Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 44, 3 November 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) SMOG WARNING, TITAN By Emma Bakes 2) NASA: ON THE ROAD TO RUIN... OR RECOVERY? By Leonard David 3) THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE OF BRIAN GREENE From Astrobiology Magazine 4) NASA ADAPTS MINIATURE BIOLOGICAL LAB FOR USE IN SPACE NASA/ARC release: 03-83AR 5) MARS AND MUDDIED WATERS? From Astrobiology Magazine 6) 2004 NASA UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH PROGRAM Council on Undergraduate Research release 7) MEGA STARBIRTH CLUSTER IS BIGGEST, BRIGHTEST AND HOTTEST EVER SEEN ESA release 8) CO-FOUNDER OF STRING FIELD THEORY EXPLORES THE PHYSICS OF ET By Greg Taylor 9) NASA TESTING K9 ROVER IN GRANITE QUARRY FOR FUTURE MISSIONS NASA/ARC release 03-84AR 10) ICE-AGE SHELL GAME From Astrobiology Magazine 11) MARS SOCIETY SENATE TESTIMONY A BREAKTHROUGH Mars Society release 12) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 13) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 14) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 15) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release ________________________________________________________________________ SMOG WARNING, TITAN By Emma Bakes From Astrobiology Magazine 27 October 2003 Dr. Emma Bakes is a SETI Institute Principal Investigator who simulates complex chemical interactions in the silicon "laboratory" of her computer. Bakes focuses on Titan, and her work comprises one facet of the SETI Institute's NAI lead team's research on the co-evolution of life and its planetary environment. Titan is Saturn's largest moon and it is unique within our Solar System, being the only satellite that possesses an atmosphere. Its atmosphere is smoggy, composed of a hydrocarbon haze, and it is this component that dominates its physical evolution, determining whether the moon ultimately boils or freezes, produces life or remains barren. The haze can also accelerate the formation of an oxygenated atmosphere by catalyzing the removal of hydrogen atoms from a planet's atmosphere and by providing an excellent absorber of harmful UV radiation, protecting fragile macromolecules floating in the haze. The most interesting point about simulations of Titan's hydrocarbon haze is that this smoggy component contains molecules called tholins (from the Greek word, muddy) that can form the foundations of the building blocks of life. For example, amino acids, one of the building blocks of terrestrial life, form when these red-brown smog-like particles are placed in water. When scientists analyze the building blocks of tholins by pyrrolysis, splitting up the tholins using plasma, scientists find a rich array of biomolecular building blocks such as pyrroles, pyrazines, pyridines and pyrimidines. All of these molecules have played an important role in the evolution of life. Most coenzymes (molecules that are indispensable in powering biological metabolism) and vitamins contain a central heterocyclic ring (a ring composed of several hexagons or pentagons of carbon atoms), which is necessary to fulfill the biological function of the coenzyme. This observation has spawned the idea that coenzymes were formed early in the history of life and may have been present during the period of terrestrial evolution where life was about to begin. Could they have originated as a product of atmospheric gas phase chemistry in the reducing, nitrogenated atmosphere of early Earth? This is a question that Carl Sagan, Bishun Khare and many of their colleagues asked themselves two decades ago. As Sagan pointed out, Titan may be regarded as a broad parallel to the early terrestrial atmosphere with respect to its chemistry and in this way, it is certainly relevant to the origins of life. The biological function of pyrroles is extremely varied, and ranges from pheromones (chemical signal molecules involved in mating and defense) to plant hormones and even antibiotics. Without the hormones that help plants grow and develop, there would be no multicellular animal life on Earth due to a lack of oxygen renewal during photosynthesis. One important class of multi-ring pyrrole derived products even bind to part of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) helix, forming an integral part of its structure, certainly of fundamental biological relevance. In another example, consider pyrimidines. Three different components--a sugar, a phosphate, and either a purine or a pyrimidine organic base-- make up nucleic acids. These three building blocks form a nucleotide, the basic building block of nucleic acids. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) contains a ribose sugar and the purines are adenine and guanine, while the pyrimidines are cytosine and uracil. The production of these building blocks is the first step towards the "RNA world". The RNA world is important because it preceded the formation of DNA and ultimately, of all life. These life-forming structures are punctuated by nitrogen containing heterocyclics related to the types formed as the building blocks of aerosols in reducing atmospheres. Did the early terrestrial atmospheric photochemistry yield building blocks that helped spawn the beginnings of the RNA world? This is certainly a tantalizing concept. As a third example, consider pyridines, water-soluble enzymes known to bind metals and accelerate chemical reactions. Without these enzymes, life on earth simply could not exist because the chemical reactions required for its upkeep would proceed too slowly. Two pyridines fundamental to metabolism include Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide (NAD) and Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide Phosphate (NADP). These compounds are not tightly bound to the enzymes they operate and are termed co-factors as a result. While it would be extremely difficult to form these compounds during purely gas phase atmospheric chemistry, the nitrogenated heterocycles that form a fundamental part of their structure may be synthesized this way. Building on the work of Sagan, Khare and their colleagues, we will investigate the importance of a hydrocarbon haze in accelerating the conditions necessary for life and the large molecules involved in its metabolism. A better idea of how life formed on Earth and how the transition was made from chemistry to biochemistry can be obtained by compressing thousands to millions of years of chemistry into one run of a computer model. What's next? Scientists would like a better idea of how optically thick Titan's haze is, and how bright or dark its surface will be, to calculate camera exposure times. In addition, scientists are fine tuning their questions as they plan the Cassini observations. Next summer, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, is scheduled to go into orbit around Saturn and its moons for four years. The piggybacking Huygens probe is scheduled to plunge into the hazy Titan atmosphere and land on the moon's surface. The Huygens probe is geared primarily towards sampling the atmosphere. The probe is equipped to take measurements and record images for up to a half an hour on the surface. But the probe has no legs, so when it sets down on Titan's surface its orientation will be random. And its landing may not be by a site bearing organics. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article651.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA: ON THE ROAD TO RUIN... OR RECOVERY? By Leonard David From Space.com 28 October 2003 NASA has taken on the look of a lost-in-space agency. Its shuttle fleet is stuck on the ground. A multi-billion dollar international space station project seems to some observers more a pork barrel claptrap than a hoped-for "world class" research laboratory. Then there's the fallout from the Columbia tragedy earlier this year. It has served as a horrific metaphor for bureaucratic, managerial and technological blundering, not only within NASA, but at the aerospace contractor level too. To dig out the space agency that flew humanity to the Moon, one now has to look at Apollo as more a part of the fossil record... of space vision past. This Wednesday, a Senate hearing will attempt to sort out what's wrong with NASA, but also what amount of right stuff remains at the space agency to propel humans outward into the future. Against this backdrop, and more importantly, the White House has stepped into the fray. The Bush Administration, according to Washington, DC buzz, is thinking about anointing NASA with a new, beyond Earth orbit vision statement. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/news/nasa_future_031028- 1.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/beyondleo-03a.html http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=892 ________________________________________________________________________ THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE OF BRIAN GREENE From Astrobiology Magazine 28 October 2003 Brian Greene, Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University, is one of the world's leading string theorists. String theories are considered by many as the natural successor to Einstein's cosmological quest for a Unified Field Theory, or what has become known as the 'theory of everything', providing a united framework for combining all the known natural forces (weak and strong nuclear forces, electromagnetism and gravity). For physics, this antagonism between small and large, quark and galaxy, has a possible deep resolution for string theorists in the geometry of space-time itself. Higher dimensions than the three extended space coordinates and time provide the fabric for all matter, which is generated by vibrations of tiny energy loops--a billionth of a billionth the size of an atom. One way to test these theories is using high-energy particle accelerators, as microscopes to probe the smallest distances in a global race to build the next big one (>27 kilometers), the highest energy machine in the world. A polymath and child prodigy in mathematics, Greene could multiply 30- digit numbers at the age of five. In sixth grade, Greene was so far ahead of his school in math that he had to find a tutor at Columbia University. He entered Harvard in 1980 to major in physics, and with his bachelor's degree, Greene went to Oxford University, in England, as a Rhodes scholar. His best-selling book, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (1999), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. For those curious about the frontiers of physics, as The New York Times Book Review indicated, the book "sets a standard that will be hard to beat". Rigorous, visual and engaging, the scope of what is so deeply rooted in mathematics as modern cosmology becomes accessible through metaphor and analogy. Many of the illustrations were taken from sketches made by Greene. His forthcoming three-part Nova special for PBS-TV begins this month [October 28th, 8-10 pm and November 4, 8-9 pm]. The exploration, also titled the "Elegant Universe" (which he co-wrote and narrates), carries the summation: "Eleven dimensions, parallel universes, and a world made out of strings. It's not science fiction, it's string theory." As an innovative educator, Greene also occasionally defends the integrity of physics in filmography: he served as technical adviser and enjoyed a cameo role as himself in the film "Frequency," based on the novel premise of a solar storm providing a cross-time radio link connecting father and son across 30 years via the aurora borealis ("northern lights"). Not relying on time travel, but cross-time communication, the film, as Green explains, has an enigmatic twist that avoids many of the paradoxes of its Hollywood predecessors: "Time is far more subtle than our everyday experience would lead us to believe. In many ways, time may simply be a psychological construct for organizing the world. It is a device we scientists have found useful, but it may in fact be a dim approximation of something far more complex." Astrobiology Magazine had the opportunity to talk with Greene about string theory, cosmology, and his forthcoming [February 2004] book, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Astrobiology Magazine [AM]: The line drawings and some specialized figures in The Elegant Universe came from sketches you did, correct? Brian Greene [BG]: Yes, that's right. AM: During the writing of The Elegant Universe, what kinds of writing habits worked best for you? For instance you mention in the forward to the book that Robert Malley [former Special Assistant to the President for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council] encouraged you to "put pen to paper". You also mention some remarkable writing habits of Edward Witten (string theorist at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study) as composing science papers directly on the computer keyboard. Are you someone who composes in particular places like a cafe or times like on airplane flights? BG: I have to write at a computer. I find that I can't write any other way. Luckily, though, I find that I can write most anywhere as far as location goes. AM: You've lectured in twenty (or more) countries on superstrings. Since science does not care about national borders, what is the most unusual or favorite place you've lectured? BG: Well, I think Pakistan was probably my favorite place to lecture. AM: Can you describe a particular defining moment in which you first got the insight that superstrings might offer a unifying path for physics? BG: Michael Green [Cambridge], one of the co-inventors of the modern approach to string theory--gave a lecture at Oxford in 1984 in which he explained the theory's basic ideas. He made it abundantly clear that the theory had the potential to be a unified theory of all forces and all matter. It was convincing, and I've worked on the theory ever since. AM: Is it aesthetically acceptable to describe one elegant goal of superstring theory as describing an infinite (or finite) universe without resorting to infinite quantities? BG: We don't need the universe to be spatially finite or infinite-- either possibility is consistent with the theory. However, it is crucial that our equations describing the physical processes we measure (energies, probabilities in quantum mechanics, etc) all yield finite answers. Infinite answers in those context signal that the laws have broken down. AM: One unique element of the style of The Elegant Universe is an attention to whether a theory should be "beautiful" or aesthetically appealing, and you have some family with a background in music. Do you think about superstrings at all in comparison to musical theories (frequencies, high and low notes, etc)? Any concepts that resonate between superstring theory and music? BG: Well, the key idea of superstring theory is that what we think of as different particles are just different string vibrational patterns. So, in this sense, the particles of nature are the musical notes of strings- -a rather significant resonance between physics and music. AM: You played yourself--twice--in the movie, Frequency. The movie is about a father communicating from 1969 with his son in the present on a ham radio, due to an unusual atmospheric aurora that bounces radio signals across time, not just space. You played Brian Greene being interviewed by Dick Cavett as both a younger and older man. Any reflections on either the interesting premise of the movie, or the adventures of being on the big screen? BG: The movie, of course, was pure science fiction. But I was impressed how the writer (Toby Emmerich) and the director (Greg Hobblit, also co- executive producer of "Hill Street Blues", 1981) really tried to define a set of rules for their scenario and stick with them consistently. As for my own role, well, it showed me how I'm going to look in 30 years! AM: For the book, you interviewed the eminent John Wheeler, who in addition to being Richard Feynman's adviser at Princeton, wrote the definitive modern book on gravity--the big black book. His quote on gravity was: "mass grips space by telling it how to curve area, space grips mass by telling it how to move." Wheeler is also gifted with an uncanny ability to coin a phrase, having named "black holes", "quantum foam", and other key terms for describing cosmology. Do you have a favorite, concise phrase that circulates about superstrings? BG: "It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that string." AM: The quest for the ultimate theory is not about experiments today, nor about stitching together a set of findings, but about a framework to describe the universe in a unified way, from small (quantum effects) to large (gravity)--subatomic to galactic. Does the superstring community look to an energy range where the first predictions might be accessible to test? BG: If some recent ideas are correct, it just might be possible to catch glimpses of string theory in the new accelerator being built at CERN (the Large Hadron Collider, Center for European Research Nucleare, Geneva, Switzerland). It should start running in 2007. AM: There is a favorite "zoom" illustration to show the increasing scales of the universe, which usually travels about forty or so changes in magnification by powers of ten. Is there a way to illustrate the superstring frontiers in a range of such scale factors? BG: Well, strings are--in their most conventional incarnation--about 20 orders of magnitude smaller than atoms. So, after reaching atoms, you need 20 more magnifications by powers of 10 to get to strings. AM: A prototype string may be on the order of 10-33 centimeters in length. Are there prototype ways to describe the size of the curled-up dimensions as a kind of compartment? Can these dimensions reach up to a millimeter (if they contain gravity) and still not be detectable? BG: The conservative incarnation of extra dimensions imagines them also being on the order of 10-33 centimeters. However, in the last few years we've realized that such dimensions could be as large as a tenth of a millimeter and still be consistent with observations. (I discuss this in more detail in an upcoming book.) AM: How many curled-up dimensions beyond three extended space coordinates and time are contained in the superstring universe? Does more than eleven total give rise to a forbidden universe of massless particles? BG: String theory seems to limit the maximum total number of space-time dimensions to 11. Any more than that, and it is very hard to make sense of string theory's equations. AM: You described the absurd state of infinite energy, density and temperature as a signal that the standard and inflationary cosmological models have broken down. Would you see one of the strengths of superstrings as a way-out of this initial condition, to avoid the infinite extremes? BG: I hope so. This is what I'm working on now: trying to tie string theory and cosmology together. It is an exciting field of study but there are many difficult problems still to solve. AM: Among the many analogies for curled-up dimensions, what does the hologram (three perceived dimensions in a two-dimensional plane) offer to imagine the higher dimensions and their relation to what we anthropically can even imagine? BG: I'm not sure holograms are a particularly good metaphor for curled- up dimensions, but recent work in string theory does offer the possibility that our entire universe is much like a hologram. The idea is that what we see is but a holographic projection of laws that exist and fundamentally operate on a distant bounding surface. It is a strange idea, but it just might be right. AM: Astrobiologists rely on liquid water as a key ingredient (and assumption) to define a planet's habitability. From the view of a cosmologist, you describe the apparent "stiffness" of physical laws as they might make possible (or extinguish) life: a conservative, order-of- magnitude change in electromagnetic strength, and life disappears from the fate of the universe itself, along with oxygen, intelligence or a single quark. Is there a case where superstrings (or physics) has to apply an anthropic principle, if a quantum mechanically consistent picture includes all forces, all matter and lastly, conditions for intelligent life? BG: This is a much debated question. I hope that we do not need to rely on anthropic reasoning. To me, it is as close to "giving up" as science can get. But we just don't know--it could be that there really are many possible (or real) universes, and so trying to explain why ours is the only universe might be a fool's errand. AM: One part of an elegant theory of the universe historically has relied on the laws of physics being the same everywhere. Andre Linde has a concrete proposal for the multiverse, or alternative universes, where the laws may differ and never contact. Was it an assumption that drove Einstein's quest for unification, that physics work the same from small to large and everywhere in between? Do superstrings have a contribution to make in understanding the different paths a multiverse might arrive? BG: String theory, with our current understanding, seems to admit the possibility of many different universes, with vastly different properties. Our hope is that better understanding will show why our universe is somehow special, or picked out by the equations themselves. Whether we will succeed in this undertaking is anybody's guess. If we fail, we might have to resort to anthropic type reasoning, but many of us view that as a last resort. AM: There are fifteen or so international space missions for finding 'rocky worlds' that qualify as habitable. Are there any elegant, but exotic scenarios to accelerate either communication or even travel to a star more than fifty or a hundred light years away? BG: The only way to accelerate such travel that I know of, in principle, involves wormholes--shortcuts through space. But it is unlikely that they really exist, and even if they did, it is unclear whether they'd be sufficiently stable for us or our signals to pass through. So, I would not take it too seriously on a practical level. But theoretically, speaking, they are very interesting probes of space and time. AM: Other than the PBS series on "The Elegant Universe", any other plans for future projects? BG: Well, I have this new book coming out in February, The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article650.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA ADAPTS MINIATURE BIOLOGICAL LAB FOR USE IN SPACE NASA/ARC release: 03-83AR 29 October 2003 NASA is adapting tiny laboratories embedded in compact discs (CDs) to conduct biological tests aboard the International Space Station and to eventually look for life on other planets. The CDs, with imbedded biological tests, are under evaluation by NASA scientists, and several academic and industrial partners. The miniature laboratories were adapted to detect life forms and chemicals derived from life. NASA's partners are Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Nanogen, Inc., La Jolla, CA; and the University of California, Irvine, CA. "This type of technology will enhance the International Space Station capability as a biological laboratory with greatly increased throughput and state-of-the-art techniques," said G. Scott Hubbard, director of the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA. "Someday, this technology could allow astronauts or robots to search for life on other planets or moons," Hubbard said. To process the CDs, the researchers adapted a suitcase-sized prototype instrument undergoing laboratory trials at NASA Ames. There are two versions of the CDs, which are about the same size as music CDs. One is plastic, similar to a standard CD, and is disposable. The other is made of glass and is reusable. "These tiny labs on CDs allow you to do thousands of tests of biological samples quickly and in the field," said Michael Flynn, a scientist at NASA Ames. "On the Space Station, the types of tests you would do are DNA analyses," Flynn said. To begin a test, a scientist places a liquid sample into a small opening near the center of the CD. The researcher puts the disc in the prototype machine that spins the CD. Centrifugal force spreads the sample fluid from the center of the CD through tiny, capillary-like pipes and valves towards the outer edges of the disc and several clear observation areas. During the journey, special dyes in the CD combine with the sample. The dyes glow when exposed to specific proteins and other chemicals, including particular portions of DNA. The instrument shines a specific color light on the specimen. If it glows in another specific color, this indicates that the specimen contains the substance the dye was designed to detect. The CD system can even sample water, and the instrument's software has image analysis capability that can discriminate between cells and debris. A microscope and digital camera built into the prototype instrument take images of the glowing test sample in the clear observation area after the disc stops spinning. "There're already thousands of fluorescent test solutions available for conducting biological tests on bacteria, proteins, viruses and other life-related chemicals," Flynn said. "The lab-on-a-CD system allows us to automate a process that traditionally was very time-consuming and expensive." The next step in evaluation of the prototype is to develop more tests to determine how well the device works. Eventually, researchers want to add a multi-disk changer to the instrument, so it can test several CDs. "We have worked with many different commercial vendors and individuals to combine a variety of commercially available technologies into an integrated microgravity-compatible instrument," Flynn said. Potential spin-offs could be clinical uses in hospitals, physicians' offices and laboratories. NASA's Fundamental Space Biology Division, Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR), Washington, funds this research. Publication-size images are available at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2003/03images/biolabs/biolabs.html Broadcast-quality sound files of interviews suitable for radio broadcast are at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/audio/biolabs/biolabs.html. More information about OBPR and space research is available at http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/. Contact: John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-5026 or 604-9000 E-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article657.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS AND MUDDIED WATERS? From Astrobiology Magazine 29 October 2003 Images taken from orbit on Mars show good evidence for the effects of erosion and flowing (fluvial) water at one time in the martian past. If Mars was wet once in its geological history, it is likely not wet today- -or at least too cold for water to flow. The evidence for this "wet and cold" scenario on Mars derives mainly from lower erosion compared to even the driest places on Earth. But most befuddling in this picture is perhaps that remote sensing cannot find some of the mineral signatures of water, like surface carbonates, which accompany terrestrial water. A team of geologists from the Universidad Complutense and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain, is studying other ways for liquid water to flow in cold places. The team includes Roberto Oyarzun, Cristobal Viedma, Alvaro Márquez and Javier Lillo. Their proposal is that under unusual conditions, liquid water can persist all the way down to the frigid temperature of -40°F. The key to how ice might not turn to water vapor, but instead persist as liquid water, could be whether it is trapped in tiny pores. The team has focused their image analysis on a suspected mudflow basin in the southern hemisphere, called the Gorgonum crater (37.4°S, 168.0°W). The researchers have recently compared the orbital pictures from Mars with known mudflows seen on Earth, such as in Chile (see banner image example, in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile). As the scientists write about the ongoing controversy about water on Mars: "The debate on the existence of water on Mars has lasted for many years. Contrary to what might have been foreseen, the arrival of high- resolution images from the Mars Global Surveyor has merely stirred the debate further." One particular point of contention is whether erosion is from mudflows or just debris, particularly unstable rock flows resembling volcanic avalanches. Astrobiology Magazine had the opportunity to interview the science team in Madrid, and discuss under what cold conditions, liquid water might account for what has been photographed from orbit so far while circling the red planet. Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Your recent paper in a European journal states that non-equilibrium water can be liquid as low as -40°F. (Terra Nova, 15:243, August, 2003; Blackwell Science; European Union of Geosciences). What are the best-case conditions for liquid water to achieve such a low freezing point, such as high salts, brine content, and volume considerations in porous media? Oyarzun, Viedma, Márquez, Lillo (OVML): The best conditions for achieving such low melting temperatures are a combination of both pore size in the sediment, and a depression of the melting temperature by dissolved salts. In the case of liquids, the hysteresis freezing temperature (as opposed to the thermodynamic freezing temperature), is defined as the limit of metastability of the liquid phase during freezing. Liquids can be supercooled below the thermodynamic freezing transition because of the presence of a kinetic barrier to crystallization. This phenomenon is particularly important in small, completely confined spaces where kinetic energy is substantially reduced. In other words, the freezing temperature can be severely depressed in confined spaces such as porous media, for example, clastic sediments. If dissolved salts are present, a depression of the freezing point of water is further enhanced. The latter is controlled by the concentration and nature of salts in solution. AM: Do you still consider the best evidence for run-off to be the imagery and geometry of terrain? Are there other proposals that account for these effects visually? OVML: We believe that the images show, beyond dispute, water run-off. Regarding other options, Hoffman (2000; Icarus, 146:326-342) proposed that many of these geomorphic features could have been originated by flows generated by the collapse of unstable rocks masses near to cliffs, in a way very much resembling volcanic avalanches. In fact the analogy goes further, because Hoffman suggested that these flows would be akin to terrestrial gas supported pyroclastic flows such as ignimbrites or surges, only that a freezing temperatures, with CO2 as the main gaseous phase. AM: How does one rule out melting carbon dioxide ice, or is that not a consideration because it sublimes directly to vapor at martian low pressures? OVML: Carbon dioxide (CO2) sublimes directly to the gaseous phase. A CO2 (gas) supported flow would not have the capacity of eroding the martian surface as observed in the imagery. For example, the existence of V- shaped channels in Gorgonum Crater, cannot be explained unless water was involved in the process. A pyroclastic flow (a "hot" Earth analogue to the suggested CO2 martian flows) does not create topography while it moves, but accommodates to the existent one. AM: How does one rule out or compare water runoff to rock-collapses, volcanic flows, or wind? OVML: Rock-collapses are rejected because the observed morphological features strongly suggests flows with considerable fluidity, moving large runout distances. Volcanic flows can be ruled out because the source area (the alcove) does not have volcanic constructs. We can also rule out the involvement of winds because meter-scale boulders at the Pathfinder landing site show C-axis imbrication, which implies deposition in situ from a dense, high energy transport system. AM: The suggested lower-end on sediment content is around 25% correct, to define a mudflow? What kind of velocities are typical, such as whether these are rapid or very slow? OVML: Mudflows are a type of gravity mass flows for which the whole sediment concentration by volume is 50- 0% (normally about 80% in mass). The suggested lower-end of 25% is to discriminate among [highly viscous] or natural Newtonian flows (such as water two-phase floods) and non- Newtonian flows (like mudflows). The average peak velocity of mudflows on Earth is around 20-30 meters per second (72-108 km per hour). Exceptionally, peak velocity may reach 60 meters per second (about 200 km per hour). AM: Would it be correct to say that a likely condition in your model is also liquid water trapped underneath a surface ice layer, and how does such a flow generate a tapering runoff channel? OVML: An inspection of crater image shows that the series of deeply entrenched channels and debris aprons occur only in the northern half of Gorgonum crater. We suggest that this phenomenon might be related to the regional slope, which decreases in altitude to the south. If groundwater exists within a specific regional stratigraphic horizon, this should leak along the northern face of basins and craters following the regional slope. This phenomenon is also observed in the northern faces of canyons in the so-called Gorgonum Chaos, some 100 km to the west of the crater. AM: So is Gorgonum Crater a case of a fluidized bed? OVML: We are aware of the many thermodynamic considerations ruling out the existence of liquid water on the surface of Mars. For example, the extremely low pressures in the region of Gorgonum are below that of the water triple point. Low pressures in the region of Gorgonum (4.5-5.5 millibar; NASA Ames Mars General Circulation Model, 2002) are below that of the solid-water-gas transition, or water triple point (6.1 milli- bar), so any ice would evaporate or sublime rather than flow as a liquid. Thus, although the highest temperatures in this zone may reach up to 290 K, pressure constraints only allow a phase change from solid to gas. However, in the Gorgonum case we would not be dealing with a typical case of on-surface, free-water, but with water confined to a porous material (i.e., a mudflow). As early as the 1960s it was recognized that classic thermodynamics was of limited use for many soil-water interactions. Modern studies have shown that liquid water can be found in soils and other porous media at temperatures well below the bulk melting temperatures. Although soils do freeze (e.g., permafrosts in cold regions), the process is not necessarily complete, and a good example is provided by the so-called taliks, i.e., localized unfrozen layers located underneath or within masses of permafrost. Based on the physics of nonequilibrium we have discussed a plausible model to account for the integrity of liquid water on the martian surface (despite martian pressure and temperature, or P-T, conditions), providing that this water is hosted by a porous material. The medium can be provided by a moving fluidized sediment (mudflow-debrisflow). This finding opens new insights into the debate on the existence of liquid water on the martian surface. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article652.html. ________________________________________________________________________ 2004 NASA UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH PROGRAM Council on Undergraduate Research release 30 October 2003 The Council on Undergraduate Research is proud to be a partner with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium in the development and administration of NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Program (USRP). NASA is seeking undergraduate students from diverse communities who are interested in a challenging research experience at a NASA center. Ten-week summer sessions and 15-week fall sessions will available. Aligned with NASA's research and development mission, the USRP program provides students with a technical mentor and excellent hands-on experience. Students will receive weekly stipends of $500, plus round-trip travel allowance. The USRP program seeks to extend and strengthen NASA's commitment to educational excellence and university research. For further information about USRP applications and deadlines, visit http://education.nasa.gov/usrp after November 1, 2003. Deadline for application to reach the Virginia Space Grant Consortium office is January 27, 2004. Contact: JoAnne Connolly-Reiche Administrative Director Council on Undergraduate Research 734 15th Street, NW, Suite 550 Washington, DC 20005-1013 Phone: 202-783-4810 Fax: 202-783-4811 ________________________________________________________________________ MEGA STARBIRTH CLUSTER IS BIGGEST, BRIGHTEST AND HOTTEST EVER SEEN ESA release 30 October 2003 The so-called Lynx Arc is one million times brighter than the well-known Orion Nebula, a nearby prototypical "starbirth" region visible with small telescopes. The newly identified super-cluster contains a million blue-white stars that are twice as hot as similar stars in our Milky Way galaxy. It is a rarely glimpsed example of the early days of the Universe where furious firestorms of starbirth blazed across the skies. The spectacular cluster's opulence is dimmed when seen from Earth only by the fact that it is 12,000 million light years away. The discovery of this unique and tantalizing object was the result of a systematic study of distant clusters of galaxies carried out with major X-ray, optical and infrared telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ROSAT and the Keck Telescopes. Bob Fosbury, of the European Space Agency's Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility in Germany, and a team of international co-authors report the discovery in the 20 October 2003 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The mega-cluster of stars appears as a puzzling red arc behind a distant galaxy cluster 5400 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Lynx. The arc is the stretched and magnified image of a mysterious celestial object about 12 000 million light-years away (at a redshift of 3.36), far beyond the cluster of galaxies. This means that the remote source existed when the Universe was less than 2000 million years old. Fosbury and colleagues first tried to identify the arc by analyzing the light from the object, but the team was not able to recognize the pattern of colors in the spectral signature of the remote object. While looking for matches with the color spectrum, Fosbury realized that the light was related to that of the nearby Orion Nebula, a star-forming region in our own Milky Way. However where the Orion Nebula is powered by only four hot and bright blue stars, the Lynx Arc must contain around a million such stars! Furthermore, the spectrum shows that the stars in the Lynx Arc are more than twice as hot as the Orion Nebula's central stars, with surface temperatures up to 80,000°C. Though there are much bigger and brighter star-forming regions than the Orion Nebula in our local Universe, none are as bright as the Lynx Arc, nor do they contain such large numbers of hot stars. Even the most massive, normal nearby stars are no hotter than around 40,000°C. However, stars forming from the original, pristine gas in the early Universe can be more massive and consequently much hotter--perhaps up to 120,000°C. The earliest stars may have been as much as several hundred solar masses, but the chemical make-up of the Universe today prevents stars from forming beyond about 100 solar masses. Such "primordial" super-hot stars are thought to be the first luminous objects to condense after the Big Bang cooled. Astronomers believe that these first "monster" stars formed considerably earlier than the Lynx Arc--up to 1800 million years earlier. "This remarkable object is the closest we have come so far to seeing what such primordial objects might look like when our telescopes become powerful enough to see them," says Fosbury. The desire to find and study the first luminous objects in the Universe is the main scientific drive behind the construction of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2011. Read the original news release at http://sci.esa.int/science- e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34108. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/huge_star_forming_region.html. ________________________________________________________________________ CO-FOUNDER OF STRING FIELD THEORY EXPLORES THE PHYSICS OF ET By Greg Taylor From Space.com 30 October 2003 Renowned physicist, author, and co-founder of "String Field Theory", Dr. Michio Kaku believes that alien civilizations may have learned to harness the energy of galaxies and travel through the universe using wormholes. Dr. Kaku has described what we might expect of alien cultures in an article on his web site, titled "The Physics of Extra- Terrestrial Civilisations" (http://www.mkaku.org/articles/physics_of_alien_civs.shtml). In the short essay, Dr. Kaku discusses the ideas of Russian astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev who theorized in 1964 that advanced civilizations might be grouped according to three types: Type I, II, and III--which have respectively mastered planetary, stellar and galactic forms of energy. He points out that we on Earth are a Type 0 civilization well on our way to becoming Type I. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/entertainment/michio_kaku.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA TESTING K9 ROVER IN GRANITE QUARRY FOR FUTURE MISSIONS NASA/ARC release 03-84AR 30 October 2003 NASA scientists and engineers are testing new technologies using the K9 rover in a granite quarry near Watsonville, CA, in preparation for future missions to Mars. The demonstration will be conducted at Graniterock's A. R. Wilson Quarry Site in Aromas, CA. Scientists chose the quarry site for the field experiment and to test its autonomous operational capabilities in a remote, non-vegetated location. Graniterock offered its 100-year-old quarry operation to NASA after Graniterock learned that the space agency was looking for a site to test the rover. "We need to take the rover into the field, away from our own backyard, in order to test how robust our technologies are," said Maria Bualat, a computer engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, who is the K9 rover project lead. "However, the Bay Area is a lush tropical paradise compared to Mars, so we needed to find a place that wasn't covered in vegetation. Graniterock was kind enough to volunteer a portion of its quarry," she added. "The goal of the K9 project is to integrate and demonstrate new robotic technologies that will enable NASA to meet the science goals of future Mars missions," said Bualat. Scientists hope to utilize new robotic technologies during NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission anticipated in 2009. "The whole purpose of this research project is to ensure that this rover is as autonomous and reliable as possible. Autonomous instrument placement capability is essential for future Mars exploration," said Dr. Liam Pedersen, principle investigator for the K9 rover instrument placement project. "This is necessary to acquire samples, determine mineralogy, obtain microscopic images and other operations needed to understand the planet's geology and search for evidence of past life." "The United States has gained so much from the space program over the years, and the plans to explore Mars by the end of the decade is another significant step in advancing America's lead in developing and applying advanced technologies," said Bruce W. Woolpert, Graniterock's president and CEO. Developed jointly at NASA Ames and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, the K9 rover is a six-wheeled, solar-powered rover weighing 145 pounds (65 kg) that measures 63 inches (1.6 m) high. The K9 rover is modeled after a rover named "FIDO" (Field Integrated Design and Operations) developed at JPL about five years ago. Due to the limited intelligence of current planetary rovers, it takes three martian days to complete the process of directing a rover to a targeted rock and placing an instrument on the rock to begin scientific analysis of it. Scientists at NASA Ames hope to be able to accomplish that objective in a single day, thereby increasing the efficiency of obtaining science data in future missions. David Smith, a computer scientist at NASA Ames, leads the research group that is responsible for developing the rover's automated planning and scheduling software. In previous missions, there has been very little automation of the planning and scheduling process for planetary rovers, according to Smith. "What's unique about this software that is being developed at NASA Ames is that it generates contingency plans to provide an alternative that can be executed when things go wrong," Smith said. "There is a great deal of uncertainty in operating a robotic system on Mars, so you need to be able to consider alternatives. By having options available, you increase the science return." "NASA near-term Mars missions have very ambitious science goals that will require high levels of autonomy onboard the robot," said Bualat. "Our goal is to have a 'smart robot' that we can send off to Mars in 2009 that will take care of itself." The K9 rover project's annual cost of approximately $1 million is funded jointly by the Intelligent Systems project under the Computing, Information and Communications Technology (CICT) program administered by NASA's Office of Aerospace Technology, and by the Mars Technology Program, administered by the Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. Graniterock was founded on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1900. The company has operations in Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Seaside, Salinas, Gilroy, Hollister, Aromas, Felton, Oakland, San Jose, Redwood City and South San Francisco. Graniterock Pavex Construction Division is a significant heavy engineering contractor building roadways, airport and private commercial and residential projects. Graniterock has also been the recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Governor's Golden State Quality Award. Reproduction quality images of the K9 rover are available at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2002/02images/k9/k9.html. Contacts: Michael Mewhinney NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-3937 or 650-604-9000 E-mail: Michael.Mewhinney@nasa.gov Keith Severson Graniterock Co., Aromas, CA Phone: 831-768-2063 E-mail: kseverson@graniterock.com An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0311/01k9rover/. ________________________________________________________________________ ICE-AGE SHELL GAME From Astrobiology Magazine 2 November 2003 A trio of scientists including a researcher from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found that humans may owe the relatively mild climate in which their ancestors evolved to tiny marine organisms with shells and skeletons made out of calcium carbonate. In a paper titled "Carbonate Deposition, Climate Stability and Neoproterozoic Ice Ages" in the October 31 edition of Science, UC Riverside researchers Andy Ridgwell and Martin Kennedy along with LLNL climate scientist Ken Caldeira, discovered that the increased stability in modern climate may be due in part to the evolution of marine plankton living in the open ocean with shells and skeletal material made out of calcium carbonate. Carbonates are minerals that form when negatively charged carbonate ions (a carbon atom and three oxygen atoms) combine with positive ions such as calcium, magnesium or iron. The conventional reaction occurs in solution, and carbonate crystallizes out of the liquid--sometimes with help from marine organisms that incorporate the carbonates into their shells. The most common carbonates on Earth are calcite--also known as limestone or calcium carbonate--and dolomite, which is made of carbonates of calcium and magnesium. The climate modelers conclude that these marine organisms helped prevent the ice ages of the past few hundred thousand years from turning into a severe global deep freeze. "The most recent ice ages were mild enough to allow and possibly even promote the evolution of modern humans," Caldeira said. "Without these tiny marine organisms, the ice sheets may have grown to cover the earth, like in the snowball glaciations of the ancient past, and our ancestors might not have survived." The researchers used a computer model describing the ocean, atmosphere and land surface to look at how atmospheric carbon dioxide would change as a result of glacier growth. They found that, in the distant past, as glaciers started to grow, the oceans would suck the greenhouse gas-- carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere--making the Earth colder, promoting an even deeper ice age. When marine plankton with carbonate shells and skeletons are added to the model, ocean chemistry is buffered and glacial growth does not cause the ocean to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But in Precambrian times (which lasted up until 544 million years ago), marine organisms in the open ocean did not produce carbonate skeletons-- and ancient rocks from the end of the Precambrian geological age indicate that huge glaciers deposited layers of crushed rock debris thousands of meters thick near the equator. If the land was frozen near the equator, then most of the surface of the planet was likely covered in ice, making Earth look like a giant snowball, the researchers said. Around 200 million years ago, calcium carbonate organisms became critical to helping prevent the earth from freezing over. When the organisms die, their carbonate shells and skeletons settle to the ocean floor, where some dissolve and some are buried in sediments. These deposits help regulate the chemistry of the ocean and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, in a related study published in Nature on September 25, 2003, Caldeira and LLNL physicist Michael Wickett found that unrestrained release of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide to the atmosphere could threaten extinction for these climate-stabilizing marine organisms. What's next? Carbon is a fundamental constituent of biogenic materials, but its lifecycle--how it is created, modified or destroyed--has taken on increasing importance to interpreting perplexing problems in predicting climate. In addition to the importance of calcium carbonate to our own climatic history, its presence or absence has often been suggested as a promising indicator of water itself. Liquid water often is considered a requirement for life, on Earth or beyond. And until recently, the presence of extraterrestrial carbonate chemicals - believed to form only in water--was thought to be a reliable indicator of the past or current presence of water. Whether this mineral can appear without water has focused a debate not only on habitability of other solar systems, but even in our own neighborhood, may point to whether Mars once had surface water or not. Recent global surveys of Mars have found no strong carbonate signatures anywhere on the planet, despite clear evidence of geological processes that have exposed ancient rocks. 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. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article656.html. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS SOCIETY SENATE TESTIMONY A BREAKTHROUGH Mars Society release 2 November 2003 On October 29, 2003, Mars Society president Dr. Robert Zubrin addressed the full Senate Commerce Committee chaired by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in hearings held on the future of the US Space program. Testifying at the same hearing were NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, Columbia investigation committee chairman Admiral Gehman, former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science Dr. Wes Huntress, University of Ohio professor David Woods, and Space Frontier Foundation president Rick Tumlinson. The hearing was divided into two panels, with O'Keefe and Gehman appearing in the first panel, and Zubrin, Huntress, Woods, and Tumlinson in the second. During the first panel, members of the Senate Committee grilled O'Keefe hard on NASA's poor recent performance, its tendency to repeatedly start and stop various billion dollar programs without achieving anything, the out-of-control bloated price of the Orbital Space Plane program, and the agency's overall lack of achievement in sending humans anywhere beyond LEO for the past 30 years. In response to the grilling, O'Keefe proffered excuses and fog-talk, while Admiral Gehman offered helpful advice. The real action began with the second panel. Dr. Wes Huntress was the first to speak. Contradicting O'Keefe, the former Associate Administrator for Space Science said NASA must be destination driven, and the destination should be humans to Mars. However Huntress said this goal should be achieved after a fifty (!) year program of preliminary robotic exploration. Dr. Zubrin was next at bat. The Mars Society president led his testimony with arguments adapted from his incisive "Two Roads for NASA" October 6 Space News editorial which showed how NASA could only by effective in its destination-driven "Apollo Mode" and that the destination-free "Shuttle Mode" of operation advocated by Mr. O'Keefe has been, and must always be, a formula for perpetual stagnation and impotence in space. Zubrin then said, "I agree with Dr. Huntress. NASA should make humans to Mars its goal. Mars is where the science is, Mars is where the challenge is, and Mars is where the future is. But should do it in ten years, not fifty. We can do it. Despite all the problems that could be cited, real or overdrawn, we are much better prepared to send humans to Mars today then we were to send men to the Moon in 1961, when Kennedy started the Apollo program. And we were there ten years later. Given the right kind of leadership, we could be on Mars within a decade." Zubrin then briefly laid out the Mars Direct plan for near-term human Mars exploration, after which he concluded with a set of concrete recommendations for immediate Congressional action. "Congress should not fund NASA to build things," he said. "You should fund NASA to implement plans. NASA has just come to you with a request to provide $17 billion for an Orbital Space Plane. Don't do it. Instead of spending $17 billion to develop a gold-plated Orbital Space Plane that won't take us anywhere, Congress should appropriate $60 million to fund two competing teams to spend six months developing cost- limited plans for humans to Mars within ten years. One of the teams should be NASA JSC. The other should be an interagency task force led by someone from the non-NASA government space community. After six months, the teams should hand in their reports, and their plans judged by a blue-ribbon committee on the basis of cost, technical feasibility, and exploratory punch. The best team should be selected to head the program, and its plan funded. No major hardware developments outside of the plan should be funded." "The American people want and deserve a space program that is actually going somewhere. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Senate, it is within your power to give it to them. I ask that you do so." Zubrin's complete written testimony is available at www.marssociety.org. Streaming video of the hearing can be viewed at http://www.cspan.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=,&Page=2. Virtually all the questioning from the Senators following the four panelists remarks were either directed to Zubrin, or to the other panelists to request comment on Zubrin's remarks. All the assembled Senators asked for autographed copies of The Case for Mars, and Admiral Gehman took one as well. Senator Brownback (R-KS), chairman of the Space Subcommittee within the Commerce Committee, talked to Zubrin for some time after the hearing, and expressed a desire to hear more about Mars Direct in further hearings that could be held within his subcommittee in the near future. Following the hearing, Zubrin traveled across town and met with a representative of the Executive branch who is currently engaged in a focused deliberation on determining a new direction for the U.S. space program. The Executive branch representative had seen Zubrin's Senate testimony that morning over the TV, and was very impressed, keeping the Mars Society president in his office for over an hour, asking many questions, and finally taking eight copies of The Case for Mars to distribute among very high ranking personnel within the Bush administration. The conclusion that Zubrin obtained from both administration and Senate staffers was that there clearly is a move going on right now for determining a new destination-driven policy that will take NASA's astronautics beyond LEO. The question is what that destination will be. It is imperative that all Mars Society members join in this debate. Write your congressmen, Senators, and President Bush immediately and tell them America's space program must adopt humans to Mars as its goal. Then set up a meeting with your Congressman in his or her home office and explain why in person. The situation is in flux. People in power are listening. We can win. Mobilize now! For further information about the Mars Society, visit our web site at www.marssociety.org. ________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology.html 4 November 2003 Human space exploration articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles3.html L. David, 2003. NASA: on the road to ruin... or recovery? Space.com. ESA, 2003. Space medicine workshop gives tomorrow's space workers a chance to design in. SpaceDaily. F. Sietzen, Jr., 2003. Presidential review on space policy heading to closure. SpaceRef.com. SpaceDaily, 2003. Bush may announce return to Moon at Kitty Hawk. SpaceDaily. SETI articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles4.html G. Taylor, 2003. Co-founder of string field theory explores the physics of ET. Space.com. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html E. Bakes, 2003. Smog warning, Titan. Astrobiology Magazine. ESA, 2003. Hubble sees a huge star forming region. Universe Today. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 2003. Clays aided first life? Astrobiology Magazine. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2003. Ice-age shell game. Astrobiology Magazine. ________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 23-29 October 2003 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, October 28. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm. On-board activities this week included a Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) high frequency receiver calibration and uplink of the Imaging Science Subsystem Narrow Angle Camera / Wide Angle Camera SSR instrument expanded blocks. An exercise of the Cassini emergency control center (ECC) at the DSN complex at Goldstone, California was conducted this week. These exercises are held periodically in order to verify the ECC's ability to support emergency operations. A science allocation panel meeting and a Sub Sequence Generation Sequence Change Request Approval meeting were held this week as part of development of the C42 background sequence. The waiver disposition meeting was cancelled, as there were no new waivers submitted. Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer personnel completed analysis of data returned from last week's in-flight test of flight software version 7.1. The test was entirely successful. RPWS detected Tuesday's X17 solar flare being reported in the news as the "flare of the century". Radio emissions were detected using the amplitude-frequency information from the high frequency receiver. Kickoff meetings were held this week for the C44 science planning team process and the S19/S20 science operations plan (SOP) implementation process. In addition, a package from the wrap-up meeting for S01/SO2 SOP implementation has been released. A delivery coordination meeting was held for Command Data Base version D10A. This version supports Mission Sequence Subsystem version D10.1 and implements changes to three commands needed by the Composite InfraRed Spectrometer team for their flight software checkout. Sunday marked the last day of transition from use of the old hard copy command request form to use of the new electronic command request form process. Cassini Outreach participated in an after-school student presentation for 150 elementary school children in San Diego, California, and gave presentations at an air show at Dryden / Edwards Air Force Base in California. The show averaged 150,000 attendees each day. 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 23-29 October 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Fresh Impact Crater (Released 23 October 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/10/23/index.html Noachis Dust Storm (Released 24 October 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/10/24/index.html Rippled Mars (Released 25 October 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/10/25/index.html Olympus Mons Lava Flows (Released 26 October 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/10/26/index.html Hecates Tholus (Released 27 October 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/10/27/index.html Crater in Syrtis Major (Released 28 October 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/10/28/index.html Chasma Australe Fog (Released 29 October 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/10/29/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 27-30 October 2003 Layers, landslides, and sand dunes (Released 27 October 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20031027a.html Ganges Chasma in Color (Released 28 October 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20031028a.html Cerberus Fossae Fractures (Released 29 October 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20031029a.html Hematite Outlier (Released 30 October 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20031030a.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. ________________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 10, Number 44.