot spacecraft consists of a 30 cm telescope with an array of charge-coupled devices, or CCD's, for sensitive light detection. It will monitor the light-curves of well chosen stars. The overall potential of COROT is to detect several tens of Earth-sized planets. To achieve this near-term goal, the mission relies on identifying a planet close to its parent star, then timing a snapshot along a narrow line of sight when the planet eclipses the starlight viewed from the orbiting telescope. Called the transit method, the idea of detecting planets by their eclipsing power was originally proposed fifty years ago by O. Struve. While more than a 100 giant planets have been discovered total, most successful surveys to date have not looked for transits, but instead looked for the gravitational wobble that these giants induce in their parent star. That "radial velocity" method, however, has fundamental limits that will not allow the discovery of planets smaller than about 10 Earth masses. That limit is one reason why planetary transit detection has intrigued scientists enough to add Corot as a near-term opportunity and thus enhance their planetary encyclopedia with more Earth-like candidates. Three exoplanets have been discovered so far using the transit method. But even with Corot's ability to see Earth-sized planets, its alignment involves a narrow angle for success--indeed, a scissor-like action is needed to cut up the night sky into precise survey sectors. The chances that a particular exoplanet passes in front of the disk of its central star as seen from the Earth are small. As Hans Deeg, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, wrote, "In order to produce transits, it is of course necessary that a planet-star system orbits in a plane that is within a small angle to the line of sight." "For the Earth-Sun system, this probability is 0.47%," continues Deeg. "Considering that Venus is another Earth-like planet with similar size, and its probability for alignment is 0.65%, the total probability for an external observer to detect any Earth-like planet around the Sun is about 1%. The probability to detect short periodic planets is of course larger, and in the case of Hot Giant planets it reaches over 5%. ...[but] giant stars are too big and photometrically unstable to produced observable planetary transits. Thus, not more than one in 200 field stars can be expected to show transits of Earth-like planets - this if Solar Systems equivalents are very common. Consequently, thousands of stars need to be observed, causing the need for wide-field photometric cameras transit surveys." For this reason, Corot is scheduled to look at 12,000 chosen stars. With a launch date planned for 2007, the four-year mission duration of NASA's Kepler project will expand this survey to 100,000 stars, as will roughly ESA's Eddington [50-100,000 stars]. What's next? For most planet finders, the real challenge is to identify faint planets in the glare of their much brighter parent stars. To overcome the distortion of how our own atmosphere may further obscure this detection, both large land-based telescopes and space missions will likely combine in the future to complete the picture. In addition to the space-based, planet surveys--Corot, Eddington and Kepler--later missions will attempt to refine the criteria of the search itself. Novel ways to detect water and other ingredients will be needed for a definitive signal that the game of life is being played elsewhere. For instance, by combining the high sensitivity of space telescopes with the sharply detailed pictures from an interferometer, NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder, or TPF, will be able to reduce the glare of parent stars to see planetary systems as far away as 50 light years. One way to know if anything lives on a waterworld will be to study them with ESA's habitable-planet-finding mission, Darwin. When it launches in around 2014, this flotilla of spacecraft will look for tell-tale signs of life in the atmospheres of any planets, including waterworlds. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article524.html. ________________________________________________________________________ SIXTH INTERNATIONAL MARS CONFERENCE WILL INCLUDE PUBLIC EVENT Caltech release 14 July 2003 Next year, if all goes well, NASA's two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, along with the British rover Beagle 2, will begin streaming back reams of data about the Red Planet, much to the delight of Mars researchers everywhere. Those data won't be available in time for scientists attending the Sixth International Conference on Mars at the California Institute of Technology, July 20-25, but small matter. Data from two earlier orbiter missions, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), launched in 1996, and the Odyssey, launched in 2001, will give those attending the conference an opportunity to review and debate some of the key questions and controversies that have matured as a result of this flood of information. "It's time for another review," says Arden Albee, a professor of geology and planetary science, emeritus, at Caltech. "Never before have scientists had such a comprehensive record of the processes that operated on the surface of Mars and in its atmosphere." The conference will also include a free public event. On Wednesday evening, July 23, the conference will sponsor "A Mars Picture Gallery-- Every Picture Tells a Story," from 8:00 to 10:00 PM in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium. Featured will be Michael Malin, principal investigator of MGS's Mars Orbiter Camera, and Philip Christensen, principal investigator of Odyssey's THEMIS camera. Malin, a 1976 Caltech graduate and an experienced planetary geologist, is currently president and chief scientist of Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the MGS camera. The camera has returned more than 20,000 new images from Mars, showing the planet's enigmatic features in great detail and tracking changes in its atmosphere. Recently Malin has been able to obtain images at an unprecedented resolution of 1.5 meters per pixel. This past spring, Malin received a Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award for his work. Christensen, a planetary geologist at Arizona State University, will display recent images and results from the THEMIS (thermal emission imaging system) camera, on the newest mission to Mars. "THEMIS provides a unique new view of Mars in thermal infrared images that is providing details on the physical properties of its surface, and the processes that have acted over time," says Christensen. "These views provide a broad perspective of martian processes, and a context from which to understand the history and evolution of the planet." Both cameras, for example, have observed sites where water--and therefore life--may have existed in ancient times. The role of water and the possibility of life on Mars will attract much attention at the sixth conference, says Albee, just as it did at the earlier conferences. "Now we can focus questions in three specific areas. The role of water in the climate of early Mars; the current extent and location of water ice; and the tantalizing evidence for the existence of very recent liquid water on its surface." Investigators using the new data argue that precipitation, either rain or snow, and flowing water eroded the surface of Mars in its first billion years despite the planet's frigid climate, says Albee. Precise digital topography from MGS's laser altimeter now also makes it possible to analytically compare valley networks on Earth and Mars. "Unlike Earth," he says, "Mars has preserved much of its ancient landscape, which may yield clues to the climatic conditions under which it formed." Instruments on Odyssey have mapped the presence of water ice in the immediate subsurface of Mars and have shown that it is less abundant toward the equator. Images show the presence of soil flowage and other features found in permafrost regions on Earth. The discovery of young gullies in photos of Mars has changed the conception that it has been a dry and frigid planet in the recent past, says Albee, noting that new theories abound. One suggests these recent gullies were formed by debris flows that involved liquid water of subsurface origin. Others have proposed flows driven by carbon dioxide, while still others have proposed localized surface heating under certain conditions. The arguments over water are simply a sample of the many viewpoints that will be argued during the conference, says Albee, including a session on Tuesday afternoon entitled "Future Missions." In all, some 400 scientists from a number of countries are expected to attend. Contact: Mark Wheeler Phone: 626-395-8733 E-mail: wheel@caltech.edu ________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology.html 14 July 2003 Astrobiology and planetary engineering articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles1.html Astrobiology Magazine, 2003. The world goes to Mars: Express, Hope, Spirit, Opportunity. Astrobiology Magazine. Human space exploration articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles3.html J. F. Bell, 2003. The end of U.S. manned spaceflight looms ever closer. SpaceDaily. L. David, 2003. Mars needs millionaires, British astronomer says. Space.com. SpaceDaily, 2003. Snack food between space walks. SpaceDaily. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 2003. Cosmic evolution: how the Owl Nebula got its shape. Spaceflight Now. D. H. Rothman, J. M. Hayes and R. E. Summons, 2003. Dynamics of the Neoproterozoic carbon cycle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100(14):8124-8129. Planetary protection articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles6.html L. David, 2003. Concerned citizens ask for congressional action on near earth objects. Space.com. Extrasolar planets articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles7.html R. R. Britt, 2003. Primeval planet: oldest known world conjures prospect of ancient life. Space.com. ESA, 2003. Searching for the "real" waterworld. ESA Science News. R. Irion, 2003. Ancient planet turns back the clock. Science, 301(5630):151. NASA, 2003. Ancient planet. NASA Science News. L. Mullen, 2003. Ancient planet discovered. Astrobiology Magazine. S. Sigurdsson, H. B. Richer, B. M. Hansen, I. H. Stairs and S. E. Thorsett, 2003. A young white dwarf companion to pulsar B1620-26: evidence for early planet formation. Science, 301(5630):193-196. University of California--Los Angeles, 2003. Farthest and oldest known planet confirmed. Spaceflight Now. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology_books.ht ml National Research Council, 2003. Assessment of Mars Science and Mission Priorities. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 14 July 2003 The investigation of the Columbia tragedy continues. I have included (below) a non-exhaustive list of links to recent articles on the subject. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/caib_preview_030707-1.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_foam_030707.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/sts107_ap_030708.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/shuttle-03z.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience-03zk.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030711175931.6h06hphp.html http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030707impacttest/ http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030711scenario/ http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=2&u=/ap/2 0030708/ap_on_sc/shuttle_investigation http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=1&u=/ap/2 0030709/ap_on_sc/shuttle_earlier_breach http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=1&u=/ap/2 0030712/ap_on_sc/shuttle_investigation ________________________________________________________________________ NEWLY LAUNCHED "OPPORTUNITY" FOLLOWS MARS-BOUND "SPIRIT" NASA release 2003-095 7 July 2003 NASA launched its second Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, late Monday night aboard a Delta II launch vehicle whose bright glare briefly illuminated Florida Space Coast beaches. Opportunity's dash to Mars began with liftoff at 11:18:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time (8:18:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. The spacecraft separated successfully from the Delta's third stage 83 minutes later, after it had been boosted out of Earth orbit and onto a course toward Mars. Flight controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, received a signal from Opportunity at 12:43 AM Tuesday EDT (9:43 PM Monday PDT) via the Goldstone, CA, antenna complex of NASA's Deep Space Network. All systems on the spacecraft are operating as expected, JPL's Richard Brace, Mars Exploration Rover deputy project manager, reported. "We have a major step behind us now," said Pete Theisinger, project manager. "There are still high-risk parts of this mission ahead of us, but we have two spacecraft on the way to Mars, and that's wonderful." NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science Dr. Ed Weiler said, "Opportunity joins Spirit and other Mars-bound missions from the European Space Agency, Japan and the United Kingdom, which together mark the most extensive exploration of another planet in history. This ambitious undertaking is an amazing feat for Planet Earth and the human spirit of exploration." As of early Tuesday, Opportunity's twin, Spirit, has traveled 77 million kilometers (48 million miles) since its launch on June 10 and is operating in good health. Opportunity is scheduled to arrive at a site on Mars called Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, Universal Time (evening of January 24, Eastern and Pacific times), three weeks after Spirit lands in a giant crater about halfway around the planet. NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter has identified deposits at Meridiani Planum of a type of mineral that usually forms in wet environments. Both rovers will function as robotic geologists, examining rocks and soil for clues about whether past environments at their landing sites may have been hospitable to life. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. It built the rovers and manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for the NASA Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Information about the rovers and the scientific instruments they carry is available online from JPL at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer and from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, at http://athena.cornell.edu. Contacts: Guy Webster NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 Don Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1727 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article518.html http://www.national-academies.org/headlines#sh0710 http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/delta2_launch_030707.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030708052622.n3u9s38g.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/merb/030707launch.html http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=1&u=/ap/2 0030708/ap_on_sc/mars_rover ________________________________________________________________________ WHERE'S OPPORTUNITY RIGHT NOW? By Ron Baalke NASA/JPL release 7 July 2003 With a successful launch today, the current position of Opportunity has been added on this web page, http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/mission/spiritrightnow.html. The page will track the positions of Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Express and Nozomi from Earth to Mars. The page is updated every 10 minutes, and new/updated views include: * Earth as seen by Opportunity (large view of Earth currently being displayed) * Combined positions of all four spacecraft en route to Mars. * Looking down on Earth, showing the Opportunity's position relative to the Earth-Moon system. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS ROVER OPPORTUNITY MISSION STATUS NASA release 2003-096 9 July 2003 NASA's Opportunity spacecraft, the second of twin Mars Exploration Rovers, has successfully reduced its spin rate as planned and switched to celestial navigation using a star scanner. Prior to today's maneuver, Opportunity was spinning 12.13 rotations per minute. Onboard thrusters were used to reduce the spin rate to approximately 2 rotations per minute, the designed rate for the cruise to Mars. After the spinning slowed, Opportunity's star scanner found stars that are being used as reference points for spacecraft attitude. One of the bright points in the star scanner's first field of view was Mars. All systems on the spacecraft are in good health. As of 6:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time July 10, Opportunity will have traveled 6.6 million kilometers (4.1 million miles) since its July 7 launch. The Mars Exploration Rover flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, is preparing to command Opportunity's first trajectory- correction maneuver, scheduled for July 18. Opportunity will arrive at Mars on January 25, 2004, Universal Time (evening of January 24, 2004, Eastern and Pacific times). The rover will examine its landing area in Mars' Meridiani Planum area for geological evidence about the history of water on Mars. Opportunity's twin, Spirit, also continues in good health on its cruise to Mars. As of 6:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time July 10, it will have traveled 82.6 million kilometers (51.3 million miles) since its June 10 launch. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Additional information about the project is available from JPL at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer and from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, at http://athena.cornell.edu. Contacts: Guy Webster NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/merb/030709update.html. ________________________________________________________________________ BEAGLE 2 TESTS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED ESA release 6-2003 8 July 2003 On Friday 4 July, and Saturday 5 July 2003, engineers successfully carried out overnight tests on the Mars Express lander, Beagle 2. Ground controllers at the European Space Agency's Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, contacted Mars Express at the weekend to carry out the tests on the lander, which were rescheduled from two weeks ago. These functional tests included uploading software and switching units on and off. With these tests, the near-Earth phase of the Mars Express payload check-outs is almost complete. All instruments, including the lander, have performed as expected. Star calibration of some instruments is scheduled for mid-July, which marks the first attempt to make scientific measurements. This will also be done in the same way when nearer to Mars. Rudi Schmidt, ESA Mars Express Project Manager, said, "This check-out was a marvelous example of complete cooperation between ESA's Mars Express and the Beagle lander teams Another major milestone has been achieved successfully. What a fantastic feeling!" Contact: Rudolf Schmidt, ESA Mars Express Project Manager ESA-ESTEC Phone: +31 (0)71 565 3603 E-mail: rudolf.schmidt@esa.int Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/marsexpress_update_030709.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/030708update.html ________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 3-9 July 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Kaiser Dune Avalanches (Released 03 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/03/index.html Windblown Dunes and Ripples (Released 04 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/04/index.html Dark Slope Streaks (Released 05 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/05/index.html Valley South of Cerberus (Released 06 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/06/index.html Time for Dust Storms (Released 07 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/07/index.html Ius Chasma Fault (Released 08 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/08/index.html Fresh, Rayed Impact Crater (Released 09 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/09/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 7-11 July 2003 Platy Flows (Released 7 July 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030707a.html Destination: Meridiani (Released 8 July 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030708a.html Gigas Meets Ulysses (Released 9 July 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030709a.html Crater Interior (Released 10 July 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030710a.html Lava Flows (Released 11 July 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030711a.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 11 July 2003 The Stardust team had eight periods of communication with the spacecraft using the Deep Space Network 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. Preparations for the next Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM-9) are underway. This TCM is a small followup adjustment to last month's Deep Space Maneuver 3. TCM-9 will be a 1 meter/second burn and because the burn direction is very close to Earth point, the project has decided to use this maneuver as an additional opportunity for measuring the impact of small forces both before and after the burn. Since the burn direction will be at Earth point, the best two-way doppler data will be obtained, and still be well within the propellant margins. TCM-9 is scheduled for July 16th. 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 28.