Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 31, 1 August 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://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA04629] This image of the spiral galaxy Messier 83 was taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer on June 7, 2003. Located 15 million light years from Earth and known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, Messier 83 displays significant amounts of ultraviolet emissions far from the optically bright portion of the galaxy. It is also known to have an extended hydrogen disc that appears to radiate a faint ultraviolet emission. The red stars in the foreground of the image are Milky Way stars. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology, which is also responsible for the science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, a division of Caltech, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program, managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The mission's international partners include South Korea and France. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1) TINY MEASUREMENT GIVES BIG BOOST TO PLANET HUNT By Randal Jackson 2) INEVITABILITY BEYOND BILLIONS From Astrobiology Magazine 3) HYDROTHERMAL VENT SYSTEMS COULD HAVE PERSISTED FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, INCUBATED EARLY LIFE National Science Foundation release 03-76 4) COMMERCIAL HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT INDUSTRY SEEKS REGULATORY RELIEF From SpaceDaily 5) FOLLOW THE SUN By Henry Bortman 6) NASA OBSERVATIONS CONFIRM EXPECTED OZONE LAYER RECOVERY NASA release 03-253 7) PICKING ON MARS By Diane Richards 8) VIKING MISSION SCIENTIST STRENGTHENS CASE FOR LIFE ON MARS Spherix release 9) A NEW FORM OF LIFE By Tony Phillips 10) THE RISE OF OXYGEN By Lee J. Siegel 11) DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH: LOOKING FOR LIFE IN ROCKS By Diane Richards 12) EXPLODING STARS CREATE CLOUDS OF COSMIC DUST By Robert Roy Britt 13) THE INTRINSIC RIGHTS OF MARTIAN BUGS By John Carter McKnight 14) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 15) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release ________________________________________________________________________ TINY MEASUREMENT GIVES BIG BOOST TO PLANET HUNT By Randal Jackson From JPL's First Light 22 July 2003 Even though astronomers have discovered more than 100 planets around stars other than the Sun in recent years, the "holy grail" of the search--an Earth-sized planet capable of supporting life--remains elusive. The main problem is that an Earthlike planet would be much smaller than any of the gas giants detected so far. Planets orbiting other stars are too dim to be observed directly, but scientists infer their presence by the tiny gravitational "wobble" they induce in their parent stars. Observed from tens of light years away (one light-year is 5.88 trillion miles), this movement becomes very tiny indeed. The smaller the planet, the less the star parent wobbles. To detect the stellar wobble caused by a planet as small as Earth, scientists need an instrument of almost unbelievable sensitivity. Let's say there's an astronaut standing on the moon, wiggling her pinky. You'd need an instrument sensitive enough to measure that movement from Earth, a quarter million miles away. In order to do that, the instrument needs to be a "ruler" accurate to within just one-tenth the width of a hydrogen atom. That's about 1 millionth of the width of the thickest human hair. Is such precision possible? After a six-year struggle, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently proved that the answer is yes. Such sub-atomic measurements were conducted for the first time ever within a vacuum-sealed chamber called the Microarcsecond Metrology Testbed. By doing this, the engineers proved they can measure the movements of stars with an astonishing degree of accuracy never before achieved in human history. The testbed, which resembles a shiny silver submarine, is jammed with mirrors, lasers, lenses and other optical components. Because even small air movements can interfere with the measurements, all air is pumped out of the chamber before each experiment is run. Laser beams, moving mirrors and a camera are used to help detect movements of an artificial star, which simulates the light that would be emitted by a real star. The instrument that engineers have demonstrated in the laboratory will become the heart of a revolutionary new space telescope known as the Space Interferometry Mission. "Six-and-a-half years ago, this technology was unproven and unsubstantiated," said Brett Watterson, the mission's deputy project manager. "It was just a remote possibility that we could do it. It was through ingenuity, insight, leadership and sheer perseverance that the team was able to overcome these difficult technological challenges." NASA recently gave the go-ahead for the second stage of development for the mission, which will not only be able to search for Earth-like planets around other stars, but will also measure cosmic distances several hundred times more accurately than currently possible. Scheduled to launch in 2009, it will scan the heavens for five years and provide astronomers with the first truly accurate road map of our Milky Way galaxy. "This is a historical time that we're intimately involved with," Watterson said. "Unlike any other culture in history, we have the technological means, the budget, and the will to determine the occurrence of Earthlike planets orbiting other stars. Everyone on the team is aware of their role in this pivotal stage in the search for life elsewhere in the universe." The Space Interferometry Mission is managed by JPL as part of NASA's Origins program. Read the original article at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/stars_galaxies/features/mam- testbed.cfm?JServSessionIdr009=uyxst91n5m.app2a. Related video is available at: http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=UU3FaT2WkzBO-3BCLCXxIg.. http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Ta_8x8gxPyFO-3BCLCXxIg.. ________________________________________________________________________ INEVITABILITY BEYOND BILLIONS From Astrobiology Magazine 24 July 2003 How many stars can be viewed in the known universe? The age-old question of how to estimate such a vast number has found a new bidder. An astronomical team led by Simon Driver of the Australian National University Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics had access to some of the world's most powerful telescopes, and then started counting. Their survey is part of the largest galaxy survey called the Two Degrees Field Galaxy Redshift Survey. This Anglo-Australian survey is trying to measure the distances to 250,000 nearby galaxies, notably using advanced equipment located at the Siding Springs Observatory in Australia's New South Wales state. Another telescope in the northern hemisphere was also used and is located on the Canary Islands, off the coast of Spain. The astronomers' task however depended on more than just accurate telescopes and the best estimate yet for the number of visible galaxies. To get an estimate for the stars in the known universe also requires some assumptions about the geometry or shape of, for lack of a better term, "everything". The team is quick to point out that the actual size of the universe is presently not known, if it ever can be, but that a star count can provide a gauge on progress in the building of modern telescopes. At this week's General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Sydney, the researchers put forward their big number: 70 sextillion, or 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [seven followed by twenty-two zeros]. Previous estimates were approximately twenty-five percent smaller. "This is not the total number of stars in the universe, but it's the number within the range of our telescopes," said Driver. To arrive at such a vast number, the team surveyed one strip of sky containing some 10,000 galaxies, or about four percent as a sample. To estimate the number of stars in those ten thousand galaxies was not a rote count but based instead on the galaxies' average brightness. In such a statistical survey, brightness is a measure of how many stars the galaxy may host. In their statistical report, that sample was then multiplied by the number of similar sized strips needed to cover the entire sky, and then multiplied again out to the edge of the visible universe. A pedestrian measure of this edge-to-edge distance is sometimes given as 234 sextillion miles. How the geometry is laid out across the sky, in turn, depends on the enclosing space defined by both the power of the telescopes and key constants for the size and age of the universe. The most well-known such constant is called the Hubble constant, which is named after the same astronomer, Edwin Hubble, whose contributions to science are also commemorated in the large NASA orbiting telescope. One fascinating photo featured in the observing schedule for the Hubble Telescope is called "the Deep Field", since astronomers attempt to capture the oldest light, or farthest reach, of what galaxies can be resolved from orbit. One important reason this estimate is constrained to visible stars however is not just a measure of how powerful a set of telescopes can be, but also depends on the age of the universe. The universe as it is currently described is not considered old enough (around 14 billion years) for light from its farthest reaches to be visible from Earth. By most estimates, our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across, and the vast empty space between galaxies stretches the limits of imagination when considering 250,000 copies of the Milky Way. When Dr. Driver was asked by the Australian newspaper, The Age, if he believed there was other intelligent life out there, he said: "Seventy thousand million million million is a big number... it's inevitable." Such large numbers--seven times ten raised to twenty-twenty powers--are beyond what is meaningful without an analogy to compare with it. The number of stars in the visible universe, for instance, is now comparable to some terrestrial references borrowed from a combination of science and poetry: * Ten times more than the number of grains of sand on Earth. * Eleven times the number of cups of water in all the Earth's oceans. * Ten thousand times the number of wheat kernels that have ever been produced on Earth. * One hundred million times more than the number of ants in all the world. * One hundred million times the dollar value of all the market-priced assets in the world. * Ten billion times the number of cells in a human being. * One hundred billion times the number of letters in the 14 million books in the Library of Congress. In the realm of astrobiology, it may be said that most meaningful terrestrial analogies to the number of stars in the known universe are biological: only a fertile biosphere can yield such large numbers. One may ask how many living things the Earth itself can accommodate in its volume. If one cubic inch can hold ten billion animal or plant cells, and if one stacked these cells across both the land and oceans to a thickness of fifteen feet, the planet would be a vast teeming mass of biology--literally, life as far as the eye could see. The thickness of fifteen feet, while extreme overpopulation on the land, is likely an underestimate given the depth of the more three-dimensional ocean biosphere or the realms of winged species. In this way, the ceiling on the carrying capacity of Earth for cellular life is vast, since about ten million times the number of plant or animal cells could pack the planet than the number of stars in the visible universe. Compared to 70 sextillion, the cellular capacity terrestrially is estimated to be what can be called one undecillion, or ten raised to the power of 30. Given that the earth's biodiversity currently has around 28,000 species with a backbone, the Earth can be considered a rich source for cellular life, and a relatively scarce source for advanced life--a conclusion that is likely to temper the future searches for clues to life elsewhere. For this reason, the chances for finding microbial life off the home planet are regarded as a more likely initial research goal. But as illustrated by sampling only four percent of the galactic sky to count stars, one can also consider that the Earth as a sample size of one for life as we know it, makes possible only informed guesses about a range of options. For instance, as one statistical postulate, the wider the base from which the sample is drawn--i.e., the larger the number of units in the pool of experience, the higher the expectation is that these statistics will give a reliable index to the future. This is known as the law of large numbers. Or as Galileo wrote in 1638: "Let us remember that we are dealing with infinities and indivisibles, both of which transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness. In spite of this, men cannot refrain from discussing them, even though it must be done in a roundabout way". Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article534.html. ________________________________________________________________________ HYDROTHERMAL VENT SYSTEMS COULD HAVE PERSISTED FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, INCUBATED EARLY LIFE National Science Foundation release 03-76 24 July 2003 The staying power of sea-floor hydrothermal vent systems like the bizarre Lost City vent field is one reason they also may have been incubators of Earth's earliest life, scientists report in a paper published in the July 25 issue of Science. Discovered just two years ago, Lost City has the tallest vents ever seen-the 18-story-tall vents at that site dwarf most vents elsewhere by at least 100 feet. Water is circulated through the vent field by heat from serpentinization, a chemical reaction between seawater and the mantle rock on which Lost City sits, rather than by heat from volcanic activity or magma, responsible for driving hydrothermal venting at sites scientists have been studying since the early 1970s. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the independent federal agency that supports research and education across all fields of science and engineering, funded the expedition to the mid-Atlantic. If hydrothermal venting can occur without volcanism, it greatly increases the number of locations on the seafloor of early Earth where microbial life could have started. It also means that explorers may have more places than previously thought to look for microbial life in the universe. "The discovery of the Lost City vent field is a wonderful example of serendipity in science-studying one problem and discovering something totally new and unexpected," says David Epp, program director in NSF's marine geology and geophysics program. "The detailed work on Lost City is just beginning, and will change the way all of us think about hydrothermal vent systems." Although the Lost City vent system is a youthful 30,000 years old, Lost City-type systems might be able to persist hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of years, say lead author Gretchen Früh-Green of Switzerland's Institute for Mineralogy and Petrology and her co-authors. One can imagine how such stable, long-lived systems pumping out heat, minerals and organic compounds for millennia might improve the chances for life to spark and to be sustained until it could take hold, say these scientists. "It's difficult to know if life might have started as a result of one or both kinds of venting," says Deborah Kelley, a University of Washington oceanographer and co-author of the Science paper, "but chances are good that these systems were involved in sustaining life on and within the seafloor very early in Earth's history." Lost City is nine miles from the nearest volcanically active spreading center and sits on 1.5 million-year-old crust. Seawater permeating deeply into the fractured surface of the mantle rocks transforms olivine into a new mineral, serpentine. The heat generated during this the process is not as great as that found at volcanically active sites-where fluids can reach 700 degrees-but it is enough to power hydrothermal circulation and produce vent fluids of 105 to 170 degrees. Tectonics, the movement of the Earth's great plates, contributes to the fracturing of the mantle rock. But a major reason this kind of system is self-sustaining, the scientists believe, is that fracturing also happens because rocks undergoing serpentinization increase in volume 20 to 40 percent. Kelley likens it to water seeping into tiny cracks in roads, then freezing and expanding to cause ruts and frost heaves in the pavement. Scientists think many Lost City-type systems were possible on early Earth because so much of the mantle had yet to be covered over with crust, putting it in contact with seawater and making serpentinization possible, Kelley says. Lost City is the only vent field of its kind known today, but scientists say more could exist. Within a 60-mile radius of Lost City are three similar mountains and there are other, potential sites along thousands of miles of ridges in the mid-Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans. Beyond Earth, peridotite-the mantle material that reacts with seawater during serpentinization-is abundant on planets in our solar system, says Jeff Karson, a geologist at Duke University. "Peridotite can be exposed by tectonic processes or by major cratering events. This means that Lost City-type venting could occur, or has occurred, in oceans on other planets, and such venting would have the potential to support microbial systems." Lost City-type systems also may be conducive to life because their fluids are high pH and rich with organic compounds compared to black- smoker systems. "Smoking" gives more widely known black-smoker vent systems their name. In those systems, dark minerals precipitate when scalding hot vent waters meet the icy-cold waters of ocean depths. Black-smoker vents are a mottled mix of sulfide minerals. The Lost City vents are nearly 100 percent carbonate, the same material as limestone in caves, and range in colors from white to cream to gray. Water venting at Lost City is hot enough to shimmer but not "smoke." Last spring, NSF funded the first major scientific expedition to Lost City since its discovery. Led by Kelly and Karson, the expedition was documented at http://www.lostcity.washington.edu. The field, named Lost City in part because it sits on a seafloor mountain named the Atlantis Massif, was discovered on December 4, 2000. Contacts: Sandra Hines, University of Washington E-mail: shines@u.washington.edu Phone: 206-543-2580 Monte Basgall, Duke University E-mail: monte.basgall@duke.edu Phone: 919-681-8057 Read the original news release at http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/pr0376.htm. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03zi.html. ________________________________________________________________________ COMMERCIAL HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT INDUSTRY SEEKS REGULATORY RELIEF From SpaceDaily 27 July 2003 An emerging demand for commercial human spaceflight has attracted the interest of a number of space tourism entrepreneurs and prompted concerns regarding regulation of this new industry. Today, witnesses at a bicameral hearing of the House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and the Senate Science, Technology, and Space Subcommittee testified on future opportunities for space travel, as well as issues surrounding government regulations and passenger liability for this new frontier of tourism. Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chair Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said, "Opening space to those willing to pay for the experience of it offers our industrial-base a new source of technical innovation well beyond government's sphere of activities. "Simply put, by building and flying space launch vehicles, commercial space entrepreneurs have overcome a barrier that apparently continues to plague NASA's bureaucratic inertia." Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketscience- 03zr.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0307/26hearing/. ________________________________________________________________________ FOLLOW THE SUN By Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine 28 July 2003 The two NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which are speeding their way towards a January rendezvous with Mars, are arguably the most advanced robotic spacecraft ever sent to explore another heavenly body. But to the robotics researchers working on the Life in the Atacama project, Spirit and Opportunity are already history. This group of hardware and software wizards, based at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute are designing rovers that, they hope, will roam the martian surface, not in this decade, but in the next. Their goal: autonomous robots with sufficient onboard intelligence to explore for days at a time without human intervention. The development of these new robotic capabilities is being field-tested in Chile's Atacama desert, which stretches east from the Pacific coast high into the Andes mountains. At its heart lies perhaps the most arid region on Earth--an area so dry that even extreme-adapted microbial life has difficulty surviving there. The researchers, whose work is funded jointly by NASA's ASTEP (Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploration of Planets) and Mars Technology Program, hope to accomplish two related goals during their three-year effort. Most immediately, they hope to chart life's ability--or inability--to survive in the Atacama. This will help biologists understand the limits of life on Earth. But in addition, they hope to develop rover hardware and software, as well as life- detection technology, that can be applied to future missions to Mars. From the arctic to the equator Their first field season was completed earlier this year. The rover used in the field experiments is called Hyperion. Originally deployed in the high Arctic, Hyperion was designed, literally, to follow the Sun. Because the Sun is in the Arctic sky all day long during the northern summer, Hyperion was designed to be able to operate 24 hours a day, by maneuvering so that its fixed solar panel constantly pointed sunward. The current research is being conducted near the equator, but the same Sun-tracking software used in the Arctic comes in handy in the Atacama as well, to maximize the distance that the rover can travel during daylight hours. The basic function of this software, known as TEMPEST (Temporal Mission Planner for Exploration in Shadowed Terrain), is to develop long-range navigation plans for Hyperion. TEMPEST was developed by Paul Tompkins, a doctoral candidate in robotics at CMU. The software takes several factors into account, all of which contribute to developing an energy profile for the rover. Sunlight, as mentioned above, is a critical factor. "If you have to drive entirely through shadow, for example, to get from point A to point B, and there's not enough energy onboard the battery, it will disallow that as a viable path, and it will have to go around the shadow to achieve the objective," says Tompkins. Another factor is large-scale terrain. "Say, for example there are two different routes from point A to point B and one takes you over a large hill and the other one goes around it. You can actually trade off the extra distance you might travel to go around the hill versus the extra energy you might have to impart to the rover to get it up and over the hill," Tompkins says. Stored in the rover's memory is satellite imagery of the terrain it is traversing. This helps scientists select a long-range target for the rover. "We're actually using a priori information derived from satellite data," says Tompkins. "So we have a map, what we call a digital-elevation model, that we'd gather ahead of time." On Mars, similar information is available from the data collected by MOLA (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter), one of the instruments onboard the Mars Global Surveyor. Also stored on Hyperion is software called SPICE, designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which calculates "the positions and rotational orientations of the major bodies in the Solar System over time. So you can predict the azimuth [direction along the horizon] and elevation of the Sun at any point on a given planet," Tompkins says. Combining the elevation and solar-position data makes it possible to predict what areas of the local terrain will be in shadow. One step at a time Applying this information to the target location, TEMPEST develops a set of shorter-range goals, known as way points, which are separated by 30 to 100 meters. TEMPEST feeds the way points, one at a time, to another software program, the local navigator, whose job it is to make sure the rover avoids small obstacles, such as rocks, along the way. The local navigator is similar to the software built-in to the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. As it reaches each way point, Hyperion stops and re-examines the surrounding terrain. Tompkins explains that "it's difficult for the [science] team to understand what 's happening if you take a picture at point A and then a picture at the end at point B, one kilometer away. It could be a very different perspective physically. So if you take intermediate photographs, and then in addition to that maybe take some other scientific information along the way, geologically or biologically, then you can get a feel for how those quantities change over the course of the traverse." Although only about 20 such sets of measurements were acquired during the first field season, in the second and third seasons (in 2004 and 2005), many more such measurements will be made. This will enable scientists to begin mapping the gradient of life in the Atacama, both in coastal regions that receive moisture from nighttime salt fogs and in the more-arid interior. In the field season recently completed, the Life in the Atacama team achieved a significant milestone: an autonomous one-kilometer (0.6-mile) traverse. (For comparison, Spirit and Opportunity are expected to travel a total distance of about one kilometer each.) "We had been shooting next year to try and be able to have the robot navigate one kilometer on a single command," says David Wettergreen, a research scientist at CMU and the technology lead for the Life in the Atacama project. "And because we were getting very good results, going 6-, 7-, 800 meters in a command cycle, we actually were able to test at least one traverse of a kilometer on a single command to the robot. I don't know that that type of distance has been accomplished by a planetary rover in testing before, and it puts us in a good position for next year, when we are going to do that again and again and again." This time around, the rover was not, strictly speaking, fully autonomous. Its control software was running on an off-board processor, which sent its commands via a wireless link to the rover. And many of the scientific instruments were not yet integrated onto the rover. Instead, a team of scientists tagged along behind the rover and performed experiments and measurements manually. "But next year," says Wettergreen, "we'll have those instruments integrated with the robot. So as it does these traverses, it will be able to periodically collect those data sets, or at least it will be able to do collection on a much more regular basis." What's next? Plans are already underway for the second field season, which will take place in the fall--that's northern-hemisphere fall--of 2004. The Life in the Atacama team has ambitions plans for its second expedition. "The goal in the second field season is to visit two sites," says Wettergreen. "One that is, again, in the coastal range, and then one that is in the heart of the desert, the hyperarid region. And to traverse longer distances. So we set a minimal goal of [a total of] about 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) of traverse. "The big change, I would say, though, for the second field season, is that we anticipate to have the various science instruments integrated with the rover." Tompkins also has some pet projects in mind. One of these is to write software that will enable the rover, before it shuts down for the night, to "select a spot that will be best to hibernate in. So my hope is that I can build in the capability to select maybe a hillside that receives early Sun. So it might distinguish between areas that receive sunlight only later in the day from areas that might receive early sunlight. And so it might get a jump start on operations on the following day." He also wants to build in allowances for uncertainty. "If you have to get to a certain place by a certain time, but there's an uncertainty in how long it takes, then you might shoot to start earlier," he says. "Or, in the case of falling into that fault," Tompkins adds, referring to a problem that occurred in this year's field season when Hyperion wandered dangerously close to a steep drop-off, "if you knew that there was some uncertainty where the fault actually was, then you might choose not to get so close to that feature, to protect against potential position errors." Meanwhile, in a separate project not directly related to Life in the Atacama, Wettergreen hopes to put Hyperion to use in its original polar configuration. "We have for five or six years now been working on a lunar-rover initiative that would look for ice and search the polar regions of the Moon," says Wettergreen. So that concept of the vertical solar powered rover seems very appropriate to that environment." This configuration conceivably could be used one day to explore the polar regions of Mars, which some scientists believe is a prime target in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article538.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA OBSERVATIONS CONFIRM EXPECTED OZONE LAYER RECOVERY NASA release 03-253 29 July 2003 NASA satellite observations have provided the first evidence the rate of ozone depletion in the Earth's upper atmosphere is decreasing. This may indicate the first stage of ozone layer recovery. From an analysis of ozone observations from NASA's first and second Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) and the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) satellite instruments, scientists have found less ozone depletion in the upper stratosphere (22-28 miles altitude) after 1997. The American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research has accepted a paper for publication on these results. This decrease in the rate of ozone depletion is consistent with the decline in the atmospheric abundance of man-made chorine and bromine-containing chemicals that have been documented by satellite, balloon, aircraft and ground based measurements. Concerns about ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere or stratosphere led to ratification of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer by the international community in 1987. The protocol restricts the manufacture and use of human-made, ozone-depleting compounds, such as chlorofluorocarbons and halons. "Ozone is still decreasing but just not as fast," said Mike Newchurch, associate professor at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, AL, and lead scientist on the study. "We are still decades away from total ozone recovery. There are a number of remaining uncertainties such as the effect of climate change on ozone recovery. Hence, there is a need to continue this precise long-term ozone data record," he said. "This finding would have been impossible had either SAGE II or HALOE not lasted so long past their normal mission lifetime," said Joe Zawodny, scientist on the SAGE II satellite instrument science team at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. SAGE II is approaching the 19th anniversary of its launch, and HALOE has been returning data for 11 years. Scientists also used international ground networks to confirm these data from satellite results. SAGE I was launched on the Applications Explorer Mission-B spacecraft in 1979; the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite carried SAGE II into orbit in 1984. The Space Shuttle Discovery carried HALOE into space on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite in 1991. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise funded this research in an effort to better understand and protect our home planet. The ozone layer protects the Earth's surface from the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. Ultraviolet radiation can contribute to skin cancer and cataracts in humans and harm other animals and plants. Ozone depletion in the stratosphere also causes the ozone hole that occurs each spring over Antarctica. For information about NASA on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov. For information about NASA's Earth Science Enterprise on the Internet, visit http://www.earth.nasa.gov. For information about this research on the Internet, visit http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/news_rels/2003/ Contacts: Chris Rink/Julia Cole Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA Phone: 757-864-6887/4052) Read the original news release at http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/news_rels/2003/03-253.html. ________________________________________________________________________ PICKING ON MARS By Diane Richards From Astrobiology Magazine 29 July 2003 "It has been a roller coaster ride, let me tell you!" SETI Institute/NASA Ames scientist, Dr. Nathalie Cabrol describes the nerve- wracking process to select a landing site for the NASA's Mars Expedition Rover (MER) mission. At a recent interview in the SETI Institute offices, Dr. Cabrol and Edmond Grin, her scientific partner (and husband), relived the ups and downs of their quest; a visit to an ancient dry lake bed at the end of the Ma'adim Vallis, a huge martian drainage channel. The combined backgrounds of Cabrol and Grin, in planetary geology and hydraulic engineering, give them a special affinity for the site. Each can visualize the ancient and dynamic processes that most likely formed the martian drainage system with its channels cut by flowing water and the lake into which the water emptied. Cabrol and Grin were some of the earliest planetary scientists to recognize the tell tale features of lakes on the Red Planet. It is not always easy to be first. For nine years (1985-1994) the duo conducted their planetary geology research at the University of Paris- Sorbonne and Observatory of Paris-Meudon, France. Grin assembled a large "Gusev mosaic" of Viking images that stretched across the wall of their office. The martian landscape caught the eyes of NASA scientist Chris McKay, whose 1994 visit to Meudon coincided with the closure of the lab where Cabrol and Grin worked. Cabrol describes the visit as "a defining moment" as it determined their future. "We left Meudon and followed Chris," she continues. "Edmond packed up the mosaic in his suitcase and we flew to Ames where the mosaic stayed in our cubicle when we arrived and is now archived in our office at the Space Science Division." With the conviction that Gusev and similar sites were rich with astrobiology potential and thus logical places to visit (ancient lakes are excellent environments for life), Cabrol and Grin pressed on at NASA Ames Research Center, in Mountain View, California. "We had a landing site with no mission," Cabrol explains. What followed was a suite of Mars and Mars-analogue studies supported by several papers on Mars crater lakes. "At the time [between 1994 and 1997], paleolakes were not considered. We had to fight for the notion of crater lakes." The tide began to turn as the evidence mounted with increases in data resolution, and the community of planetary scientists came to accept the idea of impact crater lakes. Meanwhile, the mandate for Mars exploration had become: "Follow the water!" The timing was right. Thus the MER mission would look for evidence of the past activity of water on Mars, and with the landing site selection process, Cabrol and Grin boarded the "real roller coaster." In January 2001, the first MER landing site workshop, held at NASA Ames, considered a list of 185 potential sites. The preliminary MER landing ellipses, (the landing probability area) were larger than Gusev could accommodate. Knowing this constraint she considered skipping the first workshop altogether. Realizing that the process "is like voting," and that "if you do not vote, you cannot complain if you do not like the result," she submitted her abstract at the very last minute. On day one, Cabrol presented several sites, including Gusev and Gale Craters both made the first cut. Fortunately, the calibrations determining the size of the ellipse had been refined, and Gusev was now accessible. The "ride" continued. Cabrol recalls another defining moment during the second workshop in October 2001 in Pasadena. This workshop examined safety issues and heard presentations on the sites' scientific interest. Cabrol pleaded the case of the geologically rich Gusev site. After a first round of votes ten minutes prior to the workshop's end, Gusev's chances looked "uncertain." But then safety issues eliminated two very popular Valles Marineris sites. More presentations and discussions preceded a second round of voting. Gusev made it once again. Says Cabrol, "In five minutes we went from deep concern to our candidates selection as one of four primary sites. I began to believe something big was going to happen. It was a very deep experience." Two more workshops in March 2002 and January 2003 would scrutinize the remaining candidates in detail and take the pair up and down their own emotional peaks and valleys before the April 10th announcement of the two final sites: Meridiani and Gusev. Throughout that year and a half Cabrol happily noted that Gusev research had ceased to be "personal." The research was a community effort involving many scientists and engineers. The community scrutinized all of the sites using new data. When the science selection came through, it was unanimous. If all goes well, soon after landing, MER like a human infant gazing upon its own toes will focus its camera upon the rover's front wheels then transmit this first image back to Earth. The view from Mars will be immeasurably more exciting as MER transmits its first panorama of the dry and ancient Gusev lakebed. For Cabrol and Grin, the Gusev studies have been a labor of love that began in 1990, and now, "one revolution of Jupiter later," says Cabrol, "we had consensus of the science team. That was a very rewarding moment". The SETI Institute, which has partnered with NASA since 1998 on Cabrol and Grin's Mars projects, recently lauded Cabrol and Grin for their work, which represents both the quality and the spirit of wonder that characterizes the interdisciplinary science conducted by the Institute. "We are not there yet," she reminds us. There are several critical moments, between the countdown, and the moment early in the coming new year when MER opens its 'eyes' and transmits the first image to the expectant team at JPL. Nathalie is equally excited and anxious for the second mission, MER B, to the second site (the "Hematite") in Meridiani Planum. For now, however, Cabrol and Grin are smiling. Asked whether she has an idea of what the panorama will look like, Cabrol answers, "Of course." Asked to describe it she smiles coyly and looks at Grin. "Edmond and I will each make a drawing of what we think the site will look like and compare them after the landing." After years of meticulous analysis of the site, each has built a vivid mental image of the place but for now they have made a pact not to discuss their respective ideas. Comparing their drawings side by side and with the MER images is a private ritual the two scientists look forward to as a celebration of a successful journey they've made together: an exhilarating ride towards Mars. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article539.html. ________________________________________________________________________ VIKING MISSION SCIENTIST STRENGTHENS CASE FOR LIFE ON MARS Spherix release 29 July 2003 Spherix Incorporated, today reported that recent data on the martian surface sent by the Odyssey spacecraft will be interpreted as evidence for liquid water, life's most essential need, in a paper to be presented at the Astrobiology session of the SPIE (International Society for Optical Engineering) meeting in San Diego on August 4. This is the latest, perhaps most compelling, round in the years'-long fight of the paper's author, Dr. Gilbert V. Levin, a life detection scientist in NASA's 1976 Viking Mission to Mars, to gain support for his conclusion that his experiment had succeeded in detecting microbial life. In his analysis of the data from Odyssey's Neutron Spectrometer, Levin says that the vast quantities of ice it found close to the surface of Mars mean that life-sustaining liquid water was in the soil sampled by his Viking experiment. Twenty-seven years after NASA said that its Viking Mission to Mars had found no evidence of life, Levin is battling to prove otherwise. It was not until 1997 that he finally announced that his Viking instrument had detected living microorganisms in 1976. Levin has tackled each of the many counterarguments raised. The most widely accepted one remaining is that liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars, making life impossible. Odyssey scientists say they have found the soil very close to the surface over much of the planet to contain large amounts of ice. Just last week, they confirmed and elaborated on the findings. However, the Odyssey scientists refer to the water as ice, with no mention of the possibility of its becoming liquid. Thus, they have made no statement as to the significance of their discovery to the long-standing debate over life on Mars. Levin says that ice near the surface means liquid water in the topsoil. He bases this conclusion on a thermodynamic model applied to Viking and Pathfinder data, which he and his son Ron, a physicist at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, published in 1998. Locating the Viking test sites on the Odyssey map, he shows that the soil sampled by Viking 1 contains about 2 percent water, and that the water content at the Viking 2 site is about 10 percent. This, he says, adds considerable strength to his case for life on Mars. Levin says he regrets that, despite NASA and the European Space Agency statements that the search for life on Mars remains their highest priority, none of their three spacecraft currently voyaging to Mars contains a life detection test. Nonetheless, he predicts these missions will likely advance his cause by finding liquid water and an environment that could support microorganisms. Under its motto, "A World of Solutions," Spherix's mission is to create value and increase shareholder wealth through innovations that benefit our clients and the human condition. Spherix offers innovations in information technology, knowledge management, and biotechnology. Contact: Gilbert V. Levin Phone: 301-419-3900 E-mail: glevin@spherix.com http://www.spherix.com Read the original news release at http://www.spherix.com/PressRelease/pr072903.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-03d.html. ________________________________________________________________________ A NEW FORM OF LIFE By Tony Phillips From NASA Science News 30 July 2003 Mark Twain didn't think much of California's Mono Lake. "It lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert," he wrote in his 1872 travelogue, Roughing It. "This solemn, silent, sailless sea--this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth--is little graced with the picturesque." Astrobiologist Richard Hoover of NASA's National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) in Huntsville, Alabama, has a different view. "It's beautiful," he says. Mono Lake looks like an alien world. Strange knobbly spires called "tufa" jut out of the water a dozen feet in the air. The water itself is clogged with trillions of floating creatures: brine shrimp. Scoop one out and look closely. It's a miniature Alien. In the middle of the lake lies an island, covered with ash and spitting hot springs. Weird. The lake is actually a volcanic basin about 13 miles (22 km) wide. Water flows in from Sierra streams, but there's no way out again except evaporation--a process which constantly increases the concentration of salts and minerals. The "venomous waters are nearly pure lye" and twice as salty as sea water, complained Twain. "There are no fish in Mono Lake--no frogs, no snakes, no polliwogs--nothing to make life desirable." "In fact," notes Hoover, "many things live there." The shrimp are merely one example. There's also a species of scuba-diving fly that settles mostly on the beach but sometimes swims in the water, too, navigating the lake in tiny submarine air bubbles. The lake also provides a home to microorganisms such as diatoms, cyanobacteria and filamentous algae. So much life in such an alien place is bound to attract an astrobiologist. And in September 2000 Hoover traveled to Mono Lake to discover what else might be living there. He was particularly interested in microbes. Many microorganisms are "extremophiles"--that is, they thrive in places that would kill bigger life forms such as fish or people. "By studying microorganisms found in Earth's extreme places, like Mono Lake, we begin to understand how life might exist on Mars or on other worlds," Hoover explains. It was a quick visit--only one day at the lake to collect samples of water and mud, then back to the lab in Huntsville, Alabama, for analysis. But that was enough for a discovery. Deep in the lake's salty alkaline mud where no oxygen could reach, he uncovered a new species of living bacteria: Spirochaeta americana. "These extremely thin and graceful bacteria move with an elegant motion," marvels microbiologist Elena Pikuta of the NSSTC, who cultured the samples. "Their cell walls are very delicate, and it is difficult to keep them alive for long periods in the laboratory." The lab is probably too comfortable for anything stubborn enough to live in Mono Lake--or so Twain might say. Pikuta's rare gift for isolating and growing such microbes in a laboratory was crucial to the discovery, notes Hoover. The genus Spirochaeta includes 13 species of bacteria. Not all of them live in harsh places like Mono Lake. Some thrive in ordinary freshwater mud--the kind kids love to play in. Most, however, love extreme environments. Spirochaeta thermophila, for instance, can be found in the high-pressure mud around deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Another example: Spirochaeta bajacaliforniensis thrives without oxygen in the sulfurous muds of Baja California. All Spirochaeta are resistant to high sulfide concentrations. Hot, salty mud stinking of sulfur seems to be a good home for these creatures. Soon Hoover plans to return to Mono Lake to search for more microbes. It's a timely search because Mono Lake resembles a place on Mars named Gusev Crater where NASA's Mars rover Spirit will land in 2004. What will Spirit find there? Mono Lake might be giving us a preview. There's no water in Gusev Crater today, says Hoover, but there might have been once. The crater was formed by a meteorite impact more than 3.5 billion years ago. If water was present on Mars at that time, as some researchers believe, it would have flowed into Gusev Crater through channels in a huge canyon called Ma'adim Vallis. Because the crater has no outlet, it would have become an evaporative lake site like Mono Lake. It's unlikely that any microbes are alive in Gusev Crater now, but their fossils might be there. A good place to look would be inside evaporated mineral deposits or tufa towers, if the crater has any. At Mono Lake microfossils are abundant in tufa. These spires are formed when calcium-rich spring water bubbles up through the lake, which is rich in bicarbonate. The calcium and bicarbonate combine, precipitating out as limestone and entombing microbes at the same time. Tufa towers only grow while underwater, but at Mono Lake they poke above the surface. That's because the lake level has been lowered in recent years to supply water to Los Angeles, 360 miles to the south. The water level on Mars has been lowered, too. How no one knows. If Spirit spots tufa around Gusev Crater it will be a telling discovery--a clear sign of ancient water and, perhaps, an environment that once supported life. After a week at Mono Lake, Mark Twain had had enough of the "ashes, solitude and heartbreaking silence. The cement excitement is over," he declared and gladly left. Maybe if he had known more about Mars, and the hidden forms of life in Mono Lake, Twain would have felt differently. Astrobiologist Richard Hoover can't wait to get back. Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/30jul_monolake.htm. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03zj.html. ________________________________________________________________________ THE RISE OF OXYGEN By Lee J. Siegel From Astrobiology Magazine 30 July 2003 Animals need oxygen. "You cannot evolve animals like us without having a significant amount of oxygen," says geochemist Dick Holland of Harvard University. "Without the Great Oxidation Event [a dramatic rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere some 2.3 billion years ago], we would not be here. No dinosaurs, no fish, no snakes--just a lot of microorganisms." Oxygen has not always been as abundant as it is today. Most scientists believe that for half of Earth's 4.6-billion-year history, the atmosphere contained almost no oxygen. Cyanobacteria or blue-green algae became the first microbes to produce oxygen by photosynthesis, perhaps as long ago as 3.5 billion years ago and certainly by 2.7 billion years ago. But, mysteriously, there was a long lag time-- hundreds of millions of years--before Earth's atmosphere first gained significant amounts oxygen, some 2.4 billion to 2.3 billion years ago. Burial at sea The conventional theory of how oxygen accumulated in the atmosphere focused on the burial of organic matter in seafloor sediments that later hardened into rock. Cyanobacteria are microbes that live primarily in seawater. They are believed to have been the first organisms on Earth to perform oxygenic photosynthesis. In this process, they produce organic carbon, the building blocks of life's molecules, and release oxygen gas (O2). The O2 enters into the seawater, and from there some of it escapes into the atmosphere. When these microbes die, their remains become buried in seafloor sediment. Their decomposition removes oxygen from seawater, and in turn, from the atmosphere. As the carbon-burial theory goes, when organic material is buried, oxygen becomes available to build up in the atmosphere. So perhaps there was a sudden increase 2.3 billion years ago in the amount of organic carbon that was buried, leaving more free oxygen. But there's a glitch. Studies have shown that the amount of buried carbon found in sedimentary rocks remained constant during the early stages of the Great Oxidation Event. So a change in the carbon-burial rate can't explain the buildup of oxygen in the atmosphere. Hydrogen to the rescue An alternative explanation is that oxygen built up because there was a reduction in gases--hydrogen, for example--that react with and thus "soak up" oxygen. Pennsylvania State University atmospheric scientist Jim Kasting proposed a decade ago that Earth gained an oxygen-rich atmosphere because molecular hydrogen belched out by volcanoes diffused into space. At first, that doesn't seem to make sense. If volcanoes were putting out hydrogen, and cyanobacteria were pumping out oxygen, why wouldn't they just combine to form water and be done with it? Actually, that did occur to some extent. But Kasting believes more of the oxygen produced by photosynthesis ended up buried within Earth's mantle, the layer beneath the crust, before the hydrogen could get to it. He is not sure how, but cites three hypotheses: (1) oxygen reacted with iron in seawater, and the resulting iron oxide precipitated onto the seafloor, then was buried deep within the Earth; (2) oxygen-rich water in seafloor sediments was buried within the Earth, leaving oxygen in the mantle when the water's hydrogen was belched out by volcanoes; and (3) oxygen-rich sulfates in undersea hot springs reacted with iron in seafloor sediments, which were buried to put oxygen into the mantle. Burial of oxygen, in the form of oxides, in Earth's mantle had two effects. First, it allowed hydrogen to continue escaping into space. And second, the buried oxides reacted with hydrogen and other "reduced" gases such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide that also were present within Earth's mantle. That pulled the hydrogen out of circulation. The result: when these buried oxygen-rich sediments got recycled by the Earth, and their gases got burped out again by volcanoes, the gases contained less free hydrogen than previously. Oxygen was able to build up in the atmosphere, causing perhaps the most dramatic shift in the history of life on the planet. Before that happened, the amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere was about one ten-quadrillionth of the amount present today, Kasting says. Oxygen now makes up nearly 21 percent of Earth's atmosphere; most of the rest is nitrogen. From hydrogen to methane Now, an emerging theory says that hydrogen hitchhiked into the upper atmosphere as a component of methane, or natural gas, which was broken down by ultraviolet sunlight, freeing hydrogen to escape into space. The theory was outlined in a paper published in the journal Science on August 3, 2001, by David Catling, Kevin Zahnle and Christopher McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center. (Catling, a planetary scientist, since has moved to the University of Washington.) The paper used calculations of atmospheric reactions and processes to explain why methane would have built up in the atmosphere between 2.7 billion and 2.3 billion years ago, allowing hydrogen to escape and, eventually, oxygen to accumulate. Much hydrogen and oxygen both originated from water broken down by cyanobacteria. As mentioned earlier, the cyanobacteria consumed water and carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, making organic matter and releasing oxygen. Other bacteria consumed the organic matter, yielding molecular hydrogen and acetate. These, in turn, were consumed by microbes that produced methane, according to Catling. When cyanobacteria first began producing oxygen, much of the oxygen reacted with iron, sulfur and other chemicals, in the oceans, and in Earth's surface rocks, when raindrops containing dissolved oxygen weathered and eroded the rocks. These processes carried the oxygen into seafloor sediments and eventually into Earth's interior. Catling believes that oxygen-rich sediments were buried both in the Earth's crust and in the mantle. However, he thinks that oxidized sediments recycled through the crust would have been the critical factor for the stability of oxygen in the atmosphere. These sediments reacted with hydrogen and other "reduced" gases, diminishing the flow of such gases to the atmosphere--not from volcanoes, but from hot, compressed rocks known as metamorphic rocks. The burial of oxides in the crust allowed methane to build in the atmosphere, Catling says. Some methane reacted with oxygen, but most did not. This excess methane accumulated in the atmosphere to concentrations a few hundred to a few thousand times greater than modern levels, Catling calculates. Ultraviolet sunlight in the upper atmosphere broke methane into its components, carbon and hydrogen. The hydrogen diffused into space, leaving oxygen to start accumulating. Catling says that because methane is a "greenhouse gas," his theory also explains how Earth was warmed billions of years ago, when the Sun was fainter. Two weeks before Catling's theory hit print, the journal Nature published another study with implications for how Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere arose. NASA Ames Research Center biogeochemist David Des Marais, biogeochemist-astrobiologist Tori Hoehler and Brad Bebout reported they measured massive hydrogen production by microbial mats on the coast of Mexico's Baja Peninsula. "If the Earth's early microbial mats acted similarly to modern ones we studied, they may have pumped a thousand times more hydrogen into the atmosphere than did volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, the other main sources," Hoehler said at the time. Des Marais contends much hydrogen could have escaped to space without reacting with oxygen because the mats keep producing hydrogen at night when photosynthetic oxygen production turns off. Catling and Kasting disagree, saying that any such hydrogen would have reacted with oxygen in the atmosphere and that most of the rest would have been consumed by archea that made methane. What's next? Scientists are making progress on understanding the Great Oxidation Event, but still greater mysteries remain to be unraveled in the saga of oxygen on Earth. "Although we think we know when oxygen first appeared and rose, we know very little about its rise to the present level, especially about the relationship between atmospheric oxygen and the development of animals," says Catling Some believe that after the initial rise of atmospheric oxygen more than 2 billion years ago, oxygen was only 2 to 4 percent of the atmosphere. Today it comprises more than 20 percent. There is evidence that oxygen levels also rose 1.3 billion years ago and again before the Cambrian Explosion, a rapid proliferation of animal life that began 540 million years ago. Some researchers believe increasing levels of atmospheric oxygen helped trigger the Cambrian Explosion. Catling says the reason for those rises in atmospheric oxygen "is even more of a mystery than the first one." "There were huge ice ages [Snowball Earth events] just before the Cambrian Explosion, but also associated with the Great Oxidation Event," Holland says. "It is important to have a much better understanding of those events and the history of life." Kasting, Catling, Des Marais, Hoehler and Holland are members of the NASA Astrobiology Institute so those issues have special relevance for them. "We want to understand what controls the rise of oxygen on the Earth and maybe other planets," says Kasting. "Oxygen is our best biomarker for looking for life on extrasolar planets." Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article541.html. ________________________________________________________________________ DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH: LOOKING FOR LIFE IN ROCKS By Diane Richards From Space.com 31 July 2003 Anyone who knows a trilobite from an ammonite can tell you that the history of early life is a book written in rock. According to SETI Institute scientist Friedemann Freund, chapter one and perhaps chapter two may have been written-at least in part, by the rocks themselves. Common rocks, he explains, such as gabbro and granite carry a payload of complex chemistry that may have played a dynamic role in life's origin, and the co-evolution of life and Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere. Freund first began studying this premise twelve years ago at NASA Ames Research Center as a SETI Institute principal investigator researching life's origins. While other exobiologists (as astrobiologists were then known) looked towards comets as potential delivery vehicles of life's basic materials, or at warm little ponds as assembly sites for life, Freund was intrigued by the interesting organic chemistry he found taking place in the misalignments and displacements in rock crystals. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_rocks_030731.html. ________________________________________________________________________ EXPLODING STARS CREATE CLOUDS OF COSMIC DUST By Robert Roy Britt From Space.com 31 July 2003 Astronomers have long known that we're all made of stardust. Now they've gotten an enlightening glimpse into one of the explosive events that loads the universe with the dusty seeds of life. Researchers re- examined the remnant of an exploded star and found a thousand times more smoke-like dust particles than had been detected before. The finding helps explain why galaxies are dust-laden almost to the beginning of time, astronomers said. The young universe was no place for life. It was mostly hydrogen and helium. Heavier stuff--dust, metals and all the other ingredients needed to make planets, plants and people--was forged in stars and, especially, in the catastrophic explosions of the most massive stars. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/supernova_dust_030731.html. ________________________________________________________________________ THE INTRINSIC RIGHTS OF MARTIAN BUGS By John Carter McKnight From SpaceDaily 1 August 2003 Recent evidence of vast amounts of water ice on Mars supports the possibility of indigenous life. At the same time, that water could enable human settlement and massive environmental engineering, or terraforming. A moral conflict could face us soon, pitting Terrestrial life against the Martian. The course of action we choose should be informed by broad debate: the ethics, as much as the biology, of Mars deserves full exploration. Should intelligent extra-terrestrial life be discovered, presumably through a deep-space signal, the scientific community has a well- developed set of protocols for determining its response. No such protocols exist for responding to a discovery of microbial life (through there is a proposal to formulate them). Oddly, the prospect of primitive life is the more controversial: our concept of the appropriate response is shaped by our views on environmental ethics, where profound disagreements on basic assumptions divide us in our daily lives as much as in our views of a future on Mars. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life- 03e.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology.html 1 August 2003 Astrobiology and planetary engineering articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles1.html Astrobiology Magazine, 2003. Inevitability beyond billions. Astrobiology Magazine. J. C. McKnight, 2003. The intrinsic rights of martian bugs. SpaceDaily. D. Richards, 2003. Picking on Mars. Astrobiology Magazine. Spherix, Inc., 2003. Viking mission scientist strengthens case for life on Mars. SpaceDaily. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles2.html H. Bortman, 2003. Follow the Sun. Astrobiology Magazine. T. Phillips, 2003. A new form of life. NASA Science News. SpaceDaily, 2003. New species of organism found in Mars-like environment. SpaceDaily. National Science Foundation, 2003. Hydrothermal vents may persist millions of years incubating life. SpaceDaily. Human space exploration articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles3.html J. Foust, 2003. Space entrepreneurs seek regulatory relief. Spaceflight Now. SpaceDaily, 2003. Commercial human spaceflight industry seeks regulatory relief. SpaceDaily. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html R. R. Britt, 2003. Exploding stars create clouds of cosmic dust. Space.com. D. Richards, 2003. Diamond in the Rough: Looking for Life in Rocks. Space.com. L. J. Siegel, 2003. The rise of oxygen. Astrobiology Magazine. Extrasolar planets articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles7.html R. Jackson, 2003. Tiny measurement gives big boost to planet hunt. First Light. University of California, Berkeley, 2003. Planets need heavy-metal. Astrobiology Magazine. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 24-30 July 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Layers in Crater Cluster (Released 24 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/24/index.html Fortune Cookie Sand Dunes (Released 25 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/25/index.html Outcrop In Juventae Chasma (Released 26 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/26/index.html Defrosting Sand Dunes (Released 27 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/27/index.html Textured Memnonia Plain (Released 28 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/28/index.html Cliff in Terby Crater (Released 29 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/29/index.html Olympus Mons Lava Flows (Released 30 July 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/07/30/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. ________________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 10, Number 31.