Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 11, Number 8, 16 February 2004 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. Opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the authors, and are not necessarily endorsed by the editor or by Lyon College. 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 at 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://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0407image.html] This isn't exactly astrobiology, but it's an amazing discovery. Astronomers have discovered a diamond star weighing 10 billion trillion trillion carats. The cosmic gem is the crystallized carbon core of a white dwarf star. Image credit: Travis Metcalfe and Ruth Bazinet, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Additional information is available at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0407.htm. __________________________________________________________________________ Articles and News 1) PINK SLIME YIELDS FIRST SET OF GENOMES SEQUENCED FROM ENVIRONMENT By Robert Sanders 2) SCIENTISTS FIND OZONE-DESTROYING MOLECULE NASA release 04-057 3) COMETS SPREAD EARTH-LIFE AROUND GALAXY, SAY SCIENTISTS Cardiff University release 4) LOS ALAMOS LEADING FAST-PACED REACTOR RESEARCH TO POWER PLANNED JOURNEY TO JUPITER'S ICY MOONS Los Alamos National Laboratory release 5) NASA PREDICTS MORE TROPICAL RAIN IN A WARMER WORLD NASA release 04-058 6) HOW 3-D WORKS: MARS REVEALED BY HUMAN-LIKE EYES By Robert Roy Britt 7) CHINA HOPES TO MAKE IT TWO-UP WITH SHENZHOU-6 From SpaceDaily 8) EXPLORING MARS WITH BALLOONS From SpaceDaily 9) STUDENT PROGRAMS TAP INTO MARS ROVER ADVENTURES NASA/JPL release 2004-58 10) DARWIN'S UNIVERSE By Peter Backus 11) EXPERT WARNS NASA CAN'T AFFORD MARS PLAN From Associated Press and CNN 12) BORN BONE DRY By Leslie Mullen Announcements 13) PARTICIPATE IN THE NEW U.S. SPACE INITIATIVE By Fraser Cain 14) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas Mission Reports 15) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 16) UK AND ESA ANNOUNCE BEAGLE 2 INQUIRY--INVESTIGATION TO LEARN LESSONS FROM MARS LANDER ESA release 09-2004 17) HUYGENS STATUS REPORT ESA release 18) MDRS CREW 23 POSTS SUMMARY REPORT Mars Society release 19) MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS UPDATES NASA/JPL releases 20) MARS EXPRESS/MER: INTERNATIONAL INTERPLANETARY NETWORKING SUCCEEDS NASA release 04-060 21) RECENT MARS EXPRESS RESULTS ESA releases 22) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 23) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 24) ROSETTA STATUS REPORTS ESA releases 25) STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release __________________________________________________________________________ PINK SLIME YIELDS FIRST SET OF GENOMES SEQUENCED FROM ENVIRONMENT By Robert Sanders University of California, Berkeley release 2 February 2004 In the first triumph of a field dubbed "environmental genomics," scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with the Joint Genome Institute, have for the first time sequenced the genomes of the most abundant members of a community of organisms--not one at a time, but simultaneously. The researchers took a simple community of microbes from a pink slick on the floor of an abandoned mine, ground them up, and shotgun sequenced the lot. As they put the pieces of DNA back together, the snippets fell easily into five distinct genomes, four of them unknown until now. "This is the first recovery of a genome from an environmental sample," said Jillian F. Banfield, professor of earth and planetary science and of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley. "This ushers in a whole new way of exploring and understanding our environment, allowing us to determine how organisms work as individuals and together, and how they contribute to geochemical processes." Banfield and graduate student Gene W. Tyson from UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, with colleagues from UC Berkeley and the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, CA, report their feat this week in the Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature. Banfield and her students, post docs and colleagues are primarily interested in how the microbes, obtained from the Richmond Mine in Iron Mountain, CA, one of the largest Superfund sites in the country, interact with minerals to produce acid mine drainage. "Acid mine drainage is one of the most pressing long-term environmental problems worldwide, and it's caused by microbial processes," Banfield said. "This study has dramatically improved our understanding of the microorganisms involved and has opened the way for development of much more highly refined models of acid mine drainage systems." "If we understand the organisms and how they cause this environmental problem, we can try to do something about it in the long run," Tyson added. "This represents an important example of how the production sequencing capacity developed by the Department of Energy at the JGI for the human genome program can provide fundamental insights into vital environmental problems," said JGI Director Eddy Rubin. Understanding the biofilm ecosystem also may be relevant to the search for life on Mars, since it's conceivable that the iron and sulfur-rich surface of Mars could harbor microbes that eat iron, similar to those in iron and sulfur-rich pyrite mines like the Richmond Mine. For the past nine years, Banfield has been studying a pink microbial biofilm that sits like scum on the surface of green pools of water, as acidic as battery acid, in the dark depths of the Richmond Mine, located nine miles northwest of Redding. Her goal is to understand how the extremophiles--microbes that live in extreme environments--live together and generate the acid drainage that makes such mines toxic hazards. The green runoff from the mine, captured and treated by the Environmental Protection Agency, is not only acidic, but also contains high levels of toxic metals--zinc, iron, copper and arsenic--and is a piping 108 degrees Fahrenheit. In this low-light, low-oxygen, high-acid and toxic environment about 1,400 feet into the mountain, the microbes thrive. They fix carbon and nitrogen from the carbon dioxide and nitrogen in the air, eat iron by oxidizing it with oxygen, and in the process dissolve the iron pyrite (iron sulfide, also known as fool's gold) to create sulfuric acid. Previously, researchers have studied microbial communities, such as those in hot springs or in the ocean, either by isolating individual organisms or strains, culturing them and sequencing the cultured population; or by plucking bits and pieces of genes from the various members of the community. A big problem is that only about one in 100 microbes can be cultured sufficiently to extract its genome. Even if a microbial genome is known, however, this still doesn't tell researchers how it interacts with other microbes in its environment. Banfield and other researchers have been looking at a more daring approach--sequencing the whole community at once, a technique Banfield prefers to call "community genomics." That's like surveying the species in the African veldt by grinding up lions, zebras, elephants and an unknown number of other animals, cutting the genes into tiny pieces, and trying to sort them into distinct genomes. But it works, Banfield said, "at least with the small number of distinct organisms in this community." "The magic of the whole thing is that, because of speciation, these organisms are different enough that their genomes are easy to tell apart," Banfield said. The technique would allow researchers to sequence the genomes of microbes that cannot be raised in isolated cultures. Banfield's group and the group at the JGI reassembled the genomes, each containing about 2,000 genes, using different software programs to arrive at composite genomes. Two of the draft genomes--for a Leptospirillum group II bacterium and a Ferroplasma type II microbe from the ancient group known as Archaea--are now about 97 percent complete, with a few gaps. The genome of one of the six microbes in the community, Ferroplasma acidarmanus (a type I Ferroplasma), had been sequenced earlier by JGI and Banfield's group and was a good control during the sequencing and assembly process. The other genomes were highly fragmented, but identifiable as microbes from Leptospirillum group III, Ferroplasma type I and a G-plasma microbe. "Despite the highly fragmented nature of three of the genomes, we had enough coverage and many, many genes to get an idea of what the organisms do in the environment," Tyson said. The genome of Leptospirillum group II is the first sequenced from the phylum Nitrospira, an important branch of the tree of life containing nitrate and nitrogen cycling bacteria, Banfield noted. Once Banfield's group had the five new genomes, they compared the genes in each with a database of known genes to identify their functions. For the two microbes with the most complete draft genomes, they were able to reconstruct nearly the entire metabolic cycle. Already they have determined how the microbes share tasks in the isolated microbial community of the mine. The Leptospirillum group II bacteria fix carbon and produce the biofilm that protects them and keeps them afloat, while a minor member of the community, Leptospirillum group III bacteria, fix both carbon and nitrogen. The iron is probably munched by the all of the biofilm members, including Ferroplasma microbes. Interestingly, the Ferroplasma type II microbes in the biofilm apparently are a mix of many different strains, but the genome reconstruction shows that they all arose from three distinct ancestral strains. Random sex among the microbes for millions of years has combined and recombined the genomes of the three strains so that the population today consists of strains that mix and match genes from separate ancestors. "This type of rampant exchange of genetic material has never been documented in Archaea or in natural samples before," Banfield said. "This recombination may be a strategy for maintaining optimization in the event of perturbations in the environment. The observation helps us understand the factors that shape evolution and drive development of new species." Banfield said that the community genome technique worked in this situation because the dominant microbes were represented mostly by closely related strains. In more complex environments with more organisms, it may not be so easy. "However, even in more complex environments it should be possible to extend the random shotgun sequencing approach to recover genomes of uncultivated strains and species," the authors wrote. "These data can then be used to explore the nature of the community metabolic network, to find conditions for cultivating previously uncultivated organisms, to monitor community structure over time, and to construct DNA microarrays to monitor global community gene expression patterns." While the current study provides a wealth of information about the five microbes, it's only the beginning for the team. With the genes in hand, they plan to create microarrays--so-called gene chips--to determine how gene expression and protein production change with changing conditions in the microbial community. For example, as the acidity or temperature changes, how do the organisms react? How do they change their carbon or nitrogen fixation, or their scavenging of iron from the acidic groundwater? "The next step in this project is to get whole community genome arrays up and running to look at these organisms and how they respond to certain conditions," Tyson said. Other authors include Paul Richardson and Victor Solovyev of the Joint Genome Institute; Daniel Rokhsar and graduate student Jarrod Chapman of both JGI and UC Berkeley's Department of Physics; and scientist Philip Hugenholtz and post-doctoral researchers Eric E. Allen and Rachna J. Ram of UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. This research was funded by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation's Biocomplexity Program. Read the original news release at http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/02/02_envgen.shtml. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-04n.html. __________________________________________________________________________ SCIENTISTS FIND OZONE-DESTROYING MOLECULE NASA release 04-057 9 February 2004 Using measurements from a NASA aircraft flying over the Arctic, Harvard University scientists have made the first observations of a molecule that researchers have long theorized plays a key role in destroying stratospheric ozone, chlorine peroxide. Analysis of these measurements was conducted using a computer simulation of atmospheric chemistry developed by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. The common name atmospheric scientists use for the molecule is "chlorine monoxide dimer" since it is made up of two identical chlorine-based molecules of chlorine monoxide, bonded together. The dimer has been created and detected in the laboratory; in the atmosphere it is thought to exist only in the particularly cold stratosphere over Polar Regions when chlorine monoxide levels are relatively high. "We knew, from observations dating from 1987, that the high ozone loss was linked with high levels of chlorine monoxide, but we had never actually detected the chlorine peroxide before," said Harvard scientist and lead author of the paper, Rick Stimpfle. The atmospheric abundance of chlorine peroxide was quantified using a novel arrangement of an ultraviolet, resonance fluorescence-detection instrument that had previously been used to quantify levels of chlorine monoxide in the Antarctic and Arctic stratosphere. We've observed chlorine monoxide in the Arctic and Antarctic for years and from that inferred that this dimer molecule must exist and it must exist in large quantities, but until now we had never been able to see it," said Ross Salawitch, a co-author on the paper and a researcher at JPL. Chlorine monoxide and its dimer originate primarily from halocarbons, molecules created by humans for industrial uses like refrigeration. Use of halocarbons has been banned by the Montreal Protocol, but they persist in the atmosphere for decades. "Most of the chlorine in the stratosphere continues to come from human-induced sources," Stimpfle added. Chlorine peroxide triggers ozone destruction when the molecule absorbs sunlight and breaks into two chlorine atoms and an oxygen molecule. Free chlorine atoms are highly reactive with ozone molecules, thereby breaking them up, and reducing ozone. Within the process of breaking down ozone, chlorine peroxide forms again, restarting the process of ozone destruction. "You are now back to where you started with respect to the chlorine peroxide molecule. But in the process you have converted two ozone molecules into three oxygen molecules. This is the definition of ozone loss," Stimpfle concluded. "Direct measurements of chlorine peroxide enable us to better quantify ozone loss processes that occur in the polar winter stratosphere," said Mike Kurylo, NASA Upper Atmosphere Research Program manager, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. "By integrating our knowledge about chemistry over the polar regions, which we get from aircraft-based in situ measurements, with the global pictures of ozone and other atmospheric molecules, which we get from research satellites, NASA can improve the models that scientists use to forecast the future evolution of ozone amounts and how they will respond to the decreasing atmospheric levels of halocarbons, resulting from the implementation of the Montreal Protocol," Kurylo added. These results were acquired during a joint U.S.-European science mission, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment/Third European Stratospheric Experiment on Ozone 2000. The mission was conducted in Kiruna, Sweden, from November 1999 to March 2000. During the campaign, scientists used computer models for stratospheric meteorology and chemistry to direct the ER-2 aircraft to the regions of the atmosphere where chlorine peroxide was expected to be present. The flexibility of the ER- 2 enabled these interesting regions of the atmosphere to be sampled. For information and images on the Internet, visit http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0205dimers.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0402/08ozone/ http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/ozone_destroying_molecule.html __________________________________________________________________________ COMETS SPREAD EARTH-LIFE AROUND GALAXY, SAY SCIENTISTS Cardiff University release 9 February 2004 If comets hitting the Earth could cause ecological disasters, including extinctions of species and climate change, they could also disperse Earth- life to the most distant parts of the Galaxy. The "splash-back" from a large comet impact could throw material containing micro-organisms out of the planet's atmosphere, suggest scientists from Cardiff University Centre for Astrobiology. Although some of this outflowing material might become sterilized by heat and radiation, they believe that a significant fraction would survive. As the Earth and the Solar system go round the centre of the galaxy every 240 million years, this viable bacterial outflow would infect hundreds of millions of nascent planetary systems on the way. Hence, they suggest, the transfer of Earth life across the galaxy is inevitable. These ideas are discussed in detail in two papers appearing in the current issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The authors of the two papers are Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and Dr. Max Wallis, of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, and Professor Bill Napier, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and an Honorary Professor at Cardiff University. Interstellar routes for transmission of micro-organisms supports the view that life may not have originated on Earth but arrived from elsewhere, strengthening the panspermia hypothesis that Professor Wickramasinghe and the late Sir Fred Hoyle had been developing since 1974. It is known that boulders and other debris may be thrown from the Earth into interplanetary space. Professor Napier finds that collisions with interplanetary dust will quickly erode the ejected boulders to much smaller fragments and that these tiny, life-bearing fragments may be driven out of the solar system by the pressure of sunlight in a few years. The solar system could, therefore, be surrounded by an expanding "biodisc", 30 or more light years across, of dormant microbes preserved inside tiny rock fragments. In the course of Earth history there may have been a few dozen close encounters with star-forming nebulae, during which microbes might be injected directly into young planetary systems. If planets capable of sustaining life are sufficiently common in the Galaxy, the Cardiff based scientists conclude that this mechanism could have infected over 10,000 million of them during the lifetime of our Galaxy. Dr. Wallis and Professor Wickramasinghe have also identified another potential delivery route. They point out that fertile Earth ejecta would, on impact, bury themselves in the radiation-shielded surface layers of frozen comets. A belt of such comets, the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, lies beyond the planetary system. This belt gradually leaks comets into interstellar space, some of which will eventually reach proto-planetary discs and star-forming nebulae. There they are destroyed by collisions and erosion, releasing any trapped micro-organisms and seeding the formative planetary systems. Contacts: Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe Centre for Astrobiology Cardiff University Phone: 029 2087 4201 E-mail: Wickramasinghe@cardiff.ac.uk http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/ Andrew Weltch Public Relations Office External Relations Division Cardiff University Phone: 029 2087 4731 E-mail: WeltchA@cardiff.ac.uk Read the original news release at http://www.cf.ac.uk/news/03-04/040210.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/comets_seeded_galaxy.html. __________________________________________________________________________ LOS ALAMOS LEADING FAST-PACED REACTOR RESEARCH TO POWER PLANNED JOURNEY TO JUPITER'S ICY MOONS Los Alamos National Laboratory release 10 February 2004 A proposed U.S. mission to investigate three ice-covered moons of Jupiter will demand fast-paced research, fabrication and realistic non-nuclear testing of a prototype nuclear reactor within two years, says a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist. The roots of this build and test effort have been under way at Los Alamos since the mid-1990s, said David Poston, leader of the Space Fission Power Team in Los Alamos' Nuclear Design and Risk Analysis Group. NASA proposes using use electrical ion propulsion powered by a nuclear reactor for its Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, an element of Project Prometheus, which is scheduled for launch after 2011. However, the United States hasn't flown a space fission system since 1965. Poston discussed technical requirements for such a fission reactor in two presentations Monday at the Space Technology and Applications International Forum in Albuquerque. Los Alamos is a co-sponsor of the forum. Poston discussed "The Impact of Core Cooling Technology Options on JIMO Reactor Designs" and "The Impact of Power and Lifetime Requirements on JIMO Reactor Designs." Los Alamos is leading reactor design for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission, which would orbit Callisto, Ganymede and Europa to study their makeup, possible vast oceans beneath the ice, their history and potential for sustaining life. Los Alamos is responsible for such key reactor technologies as nuclear fuel, beryllium components, heat pipes and diagnostic instruments, as well as nuclear criticality testing of development and flight reactors. "Nuclear power has long been recognized as an enabling technology for exploring and expanding into space, and fission reactors offer unprecedented power and propulsion capabilities," Poston said. The JIMO mission would demand a safe, low-mass, high-temperature reactor that can be developed and qualified quickly, can operate reliably in the harsh environment of space for more than a decade, and can meet a wide range of mission and spacecraft requirements, he said. A science mission to explore the icy Jovian moons would require kilowatts of electrical power for the scientific payloads and up to 100 kilowatts of electricity for ion propulsion to propel the spacecraft to Jupiter, maneuver within the Jovian system and allow rendezvous with the moons. The reactor also would power advanced science experiments and systems to send data to Earth at high rates. Despite the lack of U.S. space reactor research in recent decades, Los Alamos has continued to examine technologies and concepts for a rapid and affordable development program. Working with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Los Alamos has resolved many hardware issues at the component and system level. Los Alamos and NASA Marshall researchers, working with colleagues from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, have built successively more powerful nuclear electric propulsion reactor components, including a 30-kilowatt reactor core without fuel, one-third of a 100-kilowatt system (core plus heat exchanger) and a single module suitable for a 500-kilowatt reactor core. Extensive non-nuclear testing of these and other components continues. Most researchers have agreed on the best fuels and reactor construction materials for the proposed fast-spectrum, externally controlled JIMO reactor. The major design choice that remains is how best to transport power from the reactor core to the power conversion system. Los Alamos and NASA are examining three primary options for core cooling: pumped liquid-metal sodium or lithium; sodium or lithium liquid metal heat pipes; and inert helium or helium-xenon gas. Many of these options have been tested for decades for terrestrial reactors, but the reactor for JIMO would be unique, Poston said. "We believe the power and lifetime potential of space fission reactors could easily accommodate the requirements of future NASA missions," Poston said. "However, it is clear that reactor performance and technical risks are tightly coupled to power and lifetime requirements, so we must thoroughly understand these technical risks before developing the first system. For example, there are fewer technical and development challenges for a 500-kilowatt-thermal reactor than a 1,000-kilowatt-thermal reactor. "The first step needs to be small enough to ensure success and to put into place the experience, expertise and infrastructure necessary for more advanced systems," Poston concluded. "After that, we can move on to the systems needed for even more ambitious space exploration, such as multi- megawatt nuclear electric propulsion or nuclear thermal rockets. Our near-term efforts must be focused on making the first mission succeed." Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission. Los Alamos develops and applies science and technology to ensure the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent; reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction, proliferation and terrorism; and solve national problems in defense, energy, environment and infrastructure. Read the original news release at http://www.lanl.gov/worldview/news/releases/archive/04-005.shtml. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article830.html http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_040209.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0402/10jimo/ __________________________________________________________________________ NASA PREDICTS MORE TROPICAL RAIN IN A WARMER WORLD NASA release 04-058 10 February 2004 As the tropical oceans continue to heat up, following a 20-year trend, warm rains in the tropics are likely to become more frequent, according to NASA scientists. In a study by William Lau and Huey-Tzu Jenny Wu, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, the authors offer early proof of a long-held theory that patterns of evaporation and precipitation, known as the water cycle, may accelerate in some areas due to warming temperatures. The research appears in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The study cites satellite observations showing the rate that warm rain depletes clouds of water is substantially higher than computer models predicted. This research may help increase the accuracy of models that forecast rainfall and climate. The rate water mass in a cloud rains out is the precipitation efficiency. According to the study, when it comes to light warm rains, as sea surface temperature increases, the precipitation efficiency substantially increases. Computer climate models that predict rainfall have underestimated the efficiency of warm rain. Compared to actual observations from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite, computer models substantially underestimate the precipitation efficiency of light rain. The findings from this study will provide a range of possibilities for warm rain efficiency that will greatly increase a model's accuracy. "We believe there is a scenario where in a warmer climate there will be more warm rain. And more warm rain will be associated with a more vigorous water cycle and extreme weather patterns," Lau said. The process that creates warm rain begins when water droplets condense around airborne particles and clouds are created. The droplets collide, combine and grow to form raindrops. The raindrops grow large and heavy enough to fall out as warm rain. The study claims, for each degree rise in sea surface temperature, the rate a cloud loses its water to moderate- to-light warm rainfall over the tropical oceans increases by eight to 10 percent. Cold rains are generally associated with heavy downpour. They are generated when strong updrafts carry bigger drops higher up into the atmosphere, where they freeze and grow. These drops are very large by the time they fall. Once updrafts take these large drops high enough, and freezing takes place, the process of rainfall is more dependent on the velocity of the updraft and less on sea surface temperatures. Since the process of condensation releases heat, warm rains heat the lower atmosphere. More warm rains are likely to make the air lighter and rise faster, creating updrafts producing more cold rain. The study found warm rains account for approximately 31 percent of the total global rain amount and 72 percent of the total rain area over tropical oceans, implying warm rains play a crucial role in the overall water cycle. Light warm rains appear to occur much more frequently, and cover more area, than cold rains, even though they drop less water per shower. The total precipitation from all types of warm rains accounts for a substantial portion of the total rainfall. In a warmer climate, it is possible there will be more warm rain and fewer clouds. If the amount of water entering into clouds stays constant and rainfall efficiency increases, then there will be less water in the clouds and more warm rains. More study is needed to better understand the relationship between increased warm-rain precipitation efficiency and a rise in sea surface temperatures, and to determine how cold rain might be affected by an increase in warm rain and a decrease in cloud water amounts. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to understanding the Earth as an integrated system and applying Earth System Science to improve prediction of climate, weather and natural hazards using the unique vantage point of space. For more information and images related to the study on the Internet, visit http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/1224rainfall.html. For information about NASA on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov. Contacts: Elvia H. Thompson NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1696 Krishna Ramanujan NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD Phone: 607-273-2561 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/climate-04d.html. __________________________________________________________________________ HOW 3-D WORKS: MARS REVEALED BY HUMAN-LIKE EYES By Robert Roy Britt From Space.com 10 February 2004 When geologists first saw pictures of rock outcroppings at the Opportunity landing site on Mars, they thought the mini-cliff was perhaps as tall as a person. Some started calling it the "Great Wall." Then the robot's 3-D cameras, a pair of eyes standing as tall as a person, showed it was all a bluff. Seen in stereo, the stack of rocks shrunk to the height of a house cat and the public never heard the catchy nickname. At a time when digital cameras are fueling a renaissance of three- dimensional picture taking on Earth, scientists are using the technology to estimate distances to martian science targets and size them up from afar. The capability is crucial to making decisions on what objects the rover should visit, how long each would take to reach, and whether the path contains oversized obstacles to avoid. With two eyes atop its camera mast, the rover's 3-D vision overcomes limits of depth perception that would plague a single-camera setup. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/rovers_3D_040210.html. __________________________________________________________________________ CHINA HOPES TO MAKE IT TWO-UP WITH SHENZHOU-6 From SpaceDaily 10 February 2004 The training for the astronauts of "Shenzhou-6" spacecraft will start in March 2004 the People's Daily reported Monday. The biggest difference from the "Shenzhou-5" space flight is that two astronauts will carry out a flight lasting several days. Unnamed experts were quoted by the newspaper as saying this was a further test for the life safeguard system of China's manned spacecraft. Professor Xiao Yelun with Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics said that "Shenzhou 5" orbited the earth for 14 times while "Shenzhou-6" is likely to, like "Shenzhou-2 and "Shenzhou-3", carry two astronauts and orbit 108 times, almost seven days. Since the oxygen, food and water needed for the flight of two astronauts in several days is several times more than the flight of "Shenzhou-5", there will be a severe test for the life safeguard system of the manned spacecraft. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-04b.html. __________________________________________________________________________ EXPLORING MARS WITH BALLOONS From SpaceDaily 11 February 2004 Balloons outfitted with innovative steering devices and robot probes may be the best way to perform detailed surveys of Mars in preparation for human exploration. Dr. Alexey Pankine, a project scientist at the Global Aerospace Corporation, presented an analysis of balloon applications for Mars exploration at the Space Technology and Applications International Forum in Albuquerque, NM on February 10, 2004. His presentation, entitled Mars Exploration with Directed Aerial Robot Explorers, is based on research funded by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. At the center of the presentation are guided balloons that can float in the martian atmosphere for months. Balloons have long been recognized as low-cost observational platforms and are routinely used in observations of the Earth's atmosphere. In 1985, two balloons were successfully deployed in the atmosphere of Venus for a short mission. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-balloon- 04a.html. __________________________________________________________________________ STUDENT PROGRAMS TAP INTO MARS ROVER ADVENTURES NASA/JPL release 2004-58 12 February 2004 NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers are not only providing scientists a flood of information about Mars--including new insights today about winds--they are also adding excitement to classrooms throughout the nation. An assortment of programs giving students first-hand opportunities to work with information from NASA Mars missions help young people "see themselves as scientists in the future because they understand the process of science," said Sheri Klug of Arizona State University, Tempe, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. She coordinates NASA Mars education programs for kindergarten through high school, part of the agency's goal to inspire the next generation of explorers. Silver Stage High School in Silver Springs, NV, is one of 13 schools participating in one program that pairs selected students with researchers on the rover missions. "I actually get the opportunity to work with the scientists. It's really awesome!" said Shannon Theissen, 16, Silver Stage junior. Dr. Wendy Calvin, rover science team member from University of Nevada, Reno, and Shannon's mentor for a week at JPL, said, "This is the real stuff, not baby steps. The students are using the same tools we do." Hundreds of other students from around the country participate in programs using pictures and other information from NASA Mars orbiters, and more than 1,000 have sent in rocks for a project to compare Earth rocks with Mars rocks. Meanwhile, noted Art Thompson of JPL's rover flight team, "We have two very busy rovers on the surface of Mars." On Wednesday, Spirit broke its own record set earlier in the week for the longest one-day drive on Mars. The rover added 24.4 meters (80 feet) to its odometer, bringing the total to 57.4 meters (188 feet) and ending its day near a cluster of rocks dubbed "Stone Council." In coming weeks, scientists and engineers plan for Spirit to drive up to the rim of a crater dubbed "Bonneville," still more than two football- field lengths away, in hopes of peering inside and seeing rock layers that could tell the geologic history and the potential role of water at the Gusev site. Opportunity drove Friday morning to the fourth counterclockwise position in its survey of a rock outcrop along the inner slope of the crater in which it landed. Based on the survey, scientists will choose a small number of locations on the outcrop to come back to for more thorough examination later. The flight team has learned to compensate for wheel slippage in the soil on the slope. "When we attempt to drive up the slope we intentionally overdrive, and when we drive down a slope we intentionally underdrive," Thompson said. Both rovers have used an infrared sensing instrument called the miniature thermal emission spectrometer to study the sky, as well as the ground. These atmospheric observations are revealing rapid temperature changes in the lower atmosphere. In mid-morning, the air temperature at about the height of an eight-story building swings up and down by several degrees within a minute. "Warmer and colder blobs of air are intermittently passing over the rover," said Dr. Don Banfield, a rover science team collaborator from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. "We're watching the overturning of the atmosphere as it's warming up in the morning." Rising warmer air carries heat to upper layers of the atmosphere. Observing the details of these changes helps scientists improve their models for understanding Mars' winds. Better understanding of Mars' winds is important not only for the design of future landings on the planet, but also for interpreting some features on the surface. "We've been talking a lot about water on Mars in the past, but wind is currently the important agent of change on Mars," Banfield said. Microscopic images indicate that windblown sand is eroding the outcrop that Opportunity is studying. Dr. Mark Lemmon, science team member from Texas A&M University, College Station, said that taking a series of images with that instrument at slightly different distances from the target allows creation of a three-dimensional view. "We're gathering as much information about the things we're looking at as we possibly can," he said. The main task for both rovers in coming weeks and months is to explore for evidence in rocks and soils about whether the landing-site areas ever had environments that were watery and possibly suitable for sustaining life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Images and additional information about the project are available from JPL at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and from Cornell University at http://athena.cornell.edu. Information about NASA school projects is available at http://education.nasa.gov. Contacts: Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-5011 Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 __________________________________________________________________________ DARWIN'S UNIVERSE By Peter Backus From Space.com 12 February 2004 For most of history, people thought the sky was unchanging and life was as it had always been. Many believed the Earth was the center of the universe and that humans were in some way "higher" than all other creatures. Then along came the Copernican revolution four centuries ago, and suddenly Earth shifted out of the center of the universe to take up its true position among the planets in our solar system. About two and a half centuries later, another revolution took place when Charles Darwin revealed the true relation between humans and all other life on Earth. These revolutions are similar for the way they shift perspective, and better inform us about our origins and our future. We now know that everything changes. In four and a half billion years the Earth changed from a hot, dry, cratered rock to a temperate, ocean- dominated world teeming with life. We also know that most of the life that ever existed on Earth has gone extinct. The way that life changes, new species arising while others disappear, only makes sense thanks to Darwin and his theory of evolution. A perspective on how things change over time is also useful in astronomy. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_darwin_backus_040212.html. __________________________________________________________________________ EXPERT WARNS NASA CAN'T AFFORD MARS PLAN From Associated Press and CNN 12 February 2004 An aerospace executive warned a presidential commission Wednesday that NASA does not have enough money--or bright young stars--to achieve President Bush's goal of returning astronauts to the moon and flying from there to Mars. "It would be a grave mistake to undertake a major new space objective on the cheap. To do so, in my opinion, would be an invitation to disaster," said Norman Augustine, retired chairman of Lockheed Martin Corporation and head of a panel that examined the future of the space program for the first President Bush. Augustine was among five aerospace experts who addressed the first public hearing of the current President Bush's space exploration commission, held in Washington, DC. Read the full article at http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/02/12/moon.mars.commission.ap/index.htm l. An additional article on this subject is available at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=3&u=/ap/200 40211/ap_on_sc/moon_mars_commission. __________________________________________________________________________ BORN BONE DRY By Leslie Mullen From Astrobiology Magazine 16 February 2004 The MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity, now traveling on the surface of Mars, are exploring a geography drier than the driest desert on Earth. Despite the polar ice caps and suspected pockets of liquid water beneath the martian surface, the amount of water on Mars is but a teaspoon compared to the vast watery reserves of Earth. Why is Mars so dry? The inner planets of our solar system--Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury-- formed by the accumulation of small rocks and dust that swirled around the sun in its earliest years. If the Earth and Mars are made of the same stardust, they should have been born with about the same ratio of water. Many scientists think Mars once was very watery, but lost its oceans due to the low mass of the planet. This, combined with a thin atmosphere, allowed most of the water on Mars to evaporate out into space. But according to a study by Jonathan Lunine of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, the Red Planet was dry from the very beginning. Lunine, writing in the journal Icarus in 2003 with colleagues John Chambers, Alessandro Morbidelli, and Laurie Leshin, says that Mars was originally a planetary embryo. In essence, a planetary embryo is a very large asteroid that can be as massive as Mercury or Mars. This pre-Mars embryo existed in the asteroid belt, which at the time was more widely dispersed in the solar system, spread out between 0.5 to 4 AU from the sun. Today the main asteroid belt is roughly at 2 to 4 AU, located between Mars (1.5 AU) and Jupiter (5.2 AU). Lunine says that Mars grew to its present size from accumulations of smaller asteroids and comets. He says that the more massive Earth, in comparison, mostly formed from large planetary embryos colliding into each other. "By chance Mars was not struck by giant asteroids while Earth was--the lucky versus unlucky pedestrian," says Lunine. "But Mars was struck by much smaller bodies because these are so numerous." The Earth currently orbits the sun at 1 AU. Lunine says that planetary embryos in this orbit would not have had much water. Early in the sun's evolution, during planetary formation, the dusty disk that surrounded the young star was very hot. Water-bearing compounds would not have been able to form in this disk at 1 AU. Since Mars is further away from the sun than Earth, and closer to the cooler, "moist" regions of the asteroid belt, it would seem logical that Mars would have been born with more water. Yet Lunine says that Mars probably acquired only 6 to 27 percent of an Earth's ocean (1 Earth ocean = 1.5 × 1021 kg). That's because some of the planetary embryos that eventually constituted the Earth were saturated with water. While 90 percent of the embryos that formed the Earth were from the 1 AU region, and therefore dry, 10 percent were from 2.5 AU and beyond. Embryos coming from this distance would've had large supplies of water. Smaller asteroids coming from this distance would've contributed to the Earth's water supply as well. At most, Lunine says that only 15 percent of Earth's water came from comets. Mars, meanwhile, had the bad luck to be born as a single dry rock. Mars eventually received some water late in the formation game, after its core had already formed and it had nearly reached its present mass. According to Lunine's scenario, Jupiter also gained its present day mass around this time. Jupiter's gravity then either sucked in nearby asteroids or caused them to scatter outwards. The proto-Mars somehow escaped being shifted by Jupiter's gravity, but was bombarded by the outward-bound asteroids. "The impacts of small asteroids and comets constituted a "late veneer" which added water to Mars, in contrast to the picture for Earth where water was added through collisions with Mercury-sized embryos throughout a growth period of some tens of millions of years," the scientists write. Although Mars doesn't form in their computer model, the scientists think that may reflect the chaotic nature of planetary formation, where the directions of planetary embryos and asteroids are unpredictable and many outcomes are possible. "There is a fair amount of randomness involved in building the terrestrial planets, so ending up with a Mars that did not happen to accrete many water-rich planetesimals is a possible occurrence," says Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "This may well help explain the paucity of water on modern-day Mars." Such differences in planetary formation also could occur among the inner planets of other solar systems. So far, astronomers know of 104 stars that have planets orbiting them. All of the extrasolar planets found so far are gas giants, but it seems likely that terrestrial planets like Mars and the Earth also could orbit distant stars, even though we do not yet have the technology to detect them. If some inner terrestrial planets are formed by collisions of several planetary embryos, while others are embryos that only gather up moist comets and asteroids, then planets around these other stars could have very different amounts of water. Lunine suggests that the timing and formation of the gas giant planets in each solar system will play an important role in this process, just as Jupiter has influenced the character of our own solar system. Lunine currently has a paper in Icarus, with Tom Quinn and Sean Raymond of the University of Washington, on the possible variation in water abundance for terrestrial planets around other stars. In addition, he is carefully watching the data collected by the MER rovers Spirit and Opportunity, as well as the satellites currently orbiting Mars. "Odyssey, MER, and Mars Express will determine how much water exists at present, hopefully, and provide better constraints on past water abundance," says Lunine. "I am particularly interested in the MARSIS radar results, and those of its successor--SHARAD." MARSIS is a radar device on the Mars Express satellite that can look through the top five kilometers of martian crust to search for layers of water and ice. The Italian space agency is planning to fly a shallow subsurface radar, called SHARAD, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to see if water ice is present at depths greater than one meter. While MARSIS has a higher penetration capability, it has much lower resolution than SHARAD will have. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article833.html. __________________________________________________________________________ PARTICIPATE IN THE NEW U.S. SPACE INITIATIVE By Fraser Cain From Universe Today 11 February 2004 When U.S. President Bush announced his new space initiative back in January, he said that he'd appoint a special commission led by Pete Aldridge to explore strategies for sending humans back to the Moon and eventually on to Mars. The commission set up a web site at http://www.moontomars.org, and began holding public hearings today. One cool thing about this is that they are looking for the public's feedback and suggestions, so if you've got some good ideas, drop them a note from this page. __________________________________________________________________________ NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/ 16 February 2004 Astrobiology and planetary engineering articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles1.html Cardiff University, 2004. Comets could spread life around the galaxy. Universe Today. Terrestrial extreme environments articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles2.html R. Sanders, 2004. Scientists report first sequencing of environmental genome. SpaceDaily. Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html P. Backus, 2004. Darwin's universe. Space.com. L. Mullen, 2004. Born bone dry. Astrobiology Magazine. S. Olson, 2004. Evolution in Hawaii: A Supplement to Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. Astrobiology and extreme environments book list http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/astrobiology_books.html R. Byerly, Jr., R. B. Leshner and P. L. Whitney, National Research Council, 2004. Issues and Opportunities Regarding the U.S. Space Program: A Summary Report of a Workshop on National Space Policy. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. S. Olson, 2004. Evolution in Hawaii: A Supplement to Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science. National Academies Press, Washington, DC. __________________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 4-11 February 2004 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Monday, February 9. 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=1ImhDm3hTnxO-3BCLCXxIg. The Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) solar wind observations concluded this week. Cassini has begun taking data for the first color Saturn and ring approach movies. Ultraviolet mosaics of the Saturn magnetosphere continue to map neutral and ion photon emissions to derive the distribution and density of atomic and molecular species. Additional on board activities included uplink and execution of power cycle commands to perform a Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) Low Energy Magnetospheric Measurement Subsystem recovery, execution of the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) flight software checkout, a Cassini Plasma Spectrometer configuration, calibration and master instrument expanded block load for participation in solar wind survey observations, uplink and execution of Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) diagnostic flight software, deactivation and deregistration of the INMS memory dump mini-sequence, RPWS high frequency receiver calibrations, a reaction wheel unload, and clearing of the ACS high water marks. The Navigation team acquired 15 out of 16 scheduled optical navigation (OPNAV) images of the small Saturnian satellites this week. Spacecraft pointing for all received frames was excellent. These were the first sets of images dedicated towards optical navigation of Cassini. Previous OPNAVs were performed only for calibration purposes. The C43 Final Sequence Integration and Validation (FSIV) Sequence Change Request approval meeting was held this week with sequence approval scheduled for Thursday. The Preliminary Sequence Integration and Validation (PSIV) sub-phase has begun for approach science sequence C44. A wrap up meeting was held for Science Operations Plan (SOP) implementation of tour sequences S21, and S22. These sequences will be archived until February of 2006 when the S21 aftermarket process begins. Preliminary port 1 deliveries were made for SOP Implementation of tour sequences S23 and S24. Spacecraft Operations successfully completed a dry run rehearsal of the Probe Relay demonstration in the ITL last week. This week, an internal peer review was held for this activity. The actual demonstration will execute on the spacecraft in February and March of this year. The Probe Relay Demo simulates the actual Relay sequence to be used in January 2005 when the Huygens Probe reaches Titan. Cassini and other JPL personnel supported the co-located panel meetings for the Huygens Mission delta Flight Acceptance Review (FAR) at Alcatel. The three panels went through all the Review Item Discrepancies (RIDs) submitted by the reviewers. The RIDs were processed with either a closure response or further action was assigned. The follow on actions were to either clarify points in certain documents, perform additional confirming analysis or testing. Each panel has prepared reports that will be submitted to the final board meeting being held on February 13. The Cassini Radio Science Task Lead presented a briefing to the Program Manager and Cassini staff on the status of the anomaly of the Ka-band Translator (KaT). A representative from Alenia Spazio, the manufacturer of the KaT, traveled from Italy to participate. The presenters gave the background and history of the anomaly as well as the current plans for attempted recovery, probably starting in mid March. VIMS instrument personnel attended a team meeting in Tucson, Arizona. Topics of discussion included tour operations and plans. So far at least 295 VIMS data cubes have been received during C42. Data from last weeks VIMS flight software checkout has been initially processed. This version 8.1 upgrade was to add the capability to spectrally sum the data. The software appears to have performed properly, and the spectrums summed as expected. A delivery coordination meeting was held for the Command Database version D10C. Cassini presentations were given this week at career day events for the American Association of University Women, and to 250 students at Bell Gardens High School in Montebello, California. The European Space Agency has released the February 2004 Huygens Status Report. Topics include the revised mission implementation, and Delta Flight Acceptance Review status. For more information go to http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Vb8KHCbRHj9O-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. __________________________________________________________________________ UK AND ESA ANNOUNCE BEAGLE 2 INQUIRY--INVESTIGATION TO LEARN LESSONS FROM MARS LANDER ESA release 09-2004 11 February 2004 Beagle 2, the British-built element of ESA's Mars Express mission, has failed to communicate since its first radio contact was missed shortly after it was due to land on Mars on Christmas Day. The Beagle 2 Management Board met in London on Friday 6 February and, following an assessment of the situation, declared Beagle 2 lost. Today, the UK Science Minister Lord Sainsbury and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that an ESA/UK inquiry would be held into the failure the Beagle 2 lander. Lord Sainsbury, of the Department of Trade and Industry, said, "I believe such an inquiry will be very useful. The reasons identified by the Inquiry Board will allow the experience gained from Beagle 2 to be used for the benefit of future European planetary exploration missions." The ESA Director General, Jean-Jacques Dordain, said, "ESA is a partnership of its Member States and sharing the lessons learnt from good and bad experiences is fundamental in cooperation." The Inquiry Board is to be chaired by the ESA Inspector General, René Bonnefoy. The UK deputy chairman will be David Link MBE. The inquiry will investigate whether it can be established why Beagle 2 may have failed and set out any lessons which can be learnt for future missions. Such inquiries are routine in the event of unsuccessful space missions and this one will help inform future ESA robotic missions, to Mars and other bodies in the solar system. The Inquiry Board will be set up under normal ESA procedures by the Inspector General. Because the inquiry is into a British-built lander, it will report to Lord Sainsbury as well as to the Director General of ESA. The Board, made up of people with no direct involvement in the Beagle 2 mission, is expected to begin work shortly and report by the end of March 2004. Its terms of reference are as follows: 1. Technical Issues * Assess the available data/documentation pertaining to the in-orbit operations, environment and performance characterization, and to the on- ground tests and analyses during development; * Identify possible issues and shortcomings in the above and in the approach adopted, which might have contributed to the loss of the mission; 2. Programmatics * Analyse the programmatic environment (i.e. decision-making processes, level of funding and resources, management and responsibilities, interactions between the various entities) throughout the development phase; * Identify possible issues and shortcomings which might have contributed to the loss of the mission. The key players in the Beagle 2 mission, including Colin Pillinger, the Open University, the University of Leicester, the National Space Science Centre, EADS-Astrium, and BNSC partners have all welcomed the setting up of the Inquiry Board. David Link is a former Director of Science and Radar Observation at Matra Marconi Space, now EADS-UK. The Beagle 2 project to make a lander element of the ESA Mars Express mission was headed by the Open University, providing the science lead, and EADS-Astrium, the prime contractor responsible for the main design, development and management of the lander. Beagle 2 was designed to look for signs of life on Mars. It was to parachute down to the surface of the planet and collect soil samples, which would have been analysed for signs of past and present biological activity. The lander was also packed with a suite of instruments to take pictures, acquire geological information and study the weather, including temperature, pressure and wind. The Beagle 2 lander was funded through a partnership arrangement involving the Open University, EADS-Astrium, the DTI, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the Office of Science and Technology and ESA. Funding also came from the National Space Science Centre and the Wellcome Foundation. UK principal investigators for Beagle 2 came from the Open University (gas analysis package), Leicester University (environmental sensors and x-ray spectrometer) and Mullard Space Science Laboratory (imaging systems). The ESA Mars Express spacecraft, the mother ship, successfully entered orbit around Mars on Christmas Day and, following a series of orbital manoeuvres, has been performing excellently as it starts its two-year global survey of the planet. Among first results announced on 23 January were unprecedented 3-D high-resolution images of the surface and the detection of water ice on the South Pole. Contact: ESA Media Relations Division Phone: +33(0)1.53.69.7155 Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690 BNSC Press Enquiries: +44(0)20 7215 0806/0905 Public Enquiries: +44(0)20 7215 5000 Textphone: +44(0)20 7215 6740 http://www.bnsc.gov.uk Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/beagle2-04c.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/marsexpress/040211board.html __________________________________________________________________________ HUYGENS STATUS REPORT ESA release 10 February 2004 Mission status The Cassini/Huygens spacecraft is performing nominally. Cassini has entered the Saturn approach science phase and regular distant observations of Saturn have started. A new series of Saturn images was obtained with the Orbiter narrow angle camera in December. Coordinated observations of Saturn's aurorae by the Hubble Space telescope are planned for January/February while Cassini will monitor the solar wind conditions when approaching Saturn in order to shed some light on the Solar Wind/Saturn magnetosphere interaction processes. The preparation activities for the in-flight engineering demonstration of the Probe Relay Sequence, planned on 29 February-4 March 2004, are ongoing. Revised Huygens mission implementation The probe system and instrument on-board software patches implementing the pre-heating options were successfully up-loaded on the flight probe on 7 December 2003. A few days later, two in-flight checkout sequences were successfully executed that validated the on-board implementation of the software patches and their compatibility with either the pre-heating or the no pre-heating option. Delta flight acceptance review (Delta-FAR) The Huygens Delta-FAR is an Agency-level review with the objective of examining the changes to the mission implemented since the FAR that was conducted 6 months before launch in 1997. The overall objectives of the review are: * Validation of the new mission scenario designed to recover from the radio receiver design fault; * Re-validation of the entry and descent performances; * Confirmation of the readiness of flight operations preparation for the revised Huygens Mission. Three panels have been formed according to the three main objectives outlined above. Panel members include experts from both ESTEC and ESOC D/TOS Departments, Project and mission team personnel from D/SCI and other ESA directorates, experts from DLR and CNES as part of the cross- participation to reviews between ESA and National Centers, and Huygens payload experts. The Review Kick-Off meeting was held on 3 December 2003. The panels will write their reports by end of the first week of February and the final Board Meeting (co-chaired by ESA's Science Director and Inspector General) is planned for 13 February 2004. __________________________________________________________________________ MDRS CREW 23 POSTS SUMMARY REPORT Mars Society release 16 February 2004 On February 14, the 23rd Crew of the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) posted their summary report. Crew 24, commanded by Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) Crew 8 veteran, Digby Tarvin, entered the MDRS February 15. Simulation missions this spring at MDRS will continue through the end of April, to be followed by a four-week rotation by FMARS Crew 9 on Devon Island in July. Daily reports from the MDRS Crew commanders, scientists, engineers, and journalists can be found at the MDRS link at the Mars Society web site at www.marssociety.org. A complete retrospective and many individual technical reports on both the 2004 field season s at MDRS and FMARS will be presented at the 7th International Mars Society Convention, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, August 19-22, 2004. Registration is now open at www.marssociety.org. __________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS UPDATES NASA/JPL releases Mars Rover Pictures Raise "Blueberry Muffin" Questions NASA/JPL release 2004-054, 9 February 2004 NASA's Spirit rover has begun making some of its own driving decisions while its twin, Opportunity, is presenting scientists with decisions to make about studying small spheres embedded in bedrock, like berries in a muffin. Both rovers are on the move. Late Sunday, Spirit drove about 6.4 meters (21 feet), passing right over the rock called "Adirondack," where it had finished examining the rock's interior revealed by successfully grinding away the surface. The drive tested the rover's autonomous navigation ability for the first time on Mars. "We've entered a new phase of the mission," said Dr. Mark Maimone, rover mobility software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. When the rover is navigating itself, it gets a command telling it where to end up, and it evaluates the terrain with stereo imaging to choose the best way to get there. It must avoid any obstacles it identifies. This capability is expected to enable longer daily drives than depending on step-by-step navigation commands from Earth. Tonight, Spirit will be commanded to drive farther on a northeastward course toward a crater nicknamed "Bonneville." Over the weekend, Spirit drilled the first artificial hole in a rock on Mars. Its rock abrasion tool ground the surface off Adirondack in a patch 45.5 millimeters (1.8 inches) in diameter and 2.65 millimeters (0.1 inch) deep. Examination of the freshly exposed interior with the rover's microscopic imager and other instruments confirmed that the rock is volcanic basalt. Opportunity drove about 4 meters (13 feet) today. It moved to a second point in a counterclockwise survey of a rock outcrop called "Opportunity Ledge" along the inner wall of the rover's landing-site crater. Pictures taken at the first point in that survey reveal gray spherules, or small spheres, within the layered rocks and also loose on the ground nearby. NASA now knows the location of Opportunity's landing site crater, which is 22 meters (72 feet) in diameter. Radio signals gave a preliminary location less than an hour after landing, and additional information from communications with NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter soon narrowed the estimate, said JPL's Tim McElrath, deputy chief of the navigation team. As Opportunity neared the ground, winds changed its course from eastbound to northbound, according to analysis of data recorded during the landing. "It's as if the crater were attracting us somehow," said JPL's Dr. Andrew Johnson, engineer for a system that estimated the spacecraft's horizontal motion during the landing. The spacecraft bounced 26 times and rolled about 200 meters (about 220 yards) before coming to rest inside the crater, whose outcrop represents a bonanza for geologists on the mission. JPL geologist Dr. Tim Parker was able to correlate a few features on the horizon above the crater rim with features identified by Mars orbiters, and JPL imaging scientist Dr. Justin Maki identified the spacecraft's jettisoned backshell and parachute in another Opportunity image showing the outlying plains. As a clincher, a new image from Mars Global Surveyor's camera shows the Opportunity lander as a bright feature in the crater. A dark feature near the lander may be the rover. "I won't know if it's really the rover until I take another picture after the rover moves," said Dr. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. He is a member of the rovers' science team and principal investigator for the camera on Mars Global Surveyor. Opportunity's crater is at 1.95 degrees south latitude and 354.47 degrees east longitude, the opposite side of the planet from Spirit's landing site at 14.57 degrees south latitude and 175.47 degrees east longitude. The first outcrop rock Opportunity examined up close is finely-layered, buff-colored and in the process of being eroded by windblown sand. "Embedded in it like blueberries in a muffin are these little spherical grains," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, principal investigator for the rovers' scientific instruments. Microscopic images show the gray spheres in various stages of being released from the rock. "This is wild looking stuff," Squyres said. "The rock is being eroded away and these spherical grains are dropping out." The spheres may have formed when molten rock was sprayed into the air by a volcano or a meteor impact. Or, they may be concretions, or accumulated material, formed by minerals coming out of solution as water diffused through rock, he said. The main task for both rovers in coming weeks and months is to explore the areas around their landing sites for evidence in rocks and soils about whether those areas ever had environments that were watery and possibly suitable for sustaining life. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Images and additional information about the project are available from JPL at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and from Cornell University at http://athena.cornell.edu. Contacts: Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-5011 Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article828.html http://www.astrobio.net/news/article829.html http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/02/12/mars.rovers.ap/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/02/09/mars.rovers/index.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_drills_040207.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/opportunity_update_040207.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/rovers_update_040208.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/opportunity_update_040209.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_update_040209.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/opportunity_spheres_040211.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/opportunity_spheres_040212.html http://www.space.com/news/marsps_040212.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/opportunity_layers_040212.html http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/martian_winds_040213.html http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/040210210950.flb5qai0.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zz.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zza.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zze.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzh.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-general-04h.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/status.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040210spirit.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/both_rovers_on_move.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/close_examination_bedrock_reveals_ clues.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/spirit_rising_pockets_warm_air.htm l __________________________________________________________________________ MARS EXPRESS/MER: INTERNATIONAL INTERPLANETARY NETWORKING SUCCEEDS NASA release 04-060 12 February 2004 A pioneering demonstration of communications between NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and the European Space Agency (ESA) Mars Express orbiter succeeded. On February 6, while Mars Express was flying over the area Spirit was examining, the orbiter transferred commands from Earth to the rover and relayed data from the robotic explorer back to Earth. "This is the first time we have had an in-orbit communication between ESA and NASA spacecraft, and also the first working international communications network around another planet," said Rudolf Schmidt, ESA's project manager for Mars Express. "Both are significant achievements, two more 'firsts' for Mars Express and the Mars Exploration Rovers." Jennifer Trosper, Spirit mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, said, "We have an international interplanetary communications network established at Mars." ESA and NASA planned this demonstration as part of continuing efforts to cooperate in space and to enable plans to use joint communications assets to support future missions to the surface of Mars. The commands for the rover were transferred from Spirit's operations team at JPL to ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where they were translated into commands for Mars Express. The translated commands were transmitted to Mars Express, which used them to successfully command Spirit. Spirit used its ultra-high frequency antenna to transmit telemetry information to Mars Express. The orbiter relayed the data back to JPL, via the European Space Operations Centre. "This is excellent news," said JPL's Richard Horttor, project manager for NASA's role in Mars Express. "The communication sessions between Mars Express and Spirit were pristine. Not a single bit of data was missing or added, and there were no duplications." This exercise demonstrated the increased flexibility and capabilities of interagency cooperation and highlighted the spirit of close support essential in undertaking international space exploration. Spirit and its twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, frequently use two NASA orbiters, Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor, for relaying communications. The rovers also can communicate directly with the Earth- based antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network in California, Spain and Australia, another layer of international cooperation. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project and NASA participation in Mars Express for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. For information about NASA and Mars programs on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov. For images and information about the Mars Exploration Rover project on the Internet, visit http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov or http://athena.cornell.edu. For images and information about Mars Express on the Internet, visit http://www.esa.int/science/marsexpress or http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/express. Contacts: Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 Jocelyne Landeau-Constantin ESA/EASOC Communication Office Phone: 49 6151 90 26 96 Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-5011 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/interplanetary_internet _040212.html http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040212marsexpress.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/interplanetary_network.html __________________________________________________________________________ RECENT MARS EXPRESS RESULTS ESA releases 10 February 2004 [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34626] Valles Marineris Region This image was acquired in orbit 18 on 14 January 2004 from an altitude of 275 km. It shows a region north of Valles Marineris located at between 5 and 10°N, 323°E. The image height is 50 km, it has a resolution of 12 m per pixel. The features in the picture indicate erosional processes possibly caused by water. North is to the right side of the picture. Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum). [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34632] PFS Spectrum Indicating Water Ice Water ice is most clearly observed between 3750 and 3950 cm-1 in the PFS Spectrum of the southern polar cap. The comparison with the equatorial spectrum shows the presence of a wide absorption band due to water ice. In both cases a large number of water lines (water vapor in the atmosphere) are present. Note also another absorption band due to CO2 ice at 4370 cm-1. Image credit: ESA. [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34631] PFS Spectrum from South Polar Cap CO2 ice features are observed at 2725, 2770, 3000 and 3330 cm-1. A similar spectrum, observed at the equator of Mars, is shown for comparison. The three bands between 2840 and 2950 cm-1 are due to contamination of the pointing mirror, caused in space by an, as yet, unknown reason. Note that the bands are not deep, indicating that water ice may also be present. Image credit: ESA. [http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=34630] Laboratory Measurements of CO2 Absorption Bands Results of laboratory studies of water and CO2 ices performed by G. Hansen, a co-investigator on the PFS instrument. The figure indicates that CO2 ice is full of many thin absorption bands, which should be clearly visible if the ice on Mars is purely from carbon dioxide. If water ice is mixed with it, then the continuum of the spectrum is depressed and the bands become shallower. The lower the CO2 content the narrower the CO2 band at 3700 cm-1 and the rising slope, at 3800 cm-1 in the laboratory experiment, will move towards 3700 cm-1. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article832.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-04f.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0402/10marsexpress/ __________________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 5-11 February 2004 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. South Polar Scene (Released 05 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=uKtlqgAVyK9O-3BCLCXxIg Wind-Streaked Slopes (Released 06 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=GZqq9svgrjBO-3BCLCXxIg Exhuming South Polar Crater (Released 07 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=UNXtXBkHXxhO-3BCLCXxIg Polygons in Seasonal Frost (Released 08 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=AirlZy6qtpFO-3BCLCXxIg MGS MOC Image of Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, on Mars (Released 09 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=DjpiSga3X2lO-3BCLCXxIg Stripped Crater Floor (Released 10 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=EfTG4EoMXglO-3BCLCXxIg Sand Dunes in Noachis Terra (Released 11 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=cAzwbpDD5w5O-3BCLCXxIg All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are archived at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=IyzPu3gmLX1O-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 9-13 February 2004 Water Ripples (Released 9 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=LJq2esw74zlO-3BCLCXxIg Waves on a Martian Beach (Released 10 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=eCHpZmzSzlhO-3BCLCXxIg Desert Island (Released 11 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=OK7VGGml4PdO-3BCLCXxIg Bubbles (Released 12 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=4Rj8WBb9xu1O-3BCLCXxIg Black Rain (Released 13 February 2004) http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=0a_2DIUM97lO-3BCLCXxIg All of the THEMIS images are archived at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=nKXWj2y1z0NO-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. __________________________________________________________________________ ROSETTA STATUS REPORTS ESA releases Rosetta Lander Successfully Completes On-Ground Check-Out 10 February 2004 The check-out team took the Lander through a flawless "Cruise Abbreviated Functional Test". This test successfully demonstrated that all Lander subsystem and payload units were as alive and well as expected. To round off the test series, the electrical configuration was finalized for launch, the primary battery was checked out, and the secondary battery was fully charged. Finally, the harpoons, which in 10.5 years' time will secure the Lander to the comet surface, were mounted. By now, only a few protective covers and other "remove-before-flight" items still have to be removed (including tip protectors of the harpoons, still present on the picture you see here), and the plug that sets the Lander to the Arm status will be installed late February, when Rosetta is atop its Launch Vehicle. In addition, the Lander staff graduated from their refresher Safety Training to be cleared for work at the BAF (Ariane 5 Final Assembly Building), where that last "remove-before-flight" and arming task will be performed. No small feat! Hi-tech in space--Rosetta--a space sophisticate 16 February 2004 The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission will be getting under way in February 2004. The Rosetta spacecraft will be pairing up with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and accompanying it on its journey, investigating the comet's composition and the dynamic processes at work as it flies sunwards. The spacecraft will even deposit a lander on the comet. "This will be our first direct contact with the surface of a comet," said Dr Manfred Warhaut, Operations Manager for the Rosetta mission at ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. The trip is certainly not short. Rosetta will need ten years just to reach the comet. This places extreme demands on its hardware; when the probe meets up with the comet, all instruments must be fully operational, especially since it will have been in "hibernation" for 2 and a half years of its journey. During this "big sleep", all systems, scientific instruments included, are turned off. Only the on-board computer remains active. Twelve cubic meters of technical wizardry Rosetta's hardware fits into a sort of aluminium box measuring just 12 cubic meters. The scientific payload is mounted in the upper part, while the subsystems--on-board computer, transmitter and propulsion system--are housed below. The lander is fixed to the opposite side of the probe from the steerable antenna. As the spacecraft orbits the comet, the scientific instruments will at all times be pointed towards its surface; the antenna and solar panels will point towards the Earth and Sun respectively. For trajectory and attitude control and for the major braking maneuvers, Rosetta is equipped with 24 thrusters each delivering 10 N. That corresponds to the force needed here on Earth to hold a bag containing 10 apples. Rosetta sets off with 1650 kg of propellant on board, accounting for more than half its mass at lift-off. Just 20% of total mass is available for scientific purposes. So when developing the research instruments the same rule applied as for supermodels: make every gram count. The calculation seems to have worked out right: the main probe will be carrying 11 scientific instruments and the Rosetta lander a further ten. They will analyze the composition and structure of the comet's nucleus and study its interaction with the solar wind and the interplanetary plasma. Rosetta unplugged "To provide the probe with the power it needs in space, we have given it the biggest solar panels ever carried by a European satellite," Manfred Warhaut explained. "These cells are its only source of electricity." They span 32 meters tip to tip while, at 64 m2 the surface area is comparable to that of a two-bedroom flat. The panels may be rotated through 180° to catch the maximum amount of sunlight. These dimensions are also essential because when Rosetta meets Churyumov- Gerasimenko it will be 675 million kilometers away from the Sun. At that distance solar radiation is very weak and the solar collectors will supply only 440 W of power--compared with 8000 W towards the end of the mission when the two companions come closest to the Sun (at some 150 million kilometers from our star distance). "The probe is also equipped with a set of four 10-amp-hour batteries to maintain power supply while Rosetta flies in the shadow of the comet." Rosetta lander--standing on its own three legs The Rosetta lander is another of the mission's technical highlights. Using its scientific instruments, its job will be to investigate the comet's surface on location. Thanks to a mechanical arm, the lander will operate in a two-metre radius. The soft landing is a particular problem given the extremely weak gravitational force exerted by the very small comet nucleus; the lander, weighing in at 100 kg on Earth, will on the comet be as light as a sheet of paper. If there were the slightest recoil, it would bounce back uncontrollably like a rubber ball. To make sure this doesn't happen, the lander's three legs are equipped with special shock-absorbers which take up most of the kinetic energy. The legs are also fitted with ice pitons; these bore into the ground immediately on touchdown. At the same moment, the lander fires a harpoon to anchor it to the ground- -an opportunity also to investigate the mechanical properties of the surface. "If everything goes according to plan, the mission results could well fundamentally expand our knowledge of comets, just as the Rosetta Stone, after which the probe is named, helped unravel the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics," said Manfred Warhaut. For further information on Rosetta and ESA projects, please consult our portal at: http://www.esa.int/science or directly at http://www.esa.int/rosetta. Contact: ESA, Media Relations Service Phone: +33(0)1.53.69.7155 Fax: +33(0)1.53.69.7690 An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rosetta-04f.html. __________________________________________________________________________ STARDUST STATUS REPORT NASA/JPL release 13 February 2004 The Stardust team had daily communications with the spacecraft in the past week. Telemetry relayed from the spacecraft indicates it remains in very good shape. 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 at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=T2WkPoeoO8tO-3BCLCXxIg. The Stardust science team held a two-day workshop this week to review the Comet Wild 2 data and to prepare science papers for publication. 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=K6D56krf5RtO-3BCLCXxIg. __________________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 11, Number 8.