Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 10, Number 50, 26 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. 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 (http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs). 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. [http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2003/12/26/index.html] This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) picture displays polygons outlined by cracks in the martian south polar region. This southern summer view was acquired in October 2003 and is located near 86.9°S, 170.6°W. Polygons similar in size and shape to these are common in the arctic and antarctic regions of Earth. On Earth, they indicate the presence (or the past presence) of ground ice and the freeze-thaw cycles that accompany this ice. On Mars, whether ground ice was responsible for these landforms is uncertain, but their presence is suggestive that ground ice may exist or may once have existed in this region. The picture covers an area 3 km (1.9 mi) wide. Sunlight illuminates the scene from the upper left. Image credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS. __________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS Articles and News 1) MARS MAY BE EMERGING FROM AN ICE AGE NASA release 2003-169 2) CHRISTMAS DAY MARS LANDING By Karen Miller 3) BIG TELESCOPE, SMALL SIGNALS By Seth Shostak 4) COMET ENCOUNTER IS KEY MOMENT IN UW ASTRONOMER'S LONG SCIENTIFIC QUEST University of Washington release 5) WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARS POLAR LANDER? U.S. SPY AGENCIES MIGHT KNOW By Leonard David 6) ION ENGINE UNDER CONSIDERATION FOR JUPITER MISSION PASSES TEST NASA release 2003-173 7) FIRST IMAGES SHOW ORGANIC MOLECULES By Leslie Mullen 8) ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS CALLS FOR HUMANS TO MARS Mars Society release 9) ESA'S BEAGLE: SNIFFING OUT LIFE ON MARS By Stephen Hart and Henry Bortman Announcements 10) OXYGEN IN THE TERRESTRIAL PLANETS Lunar and Planetary Institute release 11) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas Mission Reports 12) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 13) MARS DESERT RESEARCH STATION THIRD FIELD SEASON UNDERWAY Mars Society release 14) MARS EXPRESS RELEASES BEAGLE 2 ESA release 83-2003 15) MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM MARS--MARS EXPRESS ENTERS ORBIT AROUND THE RED PLANET, CONTACT AWAITED WITH BEAGLE 2 ON THE SURFACE ESA release 84-2003 16) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 17) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 18) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release __________________________________________________________________________ MARS MAY BE EMERGING FROM AN ICE AGE NASA release 2003-169 17 December 2003 NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey missions have provided evidence of a recent ice age on Mars. In contrast to Earth's ice ages, a martian ice age waxes when the poles warm up and water vapor is transported toward lower latitudes. Martian ice ages wane when the poles cool and lock water into polar icecaps. The "pacemakers" of ice ages on Mars appear to be much more extreme than the comparable drivers of climate change on Earth. Variations in the planet's orbit and tilt produce remarkable changes in the distribution of water ice from polar regions down to latitudes equivalent to Houston or Egypt. Researchers, using NASA spacecraft data and analogies to Earth's Antarctic Dry Valleys, report their findings in the Thursday, December 18 edition of the journal Nature. "Of all the solar system planets, Mars has the climate most like that of Earth. Both are sensitive to small changes in orbital parameters," said planetary scientist Dr. James Head of Brown University, Providence, RI, lead author of the study. "Now we're seeing that Mars, like Earth, is in a period between ice ages." Discoveries on Mars, since 1999, of relatively recent water-carved gullies, glacier-like flows, regional buried ice and possible snow packs created excitement among scientists who study Earth and other planets. Information from the Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions provided more evidence of an icy recent past. Head and his co-authors from Brown (Drs. John Mustard and Ralph Milliken), Boston University (Dr. David Marchant) and Kharkov National University, Ukraine (Dr. Mikhail Kreslavsky) examined global patterns of landscape shapes and near-surface water ice mapped by the orbiters. They concluded that a covering of water ice mixed with dust mantled the surface of Mars to latitudes as low as 30 degrees, and is now degrading and retreating. By observing the small number of impact craters in those features and by ba estimated the most recent ice age occurred just 400,000 to 2.1 million years ago, very recent in geological terms. "These results show that Mars is not a dead planet, but it undergoes climate changes that are even more pronounced than on Earth," Head said. Marchant, a glacial geologist who has spent 17 field seasons in the Mars- like Antarctic Dry Valleys, said, "These extreme changes on Mars provide perspective for interpreting what we see on Earth. Landforms on Mars that appear to be related to climate changes help us calibrate and understand similar landforms on Earth. Furthermore, the range of microenvironments in the Antarctic Dry Valleys helps us read the Mars record." Mustard said, "The extreme climate changes on Mars are providing us with predictions we can test with upcoming Mars missions, such as Europe's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers. Among the climate changes that occurred during these extremes is warming of the poles and partial melting of water at high altitudes. This clearly broadens the environments in which life might occur on Mars." According to the researchers, during a martian ice age, polar warming drives water vapor from polar ice into the atmosphere. The water comes back to ground at lower latitudes as deposits of frost or snow mixed generously with dust. This ice-rich mantle, a few meters or yards thick, smoothes the contours of the land. It locally develops a bumpy texture at human scales, resembling the surface of a basketball and also seen in some Antarctic icy terrains. When ice at the top of the mantling layer sublimes back into the atmosphere, it leaves behind dust, which forms an insulating layer over remaining ice. On Earth, by contrast, ice ages are periods of polar cooling. The buildup of ice sheets draws water from liquid-water oceans, which Mars lacks. "This exciting new research really shows the mettle of NASA's 'follow-the- water' strategy for studying Mars," said Dr. Jim Garvin, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration. "We hope to continue pursuing this strategy in January, if the Mars Exploration Rovers land successfully. Later, the 2005 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and 2007 Phoenix near-polar lander will be able to directly follow up on these astounding findings by Professor Head and his team." Global Surveyor has been orbiting Mars since 1997, Odyssey since 2001. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages both missions for the NASA Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Information about NASA's Mars missions is available on the Internet at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov. Contacts: Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 Mark Nickel Brown University, Providence, RI Phone: 401-863-2476 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article727.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/mars_ice_age.html __________________________________________________________________________ CHRISTMAS DAY MARS LANDING By Karen Miller From NASA Science News 17 December 2003 It's wintertime in the northern hemisphere of Mars, and a flying saucer is about to land. Back on Earth where it comes from, the craft is known as the Beagle 2, sent to Mars by the European Space Agency in search of life. More accurately, the Beagle 2 will be looking for chemical traces of life- -telltale signs that life once existed, or perhaps, exists right now on the red planet. Touchdown is scheduled for Christmas Day 2003. The Beagle 2 will precede two NASA rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, slated to land in January. Named after the ship that carried Charles Darwin, the Beagle 2 is a self- contained laboratory shaped like a saucer, or a pocket watch, about three feet in diameter. Although it carries many powerful scientific tools, it weighs a mere 70 pounds. Being so light and compact, the Beagle 2 was able to hitch a ride to Mars onboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft launched last June. While Mars Express, an orbiter, surveys the planet from a few hundred miles up, the Beagle 2 will be able to stick its devices right into Mars, sampling rocks and soil on the surface and below. NASA's Everett Gibson, the interdisciplinary scientist for the Mars Express/Beagle 2 mission, explains: "We have two [ways] to get samples: a rock abrasion tool, and a burrowing mole." Both are embedded in the Beagle's robotic arm. "The rock abrasion tool goes right up against a rock, removes its weathered surface, and can continue to go in and take out a little core-- about 20 to 100 milligrams of sample," he says. The ability to remove the surface of a rock is important, as scientists learned when NASA's Sojourner rover scrutinized Mars rocks in 1997. They all looked much the same because their surfaces had been weathered by dusty winds and solar radiation. Beagle 2 will be able to sample the variety that lies within. The other tool, "the mole," is able to reach as far as two meters from the Beagle 2 and drill down about one and a half meters, gathering samples in its hollow mouth. Just like the core samples collected from inside rocks, Everett explains, soil found underground will have been shielded from, and less altered by, solar ultraviolet radiation. In these more protected samples, indications of life may be more likely to exist. As samples are collected, they'll be brought back into the Beagle and heated in one of the lab's ovens. Gases released by this process will be analyzed by a mass spectrometer. The Beagle will check for biological signatures by, in part, looking carefully at the types of carbon that it finds. Basically, carbon comes in both a lighter variety--carbon-12--and a heavier variety--carbon-13. On Earth, things that are alive tend to prefer the lighter kind. They use more carbon-12 in their metabolism. If the spectrometer identifies a sample containing more carbon-12 than would be expected in an inorganic sample of soil, that might be a sign that life had once dwelled there. The spectrometer will also check the atmosphere for traces of methane. This gas can be produced by living creatures. On Earth it comes from sources such as termites, cows, and swamps; on Mars it might come from extreme-loving microbes. Methane on Mars should be destroyed quickly, probably within a matter of months, by the planet's strong ultraviolet radiation. This means that if Beagle 2 detects any methane, something must have created it very recently. If the Beagle 2 can find methane, says Gibson, "it will go a long way to answering that key question: Are biological processes operating on Mars?" On December 19, the Mars Express orbiter will eject the Beagle. From then on, the little laboratory is on its own. On Christmas Day it will hit the martian atmosphere at a speed of about 12 thousand miles per hour. The resistance of the atmosphere will begin to slow it down, as a shield protects it from the heat of descent. A series of parachutes will emerge, each slowing the Beagle even more. At 200 meters above the surface, three gas-filled airbags will inflate to cushion its landing. The Beagle is expected to touch down within the Isidis Planitia Basin. The landing site is at a low enough elevation to allow Mars' thin atmosphere enough time to slow the Beagle down. There are also some indications that Isidis Planitia contains ice, making it a promising place to look for signs of life. Once the Beagle lands, it will open up, like a pocket watch. Four solar panels will emerge, and begin charging its batteries. It will send a signal saying that it's arrived. "When the Beagle lands," says Gibson, "we won't know immediately, because we have to wait till Odyssey passes over." Odyssey is a NASA spacecraft that's been orbiting Mars for the past two years. "The signal from the Beagle will hopefully be detected by Odyssey," says Gibson. Odyssey will send that signal on. And, about four to six hours after the Beagle lands, its first message should reach the Earth--hopefully the first of many. The Beagle will continue its mission for about six months, collecting data and transmitting it back to Earth via the orbiters Mars Express and Odyssey. Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/17dec_beagle2.htm?list52260. __________________________________________________________________________ BIG TELESCOPE, SMALL SIGNALS By Seth Shostak From Space.com 18 December 2003 I was doing my best to stay awake while the Arecibo shuttle nosed its way into the dark, bumpy hills south of the city. My driver was silent, intent on dodging the homeless dogs and feral cats that line the road. Eventually, the night sky was broken by the red lights of the telescope towers, poking above the rump of a hill. I stepped out of the van into a wall of humid air. Below me, barely discernable amid the shadowy vegetation, hulked the telescope dish. Here, 18 acres of aluminum mesh sprawl across the landscape, silently collecting radio noise from the distant depths of the universe. This is the big one, the alpha male of telescopes; the largest single antenna on the planet. Large, however, is a relative term... Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_arecibo_shostak_031218.html. __________________________________________________________________________ COMET ENCOUNTER IS KEY MOMENT IN UW ASTRONOMER'S LONG SCIENTIFIC QUEST University of Washington release 19 December 2003 After a nearly five-year chase, the Stardust spacecraft will finally meet comet Wild 2 on the day after New Year's. It's a moment Donald Brownlee has anticipated for nearly 25 years. "This could prove to be a pivotal time for science, a remarkable opportunity to gather evidence that might actually tell us how the planets formed and give us clues about how life on Earth began," said Brownlee, a University of Washington astronomer and principle investigator for the Stardust mission. On January 2, Wild 2 (pronounced Vilt) will overtake Stardust about 242 million miles from Earth, on the other side of the sun. The spacecraft will capture tiny grains streaming through the coma, the gas-and-dust envelope around the comet's icy nucleus. A tennis-racquet shaped collector, using a wispy material called aerogel, will harvest comet grains as they speed past. Meanwhile, a high-gain antenna will transmit close-up pictures and sensitive instruments will gather data about the comet. Though the encounter will last about 12 hours, the really intense activity will be over in a matter of minutes. The action will be monitored closely in Stardust's nerve centers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, and Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver. The comet particles will be traveling five times faster than a bullet from a rifle, but the aerogel will stop them in a fraction of an inch. However, because aerogel is as much as 99.9 percent empty space, it will not damage the grains or appreciably alter their characteristics, Brownlee said. The spacecraft is scheduled to return to Earth in January 2006 and a capsule containing its treasure--less than an ounce of comet dust--will parachute to the Utah desert. The contents will be sent to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and then parceled out to scientists around the world, who will begin trying to unlock secrets of the early solar system. Thousands of tons of microscopic comet particles blanket Earth each year. "Unfortunately, they are difficult to find among the earthly materials," Brownlee said. "And even when extraterrestrial particles can be found, they are cosmic orphans--there is no way to determine their origin." And such particles cannot give the same kind of information as those taken directly from a comet like Wild 2, he said. That's because Wild 2 only recently started orbiting close to the sun and so there hasn't been enough time for the sun's heat to destroy characteristics that have been preserved in the cold of deep space for billions of years. Before 1974, the comet's solar orbit extended from Jupiter to beyond Uranus. But Jupiter's gravity altered Wild 2's course, bringing it close enough--just beyond the orbit of Mars--to make the Stardust mission feasible. "This gives us a real opportunity to find out if our long-held suspicions are right, that comets played a major role in the origin of life," Brownlee said. "No one really knows how life began, but we're certain that carbon was key to the process. Comets are the most carbon-rich materials in the solar system, and we know they are full of organic compounds that fall on the Earth all the time." In addition, comets delivered a significant share of the Earth's water. Brownlee, along with colleague Peter Tsou at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, began considering the possibility of a comet mission in 1980. Five years later he and a team of NASA scientists tried to formulate a mission to Halley's comet, but that proved to be unworkable. However, technological advances and the fortunate orbit change made a mission to Wild 2 possible. Stardust, the fourth in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's series of Discovery missions and the first mission designed to return samples from beyond Mars, was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on February 7, 1999. It is currently on its third giant loop around the sun, and will have traveled some 3.1 billion miles by the end of its voyage. In November 2002, the spacecraft successfully tested systems it will use in the Wild 2 encounter during a flyby of Asteroid 5535 Annefrank. During its nearly five years in space, it also has captured interstellar dust using the opposite side of the collector that will gather the grains from Wild 2. Stardust is a collaboration of the UW, NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Other key members are The Boeing Co., the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, NASA Ames Research Center and the University of Chicago. For more information, contact Brownlee at brownlee@bluemoon.astro.washington.edu or 206-543-8575. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article729.html. __________________________________________________________________________ WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARS POLAR LANDER? U.S. SPY AGENCIES MIGHT KNOW By Leonard David From Space.com 22 December 2003 On January 3, 1999, NASA's Mars Polar Lander roared away from Earth on a bold mission to explore a unique region of the red planet. The spacecraft was to gently set itself down near the border of Mars' southern polar cap, the first ever spacecraft to study the distant world's polar environment. After months of crossing interplanetary space, Mars Polar Lander was in the final minutes of slowing itself down, ready to make a self-controlled touch down. It was never heard from again. Nobody knows for sure exactly what occurred at journey's end. The loss of the Mars Polar Lander became a detective story that pitted photo analysts at a super-secret spy agency and NASA experts about the overall condition of the lost-to-Mars probe. It's a saga of light and dark pixels, egos, and professional courtesy, and a report that never saw the light of day, until now. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/mars_polar_lander_031222.html. __________________________________________________________________________ ION ENGINE UNDER CONSIDERATION FOR JUPITER MISSION PASSES TEST NASA release 2003-173 23 December 2003 A new ion propulsion engine design, one of several candidate propulsion technologies under study by NASA's Project Prometheus for possible use on the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission, has been successfully tested by a team of engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. The event marked the first performance test of the Nuclear Electric Xenon Ion System (Nexis) ion engine at the high-efficiency, high-power, and high-thrust operating conditions needed for use in nuclear electric propulsion applications. For this test the Nexis engine was powered using commercial utility electrical power. Ion engines used on the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter spacecraft would draw their power from an on- board space nuclear reactor. The ion engines, or electric thrusters, would propel the orbiter around each of the icy worlds orbiting Jupiter-- Ganymede, Callisto and Europa--to conduct extensive, close-range exploration of their makeup, history and potential for sustaining life. "On the very first day of performance testing, the Nexis thruster demonstrated one of the highest efficiencies of any xenon ion thruster ever tested," said Dr. James Polk, the principal investigator of the ion engine under development at JPL. The test was conducted on December 12, in the same vacuum chamber at JPL where earlier this year, the Deep Space 1 flight spare ion thruster set the all time endurance record of 30,352 hours (nearly 3.5 years) of continuous operation. The Nexis engine operated at a power level of over 20 kilowatts, nearly 10 times that of the Deep Space 1 thruster, which enables greater thrust and ultimately higher spacecraft velocities for a given spacecraft mass. It is designed to process two metric tons of propellant, 10 times the capability of the Deep Space 1 engine, and operate for 10 years, two to three times the Deep Space 1 thruster life. Team members working on the Nexis engine also helped develop the first ion engine ever flown on NASA's highly successful Deep Space 1 mission, which validated 12 high-risk advanced technologies, among them the use of the first ion engine in space. "The Nexis thruster is a larger, high performance descendant of the Deep Space 1 thruster that achieves its extraordinary life by replacing the metal, previously used in key components, with advanced carbon based materials," said Tom Randolph, the Nexis program manager at JPL. "The thruster's revolutionary performance results from an extensive design process including simulations using detailed computer models developed and validated with the Deep Space 1 life test, and other component test data." Unlike the short, high-thrust burns of most chemical rocket engines that use solid or liquid fuels, the ion engine emits only a faint blue glow of electrically charged atoms of xenon--the same gas found in photo flash tubes and in many lighthouse bulbs. The thrust from the engine is as gentle as the force exerted by a sheet of paper held in the palm of your hand. Over the long haul though, the engine can deliver 20 times as much thrust per kilogram of fuel than traditional rockets. Key to the ion technology is its high exhaust velocity. The ion engine can run on a few hundred grams of propellant per day, making it lightweight. Less weight means less cost to launch, yet an ion-propelled spacecraft can go much faster and farther than any other spacecraft. "This test, in combination with the recent test of the High Power Electric Propulsion ion engine at NASA's Glenn Research Center, is another example of the progress we are making in developing the technologies needed to support flagship space exploration missions throughout the solar system and beyond," said Alan Newhouse, director, Project Prometheus. "We have challenged our team with difficult performance goals and they are demonstrating their ability to be creative in overcoming technical challenges." NASA's Project Prometheus is making strategic investments in space nuclear fission power and electric propulsion technologies that would enable a new class of missions to the outer Solar System, with capabilities far beyond those possible with current power and propulsion systems. The first such mission under study, the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter would launch in the next decade and provide NASA significantly improved scientific and telecommunications capabilities and mission design options. Instead of generating only hundreds of watts of electricity like the Cassini or Galileo missions, which used radioisotope thermoelectric generators, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter could have up to tens of thousands of watts of power, increasing the potential science return many times over. Development of the Nexis ion engine is being carried out by a team of engineers from JPL; Aerojet, Redmond, WA; Boeing Electron Dynamic Devices, Torrance, CA; NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL; Colorado State University, Fort Collins; Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; and the Aerospace Corporation, Los Angeles, CA. For more information about Project Prometheus on the Internet, visithttp://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/prometheus.htm. Information on the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/. Contacts: Natalie Godwin Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-0850 Carolina Martinez Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-9382 Dwayne Brown NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1726 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0312/23jimoengine/ http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/jimo_ion_engine_test.html __________________________________________________________________________ FIRST IMAGES SHOW ORGANIC MOLECULES By Leslie Mullen From Astrobiology Magazine 24 December 2003 The first images from the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) were made available this week, showing dazzling infrared views of distant stars and galaxies. In addition, the observatory was renamed the Spitzer Space Telescope, in honor of the late Dr. Lyman Spitzer Jr. Some of the images indicate the presence of organic molecules and other chemicals thought to be necessary for the origin of life. But James Houck of Cornell University, the principal investigator for the infrared-spectrograph science instrument, says the implication for life in these places is uncertain. "What we see is a bunch of building blocks, a bunch of bolts, some screws- -that doesn't mean that a car is going to appear soon," says Houck. "It just means there are a lot of pieces that are characteristic of the pieces that must have gone into building a car. Predicting life on the basis of the evidence we have now is going very far out on a limb." The Spitzer Space Telescope is the fourth of NASA's Great Observatories, which include the Hubble Space Telescope (visible light), the Chandra X- ray Observatory and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. The Spitzer Space Telescope senses infrared radiation, or heat, from distant, cold, and dust-obscured celestial objects. To illustrate how things look different in visible light than they do in the infrared, Michael Werner, the project scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, offered an infrared image of a dog. "In the infrared, we're primarily seeing the temperature of the dog," says Werner. "You'll notice that his eyes, his mouth and his ears are warm, because they're closer to his blood, closer to the skin. The places where the fur is particularly thick are colder, because they're further away from the interior heat of the dog. And since he is a proper dog he does have a cold nose." One of the most dramatic images produced by the Spitzer Space Telescope involves the galaxy HH46. A star in this galaxy, which is not observable with visible light telescopes because of an obscuring black cloud of silicate dust, is 3.25 billion light years away from Earth. "The light that we collected a couple of weeks ago began its journey three and a quarter billion years ago, about the time that life was first emerging on the surface of the Earth, shortly after the formation of the solar system," says Houck. "Almost certainly using building blocks similar to the ones that we detected, life became prevalent on the Earth." Houck says this star, named HH 46-IR, is similar to the sun, and in the process of forming. There is a disk of material surrounding the star, and jets of gas being ejected from the star. This may resemble what our own solar system looked like in its earliest years. There's a very large range of molecules in this object, including cyanide compounds, hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide. "It's a poisonous place, but those are the building blocks that go into assembling larger and larger organic molecules--the process that will eventually lead to life," says Houck. Closer to home, at only 22 light years away, is the star Fomalhaut. Although it is the 17th brightest star in the sky, a ring of dust prevents a clear view of Fomalhaut. "We see the system edge on, so it doesn't look like a star system," says George Rieke of the University of Arizona, the principal investigator for the multiband-imaging photometer science instrument. "The donut of dust is about 3 times further out from the star than Pluto is from the sun, and it's very cold. It's so cold that if we took the atmosphere of the Earth out to that zone in the star, it would all freeze out and all the nitrogen would be like rock on the ground." The 24-micron image from the Spitzer Telescope showed, however, that warmer dust is concentrated toward the center of the star system. Rieke says that this dusty material is the result of planets or other small bodies in the system crashing into each other, disintegrating, and throwing their material out into interplanetary space. "What we see around this star is not the planetary system itself, but the debris from which the planetary system evolves," says Rieke. Lumps in the donut ring of dust indicate the presence of massive planets. They are creating a wake in the debris disk, pulling the dust into the inner system while deflecting comets from the outer part. This structure corresponds to our own solar system, with the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud located in the outer solar system, and the rocky planets having formed from dust and debris in the inner solar system. The Spitzer Space Telescope also produced an image of the spiral galaxy M81. This galaxy is located in Ursa Major (the Big Dipper). Not only were scientists able to dissect the galaxy into its component parts, but they found that the galaxy is coated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). PAHs are the building blocks for more complex organic molecules, and they appear to be widespread throughout the universe. PAHs may have played a vital role in the origin of life on Earth. "Everywhere (PAHs are) on the Earth," says Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and principal investigator for the infrared-array camera science instrument. "It's in the black part of your toast, and the grit on your grill. But most amazingly, it's all over the surface of that galaxy M81, which is 12 million light years away." The infrared image brought into focus what only looked like a fuzzy smudge when viewed through a visible light telescope. By peering through the dust, Spitzer is helping scientists learn about the regions of star formation, as well as the total energy emitted by the newly forming stars in the M81 galaxy. "Because of (Spitzer's) sensitivity, and its ability to view large areas of the sky, we are now able to lift the cosmic veil that has been blocking this view, and see the galaxy in all its components," says Fazio. Spitzer also found star-forming regions in the Elephant Trunk nebula. The nebula winds through the star cluster complex IC 1396, which is over 2,000 light years away and located in the constellation Cepheus. The Spitzer telescope looked through the gas and dust of the nebula to see proto-stars in the process of forming. "In the optical, you primarily see a dark cloud, illuminated from the outside by a bright star," says Werner. "In the infrared, you don't see the outside of the cloud, you see into the interior of the cloud. You can see new stars that are forming. This shows the ability of infrared wavelengths to look into dark places." Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 25, 2003, the Spitzer Space Telescope is orbiting the sun. "It trails behind the Earth, like a faithful puppy dog," says Werner. This unusual orbit allows the telescope to get away from the heat of the Earth, and it also prevents the Earth from blocking the telescope's field of view. The telescope will move away from the Earth at about a tenth of an AU per year. It is currently 5.4 million miles away. If you were to try to locate Spitzer in the night sky, currently it would be in the constellation Pisces. The new name for the telescope was chosen through a contest sponsored by NASA. More than 7,000 names and supporting essays were submitted, with more than a third coming from outside the United States. Jay Stidolph, 28, a Canadian resident, submitted the winning entry. Lyman Spitzer (1914-1997) was the first to propose placing a large telescope in space, and he devoted his career to furthering that idea. His efforts led to two successful NASA space telescopes: the Copernicus satellite and the Hubble Space Telescope. Spitzer also made significant contributions to the fields of stellar dynamics, the interstellar medium, and plasma physics. The Spitzer Space Telescope has a projected life span of 5 years. The amount of liquid helium onboard (100 pounds) determines how long the telescope can be used effectively. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article732.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/spitzer_first_031218.html. __________________________________________________________________________ ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS CALLS FOR HUMANS TO MARS Mars Society release 24 December 2003 In an editorial run in its December 24, 2003 edition, the influential Rocky Mountain News called on President Bush to make human Mars exploration NASA's goal. The Rocky Mountain News is the leading newspaper of America's mountain states region. The complete editorial can be viewed online at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_25279 85,00.html. The Rocky Mountain News is right. America's space program needs a goal, and that goal needs to be humans to Mars. Contact President Bush ands tell him so yourself. President Bush may be reached at president@whitehouse.gov, 202-456-1111, or by writing President George W. Bush, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20500. Postal letters have the most impact, but if you have time, use all three methods to send Mr. Bush the message he needs to hear. For further information about the Mars Society, visit our web site at www.marssociety.org, or contact info@marssociety.org. __________________________________________________________________________ ESA'S BEAGLE: SNIFFING OUT LIFE ON MARS By Stephen Hart and Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine 24 December 2003 The European Space Agency's Beagle 2 Mars lander is small--a mere 30 kg (66 pounds)--and can never move from its landing spot. But at its core sits a miniaturized version of a sophisticated chemical laboratory. The lander's Gas Analysis Package, or GAP, is central to its mission to discover signs of past or present life on Mars. "The gas-analysis package is based on the system that we have used for 20 years now to analyze martian meteorites," says chemist-turned-planetary- scientist Colin Pillinger of The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. The only previous life-detection experiments on Mars were carried out by NASA's Viking 1 and 2 landers in 1976. Viking's biology experiments did not produce unequivocal evidence for present or past life on Mars. But the results didn't rule out life either. Nearly thirty years later, astrobiologists continue to disagree about how to interpret Viking's results. "Viking did a very noble job," says Pillinger. "They had three experiments which were configured to see whether there were any actively metabolizing organisms on the planet. When [one experiment] got results which could be interpreted as actively metabolizing organisms, they got very concerned, because they had [another] experiment onboard, called the Gas Chromatograph, which couldn't detect any organic matter. So their interpretation was that the chemistry of Mars was playing them a big confidence trick." Scientists are hopeful that, by using a different life-detection technique than that used by Viking, the GAP, in conjunction with a suite of other instruments aboard Beagle 2, will produce less ambiguous biology results than its predecessors. "The thing which is crucial is to see whether we can detect any organic matter. And the way in which I plan to detect organic matter is to burn it," says Pillinger. In its first stage, the GAP works like a well-sealed kitchen oven. The GAP slowly heats a sample, soil or rock, in the presence of pure oxygen. Different carbon compounds in the sample will break down at different temperatures, producing pure carbon dioxide. "If you burn this sample of rock, or heat it up," Pillinger explains, "you should see any organic matter burning to give you CO2, and at a higher temperature, you should see mineralogical carbonates breaking down to give you CO2 as well." Carbonates are minerals, such as limestone, that form by precipitating out of water. Finding carbonates in a sample will tell scientists that liquid water was present when the mineral formed. Organics are chemical compounds, such as sugars and amino acids, that, on Earth, typically are produced by living organisms. Finding organics in a sample will provide the first hint of life on Mars. But the GAP will go beyond merely detecting these compounds. "If you find the two carbon-containing phases, the inorganic and the organic, together, you have to measure the isotopic fractionation between them," says Pillinger. This measurement is the GAP's second task. The GAP will shunt the carbon dioxide produced by the burning process into a mass spectrometer, an instrument that can measure the amount of the carbon dioxide released and can also garner important information about individual carbon atoms. This latter capability has never appeared before in a Mars lander. The spectrometer will tell scientists what the ratio is of carbon-12 to carbon-13 for the various compounds contained in a sample. Carbon atoms come in two stable forms, called isotopes: carbon-12 and carbon-13. The only difference between isotopes is the number of neutrons in the atom's nucleus. Measuring the carbon-12:13 ratio of carbonates will give scientists important information about the martian atmosphere. A planet's atmosphere contains carbon-12 and -13 in a ratio that varies little worldwide. It is this atmospheric CO2 that supplies the carbon that ends up in carbonates. So when the GAP burns carbonates, the CO2 released will tell scientists how much carbon-12 and carbon-13 were present in the martian atmosphere at the time the carbonates formed. As organisms build organic molecules, however, they use carbon-12 more readily than carbon- 13. Compounds that arise from biological processes therefore end up with a distinctive carbon 12:13 ratio different from that of the atmosphere, enriched in carbon-12. These ratios show up in living or recently dead tissues, but also remain intact in chemical compounds long after the organisms die, preserving a detectable signature showing the past presence of life. If the organic material in one of the samples scooped up by Beagle 2 shows an elevated ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-13, it will provide the most convincing evidence to date that Mars is, or once was, a living world. Says Pillinger, "On Earth, the organic material that co-exists with the carbonate is always enriched in carbon-12, due to biology, relative to the carbonate. This has been borne out on 10,000 samples on Earth. People have spent their lives working on this stuff, analyzing every sedimentary sample that they can lay their hands on. And it's always true." Because its spectrometer analyzes gasses, the GAP can also analyze the present-day martian atmosphere. Instead of heating the atmosphere, the GAP will first chemically concentrate the atmosphere in tiny reactor vessels. The GAP can detect not only carbon but also nitrogen and methane (swamp gas). Because researchers believe that methane can persist in the martian atmosphere for less than 300 years, any methane they find can be assumed to arise from recent biological processes, produced, for example, by methane-producing bacteria. What's next? Pillinger steadfastly refuses to speculate about when the first results from Beagle 2's GAP will be announced. "The priority is to stabilize the lander and make sure that this is a mission, and not just an image. So when we get some images, the team will sit down and say, well this is what we want to do. This is what we can do, this is what's feasible, this is the order of priority in which we know we want to work. And we will tell you, the world, the media, on a rolling basis, what we are going to do tomorrow, and we will tell you tomorrow what we did yesterday." But, he adds, "I'm not making any predictions about when we will analyze a sample and tell you about the results of the GAP experiment. Because if I do that, I could be forever answering the phones, with people saying, 'Have you done it yet?'" Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article733.html. __________________________________________________________________________ OXYGEN IN THE TERRESTRIAL PLANETS Lunar and Planetary Institute release 18 December 2003 The four-day workshop will be held July 20-23, 2004, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For information regarding the purpose and scope and workshop schedule, please refer to the first announcement at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/otp2004/. To subscribe to a mailing list to receive electronic reminders relating to the meeting via e-mail, please submit an electronic Indication of Interest form (available at the meeting Web site) by February 13, 2004. __________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/ 26 December 2003 Astrobiology and planetary engineering articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles1.html S. Hart and H. Bortman, 2003. ESA's Beagle: sniffing out life on Mars. Astrobiology Magazine. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles2.html U. Sutliff, 2003. It's a cold, cruel life. Astrobiology Magazine. SETI articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles4.html S. Shostak, 2003. Big telescope, small signals. Space.com. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html L. Mullen, 2003. First images show organic molecules. Astrobiology Magazine. __________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 11-17 December 2003 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Monday, December 15. 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://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=f5CONVdPEHhO- 3BCLCXxIg. On-board activities this week included execution of Probe pre- heating checkout test #2, a Composite Infrared Spectrometer flight software checkout, execution of the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer recovery mini-sequence, and a spacecraft Periodic Engineering Maintenance activity. Preliminary port one and official port one deliveries were made as part of the Science Operations Plan implementation process for tour sequences S19 and S20. In addition, preliminary port 1 was delivered for sequences S21 and S22. The first aftermarket process decision meeting was held as part of the development process for tour sequence S01. The Preliminary Sequence Integration and Validation (PSIV) 2 integrated sequence with Inertial Vector Propagator commands merged in has been delivered for cruise sequence C42. The final approval meeting will be held the first week of January. The PSIV1 Seqgen products for C43 were also released for review along with a sequence of events listing and the space flight operations schedule. The international astronomical community and Cassini investigation teams will begin a program of cooperative, synergistic, ground based observations of the Saturnian system. The program is planned as a series of regular monitoring observations of Saturn beginning in 2004 from ground based observatories. In addition 17 orbits of Hubble Space Telescope observation time have been obtained. The objective of this program is to acquire a maximum amount of information about the state of Saturn's atmosphere, which could be obtained by imaging and spectroscopy at different wavelengths. All teams and offices supported the Cassini Monthly Management review. Delivery coordination meetings were held for the Instrument Operations Remote Terminal Interface Unit /SEQTRAN V1.0 utility, and Cassini Information Management System 3.0 (CIMS). The CIMS delivery provides several functions in support of the Science Planning processes, the most prominent of which is the Spacecraft Activity Sequence File / Science Planning Attitude Spread Sheet comparison. This comparison typically takes about eight hours to perform manually. CIMS 3.0 now does the comparison in less than a minute. On December 8, it was reported in a Southwest Research Institute News Release that the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) has made the first in situ observations of interstellar pickup ions beyond the orbit of Jupiter. This is the first major discovery using data gathered by CAPS. For more information go to http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=MEhaFLusQtVO-3BCLCXxIg. Saturn will have its closet approach to Earth for the next 29 years on December 31, 2003. At that time the planet will be about 1.2 billion kilometers away with the rings tipped towards Earth. Reflected sunlight will cause the planet to appear brighter than usual. For more information go to http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=JPvnNG-7RF5O-3BCLCXxIg. 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 DESERT RESEARCH STATION THIRD FIELD SEASON UNDERWAY Mars Society release 24 December 2003 MDRS Field Season 3 has commenced. On December 20th, 2003, Crew 20 under the command of Allan Morrison, arrived safely at the Hab. Other crew members include Jason Held, Chief Engineer and Executive Officer, biologist Daimon Sheets, geologist Chalbeth Reynolds, engineer Jonas Jonsson, and biomedical engineer Jonathan Drew. The team of hard working volunteers, working in full simulation mode in the barren canyonlands of Utah will continue to explore the surrounding terrain, cataloging more waypoints, and analyzing the geology and biology of this fascinating and remarkably Mars-like region. Follow the link at http://www.marssociety.org/mdrs/index.asp to learn more about the habitat, the crews, their work, and their adventures as they pave the way to the human exploration of Mars. __________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPRESS RELEASES BEAGLE 2 ESA release 83-2003 19 December 2003 This morning, ESA's Mars Express flawlessly released the Beagle 2 lander that it has been carrying since its launch on 2 June this year. Beagle 2 is now on its journey towards the surface of Mars, where it is expected to land early in the morning of 25 December. Mars Express, Europe's first mission to Mars, has passed another challenging milestone on its way towards its final destination. At 9:31 CET, the crucial sequence started to separate the Beagle 2 lander from Mars Express. As data from Mars Express confirm, the pyrotechnic device was fired to slowly release a loaded spring, which gently pushed Beagle 2 away from the mother spacecraft. An image from the onboard visual monitoring camera (VMC) showing the lander drifting away is expected to be available later today. Since the Beagle 2 lander has no propulsion system of its own, it had to be put on the correct course for its descent before it was released. For this reason, on 16 December the trajectory of the whole Mars Express spacecraft had to be adjusted to ensure that Beagle 2 would be on course to enter the atmosphere of Mars. This maneuver, called "retargeting'' was critical: if the entry angle is too steep, the lander could overheat and burn up in the atmosphere; if the angle is too shallow, the lander might skim like a pebble on the surface of a lake and miss its target. This fine targeting and today's release were crucial maneuvers for which ESA's Ground Control Team at ESOC (European Space Operations Centre) had trained over the past several months. The next major milestone for Mars Express will be the maneuver to enter into orbit around Mars. This will happen at 2:52 CET on Christmas morning, when Beagle 2 is expected to land on the surface of Mars. "Good teamwork by everybody--ESA, industry and the Beagle 2 team--has got one more critical step accomplished. Mars, here comes Europe!" said David Southwood, ESA Director of Science. Contact: ESA Media Relations Service Phone: +33(0)1.53.69.7155 Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article727.html http://www.marsdaily.com/2003/031219122706.ayyzl1s3.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/beagle_release_031219.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-03u.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/status.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/beagle2_separates.html __________________________________________________________________________ MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM MARS--MARS EXPRESS ENTERS ORBIT AROUND THE RED PLANET, CONTACT AWAITED WITH BEAGLE 2 ON THE SURFACE ESA release 84-2003 25 December 2003 This morning, after a journey lasting 205 days and covering 400 million km, the European Mars Express space probe fired its main engine at 03:47 CET for a 37-minute burn in order to enter an orbit around the Mars. This firing gave the probe a boost so that it could match the higher speed of the planet on its orbit around the Sun and be captured by its gravity field, quite like climbing in a spinning merry-go-round. This orbit insertion maneuver was a complete success. This is a great achievement for Europe on its first attempt to send a space probe into orbit around another planet. At approximately the same time, the Beagle 2 lander, protected by a thermal shield, entered the martian atmosphere at high velocity and is expected to have reached the surface at about 03:52 CET. However, the first attempt to communicate with Beagle 2, three hours after landing, via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, did not establish radio contact. The next contact opportunity will be tonight at 23:40 CET. The tiny lander was released from the orbiter six days ago on a collision course towards the planet. Before separation, its onboard computer was programmed to operate the lander as from its arrival on the surface, by late afternoon (martian time). According to the schedule, the solar panels must deploy to recharge the onboard batteries before sunset. The same sequence also tells Beagle 2 to emit a signal in a specific frequency for which the Jodrell Bank Telescope, UK, will be listening late tonight. Further radio contacts are scheduled in the days to come. In the course of the coming week, the orbit of Mars Express will be gradually adjusted in order to prepare for its scientific mission. Mars Express is currently several thousand kilometers away from Mars, in a very elongated equatorial orbit. On 30 December, ESA's ground control team will send commands to fire the spacecraft's engines and place it in a polar, less elongated orbit (about 300 km pericenter, 10000 km apocenter, 86° inclination). From there, ESA's spacecraft will perform detailed studies of the planet's surface, subsurface structures and atmosphere. Commissioning of some of the onboard scientific instruments will begin towards mid-January and the first scientific data are expected later in the month. "The arrival of Mars Express is a great success for Europe and for the international science community. Now, we are just waiting for a signal from Beagle 2 to make this Christmas the best we could hope for!" said David Southwood, head of ESA's Science Directorate. "With Mars Express, we have a very powerful observatory in orbit around Mars and we look forward to receiving its first results. Its instruments will be able to probe the planet from its upper atmosphere down to a few kilometers below the surface, where we hope to find critical clues concerning the conditions for life, in particular traces of water. We expect this mission to give us a better understanding of our neighbor planet, of its past and its present, answering many questions for the science community and probably raising an even greater number of fascinating new ones. I hope we can see it as opening up a new era of European exploration" Contact: ESA Media Relations Service Phone: +33(0)1.53.69.7155 Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/mars_update_031225c.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/031225update.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/status.html __________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 11-26 December 2003 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Gullies in Crater in Hellas (Released 11 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=_TLeu_JIsbhO-3BCLCXxIg. Clouds Near Mie Crater (Released 12 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=cSudLQz2765O-3BCLCXxIg. South Polar Mesas (Released 13 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=BPBT9hJ5LwNO-3BCLCXxIg. Daedalia Dust Devil (Released 14 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=nJeGG7-o0KtO-3BCLCXxIg. Exhumed Crater with Slope Streaks (Released 15 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=lR0hLSXF2olO-3BCLCXxIg. Peering Into A Cerberus Fossae Trough (Released 16 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=07IjKudHMiRO-3BCLCXxIg. Buried Mid-Latitude Craters (Released 17 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=yTxIQNK26blO-3BCLCXxIg. Old Martian Valley (Released 18 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=H3paGtGuMk5O-3BCLCXxIg. Sediments of Ophir (Released 19 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=r4kACE-rFf9O-3BCLCXxIg. Syrtis Major Dune Field (Released 20 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=of8zVttRVTpO-3BCLCXxIg. Raising Dust (Released 21 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Jcy94dgiAYFO-3BCLCXxIg. Northern Plains Buried Craters (Released 22 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=xy85Cc43mXBO-3BCLCXxIg. Windblown Sand in West Candor (Released 23 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=d-DNduW3l_BO-3BCLCXxIg. Isidis Planitia (Released 24 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=QTXLjLenIF1O-3BCLCXxIg. Gullies in Galle (Released 25 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Pv5bcg9y50dO-3BCLCXxIg. Polar Polygons (Released 26 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=45CsWcj1vqpO-3BCLCXxIg. All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are archived at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=KvK9KbQBgLhO-3BCLCXxIg. Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. __________________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 10-24 December 2003 Mars South Polar Layered Deposits (Released 10 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=pzMyl5kqzFRO-3BCLCXxIg. Solar storms, devils, dunes, and gullies (Released 12 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=1X2NKqSSu1dO-3BCLCXxIg. Sea of Sand in Juventae Chasma (Released 17 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Pw5BUZM0rAJO-3BCLCXxIg. Asymmetric Crater (Released 18 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=wTLjJ5IbuFtO-3BCLCXxIg. Strange Erosional Features (Released 19 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Xk0hBJHtn1VO-3BCLCXxIg. Dynamic Mars (Released 22 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=W6yuYTWDbi5O-3BCLCXxIg. Icaria Planum (Released 23 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=ZFun-4ew8uBO-3BCLCXxIg. A Martian Christmas Present (Released 24 December 2003) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=csaxyHkHcqFO-3BCLCXxIg. All of the THEMIS images are archived at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=WChl8PQoWEhO-3BCLCXxIg. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. __________________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 19 December 2003 The Stardust team has had daily communications with the spacecraft in the past week. Telemetry relayed from the spacecraft remains in very good shape as it approaches its date with Comet Wild 2 in about 13 days. Information on the present position and orbits of the Stardust spacecraft and comet Wild 2 may be found on the "Where Is Stardust Right Now?" web page located at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=U1jES4bek1dO-3BCLCXxIg. The Comet Wild 2 encounter attitude control mode that uses the primary and secondary thrusters to keep the spacecraft behind the protective Whipple Shield was successfully tested in the Spacecraft Test Laboratory and then in flight on the spacecraft. Daily optical navigation images are being taken in support of the spacecraft's upcoming encounter. While Comet Wild 2 has been in the spacecraft's sights since November 19, the comet was successfully observed from Earth for the first time since it went behind the sun last spring by Dr. Alan Tokunaga at the Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. For more information on the Stardust mission--the first ever comet sample- return mission--please visit the Stardust home page at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=MOd9MO-y0YZO-3BCLCXxIg. __________________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 10, Number 50.