Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 33, 23 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/. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS 1) DINNER WITH DA VINCI: THE VITAL CODEX OF LEONARDO From Astrobiology Magazine 2) SHENZHOU-5 SINGLE-PERSON MISSION COULD BE LAUNCHED ON OCTOBER 10 By Hou Yi 3) THE UNBOILABLE BUG From the National Science Foundation and Astrobiology Magazine 4) HUMANS TO MARS: CROSSROAD AND CRISIS By Leonard David 5) ALPHA AND OMEGA: INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES SEIFE, PART I From Astrobiology Magazine 6) LIFE FROM THE HEAVENS? By Seth Shostak 7) HARVESTING MARS By Karen Miller and Tony Phillips 8) NASA SEEKS PUBLIC SUGGESTIONS FOR MARS PHOTOS NASA/JPL release 2003-114 9) NEW FINDINGS COULD DASH HOPES FOR PAST OCEANS ON MARS NASA/JPL release 2003-115 10) SIXTH INTERNATIONAL MARS SOCIETY CONVENTION A SUCCESS Mars Society release 11) FROM THE INSIDE OUT: THE SIXTH MARS SOCIETY CONFERENCE By R. D. "Gus" Frederick 12) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 13) CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 14) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 16) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 17) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 18) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release ________________________________________________________________________ DINNER WITH DA VINCI: THE VITAL CODEX OF LEONARDO From Astrobiology Magazine 14 August 2003 This featured "Dinner with..." series builds on the classic thought experiment: "Which 5 historical figures would you invite to dinner, and how would you seat them?" While the field of astrobiology historically rests on many "shoulders of giants"--too many for one dinner party-- Astrobiology Magazine has selected some initial candidates for our dinner party, and then asks them to introduce their area of expertise in a brief question and answer format. The answers are their own, as gleaned from some of their most famous, controversial, or seminal contributions to science and technology. In many cases, the selection of commentary is driven by the curiosity to understand these great historical figures as one might imagine them as more modern characters, perhaps joining in on table talk or an informal interview. Tonight's dinner introduces Leonardo da Vinci. In particular, Leonardo's notebooks--his private writings or codex to himself and ultimately to posterity--offer brilliant insights into the daily ruminations of an artist, scientist and inventor. Like most of his contemporaries, when viewed with hindsight, Leonardo had his misconceptions about the universe: the moon had water, the moon had an atmosphere, the moon appeared larger on the Earth's horizon because of distortion of this lunar atmosphere. But he got many of his speculations right: the moon is reflective, like a mirror, instead of generating its own light. His observations however, had remained unknown to astronomers; Moestlin and Kepler have been credited with the discoveries which they made independently a century later. He regarded himself as the original discoverer of the cause of the ashy color of the new moon ("lumen cinereum"). He maintained that the earth was a globe and not flat. Like what Leonardo defined as prescience, or seeing the future, his codex was a mixture of science and prescience. Leonardo was both a genius at observing and depicting nature, but also a visionary filled with prescience. Astrobiology Magazine [AM]: Do you think men someday will fly? Leonardo: A man with wings large enough and duly connected might learn to overcome the resistance of the air, and by conquering it, succeed in subjugating it and rising above it. AM: Men will fly with flapping wings, like birds with feathers? Leonardo: Flying creatures will give their very feathers to support men. It is a feather bed. AM [laughing]: Very good. You are an inventor, artist, but have also been quite an observant scientist of nature. Leonardo: Science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly. AM: And mathematician? Leonardo: There is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics. AM: Let's consider some prescience. Will humans travel in space? Leonardo: Many creatures of land and water will go up among the stars-- that is Planets. AM: Your contemporaries consider the earth a flat disk. Do explorers risk sailing off the edge of the world? Leonardo: The center of the sphere of waters is the true center of the globe of our world, which is composed of water and earth, having the shape of a sphere. AM: Your contemporaries also consider the earth as both the center of the solar system, and also the center of the universe. Do you agree? Leonardo: The earth is not in the center of the Sun's orbit nor at the center of the universe, but in the center of its companion elements, and united with them. And any one standing on the moon, when it and the sun are both beneath us, would see this our earth and the element of water upon it just as we see the moon, and the earth would light it as it lights us. AM: What causes the ocean tides? Leonardo: A sea of water is incessantly being drawn off from the surface of the sea. And if you should think that the moon, rising at the Eastern end of the Mediterranean sea must there begin to attract to herself the waters of the sea, it would follow that we must at once see the effect of it at the Eastern end of that sea. AM: Many have argued about the source of moonlight. Is the moon generating its own light, or merely reflecting from the sun? Leonardo: I say that as the moon has no light in itself and yet is luminous, it is inevitable but that its light is caused by some other body. You see here the sun which lights up the moon, a spherical mirror, and all of its surface, which faces the sun is rendered radiant. The moon has no light in itself; but so much of it as faces the sun is illuminated, and of that illumined portion we see so much as faces the earth. AM: Quite remarkable. Your observation is largely attributed to later astronomers, like Kepler. Modern astronomers also depend critically on an artist's eye, in particular the relation between distance and a star's brightness. This is what gives a two-dimensional view of the sky depth. From the perspective of an artist, what is happening when we view stellar objects on the horizon, or see a very distant object as bright or dim? Leonardo: The moon is not of itself luminous, but is highly fitted to assimilate the character of light after the manner of a mirror, or of water, or of any other reflecting body; and it grows larger in the East and in the West, like the sun and the other planets. And the reason is that every luminous body looks larger in proportion as it is remote. AM: So even the earth would be a mere speck when viewed from a great distance, looking back? Leonardo: In my book [codex] I propose to show, how the ocean and the other seas must, by means of the sun, make our world shine with the appearance of a moon, and to the remoter worlds it looks like a star; and this I shall prove. AM: Your meditations on perspective, particularly the artist's view of parallax, shows how the distance to an object can be gauged by how far it oscillates or moves when compared with a close object--say, a thumb held close to the eyes, alternately closing one eye or the other, while looking at a distant object. This today is a cosmic yardstick for astrophysicists. But it is still considered almost impossible to determine depth in the star field easily. Modern astronomers consider it such an important measurement, that well over twenty-five different methods are employed to view a star in hopes of also finding its distance. Do you have an artistic proposal like this, to relate brightness to distance? Leonardo: If you look at the stars, cutting off the rays (as may be done by looking through a very small hole made with the extreme point of a very fine needle, placed so as almost to touch the eye), you will see those stars so minute that it would seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is in fact their great distance which is the reason of their diminution, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with water. Now reflect what this, our star, must look like at such a distance, and then consider how many stars might be added--both in longitude and latitude--between those stars which are scattered over the darkened sky. But I cannot forbear to condemn many of the ancients, who said that the sun was no larger than it appears. AM: An important way to measure distances is using the brightness of supernova, or star explosions, to calibrate on a given distance. This is now called in astronomy, the "standard candle". But what of the more commonplace twinkling of stars? Leonardo: If the twinkling of the stars were really in the stars--as it seems to be--that this twinkling appears to be an extension as great as the diameter of the body of the star; therefore, the star being larger than the earth, this motion effected in an instant would be a rapid doubling of the size of the star. AM: Remarkably, you are able to conclude so definitively, even though telescopes will not be in use for at least a century after you wrote that in your codex. Have you witnessed an eclipse of the sun? Leonardo: A method of seeing the sun eclipsed without pain to the eye [is to] take a piece of paper and pierce holes in it with a needle, and look at the sun through these holes. AM: Like a pinhole camera. Your Italian countryman, Galileo, developed a serious eye illness from looking at an eclipse, and eventually went blind. If a space traveler were looking back on the earth from the moon, would the earth appear to have phases just as we see the moon from terra firma? Leonardo: If you were standing on the moon or on a star, our earth would seem to reflect the sun as the moon does. And if you could stand where the moon is, the sun would look to you, as if it were reflected from all the sea that it illuminates by day; and the land amid the water would appear just like the dark spots that are on the moon, which, when looked at from our earth, appears to men the same as our earth would appear to any men who might dwell in the moon. Again, it might be said that the circle of radiance shown by the moon when it and the sun are both in the West is wholly borrowed from the sun, when it, and the sun, and the eye are situated as is shown above. AM: It is now proposed and sometimes called the "Gaia hypothesis" that an analogy can be drawn between a living organism, like a human, and various parts of our own biosphere. For instance, roughly that the atmosphere is like the lungs, the oceans like the kidneys, and so forth. What is your view of this proposal? Leonardo: By the ancients man has been called the world in miniature; and certainly this name is well bestowed, because, inasmuch as man is composed of earth, water, air and fire, his body resembles that of the earth; and as man has in him bones the supports and framework of his flesh, the world has its rocks the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean tide which likewise rises and falls every six hours, as if the world breathed; as in that pool of blood veins have their origin, which ramify all over the human body, so likewise the ocean sea fills the body of the earth with infinite springs of water. AM: The sun, its size, brightness and distance, seems so important to making the earth habitable, including setting the stage for liquid water. What is your artist's opinion on this place in the galaxy? Leonardo: In the whole universe there is nowhere to be seen a body of greater magnitude and power than the sun; from it descends all vital force. AM: Your lifetime of work, even scientifically and creatively to a very old age, seems so much larger than life. Any conclusions you can share? Leonardo: Even if a man were as large as our earth, he would look no bigger than a little star which appears but as a speck in the universe. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article557.html. ________________________________________________________________________ SHENZHOU-5 SINGLE-PERSON MISSION COULD BE LAUNCHED ON OCTOBER 10 By Hou Yi From SpaceDaily 15 August 2003 A yuhangyuan ("astronaut") could make history and become an instant hero in China with the launch of Shenzhou-5 (SZ-5) that may take place on October 10, an aerospace forum posted the unconfirmed information on Tuesday (August 12). One of the posts on the forum cited the launch date from news that originated from the Xi'an Satellite Control Centre (XSCC) in Shaanxi Province. The poster emphasized, however, that the accuracy of the information could not be guaranteed. But a report in Wednesday's (August 13) Wen Wei Po appears to support the timeframe of the launch. The local newspaper said that the launch of SZ-5 would happen after the weeklong celebration of the National Day, which is on October 1. The report also said that news of the purported launch on National Day was not accurate. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-03w.html. ________________________________________________________________________ THE UNBOILABLE BUG From the National Science Foundation and Astrobiology Magazine 16 August 2003 It may be small, its habitat harsh, but a newly discovered single-celled microbe leads the hottest existence known to science. Its discoverers have preliminarily named the roughly micron-wide speck "Strain 121" for the top temperature at which it survives: 121 degrees Celsius, or about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Announcing Strain 121's record-breaking ability to take the heat in the August 15 issue of the journal Science, researchers Derek Lovley and Kazem Kashefi write, "The upper temperature limit for life is a key parameter for delimiting when and where life might have evolved on a hot, early Earth; the depth to which life exists in the Earth's subsurface; and the potential for life in hot, extraterrestrial environments." Previously, the upper known temperature limit for life had been 113°C (235°F), a record held by another hyperthermophilic--or extreme-heat- liking--microbe called Pyrolobus fumarii. The work by Lovley and Kashefi, researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was supported by the National Science Foundation's Life in Extreme Environments program. Their NSF project may also yield clues to the formation of important ore deposits, the remediation of toxic contaminants, and more efficient recovery from petroleum reserves. On a standard stovetop, water boils at 100°C, or 212°F. Strain 121, however, comes from water at the ocean bottom, from a surreal deep-sea realm of hydrothermal vents. Heated to extremes by the earth's magma, water there spouts forth through leaks in the ocean floor. The pressure of the immense depths prevents such hot water from turning to steam-- even as it sometimes emerges at temperatures near 400°C (750°F). The sample cultured by Lovley and Kashefi was collected about 200 miles offshore from Puget Sound and nearly a mile and a half deep in the Pacific Ocean by a University of Washington team led by biological oceanographer John Baross. Baross's crew, also supported by NSF, used a remotely operated submarine to retrieve it from the Pacific Ocean's Juan de Fuca Ridge, a lightless seascape where vents called "black smokers" rise up like three- and four-story chimneys and continuously spew a blackening brew laced with iron and sulfur compounds. The neighborhood is called Faulty Towers. While suffocating, crushing, scalding, toxic and downright abysmal by most living standards, the arrangement is not so bad for Strain 121 and its ilk. They are archaea, single-celled microbes similar to, but not quite, bacteria. They often live amid extreme heat, cold, pressure, salinity, alkalinity, and/or acidity. Archaea literally means "ancient," and Lovley and other biologists tend to call them "deep branchers" because these microbes were among the first branches on the "tree of life." According to Lovley, Strain 121--it will be given a species name after his lab finalizes the microbe's description--uses iron the way aerobic animals use oxygen. "It's a novel form of respiration," Lovley says, explaining how Strain 121 uses iron to accept electrons. (Many archaea also use sulfur). As oxygen does in humans, the iron allows the microbe to burn its food for energy. Chemically, the respiration process reduces ferric iron to ferrous iron and forms the mineral magnetite. The presence of vast deposits of magnetite deep in the ocean, its presence as a respiratory byproduct of some archaea, and the abundance of iron on Earth before life began all led Lovley and Kashefi to write that "electron transport to ferrous iron may have been the first form of microbial respiration as life evolved on a hot, early Earth." The researchers tested the process with Strain 121 cultures kept at 100°C in oxygen-free test tubes. "It really isn't technically difficult. You just need some ovens to get it hot enough--and remember not to pick it up with your bare hands," Lovley says, speaking from experience. They discovered that Strain 121 grew at temperatures from 85-121°C (185- 250°F). (Meanwhile, Pyrolobus fumarii, the former top-temperature record-holder, wilted. After an hour at 121°C, only 1 percent of its cells were intact and none appeared viable). "Growth at 121°C is remarkable," report Lovley and Kashefi, "because sterilization at 121°C, typically in pressurized autoclaves to maintain water in a liquid state, is a standard procedure, shown to kill all previously described microorganisms and heat-resistant spores." Not only did Strain 121 survive such autoclaving, its population doubled in 24 hours at such heat and pressure. While they could not detect growth at higher temperatures, the researchers found that cultures that spent two hours at 130°C (266°F) still grew when transferred to a fresh medium at 103°C (217°F), with each new single-celled member appearing like a tiny tennis ball filled with cytoplasm and covered with about a dozen whip-like flagella. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article559.html. Read the Science article at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/301/5635/934. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=5&u=/ap/2 0030814/ap_on_sc/champion_of_heat ________________________________________________________________________ HUMANS TO MARS: CROSSROAD AND CRISIS By Leonard David From Space.com 17 August 2003 Like some sort of celestial prank, just as Earth and Mars draw ever closer this month, those charting where next for America's human exploration program are worlds apart. Later this month, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board will release its findings. They are likely to be an indictment of a NASA culture gone sour; government-contractor relationships that are frayed and a serious scrutiny of the rationale and risk of placing humans in harm's way. In terms of its human spaceflight program, NASA itself is seemingly in free-fall, an agency whose wing has been crippled by a devastating blow. But for those gathered here at the Sixth International Mars Society Conference, that reddish dot so vivid in the nighttime sky represents a clarion call to action. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/news/mars_society_030817.html. ________________________________________________________________________ ALPHA AND OMEGA: INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES SEIFE, PART I From Astrobiology Magazine 18 August 2003 Astrobiology Magazine had the opportunity to discuss "how the universe began and how it will end" with Science magazine writer, Charles Seife. Seife is the author of a new book, Alpha and Omega, which describes how cosmologists today are trying to answer these age-old questions. Seife previously has written on the mathematical and cultural genesis of the number "zero". His latest adventures in cosmology bring a characteristic enthusiasm for a remarkable field undergoing a revolution. One feature of this new cosmology is how powerful experiments and observations have combined to make what previously could only be speculated upon, into a set of testable hypotheses. For example, NASA's recent measurements of the universe's most "ancient light" has revealed one of the earliest glimpses into how "it" all might have begun. Called WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) and the earlier Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), the experiments measure the microwave noise that still hisses from the first 400,000 years after the big bang, when a charged gas or plasma first recombined to form neutral matter. Astronomers are looking back in time at the remnants of events 13.8 billion years ago. This event can be compared to a lifting of the fog, when an opaque cloud suddenly becoming transparent, and instruments like these can probe this ancient wall of fire and light. While these measurements are known to many scientists, Seife has told their engaging stories in a way that captures the imagination of even those unfamiliar with the physics and math. For instance, the first attempts to uncover this microwave background dated back to 1965, when eventual Nobel winners at Bell Labs thought this ancient light had a more mundane cause: their New Jersey antenna had attracted a flock of pigeons, which at first were thought to be contributing a thin layer of "noise" onto their sensitive microwave instruments. Alpha and Omega asks the questions: how did the universe begin and how will it end? And how do we know? Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Many people would be surprised at how much of the modern picture of the beginning and end of the universe is from data that are less than ten years old. Were you struck by the "fresh off the press" nature of this research while writing Alpha and Omega, which is more timeless about a question that goes back to the beginnings of consciousness? Charles Seife (CS): For me, that was the most exciting thing about writing the book. The questions are ancient and the answers are brand new--it gave me a sense that I was a witness to history being made. It was like sending dispatches from the front of a scientific revolution. AM: In your new book, Alpha and Omega, you outline the history behind a quest to understand the beginning and end of the universe. Omega--the last letter of the Greek alphabet--is also the scientific notation for the critical density of the universe, which in turn determines whether it expands indefinitely (ice-death) or collapses (big crunch or fire- death). How is this number best estimated today? CS: As far as scientists can tell, omega is equal to 1; it is exactly at the critical density that balances on the knife edge between an indefinite expansion and collapse. (In such a universe, the ultimate end is also ice death.) The components of omega are baryonic matter, which equals 0.04; exotic matter, which equals 0.23; and dark energy, which equals 0.73. AM: You quote Chesterton: "A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos", as a nice paraphrase of the astronomers' creed about not fitting a theory to our view of a special place for humans in the universe, about not being anthropocentric. Would you regard this principle as fundamental to avoiding some of the pitfalls of science history, particularly for a workable cosmology? CS: It is crucial--you can't be ruled by your aesthetic sense of how the universe should be; you have to use data to measure how the universe is. Dark matter and dark energy are ideas that seem foreign to human experience. Worse yet, cosmologists throw around words like "infinite" and "unbounded," which can give almost anyone the heebie-jeebies. However, I think that's what keeps scientists from getting too anthropocentric is the fact that theories are expressed in the language of mathematics, and scientists must go wherever their equations lead them. If the laws of quantum mechanics say that photons can have a weird "spooky action at a distance," then they must or the laws are wrong. If the concordance model says that there's dark matter and dark energy, then they must be there or the model is flawed in a fundamental way. It doesn't matter whether you like the idea of dark energy or dark matter; you must follow the equations to their conclusions, no matter how hard it is to wrap your head around the conclusions. AM: A remarkable historical fact you quote is that a third of the Danish treasury was set aside for Tycho Brahe's observatory, and that was before the use of telescopes. Why were the Danes so interested in the cosmos at that time? Sea-navigation only? CS: I think it had less to do with Danish interest than King Frederick's. Brahe had two big things in his corner. In 1572, he spotted a "new star" (in Latin, "nova stella," something that modern astronomers would call a supernova) which helped disprove the idea that the heavens were eternally unchanging. This cemented his fame. In addition, his foster father, the vice-admiral of the Danish fleet, gave his life to save Frederick from drowning. I think that the threat of having a renowned Danish scientist leave the country coupled with Frederick's gratitude to Brahe's foster father led him to offer Brahe such an incredible deal. (And Brahe's lifestyle got accordingly out of control; only in the richest households could you have a trained elk, much less a trained elk that dies while drunkenly falling down the stairs.) AM: To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, cosmology requires grappling with astronomy and particle physics, and few have been trained well in both fields. Is this a deficiency of curriculum, or more fundamentally about spanning the large and small in a single short lifetime of study? CS: You're right; cosmology requires both astronomy and particle physics, and each topic is more than a handful on its own. However, an increasing number of people consider themselves "particle astrophysicists," and not all of them are cosmologists. Neutrinos are becoming an increasingly important tool for understanding the workings of the sun (and conversely, solar physics is crucial for physicists who are trying to understand the nature of neutrinos.) It's certainly a lot to learn, but I think more and more students are tackling the subject. Often interdisciplinary subjects can fall between the cracks, but this particle astrophysics is so exciting that I suspect (and hope) that it won't suffer for lack of students. AM: Astronomers have been accused of seeing the universe in discrete energetic bins: the violent gamma-rays, the exploding X-rays, the ultraviolet, the visible, the hot infrared and finally the quiet microwaves. A galaxy or star or event looks so different, depending on the spectra it is viewed in. Of these, is the cosmology of microwaves one advance that is leading theories today about Alpha to Omega, the beginning and end? CS: Microwave astronomy is the most advanced at the moment, and it's the lynchpin of the cosmological revolution that's going on right now. The faint, cold light from the 400,000-year-old universe is a Rosetta stone to cosmologists, and it's only been three years since the CMB hunters' vision became clear enough to let them decipher the message that light contains. A few years ago, microwave astronomy lagged far behind its counterparts in other regions of the spectrum. Now that WMAP has released its initial results, other types of astronomy are going to have to do a little catching up, but they're well on their way. Visual and IR measurements are probably most important to cosmologists, though the higher-energy observatories do contribute somewhat to our understanding of dark matter and a few other things of cosmological interest. And astronomers are no longer limited to photons; neutrino observatories, cosmic ray observatories, and even gravity-wave detectors might one day be crucial, too. Cosmology is data starved, which is why the enormous new influx of data has caused such a revolution. The next revolution might not be so far away. AM: The current cosmology's lifecycle hinges on a couple of key measurements, by COBE (microwaves), Hubble (visible), balloons (namely Boomerang-microwaves) and the million galaxy sky surveys (Sloan and Two Degree Field in visible). For cosmologists, which class is the next big measurement in the next five years or so? For instance, the 2005 completion of Sloan, or something from particle physics that awaits a bigger accelerator? CS: All of these areas are going to be important over the next few years. The big one everyone was waiting for was the microwave data from the WMAP satellite, whose first data was released in February. There's still a lot of information coming from the microwave part of the spectrum, but nothing will be quite as splashy as the February announcement. The galaxy surveys are similar biggies, and they're already making a mark on cosmology. Just last month, physicists compared the Sloan data (which reveals where large chunks of matter are sitting in the universe) with the WMAP data and came up with an independent verification of dark energy with what's known as the "late integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect." A bunch of key experiments are (hopefully) going to come online and return results closer to the end of the decade: the Planck satellite which will give even more detailed microwave measurements, along with polarization; the Large Hadron Collider, which has a good chance of finding the particle responsible for exotic dark matter; and the SuperNova Acceleration Probe will do for supernovae what WMAP did for the microwave background. It will be a very, very exciting time. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article561.html. ________________________________________________________________________ LIFE FROM THE HEAVENS? By Seth Shostak From Astrobiology Magazine 19 August 2003 The conventional wisdom is that Earthly life began... on Earth. A few decades ago, many scientists believed (as did Charles Darwin) that terrestrial life first appeared in "some warm little pond." Today's astrobiologists are less fond of ponds, and more likely to suggest that biology began in the hot, sulfurous thicket of a deep sea vent. But there is a controversial alternative to this life from hell scenario. It's life from heaven. Or if not from heaven, at least from the stars. About 25 years ago, two British astronomers, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, proposed that comets might be the Johnny Appleseeds of life, carrying vital spores from star system to star system, an idea that is known today as panspermia. If the tail of such a life-loaded comet were to brush the Earth, it might pass some of its frozen microorganisms into the atmosphere where they could descend to our planet's surface. The two astronomers ventured that this might account for the start of life on Earth. They also made the disturbing suggestion that panspermia could spread disease. Now you might wonder whether life from space, as intriguing as the idea might be, solves the mystery of how biology got started in the first place. Or does this theory merely push the problem of life's origin into someone else's lap? Well, of course, to some extent it only accomplishes the latter. But there is an appealing aspect to panspermia: it allows life to be widespread, even if the genesis of life is a difficult and rare event. After all, humans cover the planet, even though Homo sapiens got his start in only one locale (Africa, presumably.) Life might blanket the Galaxy even if it only sprung up on a small number of worlds. Great, but is there any evidence for panspermia, or is it just a seductive idea with a sexy moniker? Jayant Narlikar, of the Inner- University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India, claims to have data in support of panspermia. Narlikar recently flew an experiment in a high-altitude balloon. On board was a cryogenic sampler consisting of 16 cylinders that were pumped out and decontaminated before launch. As the balloon climbed into the Indian sky, puffs of air were sucked in. One by one, the cylinders were automatically filled with samples from various altitudes, ranging from 25 to 41 km. Once the payload returned to Earth, it was examined in biology labs in Cardiff and Sheffield, England. To their amazement, the researchers found evidence for live cells in the samples from 41 km. Even more interesting, these "bacteria" recovered at high altitude were non- culturable. This doesn't mean that they didn't appreciate opera, but rather that they couldn't be grown in laboratory Petri dishes. According to Narlikar, this was important in ruling out laboratory contamination of the samples--the cells found were clearly not a common lab bacterium. Narlikar emphasizes that this is the first attempt to demonstrate that biological systems exist at such heights. But he admits that he still doesn't know if the biology he's found comes from above or below. After all, perhaps all he's found are high-flying, single-celled earthlings. But the Indian researcher seems confident that they've come from above, because atmospheric scientists have told him that even during the strongest volcanic eruptions, ash is ejected to heights no more than 32 km. So the fact that he's found something at 41 km, and during a period when there were no volcanic eruptions, speaks to the real possibility of an extraterrestrial origin. Needless to say, panspermia remains a "radical" theory, and Narlikar says that colleagues greet this idea in one of two ways. Either they protest violently, evidencing a sort of geocentric mind set as he calls it, or they are cautiously encouraging, speaking of an interesting result that should be explored further. But he does admit that the reaction to panspermia is less hostile today than it was 25 years ago, because in the interim bacteria have been found living in extreme conditions in the Earth, and in the lab they've been experimentally subjected to harsh conditions and survived. So the idea of panspermia is no longer thought to be as bizarre as it once was. What about the possibility that a disease like SARS may have come from space? "We sent a letter to Lancet, the medical journal," Narlikar says, "suggesting that these things are percolating from atmospheric heights down to Earth. Clearly, they would reach the tallest peaks first (the Himalayas--and thanks to the wind--into China.) So we suggested that this might be the origin of the SARS virus." It's a disturbing thought. How would panspermia affect our view of the origin of life? Narlikar laughs: "Well, we could all be ETs!" Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article562.html. ________________________________________________________________________ HARVESTING MARS By Karen Miller and Tony Phillips From NASA Science News 20 August 2003 When astronauts first go to Mars, it'll be difficult for them to bring everything they need to survive. Even the first tentative explorations could last as long as two years--but spaceships can only carry a limited amount. "We might have to do what explorers have done for ages: live off the land," says chemical engineer Ken Debelak of Vanderbilt University. Explorers on Earth could usually count on finding what they needed. The animals might be strange, but they'd be there, and they'd be edible. Mars is barren. But the challenge is the same. Astronauts will want to pull what they need from the planet itself. And although that goal seems improbable, Debelak believes it can be achieved. He's working on a NASA project to make it happen. The key, he says, lies in the martian atmosphere. It's a meager atmosphere, compared to Earth's, and it's about 95 percent carbon dioxide (CO2). But that turns out to be an advantage. The carbon dioxide, says Debelak, can be used to harvest almost everything else. Inside martian rocks and soil lies a bounty of useful elements: magnesium and hydrogen for rocket fuel, oxygen to breath, water to drink. What's needed is a solvent to get them out, and that's where the carbon dioxide comes in handy. "When CO2 is compressed to a pressure of 73 atm and heated to 31.1 degrees Celsius, it becomes a supercritical fluid--and a marvelous solvent," says Debelak. A supercritical fluid is a high-pressure, high-temperature state of matter perhaps best described as a liquid-like gas. Almost anything can become supercritical. Water, for instance, becomes a supercritical fluid in the high pressures and temperatures of steam turbines. Ordinary water is a good solvent. Supercritical water is a great solvent--maybe even a little too good. It dissolves the tips of the turbine blades. Supercritical carbon dioxide behaves much the same. CO2 molecules flow into solid matter, surrounding atoms, pulling them apart and away. On Earth, supercritical CO2 is not used much to dissolve things because there are less expensive, more effective solvents close at hand. It is, however, used to remove the caffeine from coffee beans, and sometimes to dry-clean clothes. On Mars, Debelak believes, supercritical CO2 will play a much more important role. For example, magnesium can be dissolved quite easily by supercritical CO2, Debelak has found. "That's an experiment that we're quite excited about at the moment," he says. Magnesium, which is likely to be found in martian soil, ignites easily and can be used to fuel rockets. In fact, says Debelak, one Mars exploration scenario called for a lander to be made of magnesium--"the legs and so on." When the astronauts were ready to go home, "you could chop it up, pack it into a rocket engine, and then add some other oxidizer to fire it off." Using CO2 as a solvent, magnesium could instead be harvested directly from Mars. Supercritical CO2 might also be used to generate water. Certain martian rocks (like some of Earth's rocks) contain hydrogen. When these rocks are submerged in supercritical carbon dioxide, a chemical reaction takes place. The CO2's carbon becomes "fixed" in the rock, leaving the oxygen free to find another partner: hydrogen. "The process kicks out water," marvels Debelak. "You can actually use it to form water." Pulling water from rocks will probably have the biggest payoff, at least in the short term, says Debelak. In addition to drinking, "you can split water into hydrogen for fuel, and oxygen for breathing--or as an oxidizer for some sort of engine." Eventually, colonists could set up plants that use CO2 from the martian atmosphere to process hundreds of kilograms of raw material a day. A supercritical fluid has some advantages over other solvents. Its solubility changes dramatically when you alter the temperature or the pressure. You can control it, so that sometimes it's a solvent for a particular substance, and sometimes it's not. That makes it easy to recover the material that has been dissolved. Let's say you have caffeine dissolved in supercritical carbon dioxide. To recover the caffeine (caffeine recovered from coffee beans is often put in soft drinks), you just lower the pressure of the CO2 and the caffeine drops out. Currently, Debelak is trying to pin down the way a variety of substances behave in supercritical CO2. He's looking at which minerals are easily soluble and which are not. And if they're not, he's trying to determine how their solubility can be improved. Adding other substances to the CO2 sometimes helps, he says. Debelak's work could be useful on Earth, too. Carbon dioxide is often spotlighted because of its damaging role in global warming. But as a solvent, it's benign. Many solvents common in industry are toxic. They cause cancer, and if they get into the water system, they stay for a long time. So there's interest, says Debelak, in learning how to use CO2 as a 'green' alternative. Carbon dioxide plays widely different roles on Earth and on Mars. "That's what's intriguing," points out Debelak. "Mars is a totally foreign environment to us. The rules are different. So that's what we're doing--trying to figure out the rules, and then we can figure out how to play the game... on both planets." Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/20aug_supercriticalco2.htm. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA SEEKS PUBLIC SUGGESTIONS FOR MARS PHOTOS NASA/JPL release 2003-114 20 August 2003 Earth comes closer to Mars this month than it has in nearly 60,000 years, but one new opportunity for seeing details on the red planet comes from a vantage point much closer. The public has an unprecedented opportunity to suggest places on Mars that should be photographed from a spacecraft orbiting that planet. Camera operators for NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are ready to take suggestions online for new places to target for images from the Mars Orbiter Camera. The spacecraft, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, has been orbiting Mars since 1997, with more than 20,000 orbits so far. The Mars Orbiter Camera has already taken more than 120,000 pictures of Mars. Many of the camera's images have sharp enough resolution to show features as small as a school bus. The images have revealed relatively recent gully erosion, ancient sedimentary rocks and many other spectacular scientific surprises. "We've only covered about three percent of the surface area of Mars with the high-resolution camera. We want to be sure we're not missing some place that could be important, so we're casting a wide net for new suggestions," said Dr. Ken Edgett, staff scientist at Malin Space Science Systems, the San Diego firm that supplied and operates the camera for NASA. "We're looking for excellent suggestions of areas on Mars that we have not already imaged. We'll look at every request that comes in." "NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft team will examine each request to ensure the safety of this priceless 'eye in the sky' above Mars," said Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration at NASA Headquarters, Washington. Information about how to submit requests is online at the new Mars Orbiter Camera Target Request Site, http://www.msss.com/plan/intro. Requesters should describe the purpose for the suggested image. Suggestions for target sites already imaged by the camera will be disqualified unless there is a convincing reason for repeating the target. An online gallery of pictures taken by the camera is at http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/. Some of the best requests may be places nowhere near any site the Mars Orbiter Camera has imaged before," Edgett said. As with pictures desired by Mars scientists working with the camera every day, new suggestions will need to wait until the Mars Global Surveyor flies directly over the selected target, which could be several months or longer. The first images from this public suggestion program will probably be released this fall. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages Mars Global Surveyor for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, DC. JPL's industrial partner is Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, which developed and operates the spacecraft. Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the Mars Orbiter Camera. Malin Space Science Systems operates the camera from facilities in San Diego. For information about NASA on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov. Information about Mars Global Surveyor is available on the Internet at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs. Contacts: Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 Ken Edgett Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, CA Phone: 858-552-2650 x500 An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0308/20marssuggest/. ________________________________________________________________________ NEW FINDINGS COULD DASH HOPES FOR PAST OCEANS ON MARS NASA/JPL release 2003-115 21 August 2003 After a decades-long quest, scientists analyzing data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have at last found critical evidence for which the spacecraft's infrared spectrometer instrument was built to search for: the presence of water-related carbonate minerals on the surface of Mars. However, the discovery also potentially contradicts what scientists had hoped to prove: the past existence of large bodies of liquid water on Mars, such as oceans. How this discovery relates to the possibility of ephemeral lakes on Mars is not known at this time. The thermal emission spectrometer on Global Surveyor found no detectable carbonate signature in surface materials at scales ranging from three to 10 kilometers (two to six miles) during its six-year Mars mapping mission. However, the sensitive instrument has detected the mineral's ubiquitous presence in martian dust in quantities between two and five percent. Planetary geologists Timothy Glotch, Dr. Joshua Bandfield, and Dr. Philip Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, analyze the data from dust-covered areas of Mars in a report to be published August 22 in the journal, Science. "We have finally found carbonate, but we've only found trace amounts in dust, not in the form of outcroppings as originally suspected. This shows that the thermal emission spectrometer can see carbonates--if they are there - and that carbonates can exist on the surface today," said Christensen, principal investigator for the instrument. "We believe that the trace amounts that we see probably did not come from marine deposits derived from ancient martian oceans, but from the atmosphere interacting directly with dust," Christensen said. "Tiny amounts of water in Mars' atmosphere can interact with the ubiquitous dust to form the small amounts of carbonate that we see. This seems to be the result of a thin atmosphere interacting with dust, not oceans interacting with the big, thick atmosphere that many people have thought once existed there." "What we don't see is massive regional concentrations of carbonates, like limestone," said Bandfield, who spent a year refining the techniques that allowed the group to separate carbonate's distinctive infrared signature from the spectrometer's extensive database of infrared spectra, despite the mineral's low concentrations and the masking effects of the martian atmosphere. "We're not seeing the white cliffs of Dover or anything like that," he said. "We're not seeing high concentrations, we're just seeing ubiquitously low levels. Wherever we see the dust, we see the signature that is due to the carbonate." Because there are known to be deposits of frozen water on Mars, the findings have important implications for Mars' past climate history. "This really points to a cold, frozen, icy Mars that has always been that way, as opposed to a warm, humid, ocean-bearing Mars sometime in the past," said Christensen. "People have argued that early in Mars history, maybe the climate was warmer and oceans may have formed and produced extensive carbonate rock layers. If that was the case, the rocks formed in those purported oceans should be somewhere." Although ancient carbonate rock deposits might have been buried by later layers of dust, Christensen pointed out that the global survey found no strong carbonate signatures anywhere on the planet, despite clear evidence of geological processes that have exposed ancient rocks. Bandfield said that carbonate deposits in dust could be partially responsible for Mars' atmosphere growing even colder, to become as cold, thin and dry as it is today. "If you store just a couple percent of carbonate in the upper crust, you can easily account for several times the Earth's atmospheric pressure," Bandfield said. "You can store a lot of carbon dioxide in a little bit of rock. If you form enough carbonates, pretty soon your atmosphere goes away. If that happens, you can no longer have liquid water on the surface because you get to the point where liquid water is not stable." "The significance of these dramatic results may have to wait for the discoveries to be made by the Mars Exploration Rovers in 2004 and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2006 and beyond," stated Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration. What's important is that we have found carbon-bearing minerals at Mars, which may be linked to the history of liquid water and hence to our quest to understand whether Mars has ever been an abode for life." The Mars Global Surveyor mission is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Arizona State University built and operates the Thermal Emission Spectrometer on Mars Global Surveyor. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, developed and operates the spacecraft. Contacts: Charli Schuler Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-393-5467 James Hathaway Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ Phone: 480-965-6375 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_liquid_030821.html. ________________________________________________________________________ SIXTH INTERNATIONAL MARS SOCIETY CONVENTION A SUCCESS Mars Society release 21 August 2003 Over 300 people gathered in Eugene, Oregon August 14-17 2003 at the 6th International Mars society Convention to map out plans to make the human exploration of the Red Planet a reality. Over 100 talks were given, including plenaries by many Mars Society leaders as well as Mars Exploration Rover Deputy Project Scientist Albert Haldeman, NASA Astronaut John Grunsfeld, planetary scientist William Hartman, and leading science fiction author Greg Bear. In his opening address to the convention on August 14, Mars Society president, Dr. Robert Zubrin, outlined the priority for the organization over the next 6 months: political outreach. NASA is about to be thrown into crisis by the soon-to-be-released Shuttle report, Zubrin said, and priorities of the agency will be subjected to wide and deep reexamination. This will happen at the same time that 5 robotic probes approach Mars, worldwide excitement will be focused on the Red Planet, and the American political science enters its high season. We must seize this unique junction to put humans to Mars on the national agenda. The Shuttle crisis makes the issue particularly sharp, Zubrin said, as the Columbia investigation is certain to recommend against flying the Orbiter much longer. NASA has already begun to respond to this reality by starting the Orbital Space Plane (OSP) program, which will move the human taxi-to-orbit function from the Shuttle to a small capsule or mini-orbiter that can be launched on top of an Atlas or Delta. This however poses the decisive question of what happens to the Shuttle physical, technical, and human infrastructure. This system comprising pads, high performance Space Shuttle Main Engines, solid rocket boosters, external tanks, and all their human support personnel, is now losing its justification in its original role of Orbiter launch, and therefore it will shortly be at risk for cancellation. That, however, would be a disastrous mistake, since if the Orbiter is removed from the shuttle stack and replaced with a hydrogen/oxygen upper stage, the system becomes a heavy lift vehicle capable of launching 120 tonnes to LEO, or sending payloads in the 40-50-ton class on direct trajectories to the Moon or Mars. Such a Shuttle-derived Saturn-V class booster would provide NASA with the primary tool it needs to launch human missions of exploration throughout the inner solar system. But its development can only be justified, if NASA actually initiates such a program. The space agency is thus presented with a choice; either embrace human exploration program, or be forced to throw away a $10 billion asset that will be needed if human exploration is ever to be done later. If they make the negative decision, and opt to discard the Shuttle infrastructure instead of converting it, they will be making a statement that they really never intend to do human exploration, at which point the OSP and the Space Station will lose their justification as well, and the entire manned space program will implode. NASA is in a box, and the only way out is forward. Zubrin called upon Mars Society chapters to take the initiative, and meet with their congressmen in their home districts and explain to these matters to them. The Shuttle catastrophe needs to be answered not with retreat, but with advance. Human space flight will always be risky, but we need to be doing missions that are worthy of those risks. At a subsequent meeting with the Mars Society political Task Force led by Pat Czarnik, a goal of 300 home-office meetings with political representatives over the next 6 months was set. Other important plenaries were given by Chris McKay, of NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), whose concept of biologically reversible Mars exploration initiated vigorous debate, ARC scientist Carol Stoker who explained a program for developing technology for water drilling on Mars, and Tom Hill, who laid out a call for an annual university Mars mission design competition. The competition, to be known as the Kepler Prize, will start this year with competitive efforts by university teams to design an Earth Return Vehicle for use in the Mars Direct mission plan. Other high points of the conference included a spirited Friday night concert by the Extremophiles rock music group, the banquet and town meeting, and the premier of a film produced by the FMARS 2003 Crew which told the story of their rotation. A meeting of veteran crew members of the MDRS and FMARS was also held, and which it was decided to form a Science Support group to interact with all future MDRS and FMARS teams, with the objective of developing the art of "telescience" involving collaboration of teams of scientists on Earth with those on Mars. The conference was covered by msnbc.com, space.com, the Eugene papers and TV stations, and in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. A good time was had by all, and much thanks are due to the organizers of the Oregon and Washington Mars Society chapters who made it all possible. One of these fine folks, Gus Frederick, has written a memoir of his conference experience, which is reproduced below. ________________________________________________________________________ FROM THE INSIDE OUT: THE SIXTH MARS SOCIETY CONFERENCE By R. D. "Gus" Frederick Mars Society, Oregon Chapter 21 August 2003 I remember my first exposure to a Mars Society conference. It was the second one, held in Boulder in 1999. I arrived without a motel reservation and not much of an idea about what to expect. After following the Case for Mars conferences from afar, I thought I had a bit of and idea. Of course, I had no clue, as I had never attended one of those conferences either. Indeed, this was my first conference dedicated to something other than science fiction or Oregon education. I had a seemingly wild idea about martian caves to talk about. My abstract was submitted and accepted for presentation, so now all I had to do was a minor polishing job and I was all set. I settled into the opening plenaries and listened as one by one, faces and voices I had only read about got up to talk about the martian frontier. There were many of the Case for Mars alumni, and others from the pages of the journals I followed. I was amazed and impressed with the caliber of everything presented that weekend. And as it turned out, others were talking about caves too. In the subsequent years, I attended each new Conference. Before I noticed it, I had transformed into a Martian myself. Each August brought a new suite of ideas and excitement. Some initial disappointment when we lost the two probes in the Fall of '99. Over all, it was, and for that matter still is, a personal mind-blower to know that I could step up and become involved in such an endeavor as exploring and settling a new world. As the sands of time drifted like so many marching sand dunes in the ancient deserts of Elysium, I find myself cruising down Interstate 5 towards Eugene on a hot Sunday afternoon. The first of several trips in preparation for the next Mars Society Conference, now coming to Oregon. About 20 miles north of my destination I saw them. Everywhere. Dust Devils. Off in the distance as tall, thin plumes of translucent brown, twisting and turning, eventually breaking apart into non-descript brown clouds. The further I drove, the more devils I saw. I watched as one hugged the highway moving towards me. A large twisting demon about two meters in diameter and at least 20 meters tall. It fell apart as I sped past. I finally pulled off and watched a field of them grow and die, one after another, in a barren expanse of dirt clods. They're everywhere I thought. Pacific Northwest martian analogs. Dust devils. Outflow channels. Lava flows. I grew up with all of these features, and never gave them a second thought. Now when I see them, my first though is of the Red Planet. By Wednesday night, like a swarm of dust devils, the Martians started to arrive in Eugene. This conference experience turned out to be for me much different than earlier ones. The main difference of course was that the Oregon Martians get to play host. Taking our turn at this task at first was a daunting prospect from our chapter, boasting only four active members. Nevertheless, we pressed on, and slowly but surely, volunteers appeared. First from familiar sources like our local NSS chapter. Then other martian enthusiasts stepped forward to lend a hand. The Eugene contingent of Jim, Tasha and Jean were especially welcome. The team slowly gelled. After many meetings, emails, phone calls, hand- wringing and teeth gnashing, it all came together! Here we were, hosting the Martians on our turf. On our watch. The speakers arrived and spoke, the hotel venue turned out to be logistic bonus and while overall attendance was smaller that past conferences, the quality of presenters and programs was a top notch as ever. Indeed, more so in many regards. Five years ago I could hardly have imagined hosting such a distinguished lot as this. Now I count many of these folks as good friends, and feel a sense of reunion each year we get together. Names I had followed from afar for so many years, I now find myself working with on actual projects--for the Society as well as the greater whole of Mars exploration. My crazy ideas about martian caves is now yet another arrow in the quiver of exploration, waiting to be pointed towards that bright red target now glowing in the midnight sky. The conference is now over. A feeling of relief has settled over me. Relief that my work is over. But there is also a sense of satisfaction that we pulled it off. And a reaffirmation of our mission. My personal mission of helping host the conference was a success. Our group mission to explore and settle Mars is as strong as ever. So once again we glance up and plan for bigger things. This next year will truly be a cross roads for Mars exploration, with the current flotilla of discovery now enroute. The success of these latest arrows could well determine to course of our work for years to come. I remain optimistic. We will succeed. We will build a new world. Even if we have to jump-start and old one to do so! ________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology.html 23 August 2003 Astrobiology and planetary engineering articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles1.html R. R. Britt, 2003. Mars liquid water elusive, but present. Space.com. S. Shostak, 2003. Life from the heavens? Astrobiology Magazine. University of Melbourne, 2003. Hot spots on Mars give hunt for life new target. SpaceDaily. University of Melbourne, 2003. Hot spots on Mars give hunt for life new target. Spaceflight Now. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles2.html K. Kashefi and D. R. Lovley, 2003. Extending the upper temperature limit for life. Science, 301(5635):934. National Science Foundation, 2003. The unboilable bug. Astrobiology Magazine. P. Recer, 2003. Microbe can survive at 266 degrees. Yahoo News. Human space exploration articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles3.html L. David, 2003. Humans to Mars: crossroad and crisis. Space.com. K. Miller and T. Phillips, 2003. Harvesting Mars. NASA Science News. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html Astrobiology Magazine, 2003. Alpha and omega: interview with Charles Seife, part I. Astrobiology Magazine. C. Huber, W. Eisenreich, S. Hecht and G. Wächtershäuser, 2003. A possible primordial peptide cycle. Science, 301(5635):938-940. L. Marino, 2003. The evolution of intelligence: an integral part of SETI and astrobiology. Space.com. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology_books.ht ml J. M. Boyce, 2003. The Smithsonian Book of Mars. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. W. K. Hartmann, 2003. A Traveler's Guide to Mars. Workman Publishing, New York, NY. ________________________________________________________________________ CONTINUING COVERAGE OF THE COLUMBIA DISASTER By David J. Thomas 23 August 2003 The investigation of the Columbia tragedy and its aftermath continues. However, the CAIB report should be published within the next week. I have included (below) a non-exhaustive list of links to recent articles on the subject. http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/caib_update_030821.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030819184734.bex0nd7e.html http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts107/030820navysearch/ ________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 14-19 August 2003 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Canberra tracking station on Monday, August 18. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm. On board activities this week included a telemetry mode test and support of a Deep Space Network array test at the Canberra complex in Australia. Instrument activities included loading the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer flight software and Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) high rate observations and HFR calibrations. The Composite Infrared Spectrometer and Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer performed preliminary tests prior to the mute tests that will execute next week. (The mute test assures that an instrument is completely quiet on the data bus when it has been muted.) A kick off meeting was held for the Verification and Validation (V&V) of the live update process. Live updates will be required during the tour when the on-board sequence requires timing or pointing changes based on updated spacecraft or satellite position information. This is a continuation of the Science and Sequence Update Process V&V performed earlier this month. RPWS has produced a pre-peer review volume of archive data, and a peer review volume of the first Gravity Wave Experiment data for Planetary Data System review. The Science Planning Virtual Team continues work on cruise sequence C42, the first approach science sequence, which includes the first set of Saturn approach movies. The Mission Support and Services office demonstrated the new Electronic Command Request Form for members of the Spacecraft Operations Office. Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 14-20 August 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Dust-Raising Event in Noachis (Released 14 August 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/08/14/index.html Southeast Olympus Mons (Released 15 August 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/08/15/index.html Peridier Dune Field (Released 16 August 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/08/16/index.html Top of Olympus Mons (Released 17 August 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/08/17/index.html South Polar Artwork (Released 18 August 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/08/18/index.html Dark Slope Streaks (Released 19 August 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/08/19/index.html Intracrater Dune Field (Released 20 August 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/08/20/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 18-21 August 2003 Koga Crater (Released 18 August 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030818a.html Eroded Surfaces (Released 19 August 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030819a.html Valles Marineris Landforms (Released 20 August 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030820a.html A Suite of Features (Released 21 August 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20030821a.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 22 August 2003 The spacecraft is in its 2-month solar conjunction period where it is within 3 degrees of the sun as viewed from earth. There is no commanding but only downlink telemetry during this period. There were no Deep Space Network passes during the past week. 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. The Stardust flight team held a very successful Encounter Workshop at the University of Washington this week. Among the numerous topics of conversation were optical navigation and imaging for the spacecraft's closest approach imaging strategy for the upcoming Comet Wild 2 encounter in January 2004. 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 33.