Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 46, 25 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) SCIENTISTS DEVELOP CHEAP METHOD FOR SOLAR SYSTEM HUNT USING MCDONALD OBSERVATORY TELESCOPE McDonald Observatory release 2) NASA'S GATEWAY TO SPACE FOR LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCH DEDICATED TODAY NASA release 03-373 3) THE UNEXPLORED COSMOS From Astrobiology Magazine 4) NASA SCIENTIST SAYS WEAK MICROWAVES DO NOT AFFECT PLANT GROWTH NASA/ARC release 03-94AR 5) SEEING EXTRATERRESTRIALS By Seth Shostak 6) EXTREMOPHILES 2004 By Frank Robb 7) NEW EVIDENCE THAT EARTH'S GREATEST EXTINCTION CAUSED BY ANCIENT METEORITE OR COMET University of Rochester release 8) ARECIBO DIARIES: TIME TO MOVE UP By Peter Backus 9) CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS: 3RD MARS POLAR SCIENCE SPECIAL ISSUE OF ICARUS By Stephen Clifford 10) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 11) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 12) MARS EXPLORATION ROVER MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 2003-153 13) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 14) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 15) STATUS OF JAPAN'S MARS EXPLORER "NOZOMI" JAXA release ________________________________________________________________________ SCIENTISTS DEVELOP CHEAP METHOD FOR SOLAR SYSTEM HUNT USING MCDONALD OBSERVATORY TELESCOPE McDonald Observatory release 19 November 2003 University of Texas at Austin astronomers have invented an inexpensive method to determine if other solar systems like our own exist. Among the more than 100 stars now known to have planets, astronomers have found few systems similar to ours. It's unknown if this is because of technological limitations or if our system is truly a rare configuration. The McDonald Observatory astronomers' novel search method uses a Depression-era telescope mated with today's technology. Astronomers Don Winget and Edward Nather, graduate students Fergal Mullally and Anjum Mukadem, and colleagues are looking for the "leftovers" of solar systems like ours. Their method searches for the pieces of such a solar system after its star has died, by exploiting a trait of ancient, burnt-out Suns called "white dwarfs." University of Texas astronomers Bill Cochran and Ted von Hippel are also involved, along with S.O. Kepler of Brazil's Universidade Federal de Rio Grande dol Sul and Antonio Kanaan of Brazil's Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Astronomers know that as Sun-like stars use up their nuclear fuel, their outer layers will expand, and the star will become a "red giant" star. When this happens to the Sun, in about five billion years, they expect it will swallow Mercury and Venus, perhaps not quite reaching Earth. Then the Sun will blow off its outer layers and will exist for a few thousand years as a beautiful, wispy planetary nebula. The Sun's leftover core will then be a white dwarf, a dense, dimming cinder about the size of Earth. And, most important, it likely will still be orbited by the outer planets of our solar system. Once a Sun-like system reaches this state, Winget's team may be able to find it. Their method is based on more than three decades of research on the variability (that is, changes in brightness) of white dwarfs. In the early 1980s, University of Texas astronomers discovered that some white dwarfs vary, or "pulsate," in regular bursts. More recently, Winget and colleagues discovered that about one-third of these pulsating white dwarfs (PWDs) are more reliable timekeepers than atomic clocks and most millisecond pulsars. These pulsations are the key to detecting planets. Planets orbiting a stable PWD star will affect observations of its timekeeping, appearing to cause periodic variations in the patterns of pulses coming from the star. That's because the planet orbiting the PWD drags the star around as it moves. The change in distance between the star and Earth will change the amount of time taken for the light from the pulsations to reach Earth. Because the pulses are very stable, astronomers can calculate the difference between the observed and expected arrival time of the pulses and deduce the presence and properties of the planet. (This method is similar to that used in the discoveries of the so-called "pulsar planets." The difference is, the pulsar companions are not thought to have formed with their stars, but only after those stars had exploded in supernovae.) "This search will be sensitive to white dwarfs which were initially between one and four times as massive as the Sun, and should be able to detect planets within two to 20 AU from their parent star. This means we'll be probing inside the habitable zone for some stars," Winget said. (An AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance between Earth and the Sun.) "Basically, detecting Jupiter at Jupiter's distance with this technique is easy. It's duck soup," he said. Easy, but not quick. Outer planets, orbiting their stars at large distances, can take more than a decade to complete one orbit. Therefore, it can take many years of observations to definitively detect a planet orbiting a white dwarf. "You need to look for a long time for a full orbit," Winget said. "A half-orbit or a third of an orbit will tell us something's going on there. But for a planet at Jupiter's distance, a half-orbit is still six years." Winget added that for this method, "detecting Jupiter at Uranus' distance is easier, but takes even longer." For the PWD planet search, Nather conceived a specialized new instrument for McDonald Observatory's 2.1-meter Otto Struve Telescope. He and Mukadam designed and built the instrument, called Argos, to measure the amount of light coming from target stars. Specifically, Argos is a "CCD photometer"--a photon counter that uses a charge-coupled device to record images. Located at the prime focus of the Struve Telescope, Argos has no optics other than the telescope's 2.1-meter primary mirror. Copies of Argos are now being built at other observatories around the world. Mullally continues the search for planets around white dwarfs with Argos on the Struve Telescope. He has 22 target stars, most of which were identified through the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. When the team finds promising planet candidates with Argos, they will follow up using the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory. "If we find large planets orbiting at large distances, that's a good clue that there might be smaller planets closer in. In that case, what you do is pound away on that target with the largest telescope you have access to," Winget said. The HET will enable more precise timing of the PWD's pulses, and thus be able to pinpoint smaller planets. This search will be able to study types of stars unable to be studied with the doppler spectroscopy method--the most successful planet search method to date--Winget said. Because of idiosyncrasies in the make-up of Sun-like stars, the doppler spectroscopy method is not very sensitive in looking for planets around stars twice as massive as the Sun. Roughly half of the stars in Winget's study will be white dwarfs that were originally these types of stars. For this reason, the PWD study at McDonald can be instrumental in scouting and assessing targets and observing strategies for NASA space missions planned in the next two decades, specifically the Space Interferometry Mission, Terrestrial Planet Finder and Kepler spacecraft. This research is funded by a NASA Origins grant, as well as an Advanced Research Project grant from the State of Texas. Through funding from the Texas Higher Education Agency, two secondary schoolteachers (Donna Slaughter of Stony Point High School in Round Rock, Texas, and Chris Cotter of Lanier High School in Austin) have been directly involved in this research. Plans are now underway to extend this involvement to other teachers, and the students in their classrooms by bringing the science, scientists and the Observatory directly into the classroom using the Internet. Cotter and his colleagues at Lanier High School are involved with Mullally in testing this concept. Read the original news release at http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2003/1119.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-03r.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/cheap_extrasolar_planets.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA'S GATEWAY TO SPACE FOR LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCH DEDICATED TODAY NASA release 03-373 19 November 2003 The Space Life Sciences (SLS) Laboratory was dedicated today in a ceremony hosted by NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and the state of Florida. The 100,000 square-foot facility houses labs for NASA's ongoing research efforts, microbiology/microbial ecology studies and analytical chemistry labs. Facilities for space flight-experiment and flight-hardware development, new plant growth chambers, and an Orbiter Environment Simulator that will be used to conduct ground control experiments in simulated flight conditions for space flight experiments also call the new lab home. Lt. Governor Toni Jennings said, "Today we celebrate the dedication of the new Space Life Sciences Lab and a new era in education and economic partnership. This new facility will greatly benefit Florida's university community." Jennings is chair of the Florida Space Authority's Board of Supervisors. Invited guests included dignitaries, government representatives and partners. "The SLS Lab provides NASA's gateway to space with operations and research capability to effectively use the International Space Station and take full advantage of research and commercialization opportunities," said KSC Director Jim Kennedy. "It provides a meeting place for our partners in research to work together. We anticipate researchers from around the world performing investigations in the SLS Lab, addressing key issues in biological sciences, enabling improved life on earth and long duration space flight," he said. The facility, completed in August of this year, represents a partnership between NASA and the state of Florida. The state, through Florida Space Authority, built the research laboratory. The facility is part of a $30 million project that also includes Space Commerce Way, the new public roadway providing 24-hour access to International Space Research Park. The Florida Space Authority Director, Captain Winston Scott, said, "This new facility represents a new way of doing business to advance the 'state of Space.' The only way we'll continue to do that in the future is through partnerships of this kind." Kennedy Space Center, in partnership with Florida Space Authority, is developing the International Space Research Park at KSC. The SLS Lab, formerly known as the Space Experiment Research and Processing Laboratory or SERPL, provides space for NASA's Life Sciences Services contractor Dynamac Corporation, Bionetics Corporation, and researchers from the University of Florida. NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research will use the facility for processing life sciences experiments that will be conducted on the International Space Station. The SLS Lab is the magnet facility for the Research Park. Space Commerce Way also connects NASA Causeway and Kennedy Parkway to provide a throughway to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center and the Astronaut Hall of Fame. For more information on space research, visit http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/. Contacts: Dolores Beasley NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1753 Tracy Young NASA Kennedy Space Center, FL Phone: 321-867-2468 ________________________________________________________________________ THE UNEXPLORED COSMOS From Astrobiology Magazine 20 November 2003 Ann Druyan, the widow of renowned scientist Carl Sagan, and astrophysicist Steven Soter collaborated with Sagan over many years to create the famed television series Cosmos and numerous other projects. In this interview with "Astrobiology at NASA" executive producer Kathleen Connell, Druyan and Soter discuss a range of subjects, such the possibilities of life beyond Earth and what the discovery of extraterrestrial life could mean for humanity. Kathleen Connell: Help us take a stab at understanding the extraordinary proliferation of planets beyond our solar system. What is the evidence, and why should we care? Steven Soter: For a long time, there was a theoretical expectation that other stars have planets, that planets are common. But there was no observational evidence, because it's extremely difficult to see planets of other stars. They're relatively non-luminous, and they're very close to their stars compared to the distance between stars, so they're lost in the glare of their stars. If you were to look back at our solar system from the distance of a nearby star, you could not image any of the planets, even the largest ones, directly. But starting in 1995, some sensitive new techniques were developed that could detect planets indirectly, because, when a planet moves around its star, it actually tugs on the star by its gravity. The star makes a small orbital motion around the center of mass of the planet-star system. Since the star is luminous, you can detect that motion by the Doppler effect, because in part of its orbital motion the star is moving away from us, and the spectrum is red-shifted. In the other half of its motion it's moving toward the Earth, and the spectrum is blue-shifted. You can detect that subtle motion in the spectrum of the star. From the period of that motion you have the period of the orbital motion of the planet which is causing it. And from the speed of that motion you can calculate a lower limit to the mass of the planet. You can also detect more than one planet around a given star, because each planet makes its own contribution to the complex motion of the star. That's been done in a number of cases. Starting in 1995, this technique began to yield results. And they're being discovered at a rate of about one a month. It's looking quite likely that the number of planets in the Milky Way could outnumber the stars. That's a major discovery of our time. Kathleen Connell: We're using inference--we've not imaged these planets, correct? Steven Soter: Correct. There's one other kind of detection. In one or two percent of all systems of exoplanets the plane of the planetary orbit is such that the planet will move in front of the star as seen from the Earth. It will make a transit, and will diminish the light output of the star by some small fraction, because the planet is a shadow across the disk of that star. And that will be repeated every orbit. That kind of transit detection method has also been achieved in one case. Again, it's indirect. You don't see the planet itself. But there's nothing else that could be responsible for these two kinds of observations. No one has any doubt that these are companion masses that are orbiting the star. The masses are in the range of the giant planets of our own solar system and larger. We cannot yet detect small planets-Earth-size planets-by this gravitational method, because they don't make a sufficient motion of the star. And we've not yet seen even Jupiter-mass planets that are at the distance of Jupiter from the Sun, because their orbital period is on the order of ten years or more, and these observations have only been going on for the last seven years. But as they continue, we will be able to extend the detection to more and more distant planets, which have longer orbital periods. Kathleen Connell: So, Ann, we have a consensus in the scientific community that exoplanets are real. We're talking about hundreds of billions? Ann Druyan: We're talking about more planets than stars. We're talking about a galaxy and a universe of planets that far outnumber the stars. That was the great revelation to me of working with Steve on writing the show: to look up at the Milky Way and not only see a galaxy of four hundred billion stars, but to realize that hidden from our view is a galaxy of worlds that outnumber the stars. We are just a few years away from launching an ultraviolet all-sky survey which could look directly at thousands of stars at once to find not these giant gas planets, but small, Earth-like planets. There's no doubt in my mind that we will. Why should we care? Well, imagine that we do inhabit a galaxy of worlds. And imagine that all those beings-if there are beings on any of those worlds who are conscious-have evolved in the same spatial quarantine that we have. So there's a period of infancy just as we've experienced, in which we imagine ourselves the only beings, the only world in this vast galaxy and even vaster universe. And imagine that there comes a time when we are sufficiently mature, and they are, to develop the methods of science, and to be emotionally mature enough as a civilization not to need to be the infantile center of the universe. That rite of passage, that recognition of these other worlds, of these ways of living, of being, of seeing, of thinking--that's a great moment in the history of our species, as great as leaving the oceans to come up on the land. There's a tendency we have to think that we are the end of history, that we are the end product of science. And lots of great discoveries have been made. But I keep thinking about all those possible worlds, and the fact that we're just around the corner from really finding them, and how, as Seneca wrote, we're just standing in the anteroom of the temple of nature. I think it will have a huge effect on us. Of course, most urgently I hope that it will affect the way we see each other. Obviously, the violent spasms of superstition and fundamentalism that are torturing our species and our civilization right now are a kind of last ditch battle against the completely inescapable insights of modern science and the scientific revolution. I think what should happen is that we won t be able to help but recognize our genetic commonality with each other, our shared history, and the fact that the things that divide us would be unrecognizable, undetectable by species of other worlds with their own separate history and evolutionary pathways. Kathleen Connell: So what you're suggesting, perhaps, Ann, is a new perspective that on the one hand, recognizes the unity of our species, but at the same time allows for our incredible diversity. Ann Druyan: What I'm doing is merely echoing Carl Sagan's brilliant impulse to make us look at this tiny planet, at the pale blue dot, and to see it in its real context, in its actual circumstances, in its true tininess. I don't know anyone who's able to really see that one-pixel Earth and not feel like they want to protect the Earth; that we have much more in common with each other than we're likely to have with anyone anywhere else. And, I'm echoing Carl's dream of exploring the universe, of putting our house in order so that we're in a position to actually explore the universe, and to really find out how it works and how it's put together. So while science has been a traumatic experience for a lot of people-and maybe it precipitated some of this upheaval-it's also in the end the only hope that we have to get through this period of adolescence that's been so violent and so disturbing. Kathleen Connell: I've seen this in various ways, including actually showing the Mars rock-the Allen Hills meteorite-to children. We had an open house at NASA Ames Research Center, and 220,000 people showed up. The advertising had mentioned that the Mars rock was going to be there. I attribute a lot of the attendance to that talisman from the universe. And yet to the kids, it looked just like any other rock. Steven Soter: The thing is, it does look like any other rock. Yet we can prove that it's from Mars. But the profound implication for geology is that there are going to be similar things throughout the universe to what we find here. It's not necessarily going to look weird and exotic. The same might go for biochemistry, we don't know. But just as there's a range of geological types that we understand, we might quite well recognize a lot of other biologies in the universe. The first great discovery of astrophysics in the 19th century was that the visible universe was made of the same chemical elements as we have on the Earth. And that it obeys the same physical laws as we know on the Earth-the same laws of gravity and atomic physics and electromagnetism and so on. There's a unifying principle that came from astrophysics: the entire visible universe has this commonality. And that may extend to biology as well. But we don't know. We don't have the observations for the biology. Kathleen Connell: Ann, I know you're busy on the Internet, and the Internet is a people's medium, for now. How do you view that in terms of both communicating and really engaging in a meaningful way in the search for life? Ann Druyan: Well, actually, SETI@home, I think, is the absolute best example, because here are three-million-plus people, participants in a world Internet community who are accepting from the University of California at Berkeley the data from the Arecibo telescope. As their computer is going about its business it's analyzing those parcels of data, returning them to Berkeley. Conceivably, if any signal is ever isolated in that noise, you or me or any other participant in SETI@home will be credited with some part of that discovery. That is about as democratic an approach to science, this notion of massive distributed computing, as any. It's exactly on the theme that is so dear to us, which is the idea of making it possible for all of us to participate in the experience of science. We are in the process of becoming an intercommunicating organism. Kathleen Connell: What are your personal feelings about the possibility of the existence of life outside of our Earth? Steven Soter: The problem is, of course, we have no direct evidence. And [in terms of theory] we're not much better off, because we do not know how life began on Earth. We're almost clueless there. If we knew that, we would have some grounds for knowing how common the process is. But I'm basically a Copernican; I believe that there's nothing special about the Earth's position in the universe. I'm impressed by the ubiquity of the chemistry that makes life. We see complex organic molecules in interstellar clouds. It's everywhere. And I'm impressed by the fact that life began on Earth almost as soon as it was possible, almost as soon as the intense early bombardment by asteroids and comets tapered off and a stable environment emerged. The oldest evidence for life follows very soon after that, which suggests that where it's possible, it will take hold. And then on top of that you've got, it now looks like, something on the order of a trillion planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone, and a hundred billion other galaxies. Those numbers are staggering. My own opinion--and it's, I stress, still only an opinion--is that the universe is full of life, that we're not alone. And, that we may be close to finding out in our own solar system if there's other life; and, on a somewhat longer time scale, whether there's life on the planets of other solar systems. Kahtleen Connell: In other words, are you saying you believe that life is a cosmic imperative, in a way? Steven Soter: Oh, no. I don't think it's an imperative. That's going too strong. But I would be surprised, very surprised, if we found that life is very rare in the universe. Kathleen Connell: And Ann, what are your feelings about it? Ann Druyan: Well, not surprisingly, I agree with what Steve is saying. It would be a giant surprise. You look at any image of a star-choked field in the sky, and the notion that life and intelligence only came to be on our one particular planet, when we're talking about hundreds of billions of stars, and then perhaps five to ten times as many planets, is just untenable. The odds just don't sound likely that this is the only place where life has come to be. And then of course if you factor in the ubiquity of organic molecules, the building blocks of life, it makes it even more of a stretch to imagine that life only happened here. It just doesn't make any sense. I think it's very likely that there's life. What's next? During the next 15 years, American and European scientists hope to launch more than half a dozen missions to search our corner of the Milky Way galaxy for terrestrial planets. To search for Earth-like planets around stars beyond our solar system, the space-borne telescope Kepler Mission is scheduled for launch in 2006. Kepler will simultaneously observe 100,000 stars in our galactic neighborhood, looking for Earth- sized or larger planets within the "habitable zone" around each star - the not-too-hot, not-too-cold zone where liquid water could exist on a planet. One NASA estimate says Kepler should discover 50 terrestrial planets if most of those found are about Earth's size, 185 planets if most are 30 percent larger than Earth, and 640 if most are 2.2 times Earth's size. In addition, Kepler is expected to find almost 900 giant planets close to their stars and about 30 giants orbiting at Jupiter-like distances from their parent stars. After Kepler, NASA is considering a 2009 launch for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). SIM's primary mission will be to measure distances to stars with 100 times greater precision than currently is possible. This will improve estimates of the size of the universe, and help determine the true brightness of stars, allowing us to learn more about their chemical compositions and evolutions. SIM also will look for Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones around some 200 stars. SIM will be an interferometer, which means it will combine interacting light waves from three telescopes. This interaction, called interference, makes the individual telescopes act as though they were a single, larger telescope with greater light-gathering ability. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article682.html. ________________________________________________________________________ NASA SCIENTIST SAYS WEAK MICROWAVES DO NOT AFFECT PLANT GROWTH NASA/ARC release 03-94AR 20 November 2003 A NASA scientist has discovered that future solar-power satellite systems designed to harvest sunlight, convert solar electric energy into weak microwaves and beam them down to Earth to make electricity, are not harmful to green plants. During the simple experiment, the scientist bathed a tray of alfalfa plants with weak, 2.45 GHz microwaves for seven weeks with no ill effects. The microwaves were about 1 million times weaker than those an average kitchen microwave oven makes. The test took place in a laboratory at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, and is the first of many experiments scientists plan to conduct to see if an array of solar-power satellites designed to send microwave power to Earth could affect plant life. "A tray of growing plants was illuminated with microwaves while control plants were grown behind a microwave-opaque shield. Test plants and the control plants were subjected to the same environment otherwise," said NASA Ames scientist Jay Skiles, who designed the experiment and recently presented its results at the 54th International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany. "In all measured variables, there was no difference between the control and the microwave treatment plants," Skiles added. A "control" is a parallel experiment in which the factor being tested in the main experiment is left out in order to provide a way for scientists to judge that factor. In 1968, scientists proposed putting solar-power satellites into orbit about 22,000 miles above the ground, where these spacecraft could harvest sunlight for its energy. While the satellites would collect sunshine to make direct current (DC), they also would be converting the DC to some form of radiation, most likely microwaves. The satellites then would broadcast the microwave energy to the Earth's surface, where power plants would reconvert it into electricity for distribution. "Over the ensuing decades, the space-power satellite concept has been studied from the view of engineering feasibility and cost per kilowatt, with only little attention paid to the biological consequences to organisms exposed to continuous microwave radiation," Skiles said. "The hypothesis of my experiment was that plants exposed to microwaves would be no different from those plants not exposed to microwaves," he said. Skiles used off-the-shelf equipment to conduct the experiment. He used the same nutrients and watering techniques on two sets of plants, only one of which was exposed to microwaves. A microwave generator with an antenna and a parabolic reflector beamed microwaves onto the test plants from the side so as not to block lights placed above the plants. A sheet metal microwave shield protected the "control" plants from the microwaves so Skiles could compare the non-microwaved plants with the microwaved plants. Skiles measured the chlorophyll concentration of the alfalfa leaves in the microwaved and non-microwaved plants. He measured the plants' stem lengths, and also harvested, dried and weighed the plants. He found there were no significant differences in the microwave-treated plants and the untreated control plants. Skiles chose to test alfalfa because it is an important crop that animals and people eat. Alfalfa also represents a broad class of economically important plants, he added. Unlike radioactive materials, microwaves cannot burn living things, but microwaves do generate heat. However, Skiles reported, "Even though I tested microwaves on alfalfa, I didn't see any increase in plant or soil temperatures." Skiles plans to conduct additional experiments to test plants outdoors, as well as under other conditions. "I want to test plants growing in a glasshouse to determine the effects of microwaves on the plants during daily changes of light and temperature," he said. "Another experiment will be to grow cereal plants, including wheat and oats, to determine the effect of microwaves on the kinds of plants that humankind depend on for food," Skiles continued. He also plans to test whether or not microwaves provide a competitive advantage for some kinds of plants when several different species are growing in the same area. In another experiment, he is planning to examine the genes of one plant species to learn the effects of weak microwaves on that plant. Additional experiments to test effects of climate change, watering and other conditions also may be conducted, according to Skiles. NASA's Office of Space Flight Advanced Concepts funded the microwave study. High-resolution images in "publication format" are available on the World Wide Web at http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2002/02images/microwaveplants/micr owaveplants.html. Contact: John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-5026 or 650-604-9000 E-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/food-03h.html. ________________________________________________________________________ SEEING EXTRATERRESTRIALS By Seth Shostak From Space.com 20 November 2003 China's Great Wall may, indeed, be a whale of a wall, but you can't see it from space with your naked eye. I made this point in my column of last month, "Can Aliens Find Us?" where I considered whether sophisticated extraterrestrials could easily discover Homo sapiens. My example was intended to show that even from relatively nearby, the physical artifacts of human society are difficult to detect. Our radio signals are far more conspicuous. But a reader of that column, Fred Hapgood, wrote to say that, after all, just because the constructions of an advanced culture would be difficult to see directly, this doesn't mean that they're thoroughly impossible to find, does it? Consider how much better the telescopes of a civilization hundreds of times older than ours would be, Mr. Hapgood suggests. He's right, of course. We inevitably tend to envision the capabilities of putative extraterrestrials as being similar to, or slightly more advanced than ours. But what could a society that's many millennia beyond us do? Could they ever map our world and see our ancient walls, our cities, or even us? Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_shostak_seeing_031120.html. ________________________________________________________________________ EXTREMOPHILES 2004 By Frank Robb American Society for Microbiology release 20 November 2003 The American Society for Microbiology is organizing Extremophiles 2004, to be held in Cambridge, Maryland, September 19-23, 2004. The study of extreme environments has revealed the extraordinary versatility and durability of life in seemingly prohibitive conditions, including high and low temperature, high pressure, high salt, extreme pH and desiccation. Extremophiles 2004 will be the 5th International Congress held biannually since 1996, to provide continuous coverage of new developments in the international scientific community in this burgeoning field. It will also mark the first occasion this conference will be in North America. The program will provide a forum to review progress in the biology, physiology, genomics, and systematics of microorganisms from extreme environments, and to stimulate interest in structural genomics and proteomics that are major growth areas in the field. Early abstract submissions are encouraged, and up to 50 student travel grants will be available. We welcome your participation at this important meeting. Additional information is available at http://www.asm.org/Meetings/index.asp?bid=19177. ________________________________________________________________________ NEW EVIDENCE THAT EARTH'S GREATEST EXTINCTION CAUSED BY ANCIENT METEORITE OR COMET University of Rochester release 20 November 2003 Long before the dinosaurs ever lived, the planet experienced a mass extinction so severe it killed 90 percent of life on Earth, and researchers at the University of Rochester think they've identified the unlikely culprit. "An ancient meteorite body, one from the days when the solar system was still forming, struck the Earth 251 million years ago," says Asish Basu, professor of earth sciences in today's issue of Science. The research is the latest volley in a decades-long debate over what caused "The Great Dying," the greatest elimination of life in the planet's history. While scientists have been wrangling over whether a meteor caused this great extinction ever since a meteor was fingered with the blame for the later dinosaur extinction, these new findings add weight to the argument that a major meteorite did strike the Earth 251 million years ago, likely triggering climate change and unprecedented volcanic activity. That one-two punch so affected the composition of the atmosphere that it took thousands of years to recover--leaving only a relative handful of plants and animals alive. Two decades ago, Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez and his son, Walter, detected huge concentrations of iridium throughout the world in rock dated to the end of the dinosaur era. Iridium is only found in such concentrations in asteroids, so they concluded that a giant asteroid had struck the Earth at that time, likely leading to the downfall of the dinosaurs. The Alvarez claims were at first largely dismissed, but the evidence grew and today it is accepted that their interpretation was largely correct. Basu added weight to the Alvarez claims in 1988 when he announced the discovery of "shocked quartz"--special crystals that have split along certain planes indicative of a large impact-- immediately beneath the Deccan Traps of India. The Deccan Traps are areas of huge volcanic deposits that have been dated to 65 million years ago, the time of the dinosaur extinction, so finding shocked quartz immediately beneath them suggests that a giant impact preceded these giant lava flows. While a meteorite has been largely accepted as the source of the dinosaurs' demise, the root of The Great Dying has been a mystery. In 1991, however, Basu published a study in Science that showed a massive and ancient lava flow in Siberia dated precisely to that greatest of extinctions 251 million years ago. The lava did not shoot out of the Earth like a giant volcano, but oozed molten rock for thousands of years--so much lava, in fact, that if spread evenly, it would bury the surface of the Earth under 10 feet of magma. Further testing by Basu and Robert Poreda, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University, and also co-author of the current Science research, showed that both the Siberian and Indian lava had come from as deep as 1,800 miles beneath the surface. "These were not just examples of local magma bubbling through the crust," explains Poreda. "Something brought this lava all the way up from near the Earth's core." To find what might have caused the Siberian flows meant finding rock samples 251 million years old--not an easy prospect since oceanic tectonic plates that make up 70 percent of the Earth's surface are younger than that. Oceanic plates slide underneath continental plates as they move, thus carrying any evidence far beyond the reach of humans. From an area in Antarctica called Graphite Peak, Basu and Poreda took rock from a stratum that sat between a layer that contained many fossils and a layer nearly devoid of fossils called the Permian/Triassic, or P/T boundary. One of the fossils that had gone from prominence to sudden disappearance was Glossopteris flora, a plant that was widely known to have been wiped out in The Great Dying. This reassured the team that they had the right rock from the right period. Previous tests by Poreda on this same layer found shocked quartz and fullerenes, cage-like molecules, containing atoms of extraterrestrial gases, which again hinted at a meteorite or comet strike. These results, however, were disputed by some researchers. Coming at the problem from another angle, Basu and Poreda separated out the magnetic particles from the samples from Graphite Peak and from a source of P/T strata in Meishan, China, and Japan. To their surprise they found that the grains that sorted out contained an iron alloy that does not occur on Earth. Some 40 pieces were tiny fragments of meteorite 4.56 billion years old, while other grains displayed metallic characteristics that were more indicative of being formed by extreme heat, such as that in a severe meteorite impact. The very fact that these grains had not deteriorated from weathering means they must have been buried quickly under sedimentary deposits, again, indicative of a major impact. "At the end of the Permian era, Antarctica was close to its present position as the southernmost part of the ancient supercontinent, Pangea, while south China was at the equator and Japan was to the north of the equator," explains Basu. "Such a wide, global distribution of these metal grains in the P/T boundary strongly suggests that these grains mark a major impact of a celestial body at that time." Critics of the P/T impact theory may point to the lack of iridium, the element that is so rare on Earth but common in asteroids and which alerted Alvarez to the possibility of a meteorite as the death knell for the dinosaurs. The Rochester team's work shows strong evidence that not all collisions with extraterrestrial bodies will leave an iridium footprint. Basu suggests that a collision with a comet, which may have a meteoric core, would be low in iridium. Thus the culprit that wiped out nine of every 10 creatures on the Earth and nearly ended life when it was just taking hold may have been created before the Earth itself was fully formed. Basu and Poreda plan to continue searching for evidence of a catastrophic impact in the P/T layer in different sites around the world. They hope that if enough samples from enough locations show evidence of a major impact, then scientists will be able to construct the exact scenarios of how the two largest mass extinctions in history were caused by meteorite collisions. Along with Basu and Poreda, the co-authors of the paper are Michail I. Petaev and Stein B. Jacobsen of Harvard University, and Luann Becker of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mass_extinction_031120.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03zzs.html ________________________________________________________________________ ARECIBO DIARIES: TIME TO MOVE UP By Peter Backus From Space.com 21 November 2003 For most people, the term "Microwave Window" brings to mind a bag of popcorn inflating on a rotating tray. For SETI astronomers, it's the portion of the radio spectrum where we can best listen for the faint whisper of a distant civilization. Below a frequency of 1000 MHz the radio hiss of the galaxy's electrons rises to a dull roar. Above 10,000 MHz, the atmosphere and other effects make detection difficult. The quiet zone of the cosmic radio dial is in the range from 1,200 to 3,000 MHz. Project Phoenix explores this entire range-when possible. Frequently, observatories have receivers that cover only the lower portion of the range, from 1,200 to 1,750 MHz. Those frequencies include the radio signatures of Hydrogen atoms (H) and Hydroxyl radicals (OH) and define the so called "Water Hole" (H + OH -> H2O). Many SETI projects limit their observing to what some people call the "magic frequencies" associated with H and OH themselves or the Water Hole they define. Project Phoenix takes a more comprehensive approach towards the 700-plus stars on its target list, with an ultimate goal of covering the entire quiet zone, including the range from 1,750 to 3,000 MHz. Since September 1998, we have visited Arecibo nine times, each visit observing for about 200 hours, always in the lower frequency range. To observe the entire range, it's time to move up, a step we are taking that brings with it advantages and disadvantages. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_arecibo_backus_031121.html. ________________________________________________________________________ CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS: 3RD MARS POLAR SCIENCE SPECIAL ISSUE OF ICARUS By Stephen Clifford 25 November 2003 To help capture the scientific output of the recent 3rd International Conference on Mars Polar Science & Exploration, the conveners have made arrangements with the planetary science journal Icarus for the publication of the 3rd Mars Polar Science special issue. Note that participation in the Conference is not a requirement for submitting a manuscript for consideration in the special issue. Submitted papers should have a substantial Mars focus, but may also address terrestrial polar and glacial analogs and processes where there is a clear and demonstrated relevance to Mars. Papers may address any aspect of Mars polar research (including: physical & chemical properties, geology, climate, glaciology, hydrology, life in extreme environments and astrobiology). Papers must be of a scientific (i.e., involving data analysis, or the presentation of new theories and interpretations, etc.), rather than engineering nature. Icarus generally does not publish papers describing instrument designs or concepts, or any paper that might be seen as advocating a particular mission that is not yet approved. Where a question exists regarding the potential acceptability of a topic, authors should contact the editor. Submitted manuscripts will go through the standard review process, and there is no guarantee that a given paper will be accepted for publication. ICARUS has no page charges, but does charge for color art. The deadline for submitting manuscript to the special issues is Friday, January 30, 2004. Manuscripts submitted after this date may still be considered for publication in the special issue if they are able to catch up with the on-time submissions during the review process. Cover letters should reference the 3rd MPS special issue. Please feel free to suggest possible reviewers for your paper. All manuscript submittal information can be found at http://icarus.cornell.edu/information/. If you are planning to submit a manuscript, please send an indication of intent to clifford@lpi.usra.edu. Please include your name, address, phone number and e-mail address along with the likely title of your submission (if you previously completed an indication of interest form at the Conference, there is no need to submit another). We strongly encourage the redistribution of this announcement to any colleagues who you believe might have an interest in submitting a manuscript to the special issue. Contact: Stephen Clifford Lunar and Planetary Institute 3600 Bay Area Blvd. Houston, TX 77058 Phone: 281-486-2146 Fax: 281-486-2162 E-mail: clifford@lpi.usra.edu ________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology.html 25 November 2003 SETI articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles4.html P. Backus, 2003. Arecibo diaries: time to move up. Space.com. S. Shostak, 2003. Seeing extraterrestrials. Space.com. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html A. R. Basu, M. I. Petaev, R. J. Poreda, S. B. Jacobsen, L. Becker, 2003. Chondritic meteorite fragments associated with the Permian-Triassic boundary in Antarctica. Science, 302(5649):1388-1392. R. R. Britt, 2003. Controversial new claim in death-by-asteroid case. Space.com. University of Rochester, 2003. Greatest extinction probably caused by meteorite or comet impact. SpaceDaily. Extrasolar planets articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles7.html Astrobiology Magazine, 2003. The unexplored cosmos. Astrobiology Magazine. McDonald Observatory, 2003. Cheap method for finding extrasolar planets. Universe Today. McDonald Observatory, 2003. Scientists develop cheap method for solar system hunt. SpaceDaily. University of Arizona, 2003. Null and no void. Astrobiology Magazine. ________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 13-19 November 2003 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, November 19. 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 Cassini Plasma Spectrometer flight software normalization, an Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer checkout, a Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer Instrument Expanded Block (IEB) uplink, conclusion of a Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) eight day cyclic and start of a ten day SOI test, conclusion of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument Saturn Orbit Insertion IEB demonstration, and continuation of GWE #3. The Radio Science team continues to collect coherent X-band data, and when available, Ka1 data as part of GWE #3. During the first eight days of continuous DSN coverage, the X-band transmitter at DSS-25 tripped off four times causing a loss of about 130 minutes of coherent X and Ka1 data. The initial monopulse problems of the first day of the experiment were determined to be due to a procedural error. Since the correction of the error, monopulse has been behaving normally. During the DSS-25 pass on DOY 316, a strong spurious signal was observed crossing the Ka- band downlink signal as seen in the open-loop recording bandwidth. The DSN has been informed of this in order to investigate the source of the interference. Official port#2 of the Science Operations Plan implementation process for tour sequences S05 and S06 occurred this week. The products were merged and are currently being run through Kinematic Prediction Tool/ Inertial Vector Propagator. A wrap-up meeting was held as part of the Science Planning Team process for cruise sequence C43. The sequence generation process will begin next week. The Spacecraft Operations Office (SCO) delivered the Solaris 9 port of ground software tools Alf_Tool V10.1, ACKT V1.1, and PGT V9.0. The Alf tool is used to uplink flight software for both engineering and instrument subsystems. ACKT and PGT are used by the AACS team to develop engineering subsequences. SCO completed the procedure to power- off the second Power Converter Units in each of the two Solid State Recorders. This was done to extend life on the second units. The Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) Risk Review board report has been released. The risk review was held at JPL at the end of October, and was chartered to provide an independent assessment of the Cassini project's risk preparedness for the Saturn Orbit Insertion phase of the mission. Two success criteria were defined: 1) Cassini has implemented the appropriate processes for risk identification, and 2) the appropriate level of risk mitigation measures are (or will be) in place for SOI. The consensus of the review board was that the Cassini project is very well prepared for Saturn Orbit Insertion from almost any point of view. Key personnel, from the project management through the individual cognizant engineers, are knowledgeable about the major risks associated with SOI and are actively pursuing risk mitigation activities. In addition, the formal risk identification process has been exceedingly thorough. Risk Management and Contingency Plan efforts have been rigorously disciplined, providing a near textbook approach to the implementation of these two operational system engineering activities. More than ample time has been allocated for the critical software and sequence testing efforts. The review board did find some areas where additional effort may reduce the project risk even more. These areas are covered in the findings and recommendations listed within the report. The Uplink Operations team delivered an updated SOI initialization sequence, a merged CDS and AACS initial conditions file, and an SOI vector update to the Integrated Test Laboratory for an upcoming SOI test. A delivery coordination meeting was held for two versions of the Mission Sequence Subsystem (MSS). MSS D10.0.1 cleaned up the size of the Science Opportunity Analyzer tool. Previously the tool had been delivered with unnecessary java components, which ate up large amounts of disk space. MSS D10.1 incorporated changes in the command database for three updated CIRS commands necessary to support their flight software checkout. An SRCR delivery meeting was held for the CAPS v4.0.1 flight software. The software is planned for uplink to the spacecraft in mid December. Imaging Science Subsystem Pre-commanding Tool software was provided to the project software library. Test plans are currently being formulated by Instrument Operations. Outreach personnel attended a final read-through of the Cassini Literacy Program in Berkeley, CA with Bay Area Writing Project, Caltech Precollege Science Initiative Program and Project FIRST. This program will go online January 2004. The Cassini planetarium show "Ring World" is now opening across the country. A DVD version is being pressed and will be available the first week in December. Jupiter, our solar system's most massive planet, was captured in the most detailed global color view ever seen, by the narrow-angle camera on board the Cassini spacecraft. The view was acquired on December 29, 2000 during closet approach to the gas giant while en route to Saturn. The narrow angle camera took a series of high-resolution images at a distance of approximately 10 million kilometers. This allowed the Cassini imaging team to produce this new global view. The Jupiter portrait is available at the JPL photo journal at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov and at the Cassini Imaging Team's web site at http://ciclops.org. On November 14-15, Saturn and its ring system passed in front of an 8.4- magnitude star in Gemini. Observers with 8-inch or larger telescopes watched in fascination as the star leisurely faded in and out of view behind the various rings, gaps, and the open space between the rings and the ball of Saturn itself. For a diagram of the star's apparent path behind Saturn and the rings, visit SkyandTelescope.com and click Observing Highlights or go to http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/occultations/article_1102_1 .asp. Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. ________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPLORATION ROVER MISSION STATUS NASA/JPL release 2003-153 19 November 2003 NASA's Spirit spacecraft made its third trajectory correction maneuver on Friday, November 14, fine tuning its flight path toward Mars with an engine-firing operation planned into the seven-month trip. The trajectory adjustment was designed to alter Spirit's velocity by 0.6 meters per second (1.3 miles per hour), moving the arrival point by 770 kilometers (478 miles) and arrival time by 16.5 minutes closer to the planned target location and time, said Louis D'Amario, the project's navigation team chief. To accomplish that adjustment, the flight team commanded Spirit to fire its engines for 132 seconds in the direction of the spacecraft's rotation axis and for short pulses totaling 27 seconds in a direction roughly perpendicular to the rotation axis. Spirit has three more scheduled dates for additional trajectory corrections before reaching Mars less than seven weeks from now. The spacecraft is carrying the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers equipped to examine the geology around their landing sites for evidence about past environmental conditions. Both Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, have rebooted their computers in the past two weeks. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, sent commands for that procedure on each spacecraft to correct possible corruption of computer memory registers by radiation from powerful solar flares in late October and early November. The flares were among the most intense ever recorded. "We had no evidence of memory problems, but we considered it prudent to reboot both spacecraft to assure memory integrity, using the sleep-wake cycle that we plan to do each night after the rovers are on the surface of Mars," said JPL's Peter Theisinger, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project. High-energy protons ejected by the stormy Sun appeared on October 28 as bursts of bright spots in star-tracking instruments used by both Spirit and Opportunity to sense the spacecrafts' orientation. The instruments interpreted the proton hits as stars, so the bursts overwhelmed their ability to recognize star patterns and determine spacecraft attitude. Both spacecraft temporarily switched to a backup method of attitude sensing, using the Sun. They resumed use of the star trackers last week. Spirit's target is arrival at Mars' Gusev Crater at 04:35 January 4, 2004, Universal Time (8:35 PM January 3, Pacific Standard Time and 11:35 PM January 3, Eastern Standard Time). These are "Earth received times," meaning they reflect the delay necessary for a speed-of-light signal from Mars to reach Earth; on Mars, the landing will have happened nearly 10 minutes earlier. Three weeks later, at 05:05 January 25, Universal Time, Opportunity will arrive at a level plain called Meridiani Planum on the opposite side o geological evidence about the history of water there, key information for assessing whether the site ever could have been hospitable to life. As of 6:00 AM PST on November 19, Spirit had traveled 396.5 million kilometers (246.4 million miles) since its June 10 launch, with 91.5 million kilometers (56.2 million miles) to go before reaching Mars. Opportunity, launched on July 7, had traveled 326 million kilometers (202 million miles) and has 130 million kilometers (81 million miles) yet to go. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Additional information about the project is available from JPL at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer and from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, at http://athena.cornell.edu. Contact: Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article684.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars2003-03x.html ________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 13-19 November 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Distributary Fan: "Smoking Gun" Evidence for Persistent Water Flow and Sediment Deposition on Ancient Mars (Released 13 November 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/13/index.html Circles and Streaks (Released 14 November 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/14/index.html Meridiani Sedimentary Rocks (Released 15 November 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/15/index.html Sabaeus Dust Devil (Released 16 November 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/16/index.html Galle Crater Scene (Released 17 November 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/17/index.html South Polar Layers (Released 18 November 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/18/index.html Volcano near Pavonis Mons (Released 19 November 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/11/19/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 17-20 November 2003 Lava Flows and Surface Textures (Released 17 November 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20031117a.html The Dichotomy Boundary (Released 19 November 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20031119a.html Erosion and what it reveals (Released 20 November 2003) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20031120a.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. ________________________________________________________________________ STATUS OF JAPAN'S MARS EXPLORER "NOZOMI" JAXA release 20 November 2003 Some of you might have read a report of a newspaper: "NOZOMI, Japanese made Mars exploration probe is to collide with Mars". But this description is not correct. The truth is that "NOZOMI" will, if going as it is, approach Mars on December 14 by 894 km passing above martian surface at its closest approach, but there would not be excluded a theoretical possibility of colliding with Mars by more or less one percent, if we take the error of orbit determination into account. The international organization called "COSPAR" representing worldwide space science organs defines "Planetary Protection Policy" as special protective measure that provides for regulating a percentage possibility below one percent of falling upon Mars, within twenty years after the launch, for Mars orbiting satellites inadequately sterilized. On the other hand, from the standpoint of observing Mars, it is naturally better to get closer to Mars as much as possible, which means, therefore, the closest distance of 894km is marginally and most appropriately set for probe trajectory to take. As you may know, however, "NOZOMI" right now is under "the last challenge" to repair its malfunction of which must be concentrated by all task force of scientists and engineers of "NOZOMI" mission team until its outcome is clearly known. Upon recovering from the damage, we will then work on putting the probe to orbit around Mars and resume its exploration. Unfortunately, if not restored, we will try to adjust the closest approach as far as possible from 894km. In this case, "NOZOMI" will, after once approaching Mars, escape from martian gravitational sphere to become an artificial planet going around the orbit of the sun forever. As many of you may know, onboard "NOZOMI" is mounted an aluminum plate etched with the names of 270,000 people who applied for the pre-launch campaign, "Send your names to Mars!" The names of 270,000 people will keep on circling around the sun for hundreds of million years. As long as "NOZOMI" team is at work, please give us a little more time until around December 10. When final result is known, we are ready to explain everything plainly to you and offer our sincere feeling and thinking. We believe what the mission team can do is not to give up but to do the best until the very last moment toward responding the expectation of the people including those who kindly left their desires to this spacecraft. Read the original news release at http://www.jaxa.jp/missions/projects/sat/exploration/nozomi/index_e.html . An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-03m.html. ________________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 10, Number 46.