Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 49, 15 December 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) DOWN THAT LONG DUSTY TRAIL By Usha Sutliff 2) GLOBAL WILDFIRES DID NOT KILL THE DINOSAURS Royal Holloway, University of London release 3) JAPAN'S STAR-CROSSED MISSION TO MARS ENDS IN FAILURE By Stephen Clark 4) MARTIAN CHRONICLES XIII: ELVES By Steve Squyres 5) MARTIAN DANGERS: STARING AT THE SUN From Astrobiology Magazine 6) FINDING JIMO, JUPITER'S ICY MOON ORBITER From the American Geophysical Union and Astrobiology Magazine 7) PLANET-FORMATION MODEL INDICATES EARTHLIKE PLANETS MIGHT BE COMMON University of Washington release 8) NIGHT LIGHTS: INTERVIEW WITH WOODY SULLIVAN From Astrobiology Magazine 9) OTHER INTELLIGENT LIFE... AT THE OBSERVATORY By Peter Backus 10) UA SCIENTIST EXPLAINS WHY ASTROBIOLOGISTS LOOK TO TITAN By Lori Stiles 11) INTERNATIONAL TITAN CONFERENCE--3RD ANNOUNCEMENT ESA release 12) NASA TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT "WEIRD LIFE" BEYOND EARTH By Leonard David 13) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas 14) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 15) MARS [EXPRESS] IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER ESA release 81-2003 16) CHRISTMAS ON MARS: BE THERE WITH ESA ESA release 82-2003 17) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release __________________________________________________________________________ DOWN THAT LONG DUSTY TRAIL By Usha Sutliff University of Southern California release 1 December 2003 Mars can claim some unique features--the largest volcano and the deepest canyon in the solar system--its rocky, dusty, cold landscape has yet to yield signs of the ultimate prize: life. Three simple words--follow the water--have become the mantra of astrobiologists studying the Red Planet because the presence of water is believed to be a prerequisite for life, either past or present. But as scientists look for evidence of water on Mars, they are faced with an underlying dilemma. Will they know life when they see it? "Scientists' approach to finding life is very Earth-centric," said Kenneth Nealson, holder of the USC Wrigley Chair in Environmental Sciences. "Based on what we know about life on Earth, we set the limits for where we might look on other planets." In a paper published in the current edition of the journal Astrobiology, Nealson--and Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado--speculated that a microbe that exists in the coldest temperatures on Earth might provide clues about how a similar organism could survive beneath the martian polar ice caps. The microbe in question was discovered by Corien Bakersman, a postdoctoral student in Nealson's lab, and remains the only one of its kind. It was isolated from a cryopeg--a small, salty, liquid lake found under the Siberian permafrost. The bacterium, named Psychrobacter cryopegella, can grow at -10° Celsius and can stay alive and even keep metabolizing at an astonishing -20° Celsius. While it isn't able to replicate itself at that extreme temperature, it maintains the minimal metabolism needed to repair and maintain its cell structures. "This organism can exist at colder temperatures than any previously discovered," said Nealson, a professor of earth sciences and biological sciences in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "We know it's possible here, so certainly it's possible somewhere else. This bacteria expands the limits of life, so if you can find places on Mars that are minus 20 degrees centigrade, you should take a look." Nealson and Jakosky looked to the martian polar regions for a habitat similar to the one in which cryopegella survives. While temperatures at Mars' equatorial and mid-latitudes regularly rise above -20 Celsius, it is unlikely that there is liquid water there because of its potential to be absorbed into the atmosphere, Nealson said. But, liquid water could be found under the frozen polar caps, he added. Climate changes on Mars, as with all of the nine planets that orbit the sun, are tied to its obliquity, or tilt of its axis with respect to its orbital plane. Nealson and his colleagues proposed that as the Red Planet tilted--exposing more of itself to the sun at various times in its history--temperatures at the polar ice caps were warmed to minus -20° Celsius or higher. "If the ice at the polar caps warmed to liquid water, organisms like cryopegella could have awakened and repaired any damage that might have occurred to their various cellular components," Nealson said. "Then, as the obliquity changed a few million years later and the planet got colder and colder, these organisms would have been the last survivors." But, he added, "I would never say, 'Go and look for this bacteria.' I would say, 'This is a habitat that we should look at on Mars because on Earth, similar habitats have life.'" The paper's other contributors were USC's Corien Bakerman and the University of Colorado's Ruth Ley and Michael Mellon. Contact: Usha Sutliff Phone: 213-740-0252 E-mail: sutliff@usc.edu Read the original news release at http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/story.php?id=9590. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/mars_life_fool_us.html. __________________________________________________________________________ GLOBAL WILDFIRES DID NOT KILL THE DINOSAURS Royal Holloway, University of London release 5 December 2003 New research has revealed that thermal radiation, resulting from the impact of an asteroid colliding with the United States 65 million years ago, was not responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs and other land organisms. The massive 65 million year old impact crater, Chicxulub, on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, was first located by Alan Hildebrand and co-workers in 1991. The discovery led scientists to conclude that large amounts of thermal radiation released by the asteroid's impact would have raised ground temperatures to around 1000°C, igniting globally extensive forest fires and effectively boiling land organisms alive. However, new NERC funded research, shows that although forest fires played an important part in the latest Cretaceous and earliest Tertiary ecosystems, there is no evidence that North America was engulfed by wildfires 65 million years ago. The research team from Royal Holloway, University of London, was led by Claire Belcher with co-workers Professor Margaret Collinson, Professor Andrew Scott, and members of the Canadian Geological Survey and University of Calgary. The team studied quantities of fossil charcoal from the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary sediments from non-marine rocks across North America, to test the hypothesis that extensive forest fires occurred as a result of thermal radiation released by the impact. Details of the research will appear in the December issue of Geology (volume 31). The latest Cretaceous and earliest Tertiary rocks were found to contain an average of 16.3% charcoal, but neighboring K-T rocks showed only 1.75%. More surprisingly, the K-T rocks also revealed considerable amounts of unaffected plant remains, with some sites containing as much as 60% non- charred plant fragments. "If we assume that extensive wildfires consumed the vegetation across the North American continent, it is hard to imagine a situation where so much plant material remained un-charred. This does not support the theory that North America was engulfed by wildfires at this time," said Claire Belcher, from Royal Holloway's Department of Geology. The revelations led Belcher's team to further question the amount of thermal radiation released from the K-T impact. Spontaneous ignition of biomass occurs at around 545°C and vegetation will begin to smolder when subjected to temperatures around 325°C. This suggests that ground temperatures cannot have been greater than 325°C, and no more than 6 kW m-2 of thermal power was delivered to the ground for any significant length of time, compared with considerably higher previous estimates of 5000 kW m-2 and 150 kW m-2. Art Sweet, from the Canadian Geological Survey and a co-worker on the project, explains "It is recognized that major disruptions occurred in both plant and animal communities at this time, but the new findings indicate that these are not coincident with increased abundances of charcoal". Belcher concludes, "The research we have carried out suggests that the amounts of thermal radiation released by the impact of an asteroid with the Earth 65 million years ago, were not as significant as previously thought, and the energy component of the K-T event was not responsible for the extinctions seen at this time". Belcher hopes that research may now focus on addressing other hypotheses, which may explain the extinction patterns and disruptions seen at this time, including the death of the dinosaurs. Contact: Christine Long, Press & PR Officer Phone: 01784 443967 E-mail: christine.long@rhul.ac.uk Read the original news release at http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Whats- New/news2003/dinosaurs.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03zzu.html. __________________________________________________________________________ JAPAN'S STAR-CROSSED MISSION TO MARS ENDS IN FAILURE By Stephen Clark From Spaceflight Now 9 December 2003 A stricken Japanese Mars probe lost its last chance at success Tuesday, as the deadline for a remedy to its problems came and passed with no solution in sight. Nozomi continues to speed toward a close fly-by of the planet later this week. Launched over five years ago in July 1998, engineers in charge of the 1,190-pound Nozomi probe have lost hope for a successful orbital mission around the Red Planet that was already almost half a decade behind schedule due to a laundry list of problems that plagued the beleaguered craft almost from the start. Read the full article at http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/nozomi/031209abandon.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.marsdaily.com/2003/031209134158.i1quixrr.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/nozomi_done_031209.html __________________________________________________________________________ MARTIAN CHRONICLES XIII: ELVES By Steve Squyres From Astrobiology Magazine 10 December 2003 Three spacecrafts are now hurtling toward the Red Planet to look for evidence that it might once have been wet enough to sustain life. Orbital projections of where Europe's Mars Express and the two NASA Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are right now, can be continuously monitored over their half-year journeys. Experiments performed by the MERs will help to determine whether water might have once existed in volume on the red planet. The two Mars Exploration Rovers are targeting what imagery indicates might have been ancient dry lake beds and other geologically interesting sites in early 2004. The Martian Chronicles series gives an inside view of what it takes for scientists to deliver a complex mars mission. The journal entries are from Cornell's Steve Squyres, the Principal Investigator for the Mars Exploration Rovers' scientific package called Athena. The chronicles begin sequentially from the beginning of July 1999, four years before launch, and will culminate in the dramatic landing of the twin rovers on Mars in January 2004. The expected mission time roaming the red planet is ninety days, from January to April. As Spirit and Opportunity speed toward Mars, more than three hundred scientists and engineers here on Earth will learn how to act in unison to master the art of commanding two very complex robots to do science on another world. The chronicles include an insider's view of hardware tests and site selection to problem solving and science planning on the surface of Mars. October 25, 2003 In the operations readiness tests we're running, we spend a lot of time talking about elves and gremlins. "Elves" are the people behind the scenes in our tests who make life easier for us by keeping the rovers running smoothly. But the same people are sometimes "gremlins". We call them that when they do something to challenge us, by making the test harder. The gremlins were hard at work during our latest operations readiness test. The last couple of times we've done this, it was pretty easy to drive the rover off the lander. Not so this time! This time we landed, put the mast up, took some pictures, and discovered that the lander was almost completely surrounded by large, dangerous-looking rocks.(Rocks that were put there by the gremlins, of course.) We couldn't drive over rocks that big, so we had to find another way to get off the lander. The only reasonably clear path was the one directly behind the rover. So way we did it was to "hyper-extend" the lander petal that sticks out behind the rover, tilting it down at an angle to make something like a ramp. We then drove backwards down the ramp, sort of like backing out of a driveway onto the surface of Mars. Pretty cool. And this was supposed to be our last "nominal" test. The next test, in November, will be an "off nominal" one. We're all very curious to see what the gremlins come up with for us next time! November 8, 2003 Good news about the Mössbauer Spectrometer on Spirit: We've figured out how to make it work. You'll recall that back in August we did an in- flight checkout of all of the instruments on both spacecraft. Most of them were fine, but there was something wrong with the Mössbauer Spectrometer on Spirit. We couldn't tell exactly what was going wrong, but the instrument's drive system the part that vibrates back and forth definitely was not working properly. We've spent several months now troubleshooting it. The first rule in anything like this is "do no harm", so we worked through it very, very slowly. We'd do a very simple little checkout, take weeks to sift through the data, try another checkout, take more weeks to sift through more data, and so forth. It's painstaking work, but with each checkout we learned a little bit more. And what we discovered, eventually, was that the drive system was bumping into something at one end of its motion. It wasn't hitting it hard, and it wasn't doing any damage to itself. But there was some minor obstruction that was keeping the drive from moving the way it's supposed to. So what to do? We couldn't exactly head out after it with a screwdriver! But there are some tricks you use when you build space hardware, and we had used them on this instrument back when we built it. One trick is that you try to make an instrument as adjustable as you can. This can be a good thing to do even if there's no obvious reason why you'd ever want to make an adjustment... you never know what'll happen. The second trick is that you try to design an instrument with lots of "margin". In other words, you try to make it better than it really needs to be. That way, if something goes wrong, it might still work okay after you make an adjustment. We did both of these on our Mössbauer, and it paid off, bigtime. We built the drive system so that we could adjust both the velocity and the frequency with which it vibrates. By adjusting both, we were able to make it vibrate with less total motion... so that it wouldn't hit the obstruction. And while we never expected to operate the instrument with a total motion that small, we built it with enough margin that the spectrometer still will still work properly on Mars. So what was the mysterious obstruction it was hitting? Best guess is that it was a wire that was bent slightly during the intense vibrations of launch. Whatever it was, though, it's not causing us any more problems. If the instrument works on Mars the way it's working now, we'll get all the science we were hoping for. What a relief! November 15, 2003 It's mid-November, and time for another ORT. These Operations Readiness Tests are intense, and they seem to be getting more so. As I write this it's 2:00 AM at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and 2:30 AM (in our simulation) at Gusev Crater. The rover is asleep right now, and we're in the process of getting the commands ready to make it do its thing when the sun comes up on Mars (again, in our simulation) tomorrow morning. Today's main activities should be a checkout of the RAT followed by a short drive to a rock that the science team has, for some reason, nicknamed "Fromage". Meanwhile, out in space... we just completed a final checkout of all the cameras on Spirit, and they all look great. The next time we'll turn them on, they'll be in Gusev Crater for real. November 29, 2003 Wow, what an ORT! And it's a good thing, too, since this was our last one. We had our final Operations Readiness Test last week, and this one was a real hummer. We simulated five martian days of motoring around Gusev Crater, with all the bells and whistles. The highlight of this one, by far, was that we used the RAT, or Rock Abrasion Tool. The RAT is our version of a geologist's rock hammer... we use it to remove the outer layers of a rock so that we can see what lies underneath. In this ORT we spotted a rock that we really liked, and we decided to go after it with the RAT. (The science team nicknamed this particular rock "Fromage": bait for the RAT... get it?) We drove the rover to Fromage, stuck out the arm, and used the RAT to grind a beautiful circular hole in it. Then we stuck all three of the other instruments on the arm into the hole and got fantastic data. It was, by far, our coolest ORT yet. It was nice to finish up on such a high note. We're now just one month away from landing in Gusev Crater for real... Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article708.html. __________________________________________________________________________ MARTIAN DANGERS: STARING AT THE SUN From Astrobiology Magazine 10 December 2003 How planets, and any potential inhabitants, protect themselves using some analogous form of sunscreen turns out to be one of the great challenges to surviving elsewhere. While this challenge may have to be designed around in some innovative ways, any future human missions to Mars will face the Sun. It turns out also to be a recurring problem for landing rovers and orbiting probes. What style of ecosystem might be required for microbial life to survive elsewhere? Mars' thin atmosphere does little to protect the planet: the air density at martian "sea level" is roughly equivalent to that of Earth's atmosphere at 70,000 feet altitude. The flurry of solar storms, and the largest solar flare recorded by NASA's orbiting satellites, has indeed already cost (at least temporarily) one radiation-measuring instrument on the Mars Odyssey probe. The 2001 Mars Odyssey, for example, an orbiter launched on April 7, 2001, contains an experiment to measure the amount of damaging radiation that humans traveling to Mars would need to protect themselves against. Called MARIE, for the Mars Radiation Environment Experiment, the instrument maps the radiation environment more than five million kilometers from Earth, and even at that great distance, a properly pointed solar outburst can provide challenges to protect against. No sunscreen? Use a mud pack For life as we know it to survive, heavy sunscreens are needed to block out the full spectrum of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays. There are three kinds of UV rays: UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C. Modern sunscreens absorb UV-A and UV-B rays. UV-C rays are the most damaging, but they never reach the Earth because they are blocked by the ozone layer. But over 2 billion years ago, the Earth had little oxygen and no ozone layer. UV-C rays blazed down on the Earth's surface unimpeded, and would have fried to a crisp any life caught out sunbathing. Before photosynthesis led to the rise of oxygen and the formation of the ozone layer, early life protected itself by living underwater. Water can block UV light while allowing enough visible light to shine through for photosynthesis to take place. Early photosynthetic life would have had to stay below a certain water depth to take advantage of visible light while avoiding UV. Janice Bishop of the SETI Institute has been studying this connection between iron, photosynthetic organisms, and atmospheric oxygen. She thinks iron oxide-bearing minerals like ferrihydrite and schwertmannite could have acted as a sunscreen for early photosynthetic life. The role iron may have played on early life naturally leads to questions about the potential for life on Mars. Mars has huge quantities of iron, as evidenced by the rusty red color of its soil. Mars also has silica, many volcanic features, large quantities of water ice at the poles, and perhaps even some water ice or liquid water underground in lower latitudes. Most scientists think Mars is too cold and dry at present for life to exist, but the combination of water, heat, and sunscreen materials makes it tempting to think microbial life could have existed during a warmer, wetter period in the Red Planet's history. If life ever existed on Mars, it would not necessarily have needed sunscreen in order to survive. Life could have lived deep underground, protected from the irradiated surface, gaining energy from chemicals in the rocks. Like early life on Earth, the only organisms that would have needed to risk exposure to the sun were those that made their food from photosynthesis. As NASA Ames astrobiologist Chris McKay noted, this can even pose an underground threat over very long times: "background radiation, from natural levels of the decay of uranium, thorium and potassium, even deep below the surface, is about 0.2 rads per year on Earth and would be roughly similar on Mars. This would deliver a lethal dose, even to the most radiation-resistant organisms, in about 100 million years." So bright, you have to wear sunglasses? "We did some calculations a while ago", wrote the principal investigator for the science package on the Mars Exploration Rovers, Dr. Steven Squyres, "and they showed that if we were ever to point the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (or Mini-TES) at the sun we could damage the instrument." This instrument will survey the surroundings, scanning for spectral variations in the variations in the infrared radiation given off by different rocks. By analyzing these spectra--which frequencies of infrared are absorbed and which are reflected--will be able to determine the mineral composition of the rocks. At the time of their Critical Design Review--a review of the whole spacecraft, including the instruments--his Cornell team first addressed this challenge in June 2001, just 24 months prior to launch. "That's not bad news scientifically... there's no reason we'd want to look at the sun with Mini-TES anyway. But what if we did it accidentally? We could have a toasted spectrometer on our hands. So now we have to figure out how to keep such an accident from ever happening. It shouldn't be hard... it's easy to calculate where the sun will be in the sky, and we'll just make sure that we don't point Mini-TES in a dangerous direction. But it's one more thing to put in the software, and time is getting tight". Their solution took a week of troubleshooting. Mini-TES sits down inside the rover and uses some mirrors near the top of the mast to get almost the same view of the world that the panoramic (Pancam) camera does. Squyres wrote: "We've figured out how we're going to keep from pointing it at the sun accidentally, which we were worried about last week. The best answer turns out to be the simplest one. The rover always knows roughly which way it's pointed, and also what time it is... which means that it can figure out where the sun is. So we keep Mini-TES pointed away from where the rover thinks the sun is, and we keep it far enough away that even if the rover's off by a little, Mini-TES will be safe anyway". Afraid of ghosts Squyres' team also had to consider the effects of the Sun on any martian optics. He wrote about the design issues, by noting: "We've been worried about what are called 'ghost images'". "One of the most important jobs for our Pancam camera will be to take pictures of the sun. Part of the reason we're going to do this is to figure out how dusty the martian atmosphere is: the more dust there is in the sky, the darker the sun will look," continued Squyres. "The really important reason, though, is to figure out which way is north. Mars doesn't have a magnetic field, so we can't use a compass to figure out directions. Instead, we use Pancam to see where the sun is in the sky, and then use that information to work out which way is which. Taking pictures of the sun isn't all that hard: we just have to give Pancam special dark filters. They're sunglasses for our rover, really. But even with the filters, all that sunlight can sometimes bounce around inside the camera in funny ways, creating the 'ghost images' we were worried about. But after lots of good work by the optics experts at JPL..., we've concluded that it shouldn't be a problem. So we're not afraid of ghosts any more". Terrestrial suspicions Scientists from NASA, the SETI Institute and other institutions have studied microscopic life forms in some of the highest lakes on Earth atop a South American volcano to learn what life may have been like on early Mars. Scientists have conducted field tests to examine life forms in several lakes, including the Licancabur volcano crater lake, at nearly 20,000 ft. in the Andean Altiplano on the border of Bolivia and Chile. Most of the Earth is covered by a protective ozone layer that screens out higher-energy UV radiation, which is particularly damaging to life. "The best way to get high UV," explains Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA, and a member of Licancabur expeditions, "is to go to high elevations. The equatorial regions are particularly interesting because the Sun is higher in the sky," so the radiation is stronger than in regions closer to the poles. Intense ultraviolet (UV) radiation, low oxygen, low atmospheric pressure and cold temperatures make the environment a close analog to martian lakes 3.5 billion years ago. Despite the extreme conditions at Licancabur, scientists say microscopic life is present and diverse. Its survival strategy might be very ancient, according to the project's principal investigator and expedition lead, Dr. Nathalie A. Cabrol of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, and the SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA. During their first expedition last year to the same area, Cabrol's science team discovered that very small plankton-like algae called diatoms had 10 times more deformities than similar algae in other lakes. UV is believed to be the "prime suspect" that may have triggered the malformed algae, according to Cabrol. One of the scientists' goals is to identity the species living in the high lakes and to learn how these living things cope--or do not cope--with UV and other stresses. "Most of the lakes we study there are shallow and do not provide substantial protection to living organisms. They have nowhere to hide from UV," Cabrol said. "We want to understand if these diatoms have developed some sort of 'sunscreen.' If not, they are probably on their way to extinction," she added. "On the one hand, we might learn more about life strategy against UV with all its implications for early planets' habitability and future astrobiological mission exploration strategies, and on the other hand, we might possibly be on our way to identifying a limit to life's adaptation on Earth," Cabrol explained. Cabrol likens the harsh, isolated environment of Licancabur to what was perhaps the final era of martian habitability. "High UV, low oxygen, low atmospheric pressure--these must be the conditions that were on Mars 3.5 billion years ago, when the atmosphere was not completely gone, when there was still a little bit there, when local ponds were still possible," says Cabrol. Conan, the bacterium The champion among radiation-resistant life on Earth doesn't need sunscreen. The red bacterium, called Deinococcus radiodurans, can withstand 1.5 million rads--a thousand times more than any other life form on Earth and three thousand that of humans. Its healthy appetite has made it a reliable worker at nuclear waste sites, where it eats up nuclear waste and transforms it into more disposable derivatives. The ability to withstand other extreme stresses, such as dehydration and low temperatures, makes the microbe one of the few life forms found on the North Pole. Deinococcus radiodurans was discovered decades ago in canned food that was sterilized using radiation. Red patches appeared in the cans--colonies of the bacterium--setting off questions as to how it could have survived. Though these questions have now been answered, the tide of speculation as to how these defense mechanisms evolved--and where--is likely to continue. What's next? Three spacecrafts are now hurtling toward the Red Planet to look for evidence that it might once have been wet enough to sustain life. Orbital projections of where Europe's Mars Express and the two NASA Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are right now, can be continuously monitored over their half-year journeys. Experiments performed by the MERs will help to determine whether water might have once existed in volume on the red planet. The two Mars Exploration Rovers are targeting what imagery indicates might have been ancient dry lake beds and other geologically interesting sites in early 2004. Matt Golombek, who was the project scientist for the 1997 Pathfinder/Sojourner mission, believes that "the MER is exactly the next step beyond what Pathfinder did." Because it will enable a detailed study of the mineral composition of martian rocks and soil, it will tell scientists far more than was previously known about the history of water on Mars. Future missions to Mars will perform additional experiments to understand better the possibilities and challenges of supporting a human mission. And astronauts living aboard the International Space Station will improve NASA's understanding of the effects of long-term exposure to microgravity. But NASA's Mars-exploration roadmap for the next 20 years contains no plan to actually send human explorers there. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article711.html. __________________________________________________________________________ FINDING JIMO, JUPITER'S ICY MOON ORBITER From the American Geophysical Union and Astrobiology Magazine 10 December 2003 NASA's Galileo spacecraft, orbiting Jupiter since 1995, found evidence for subsurface oceans on the moons Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. NASA plans to dispatch a hulking nuclear-powered spacecraft to determine whether three of Jupiter's icy, planet-sized moons have the potential to harbor life. The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, or JIMO, would spend monthlong stints circling the moons Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, which are believed to have vast oceans tucked beneath thick covers of ice. Scientists are keen to study the Jovian system because of its complexity. The planet and its stable of moons represent, in many ways, a miniature solar system. "These are worlds in their own right," said Ron Greeley, of Arizona State University, Tempe. Follow the water If liquid water were to exist on these moons, it would not be unreasonable to speculate on the existence of life there, perhaps forming near undersea volcanic vents. Life on Earth has been discovered at great ocean depths, beyond the penetration of sunlight, thriving on upwelling chemical nutrients from the interior of the planet. "We don't know if life is there. But this mission will allow to ask that question with some pretty sound tools," said Christopher McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center. JIMO won't launch until at least 2011. At the December 8th meeting of the American Geophysical Union, scientists prepared a briefing on the mission's progress. The unmanned craft, far larger and more powerful than any other sent to explore the outer solar system, would spend years studying the moons' makeup, geologic history and potential for sustaining life, as well as Jupiter itself. The spacecraft is envisioned as being 60 to 100 feet in length. Early conceptions place its nuclear reactor at the end of a boom to shield the scientific instruments from radiation. JIMO also would bristle with fins to dissipate the intense heat from its reactor. Inspired discoveries The icy moons are part of the original Galilean system, named after their discoverer, Galileo. Their presence has been a kind of benchmark for planetary science, since they helped solidify the Copernican view of the universe--that the Earth is not at the center of the known universe. The mini solar system around Jupiter instead has its own unique orbital mechanics, governed by the powerful magnetism and gravity of its parent planet. The first images of these moons sent back by Pioneer and Voyager stunned planetary scientists in their richness, eventually culminating in the 1995 discovery of evidence for subsurface, briny oceans. Because of its enormous volcanoes, Io is the only place beyond Earth where we can watch geological processes in action. But other than a predictable sulfur dioxide content from its volcanoes, Io's surface chemistry is still largely unknown. To fully understand geological processes, the subsurface (> 1 meter) heterogeneity should be mapped at better than 100 meter horizontal resolution over at least 50% of the surface of the three moons. What's on tap? The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission thus has three major science goals. Potential for life The mission would scout the potential for sustaining life on Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. This includes: 1) Determining whether the moons do indeed have subsurface oceans. 2) Mapping where organic compounds and other chemicals of biological interest lie on the surface. 3) Determining the thickness of icy layers, with emphasis on locating potential future landing sites. Origins and evolution Another main science objective would be to investigate the origin and evolution of these moons. This includes determining their interior structures, surface features and surface compositions in order to interpret their evolutionary histories (geology, geochemistry, geophysics) and how this contributes to the understanding of the origin and evolution of Earth. Radiation environments The mission would also determine the radiation environments around these moons and the rates at which the moons are weathered by material hitting their surfaces. Callisto, Ganymede and Europa all orbit within the powerful magnetic environment that surrounds Jupiter. They display varying effects from the natural radiation, charged particles and dust within this environment. Understanding this environment has implications for understanding whether life could have arisen on these distant moons. Fission fuel far from the Sun The spacecraft would be the first in a series of robotic NASA probes that rely on uranium-fueled fission reactors to generate large amounts of electricity. While probes such as Galileo and Cassini have made do with hundreds of watts of electricity, JIMO might have thousands of watts to power its thrusters and instruments, said Torrence Johnson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The reactor conceivably could produce enough electricity to power several U.S. homes. That could provide JIMO a hundredfold boost over previous missions in the amount of data it would be able to beam back to Earth. JIMO would carry high-resolution cameras and other instruments, including radar and lasers to map the thickness and elevation of the ice that envelops each moon. McKay's presentation posed the question: "How could a search for life be accomplished on a near-term mission given the thick ice cover?" One answer may lie in the surface materials. If Europa has an ocean, and if that ocean contains life, and if water from the ocean is carried up to the surface, then signs of life may be contained in organic material on the surface. Organics that derive from biological processes (dead organisms) are distinct from organics derived from non-biological processes in several aspects. First, biology is selective and specific in its use of molecules. For example, Earth life uses 20 left-handed amino acids. Second, biology can leave characteristic isotopic patterns. Third, biology often produces large complex molecules in high concentrations, for example lipids. Evidence of life in the ocean may be found on the surface of Europa if regions of the surface contained relatively recent material carried up from the ocean through cracks in the icy lithosphere. But organic material that has been on the surface of Europa for long periods of time would be reprocessed by the strong radiation field probably erasing any signature of biological origin". Uniqueness Other presentations described mission plans for science where JIMO might differ from the previous probes ranging from the recent Galileo, Cassini, Voyager series back to Pioneer. For instance, JIMO offers a potential breakthrough in remote sensing: The 1-3 Mbps [megabits per second] data rate is 2 orders of magnitude (100 times) greater than that of previous missions. The circular orbit offers continuous planet viewing during the 3 months between satellite encounters. The 10-30 kilowatts (kW) of power offers advantages for radio occultations and other active sensors. In addition, JIMO can carry a probe, which can determine the water abundance, deep winds, and thermal structure to 100 bars. Dust measurements have shown that the Galilean moons are surrounded by tenuous dust clouds formed by collisional ejecta from their icy surfaces, kicked up by impacts of interplanetary micrometeoroids. Even a flyby mission, without landing, thus may offer a chance to sample chemistry from the surface of these moons. On January 4th, a similar mission profile of flying through a dust cloud is planned for the comet sampling and return mission called Stardust. The economics of a flyby are considerably less complicated than landing, particularly for sample returns. The biological triad One of the most startling aspects of testing for life so far from the Sun, and potentially under 8 to 30 miles of ice, would be its energy source. As these inner Jovian moons orbit the powerful gravitational and magnetic fields of Jupiter, their surfaces flex and this tidal friction generates heat internally. Tidal dissipation in Jupiter is the ultimate source of the energy that powers Io's volcanism and may also be an important cause of heating in Europa and Ganymede. However, the mechanism of jovian tidal dissipation is still unknown. It takes at least three elements to harbor life as we know it: water, energy and an atmosphere. Among Mars and the moons around both Jupiter and Saturn (mainly its largest one, called Titan), there is evidence of one or two of these three elements, but less is known if a complete set is available. For instance, the icy Galilean satellites are known to have tenuous atmospheres of hydrogen (H2), oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2), among other species. A hydrogen corona has been detected around Ganymede and Callisto. An oxygen (O2) atmosphere has been inferred at Europa as a result of Hubble Telescope (HST) measurements of oxygen emission features. But only Saturn's moon, Titan, has an atmosphere comparable to Earth's in pressure, and is much thicker than the martian one (1% of earth's sea level pressure). A day on Mars is like continuously flying at 70,000 feet on Earth, as far as available air pressure. The icy satellites of Jupiter are embedded within the magnetosphere and as such, are constantly bombarded by intense radiation and charged particles. Salt plumes of sodium chloride have been observed by Hubble on the volcanic moon, Io. Ozone (O3) has been detected on Ganymede primarily in the polar regions, suggesting that the source is bombardment by electrons traveling along the field lines and impacting the polar ice. One reason planetary scientists want to update future imagery of these moons is to see if they change. Studying images of Ganymede and Callisto and Europa, especially at higher resolutions, will reveal if any changes have taken place since previous probes like Galileo or Voyager. Visible and infrared imaging may be able to detect thermal anomalies due to intrusions of warm water into ice for hundreds of years on Europa, and larger-scale thermal plumes could leave areas of thinner crust for up to a million years. These plumes might be detected by radar sounding from orbit. During its numerous flyby missions of the moons, Galileo provided spatial resolution down to a few meters but temporal resolution no better than a few months, and Earth-based techniques provide temporal resolution down to hours or days. Such changes over a short time period may suggest activity that serves as another remote signature for the partial triad of life: water, energy and a significant atmosphere. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article713.html. __________________________________________________________________________ PLANET-FORMATION MODEL INDICATES EARTHLIKE PLANETS MIGHT BE COMMON University of Washington release 10 December 2003 Astrobiologists disagree about whether advanced life is common or rare in our universe. But new research suggests that one thing is pretty certain- -if an Earthlike world with significant water is needed for advanced life to evolve, there could be many candidates. In 44 computer simulations of planet formation near a sun, astronomers found that each simulation produced one to four Earthlike planets, including 11 so-called "habitable" planets about the same distance from their stars as Earth is from our sun. "Our simulations show a tremendous variety of planets. You can have planets that are half the size of Earth and are very dry, like Mars, or you can have planets like Earth, or you can have planets three times bigger than Earth, with perhaps 10 times more water," said Sean Raymond, a University of Washington doctoral student in astronomy. Raymond is the lead author of a paper detailing the simulation results that has been accepted for publication in Icarus, the journal of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. Co- authors are Thomas R. Quinn, a UW associate astronomy professor, and Jonathan Lunine, a professor of planetary science and physics at the University of Arizona. The simulations show that the amount of water on terrestrial, or Earthlike, planets could be greatly influenced by outer gas giant planets like Jupiter. "The more eccentric giant planet orbits result in drier terrestrial planets," Raymond said. "Conversely, more circular giant planet orbits mean wetter terrestrial planets." In the case of our solar system, Jupiter's orbit is slightly elliptical, which could explain why Earth is 80 percent covered by oceans rather than being bone dry or completely covered in water miles deep. The findings are significant because of the discovery in recent years of a large number of giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn orbiting other suns. The presence, and orbits, of those planets can be inferred from their gravitational interaction with their parent stars and their effect on light from those stars as seen from Earth. It currently is impossible to detect Earthlike planets around other stars. However, if results from the models are correct, there could be planets such as ours around a number of other suns relatively close to our solar system. A significant number of those planets are likely to be in the "habitable zone," the distance from a star at which the planet's temperature will maintain liquid water on the surface. Liquid water is thought to be a requirement for life, so planets in a star's habitable zone are ideal candidates for life. It is unclear, however, whether those planets could harbor more than simple microbial life. The researchers note that their models represent the extremes of what is possible in forming Earthlike planets rather than what is typical of planets observed in our galaxy. For now, they said, it is unclear which approach is more realistic. Their goal is to understand what a system's terrestrial planets will look like if the characteristics of a system's giant planets are known, Raymond said. Quinn noted that all of the giant planets detected so far have orbits that carry them very close to their parent stars, so their orbits are completed in a relatively short time and it is easier to observe them. The giant planets observed close to their parent stars likely formed farther away and then, because of gravitational forces, migrated closer. But Quinn expects that giant planets will begin to be discovered farther away from their suns as astronomers have more time to watch and are able to observe gravitational effects during their longer orbits. He doubts such planets will be found before they have completed whatever migration they make toward their suns, because their orbits would be too irregular to observe with any confidence. "These simulations occur after their migration is over, after the orbits of the gas giants have stabilized," he said. The research is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Astrobiology Institute, its Planetary Atmospheres program, and Intel Corporation. Contacts: Sean Raymond Phone: 206-543-9039 E-mail: raymond@astro.washington.edu Thomas Quinn Phone: 206-685-9009 E-mail: trq@astro.washington.edu Jonathan Lunine Phone: 520-621-2789 E-mail: jlunine@lpl.arizona.edu Read the original news release at http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/2003archive/12- 03archive/k121003.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/earth-like_planets_031211.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0312/10earthlike/ http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/earthlike_worlds_fairly_common.htm l. __________________________________________________________________________ NIGHT LIGHTS: INTERVIEW WITH WOODY SULLIVAN From Astrobiology Magazine 10 December 2003 For University of Washington Professor, Woody Sullivan, his vita is both deep and broad. Self-described as an ETI Searcher, Gnomonicist, Outfielder, Scrabbler, Cyclist, Wordsmith, Quinquagenarian, Sublunarian-- Sullivan has something to offer on topics ranging from how to build a first-rate sundial for a Seattle mall or another planet, to how to think about the electromagnetic SETI signals that our own planet is broadcasting, or leaking. For instance, when Seattle computer scientist David Gedye first wondered what could be done with a huge network of home computers tied together with a screensaver, the hugely successful SETI@home project took shape. The guy Gedye went to for information about SETI and how to organize the project from scratch was Woody Sullivan. Five years after its launch, each day the SETI@home network contributes about one thousand years of equivalent computer processing time to the analysis of radio data. Indeed, SETI strategies have occupied Sullivan for nearly a quarter- century. From his years in designing SETI strategies, Sullivan thinks what Hollywood did with Carl Sagan's book, Contact, particularly the first half, is about as close as a popular film can get to what it's like to do real SETI research. Much of the opening sequence owes a debt to Sullivan, since he spearheaded the scientific understanding that the Earth is leaking electromagnetic signals all the time, mainly from TV and some military radars. Just as the film, Contact, begins, the viewer is taken on a voyage, as if riding such a signal from the depths of the universe until it zooms back towards Earth. Before Sullivan's work, previous SETI strategists more often thought of broadcast sources from another civilization as likely to be directed beacons, or singularly devoted transmitters. Instead Sullivan supposed a viewpoint about the more constant background noise, one that unavoidably might date back to the film's key plot-point when the advanced civilization finds the first terrestrial TV broadcast--the carrier signal when Adolf Hitler hauntingly introduced the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. "These are not great examples of our civilization," said Sullivan. To say Sullivan's interests are unconventional or eclectic however is perhaps not to capture the wide-range of projects that his career has spearheaded; his participation in astronomy has been both a mile-wide and a mile-deep, a combination which astrobiologists can tell you is exactly what it takes to handle research in his newest chosen field. "The fundamental question of the existence of extraterrestrial life is not new, but for the first time we can now carry out scientific experiments and observations to search for such life," writes Sullivan. In a way, each of his talents has been a good preparation for understanding a terrestrial future in which life might be detected elsewhere: patience and longevity (quinquagenarian), deciphering of signals (scrabbler), instrument building and engineering (gnomonicist and cyclist) and even some measure of luck (outfielder). For those less adept at wordsmithing than Professor Sullivan, the translation of his vitae has to do with the following facts about him. He is over fifty, a searcher for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), a designer of scientific instruments, including a number of landmark Seattle sundials (gnomonicist), a player of the game Scrabble, a bicyclist and baseball outfielder, and through his research in radio astronomy, is interested in probing the lunar interior with radar. To sum up his approach, he is fond of quoting Mark Twain, "We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they were made or only just happened." Astrobiology Magazine had the opportunity to talk with Woody Sullivan about some of his eclectic interests in a wide-ranging way, including his role in making possible such landmark projects as the Mars' sundials, the SETI@home screensavers, and his now famous posters, "Earth at Night". Astrobiology Magazine (AM): You are a sundial enthusiast, or gnomonicist. Your participation in the Mars' sundial project is part of their January 2004 landings. You were described by Bill Nye ("the Science Guy") as key to making their design possible for the first interplanetary sundials. How did you first get interested in sundials? Professor Woodruff Sullivan (WS): It came about from the building we're in. Since 1994, we have been in the Physics and Astronomy Building. I got a request to design the architectural dials for the building, and it started from there. I am very interested in the history of science. The architects liked the design. I spent around 6 person-months, in designing the dial, so it was a big project. I tried to make something that was in the long tradition of sundials, one that wouldn't need maintenance for 50 years. The University of Washington sundial is a well-known thing on campus, and in Seattle. AM: I thought the Sun didn't shine in Seattle? WS: That is why we appreciate the sun when it's out. I want to make Seattle the sundial capital of the world. My sundial phase has really been in the last decade. By dial projects, I mean big public displays: in high schools, in parks, in malls. Each one is unique. These are not just a plate with a triangle on top. Working with architects, scientists, construction workers, those people are a real kick to work with. Bill Nye got into sundials via his father originally. Bill and I saw our common interest in sundials. When he came up with the calibration target on the Mars rover, he thought of me. He asked me if I wanted to put a sundial on Mars. I answered immediately in email: Are you kidding? Is the Pope Catholic? Does Ken Griffey play centerfield for the Seattle Mariners (true at the time)? Does it rain in Seattle? So we got started. In the summer of 1999, it all had to be designed in 6 months. We madly pushed emails back and forth. We also wanted to make it look good. Over six months, we turned it into a sundial. We were able to fabricate the sundials in our shop at the University of Washington. I got our scientific instrument maker, who worked on the big dial on the Physics and Astronomy building. He designed the dials in their details. We had to get NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab to approve the epoxy. We had to anodize the metal. We had to glue in the silicone rubber, which attaches the rings and color patches. It all had to be color-calibrated. This was all very interesting to me--to make something that would rest on another planet. And fortunately, except for a very few high, thin clouds, most days on Mars are sunny. AM: What are the unique challenges of putting a sundial on a Mars' rover, either because the shadows are not intuitive or the platform itself is moving in direction all the time? WS: It wasn't originally a design that was meant to be read on a moving platform. The 2001 Mars mission was to be a home station, and the rover would go out from that home. The Pan camera was on the home, and it was stationery. About three months into the sundial design, the mission was cancelled. That threw everything up in the air. NASA said: "We are going to have the community bid on a 2003 mission". The Cornell people were again selected for the 2003 mission. NASA didn't feel confident in a retro-rocket landing, and went back to a bounce landing, as it was successful on the 1997 Mars Pathfinder. The Cornell people said they would use the same calibration target. So we changed the plate to read: 2004. But we had the big problem: a sundial on a moving vehicle. How do you know how the vehicle is oriented? We have now, because of this history, a sundial on a moving vehicle. We have to get the orientation from NASA. But NASA is going to get the vehicle's orientation by pointing the Pancam to find the sun in the martian sky. So ironically, they are going to use some of the same information that the sundial relies on for its shadow. Knowing the time, and seeing the shadow, we can find the same orientation. But still, what latitude is it going to be at? NASA said: "The landing site is going to be selected long after you have to deliver the dial". So we came up with superimposing the dials' hour lines via the web. Electronically we can change the selected lines and what they mean. Sundials can show about a dozen things other than just the hour or time of day, like what is the martian zodiac? On the web, I wanted to let the users define their own units. How many hours do they want? Do they want a personal calendar? We probably won't have the money to do the web site that way, but I liked the whole idea of spreading the sundial gospel. It is a great way to get people to think about their place in the cosmos. It gets people thinking. How does a sundial work on earth? How will it keep on time on another planet? The whole idea of it was great, as an educational project. There is a plan to do a movie about the Mars Dial. The idea is to take an image every 10 minutes, for fifty or so images, and show the passage of time in a dramatic way. AM: You are planning a terrestrial counterpart to what is happening on Mars, called The Earth Dial? WS: The idea of The Earth Dial is to do it in conjunction with the Mars' dials, with Bill Nye. This is something I've wanted to do for seven or eight years. The idea is set up dials all over the world, put webcams on them. Look at all these different sun dials at different longitudes on a single web page. You would get a palpable sense of time around the globe. You could follow the Earth's terminator, the night-day line, as it moves. The different latitudes would give you different patterns. The one in Sydney will look different from Seattle. They will all indicate the same time at the same longitude. We are in the mad-throws, because at the end of this month, we will have the first Earth Dial instructions on the Planetary Society web site. It is fairly specific, like all of them will be an eighty centimeter diameter circle. Like the Mars dials, the motto will be "Two Worlds, One Sun", which is a very nice motto. They will all read 2004. But we also want the local language on the Earth dials. You put the name of your town and country. So while they will all be the same--a post and ball on the end--the outer two rings will be evocative of the Mars' dials. On the circumference, or outer edges, they can do whatever they want. They can put whatever they want there. For instance, they can put individual artwork and languages, like Swahili or whatever. The Earth Dials will each have individuality. We have no idea how many we can solicit. We hope we will have several dozen, and a distribution around the globe. You never know. I was involved in SETI@home, and we never anticipated how popular that would become. The Earth Dials require more work than just downloading a screensaver, but you never know. The Earth Dials will run for six months, while the rovers will collect their own data. It is a coat-tail project to the Mars Dial. The Earth Dial homepage will be on the planetary society web site, by early November. AM: There is great scientific curiosity about how the atmospheric conditions on Mars might appear on camera. Lunar astronauts described the moon's shadow, not distorted by an atmosphere, as distinct and somewhat disorienting. Most films from Hollywood have a distinct red filter quality that is akin to wearing rose-colored glasses. How does one approach such a description of what the orange-pink corrections will actually look like in advance? WS: By "true colors", what does one mean by true? Do you mean what you would see on Mars? Or the scientific plot of intensity vs. wavelength? The scattered light from various molecules and dust particles influence the colors that you would see. Not as it would appear in a vacuum. It has a blue or grey cast on Earth because of scattering. Even the Earth shadows are not black, but more bluish. So first, you need to correct for scattering on Mars. Ultimately you want to find what kinds of rocks are on Mars, so you want to see their colors as they would appear in a laboratory. On the calibration targets, you look at those color scales on the Earth, as we calibrated their known values before launch, and then adjust the picture hue and tint to compensate for the local martian atmosphere or weather. The point is after taking the science data, of intensity vs. wavelength, a skilled person could translate that to what a human eye could see. AM: You have also been working in SETI fields for some time, correct? WS: Why am I so involved in astrobiology these days? I am trained in radio astronomy over the decades--interstellar molecules, those kinds of studies. I got interested in SETI about 25 years ago. I have eclectic interests. Here was a fascinating field. Within the SETI community, I got people to think about the leaking radiation from the Earth. Most SETI was set up mainly to look at beacons from another civilization. But we don't have a devoted beacon broadcasting from Earth even. A priori, we don't know that a civilization would set up a beacon. But we Earthlings are leaking all the time, just from our daily activities. So what are the sources of leaking radiation that could most easily be detected? Military radar, and TV. These are not great examples of our civilization. I call this eavesdropping. Sometimes when you eavesdrop, you get a better idea of what is really going on, say at a party. So when another civilization is eavesdropping on us, they may actually get a better idea about what is going on with Earth. There is more to Earth, as a planet, than what we could send on the gold record that travelled on the Voyager spacecraft. We, as a planet, are not just about listening to Chuck Berry. AM: What are the signals that our planet's civilization leaks now? WS: I was looking for the best combination for a signal being picked up from 10 to 100 light years away, and bearing information. Military radar, called the Ballistic Military Early Warning System or BMEWS, is a very powerful broadcast, but carries no real information. There are a couple other strong radars on the planet. The strongest radar is Arecibo, but it covers a very tiny bit of sky. The odds that you were in that patch, or broadcast path, are unlikely. So for a good signal for reception, you want to balance a trade-off between both powerful and broad-area beaming. About information, the input is not actual TV programs in the broadcast signal. But I was talking first about the video carrier, which is a single frequency carrier. Your TV locks onto it. You can't get the whole program information. From another planet, you could get a lot or dozens of those carriers, about a rotating planet with doppler shifts. That communicates a lot of information to a receiver. So what you want to imagine about what signals we Earthlings are optimally leaking to our neighbors: it should be broadly spread, strong, and possibly discernable as an intelligent signal. AM: You were instrumental in the now famous "Earth at Night" posters. How did this picture of urbanization from orbit become a personal interest? WS: In Time magazine, I had seen a picture of how the United States looked at night from orbit. So I asked: "Why hasn't anyone put an entire image of the earth?" I put it together in the mid 1980's. I published the poster. The image itself is from the Pentagon's weather satellite. The DMSP [Defense Meteorological Support System] is the satellite's name. Every twelve hours you have a new image of all the earth. I've been working on another edition. There is now better data, because the satellites are digital. Earth at Night II, is coming. This is also part of the my research historically, into what kinds of leaking radiation might help with SETI. I have also been curious about, "how humans are affecting the earth?" As a card-carrying Sierra Club member, I was interested in resource use. After working on the original "Earth at Night" poster, I later became a leader in the light pollution issue and how it affects astronomy. "Earth at Night" itself has nothing to do with SETI, because the sun is so much brighter and no civilization would first see a living planet because the lights are on. But if you were poking around in our solar system, you would see our presence from snapshots of light--the dark-light contrasts in our own night side is a good signal of life. AM: Do you have any reflections on the wild success of the SETI@home project? How do you feel about watching it evolve from the early SERENDIP project to more than 4.7 million computers? WS: Through the 1980s, we, the SETI community, had a low-scale program. Finally in 1991, we got ten to fifteen million dollars from Congress, then just as suddenly, it was axed. We had the software and hardware ready to go, and it was great sadness to lose it. Then the screensaver idea behind SETI@home came on. SETI@home was the idea of a computer scientist, David Gedye, who didn't know anything about SETI, but was an expert in distributed computing. Through a mutual friend, he came to me. At first, I was very skeptical. It is a very challenging problem, to push out radio data, process it locally, and keep track of everything that is going on. Foremost, where are we going to get all the data? Most of my SETI activities have been about optimizing strategy: when and where should you look for signals? This is now 1995-96, and finally, SETI@home looked like it might fly. From the perspective of public outreach, you not only were getting CPU [computer processing unit] cycles, you also were getting people from all over the earth to participate, and it is such a great forum for teaching people about SETI. So we started looking for scientific partners and sponsors. We looked at two groups of SETI researchers, and the ones in Berkeley, associated with the SERENDIP ("Search for Extraterrestrial Radio from Nearby Developed Populations") project, they were the best match. David Gedye, knew David Anderson [Gedye was a former computer science graduate student of Anderson's at Berkeley], and we started working with the Arecibo data. For sponsors, we knocked on the door at Sun, Microsoft and some others. We had some possible deals. But mostly they were too commercial, or wanted to work on UFO's. Finally SETI@home was launched in 1999. I pulled back more to an advisory role. Berkeley SETI has been doing a great job. AM: So you started working more in the field of astrobiology? WS: At that time, the University of Washington--we were just getting going with an astrobiology graduate course. This is where I'm devoting my time. Astrobiology--including the Mars' rock, the Europa ocean, the new planet discoveries, and the prospects for water on Mars--those findings all seemed to come together at once. We had a course in biological oceanography--called "Planets and Life"--with John Baross, and we had a lot of interest on campus. We got a National Science Foundation grant for graduate programs in astrobiology. As a student, you get a certificate in astrobiology. You get to do twenty-five percent more work than just your departmental degree, say, in microbiology, paleontology, or astronomy. But mainly, leaving the program, you're not afraid of collaborating with geologists, if you're an astronomer, or an oceanographer, if you're a microbiologist. I've always disliked the barriers in different departments. You can't easily cross borders intellectually. Astrobiology crosses those boundaries. We are now one of the NASA Astrobiology Institute members. In the astrobiology certificate program, we have 15 graduate students, and 20 to 25 faculty in different departments. John Baross and I are editing a graduate textbook called Planets and Life with Cambridge University Press. The idea of this textbook is "if I've heard about astrobiology, how to get the basic background". No matter what your background, if you have a bachelor's degree, we will lay things out so you can get at least two-thirds of the material. We cover the whole field in 25 chapters. It is expected for a late 2004 publication. AM: Chronologically, when do you demark the beginning of this field, astrobiology, for instance? WS: I am a student of the history of science. In my research, I have looked at radio astronomy in particular, as it grew directly out of radar work during World War II. I've thought about how new discoveries have been made. There is something of the same feeling in the past seven years in astrobiology, as was going on in early radio astronomy. And some of the same questions are being asked by astrobiologists. Should we have our own journals? Should we have our own societies? How do we communicate? Unlike the link between radar and what became radio astronomy, this was not a single technology, nor was it developed for war purposes. Astrobiology instead is a confluence of new discoveries. Before astrobiology, there was exobiology and SETI. There were societies devoted to the Origins of Life for 40 years. But with the martian meteorite, while probably a wrong conclusion as an example of fossilized life--that publication gave a kick start to astrobiology. And now new research says the next one may be right--in theory, the solar system supports or is capable of carrying rocks between planets, like panspermia. The next discovery was extrasolar planets. The reality of it raises tremendous excitement. The Kepler mission is really neat. If that one works, that is going to be fantastic. In five to six years, we may have a few dozen earths, or earth-like planets to look at. The third one is extremophiles. Over the last ten to twenty years, microbiologists have come to terms that there is far more than what they dreamt of in their philosophy. That gives more optimism to extremes as supporting life as perhaps we don't even understand it terrestrially yet. Then the happenings on Mars and Europa. Mars with liquid water on the surface. There is compelling evidence of liquid water even on the surface now, with these gullies. Europa's ocean is a longer term prospect. That whole concept, changes the way we think about habitable zones. For habitability, you need energy, time, the right chemical elements. But it doesn't have to between around an earth-like orbit, say 0.9 to 1.1 astronomical units (AU). If you throw in radioactive heating, you could get further away. Our whole thinking about the cosmos, has really gone to a whole different level since the 1990s. Amongst the pioneers in astrobiology, were the SETI community generally, the Viking project team, and the exobiologists. This also now has a lot to do with life on earth. This has caught on with more "there" there, because you are studying things right here on Earth. You're not just dreaming about the possibilities. Astrobiology is as much about life here. What's next? For the future, Sullivan's "to-do" list is no short scientific shopping trip. He has plans for a second "Earth at Night" poster, the images of which have already been stitched together. Sullivan is co-editing with oceanographer John Baross, also of Seattle, a graduate text book for astrobiology in twenty-five chapters and planned for publication in late 2004. From January to April of next year, two of his unique creative contributions will arrive and rove about on another planet. Each sundial is inscribed with the words "Two Worlds, One Sun" and bears the name "Mars" in 17 languages, including Bengali, Inuktituk, Lingala and Malay- Indonesian, as well as ancient Sumerian and Mayan. Four gold panels along the sides of the sundials are inscribed with stick-figure drawings of people (called "sticksters"), as well as a message to future Mars explorers. To commemorate these first interplanetary sundials, he will help the Planetary Society tie together a large part of the Earth to view from one location, the passage of time simultaneously, and include a disperse set of webcams in their native languages and artistic cultures. Orbital projections of where the two NASA Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are right now, can be continuously monitored over their half-year journeys. Even a cursory glance at his "Earth at Night" view, must reveal at least one tiny, glowing dot along the northwest coast of the United States that is Sullivan's office. Whether the weather in Seattle is cooperative or not with his plans for catching the sun's shadow in the Pacific Northwest, Woody Sullivan may likely have a night light on for the foreseeable future. Collaborators on the Mars Sundial project include: * Bill Nye, a 1977 Cornell engineering graduate, Rhodes Class of '56 Professor and host of the PBS show, "Bill Nye the Science Guy", and the upcoming "Eyes of Nye" television shows; * Steven Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and principal investigator for the Athena suite of science instruments carried by the rovers; * Jim Bell, Cornell assistant professor of astronomy and lead researcher for the high-resolution stereo Pancams carried by both rovers; * Woodruff "Woody" Sullivan, sundial enthusiast and professor of astronomy at the University of Washington; * Tyler Nordgren, Cornell Ph.D. '97, an artist and astronomer at the University of Redlands in California; * Jon Lomberg, an artist and creative consultant to the Mauna Kea Center for Astronomy Education, University of Hawaii at Hilo; * Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article714.html. __________________________________________________________________________ OTHER INTELLIGENT LIFE... AT THE OBSERVATORY By Peter Backus From Space.com 11 December 2003 The details of SETI observing are engrossing--so much so that when we launch a Phoenix observation run, it is all too easy to forget that the enormous dish just beyond the control room is actually used by others as well. While I shouldn't be surprised to see old friends on the observatory grounds, seeing my friend Joel Weisberg and two of his Carleton students at breakfast was an unexpected pleasure, and reminded me that the human universe we observe at Arecibo is just as rich and compelling as the one we scan for signals. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_arecibo_backus_031211.html. __________________________________________________________________________ UA SCIENTIST EXPLAINS WHY ASTROBIOLOGISTS LOOK TO TITAN By Lori Stiles University of Arizona release 11 December 2003 Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the best place in the solar system to study primordial soup--the stuff from which life emerged. In January 2005, planetary scientists will get a closer look at Titan's version of primordial soup when the European Space Agency's Huygens probe floats to the surface. The probe currently is riding aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which will reach Saturn next July. "Cassini/Huygens will tell us all about the organics in the atmosphere, the stuff that's photochemically processed by sunlight and falls to the surface," said University of Arizona planetary sciences Professor Jonathan I. Lunine. "But what it won't be quite so good at is telling us what goes on at the surface." Lunine is one of the three interdisciplinary scientists on the Cassini/Huygens mission, and heads NASA's Astrobiology Institute focus group on Titan. This group includes scientists who want to learn more about the organic chemistry of Titan's environments. In addition, Lunine and Mark Smith collaborate with Caltech and NASA Jet Propulsion Lab scientists and engineers in designing an organic chemistry laboratory that could be deployed to Titan's surface. Smith is head of UA's chemistry department. "We really don't know how life formed on the Earth, or on whatever planet it formed," Lunine said. "Because we are organic, with carbon and hydrogen, we want to know more about organic molecules. How do molecules change chemically into biomolecules in an environment that is not conducive to life? There are no traces left of how it happened on Earth because all of Earth's organic molecules have been processed biochemically by now. Titan is our best chance to study organic chemistry in a planetary environment occurring in the absence of life over billions of years." Scientists have focused much of their attention on Titan's thick atmosphere, which is four times denser than Earth's atmosphere at sea level. Like Earth, and unlike Mars and Venus, Titan has mostly a nitrogen atmosphere. But because Titan is 10 times farther from the sun than Earth, surface temperatures hover around minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit. That's too cold for water vapor, even though the planet-like moon is half rock and half water. Titan's primarily nitrogen atmosphere contains methane. Methane reacts with ultraviolet sunlight, forming organic compounds that flake from the sky. The thick atmosphere protects the hydrocarbons and other organic solids that settle on the surface from being destroyed by damaging particle and ultraviolet radiation. Some of these organic molecules are thought to have been important in Earth's prebiotic environment. "Cassini-Hugygens will be the stepping stone that will tell us where the organics are located on the surface, and it will tell us whether there are differences in organics that have been deposited in craters or in regions that seem to have been resurfaced by cyrovolcanism." Cryovolcanism is volcanism where the fluid is not molten rock, but liquid water that possibly includes ammonia and other antifreezes. "These are interesting places because liquid water might have been briefly present and modified the organics in some way." Last year, Lunine and Natalia Artemieva of the Institute for Geospheres in Moscow published a paper on how much water ice in Titan would melt if the moon were hit by an asteroid or other object, and how that would affect organic materials on Titan's surface. If astrobiologists don't get some answers from Titan, they'll have to hunt for them in other solar systems. "Our solar system can be a frustrating place," Lunine said. "There are only nine planets--some people say eight because they exclude Pluto--and there are only 60 moons, not 6,000. And of those 60 moons and 8 or 9 planets, there's only one place without life that has abundant organic chemistry, energy sources, a solid surface where organic molecules can actually survive and be processed, sometimes along with liquid water. And that place is Titan." Read the original news release at http://uanews.org/cgi- bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/5/wa/SRStoryDetails?ArticleID=8348&wosid=iGnFrdx G2B9tZbc97CaEcg. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/titan_important_life.html. __________________________________________________________________________ INTERNATIONAL TITAN CONFERENCE--3RD ANNOUNCEMENT ESA release 11 December 2003 International Conference on the occasion of the 375th birthday of Christiaan Huygens, (born 14 April 1629). In the 17th century, Christiaan Huygens was one of the most respected leading European scientists. He was the first of what we would today call a "scientific director" of the Académie Française. A highlight in his carrier was the discovery of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in 1655 Abstract Submission extended to 15th January 2004. Abstract submission Papers will be selected either as contributed paper or as poster on the basis of abstracts not exceeding 1 page. The abstracts should outline clearly and precisely the major interests and novelty of the papers on the topics: * Christiaan Huygens, the person, scientist and interactions * The Cassini-Huygens mission in historical perspective, the contribution of Gerard Kuiper * Recent results of Saturn/Titan observations (ground- and space-based) and theoretical studies * Amateur astronomers' observations of Saturn and Titan Abstracts should be sent before 15 January 2004 to ESA Conference Bureau and may be submitted by using the Abstract Submission Form (preferred method of submission) at http://www.congrex.nl/04a01. Should it not be possible at all to submit your abstract through the above web page, you may also send it by e-mail to esa.conference@bureauesa.int. Abstracts should contain the following information: Name and proposed topic/subtopic for the paper Title of paper Author's full name Name and affiliation of author(s) Addresses, e-mail, telephone and fax numbers Name of the prime author or contact person The author(s) should also indicate whether the papers are proposed for an oral or a poster presentation. Authors will be notified of the decision of the program committee by 30 January 2004. Authors whose papers have been accepted will then receive instructions for the preparation of their full-length paper for inclusion in the proceedings of the event. Additional information is available at http://sci2.esa.int/huygens/conference/. __________________________________________________________________________ NASA TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT "WEIRD LIFE" BEYOND EARTH By Leonard David From Space.com 13 December 2003 NASA is assessing support for a major look into the limits of organic life in planetary systems. The purpose of the imaginative study is twofold: to evaluate the possibility that "non-standard" chemistry may support life in known solar system environments and conceivably in extra-solar settings; and to define broad areas that might guide NASA and other agencies to fund efforts to expand knowledge in this area. The assessment would take place over a 15-month time period, undertaken by a National Academy of Sciences study group within the National Research Council's Space Studies Board in Washington, DC. The expected go-ahead on the effort stems from a "Weird Life" Planning Session, held in April 2002 by the National Research Council's Committee on the Origins and Evolution of Life. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/nasa_astrobiology_031212.html. __________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/ 15 December 2003 Astrobiology and planetary engineering articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles1.html American Geophysical Union, 2003. Finding JIMO, Jupiter's Icy Moon Orbiter. Astrobiology Magazine. Astrobiology Magazine, 2003. Martian dangers: staring at the Sun. Astrobiology Magazine. L. David, 2003. NASA to take a closer look at "weird life" beyond Earth. Space.com. M. C. Malin and K. S. Edgett, 2003. Evidence for persistent flow and aqueous sedimentation on early Mars. Science, 302(5652): 1931-1934. L. Stiles, 2003. Why Titan is important in the search for life. Universe Today. U. Sutliff, 2003. Could martian life fool us? Universe Today. SETI articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles4.html P. Backus, 2003. Arecibo diaries VI: other intelligent life... at the observatory. Space.com. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html Royal Holloway, University of London, 2003. Global wildfires did not kill the dinosaurs. SpaceDaily. Extrasolar planets articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles7.html R. R. Britt, 2003. Earth-like planets common, computer simulation suggests. Space.com. Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Councils UK, 2003. Vega's likeness for new planets. Astrobiology Magazine. University of Washington, 2003. Earthlike planets might be common, model indicates. Spaceflight Now. University of Washington, 2003. Earthlike worlds could be fairly common. Universe Today. __________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 4-10 December 2003 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Monday, December 8. 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 transition from reaction wheels to the reaction control subsystem, uplink of Probe pre-heating checkout tests 1A and 2, execution of Probe test 1A with orbiter instruments in sleep and muted, uplink of the Composite Infrared Spectrometer flight software checkout, a Radio and Plasma Wave Science High Frequency Receiver calibration, and uplink of an Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer recovery mini-sequence to execute next week. Deliveries were made for both the preliminary and official port 2 as part of the Science Planning Team process for C44. The European Space Agency began the Huygens Mission Delta Flight Acceptance Review (FAR) with a kickoff meeting last week at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, Netherlands. The overall purpose of the review is to examine the changes in the Huygens mission that have been implemented since the FAR that was conducted six months prior to launch. Specific objectives of the review are the validation of the new mission scenario designed to recover from the receiver anomaly, the re-validation of the entry and descent (with respect to the revised atmosphere model), and the confirmation of the readiness of operations preparations for the revised Huygens Mission. The review team has split into three panels to focus on each of the primary objectives. The panels will meet over the next six weeks to review the documentation and prepare requests for further discussion. There will be a final co- located set of panel meetings in early February and the review will conclude with a board meeting on February 13. The Navigation team completed the third segment of team test and training. This segment included processing of the tracking data from Saturn Orbit Insertion to Tb, the second Titan encounter. Both the spacecraft and major satellite ephemeredes were estimated. A Software Review/Certification Requirements meeting for Cosmic Dust Analyzer v9.2 flight software (FSW) was held this week. The FSW has been uplink in January as part of C42 sequence activities. A number of delivery coordination meetings were held last week for Telemetry, Tracking, Command & Data Management 28.1.1, Remote Terminal Interface Unit V3.0 software, Electronic Command Request Form V1.1, Cassini Operations Reference Encyclopedia 4.0, and E-Kernel Generation V1.1 The Cassini web site has a new look. To comply with agency-wide portal design specifications, the Cassini web site has rolled out a new graphics environment. Also new to the web site are major content enhancements to the kids' section. To view the site go to http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm. 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 [EXPRESS] IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER ESA release 81-2003 9 December 2003 After a journey of 400 million km, ESA's Mars Express is now approaching its final destination. On 19 December, the spacecraft is scheduled to release the Beagle 2 lander it has been carrying since its launch on 2 June. At 9:31 CET, ESA's ground control team at Darmstadt (Germany) will send the command for the Beagle 2 lander to separate from Mars Express. A pyrotechnic device will be fired to slowly release a loaded spring, which will gently push Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft. Data on the spacecraft's position and speed will be used by mission engineers to assess whether the lander was successfully released. In addition, the onboard Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) should provide an image showing the lander slowly moving away. The image is expected to be available mid-afternoon. Beagle 2 will then continue its journey towards the surface of Mars, where it is expected to land on 25 December, early in the morning. At the same time, the Mars Express orbiter should be maneuvering to enter into orbit around Mars. In view of the complexity of this operation, the Mars Express control team has been trained to deal with the eventuality that separation might not be achieved at the first attempt. If that did turn out to be the case, there is a series of procedures that has already been set up and tested for completing the maneuver successfully within the subsequent 40 hours. The "separation" event can be followed live at ESA/ESOC on Friday 19 December from 8:30 to 15:00. A videoconference will link the control center at Darmstadt with ESA Headquarters in Paris (F), and ESA/ESRIN at Frascati (I). Highlights of this event will be streamed over the Internet at http://mars.esa.int at the following times: 09:09 UT - 09:32 UT 11:25 UT - 11.47 UT 12:00 UT - 12:10 UT As well as live streaming of key events, the Mars Express site will have daily news, features, images, videos and more. Contact: ESA Media Relations Service Phone: +33(0)1.53.69.7155 Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690 Read the original news release at http://www.esa.int/export/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEM100VZJND_0.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article716.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/mars_express_nearly_arrived.html __________________________________________________________________________ CHRISTMAS ON MARS: BE THERE WITH ESA ESA release 82-2003 15 December 2003 Launched on 2 June 2003, after a six-month cruise at an average speed of about 10 kilometers per second and covering a distance of about 400 million kilometers, ESA's Mars Express will arrive at Mars on Christmas Day. After a very complicated and challenging series of operations during the night of 24/25 December 2003, the probe will be injected into an elliptical orbit near the poles of the Red planet, while the Beagle 2 lander--released from the mother craft six days earlier--is expected to touchdown on the surface of Mars. The exciting event can be followed at ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, on Thursday, 25 December, from 01:30 to 14:00, together with the mission managers, the operation teams, scientists and top ESA management, including ESA's Director-General Jean- Jacques Dordain, ESA's Director of Science David Southwood and ESA's Director of Technical and Operational Support Gaele Winters. The highlights of the night will be also webcast over the internet at http://mars.esa.int. As well as live streaming of key events, the Mars Express site will have daily news, features, images, videos and more. The ESA TV Service will provide live coverage of operations, from the Operations Control Centre at ESOC. All transmission and satellite details are published online at http://television.esa.int. All live transmissions are also carried free- to-air on Astra 2 C at 19 degrees East, transponder 57, horizontal, (DVB- MPEG-2), frequency 10832 MHz, Symbol Rate 22000 MS/sec, FEC 5/6. Contact: ESA Media Relations Service Phone: +33 (0)1 53 69 71 55 Fax: +33 (0)1 53 69 76 90 __________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 4-10 December 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Polygons near Lyot Crater (Released 04 December 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/04/index.html Tithonium Chasma's Sedimentary Rocks (Released 05 December 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/05/index.html Crater in Marte Vallis (Released 06 December 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/06/index.html Small Dust Storm in Syria/Claritas (Released 07 December 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/07/index.html Troughs in Tempe Terra (Released 08 December 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/08/index.html Wind-Eroded Terrain near Olympus Mons (Released 09 December 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/09/index.html Layers in Tithonium (Released 10 December 2003) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/10/index.html All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are archived at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/index.html. Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA, and Denver, CO. __________________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 10, Number 49.