Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 11, Number 21, 18 May 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. __________________________________________________________________________ Articles and News 1) SPACE EXPLORATION ALLIANCE FOUNDED Mars Society release 2) BRINGING MARS HOME Edited testimony of Michael Carr 3) SYNTHETIC LIFE By W. Wayt Gibbs 4) TWO NEW VERY HOT JUPITERS Based on a European Southern Observatory report 5) INTERVIEW WITH BROTHER GUY CONSOLMAGNO, CURATOR OF METEORITES AT THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY By Henry Bortman 6) NASA SELECTS NEW EXPLORER SCHOOLS NASA release 04-153 7) NASA, STANFORD FORM SPACE BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP NASA/ARC release 04-42AR 8) EXTREME ECOSYSTEM By Ron Koczor 9) EVIDENCE OF METEOR IMPACT FOUND OFF AUSTRALIAN COAST NASA release 04-159 10) WAYSTATIONS TO MARS Edited testimony from David Morrison 11) WHAT WOULD A MARTIAN DRIVE? Based on the testimony of David Morrison, Jonathan Lunine and Michael Carr 12) PUNCHING THROUGH THE NIGHT'S CURTAIN Based on testimony of David Morrison, Jonathon Lunine and Michael Carr 13) WHY MOVE AN ASTEROID? Testimony of Edward Lu 14) RAY BRADBURY: THE ILLUSTRATED SPACEMAN Edited testimony of Ray Bradbury 15) A BIT OF TITAN ON EARTH HELPS IN THE SEARCH FOR LIFE'S ORIGINS By Lori Stiles Announcements 16) THE SECOND CONFERENCE ON EARLY MARS: GEOLOGIC, HYDROLOGIC, AND CLIMATE EVOLUTION AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE, SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT Lunar and Planetary Institute release 17) PROGRAMS WILL SHARE EXCITEMENT OF MARS ROVERS NASA/JPL release 2004-127 18) NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX By David J. Thomas Mission Reports 19) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS NASA/JPL release 20) MARS ROVER INSPECTS STONE EJECTED FROM CRATER NASA/JPL release 2004-125 21) MARS EXPRESS UPDATE ESA release 22) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 23) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release __________________________________________________________________________ SPACE EXPLORATION ALLIANCE FOUNDED Mars Society release 7 May 2004 The Mars Society has joined with twelve other space advocacy organizations to form a Space Exploration Alliance to secure passage of the first year's funding required to launch NASA's new exploration initiative which aims at sending human explorers to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. The human space exploration initiative currently faces a critical political fight. The Mars Society has been heavily engaged, with over 150 meetings conducted between Mars Society members and Congressmen or staff in the past several months to try to win support for the new program. We view the formation of a united front with as many other organizations as possible on this issue as an an essential step to achieve victory. We call upon everyone who supports the vision of the human future in space to rally alongside the SEA at this time. An in-depth discussion of the fight to launch the new human exploration initiative will take place at the 7th International Mars Society Convention, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago IL, August 19-22, 2004. If you wish to present a paper on this or any other issue relating to the exploration or settlement of Mars, please send abstracts of no more than 300 words by May 31, 2004 to msabstracts@aol.com. Registration for the conventions is now open at www.marssociety.org. The SEA press release announcing the foundation of the new alliance is reprinted below. Leading Space Groups Agree: It's Time For The Moon, Mars And Beyond In an unprecedented show of unity, thirteen of the nation's premier space advocacy groups, industry associations and space policy organizations have teamed up to support the effort to refocus NASA's human space activities toward exploration, including a return to the Moon and moving on to Mars and beyond. The organizations involved include: Aerospace Industries Association, Aerospace States Association, American Astronautically Society, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, California Space Authority, Florida Space Authority, The Mars Society, National Coalition of Spaceport States, National Space Society, The Planetary Society, ProSpace, Space Access Society and Space Frontier Foundation. Collectively these groups can count almost one million Americans as members or as employees of member companies. Their first goal as a group is to work for broad Congressional support of the new national vision for space exploration outside of low earth orbit, which they refer to as Moon, Mars and Beyond. To begin they will work to secure first year funding for the initiative, which they view as a necessary first step for in-depth planning of the exploration program to commence in earnest. In addition they intend to aggressively refute the false impression that Moon, Mars and Beyond is too expensive for this country to take on. They will demonstrate how modest but steady growth in our national expenditures on space can move the nation toward these important goals, and the benefits those expenditures will provide. As space activity becomes increasingly integrated with every aspect of life here on earth, this new focus on exploration will provide myriad advances in science and technology, untold economic opportunity and serve as an inspiration to our nation's youth. Given those benefits and the many more that lie in store, this new program of human space exploration beyond low earth orbit is a vital link to the future of the United States and the world. For further information about this effort, please contact: Tim Huddleston, Aerospace States Association Phone: 256-782-5972 E-mail: thuddleston@aerospacestates.us Bruce Mahone, Aerospace Industries Association Phone: 703-358-1095 E-mail: bruce@aia-aerospace.org Marc Schlather, ProSpace Phone: 703-753-6887 E-mail: mschlather@prospace.org __________________________________________________________________________ BRINGING MARS HOME Edited testimony of Michael Carr, President's Commission on the Moon, Mars and Beyond From Astrobiology Magazine 11 May 2004 Dr. Michael Carr is an astrogeologist in with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. His specialty is Mars, which he has studied for over 30 years. He testified before the President's Commission on the Moon, Mars and Beyond on April 16, 2004. I am a strong advocate for robotic exploration of Mars. I am also an advocate for the human exploration of Mars, but in the future, after this robotic exploration has fulfilled certain requirements. Let me just talk a little about human exploration and why I think it is inevitable that we will ultimately go to Mars. I have sat in many workshops where the rationale for human exploration has been discussed. We've talked about stimulating the economy. We've talked about national pride. We've talked about the effect on education. And I don't think any of those reasons are the real reasons that we will ultimately go to Mars. I think we go to Mars because it inspires us. It fills us with awe and pride and it lifts us above the humdrum everyday concerns of food and shelter. I think this spiritual driving force will ultimately take us to Mars. Having said that, I think there is a lot that we must do before we ultimately go to Mars. The main interest in going to Mars is the possibility that life may have started there, and there may still be extant life there on the planet. The reason for that hinges on the story of water on Mars. In 1971, the Mariner 9 mission returned pictures, and we were astonished to see evidence of large floods, of erosion by dry river valleys all over the planet. And the reason we were so surprised is, at that time, we knew that conditions on Mars were very harsh that it was too cold for liquid water to be there, much, much too cold. Something had to have happened in the past, we thought, that had changed, and the planet had evolved from an Earth-like place to the dry, cold desert that we know today. Much of the last 30 years has been spent trying to understand better the evidence for water, and understand better the reasons or mechanisms whereby the planet may have changed. And we're still in a quandary over those things. We still don't know how one can change the climate of Mars. Atmospheric modelers have tried various tricks and with no success. We simply don't know how it might have happened. So the whole question of liquid water on the surface of the planet has been questioned. People have questioned the formation, the mode of formation of those valleys. People have questioned whether there really were large floods, whether they were caused by water. Recently, of course, with the Mars rovers, we have just acquired very strong, almost totally compelling evidence that, in fact, there were in the past bodies of water there. What we have found at the Opportunity site is a thick sequence of evaporites. These are salts that form when lakes or seas evaporate, and leave behind these beds of evaporites. The evidence is unambiguous. This is extraordinarily stimulating because, indeed, we now have absolute firm evidence that on Mars there were places in which life could flourish. Prior to the discovery of these evaporites, people have thought, "Well, perhaps the water is only underground and seeps out in local places." And there is contrary evidence of warm conditions on the path from mineralogy and so forth. But what this latest discovery confirms unambiguously is that there were lakes and seas on Mars. That has enormous potential for exobiology. In this sense, Mars is a biological treasure: something to be exploited but something to be carefully taken care of. We have to understand this planet--understand whether, indeed, biology did start on Mars and whether biology is present today before we contaminate the planet with terrestrial organisms, and so confuse the signal and perhaps destroy the evidence that is there. That's why I say we need a very strong aggressive robotic program before we send people to Mars. What should that program consist of? It should consist of rovers just like we have on Mars today well-instrumented rovers not only with geologic instruments, but with biological instruments and with instruments to determine organic chemistry. But we also need sample returns. And sample returns are extraordinarily important, because with samples in hand on Earth we can utilize the full analytical capability of all terrestrial laboratories to analyze the samples. We can also adapt the analytical strategy to the results as they come in. And we can also develop instruments to attack problems that the samples present, problems that we didn't anticipate. I think the availability of the lunar samples or the acquisition of the lunar samples demonstrates this potential for samples well. The combination of mobility, being able to get around the planet with rovers, and the sample return, is very important. It has been demonstrated recently with Opportunity. For example, Opportunity landed in a small crater. Out of reach was an outcrop, and this outcrop is where these evaporites are found. Had we landed there just with an arm, and reached out and dug up the soil, we would have totally missed the exciting materials that are just a few meters away. So we have to have sample returns that are combined with mobility that is, Mars rover sample returns. We've been working on these kinds of missions for 30 years ever since Viking--and we still have not had a Mars rover sample return. I believe a number of Mars rover sample returns are essential before we send people there, before we jeopardize the evidence that might be there of former life and prebiotic chemistry. What's next? The 2009 Mars Science Laboratory is planned as the first set of biological experiments in the current exploration strategy. As the NASA Office of Space Science noted however, there has been considerable debate about when to time a sample return: "We note with concern that there appears to be a growing division within the Mars community between scientists seeking early Mars Sample Return and those who believe it is best to delay it." Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article964.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-04h.html. __________________________________________________________________________ SYNTHETIC LIFE By W. Wayt Gibbs From Scientific American 11 May 2004 Biologists are crafting libraries of interchangeable DNA parts and assembling them inside microbes to create programmable, living machines. Evolution is a wellspring of creativity; 3.6 billion years of mutation and competition have endowed living things with an impressive range of useful skills. But there is still plenty of room for improvement. Certain microbes can digest the explosive and carcinogenic chemical TNT, for example--but wouldn't it be handy if they glowed as they did so, highlighting the location of buried land mines or contaminated soil? Wormwood shrubs generate a potent medicine against malaria but only in trace quantities that are expensive to extract. How many millions of lives could be saved if the compound, artemisinin, could instead be synthesized cheaply by vats of bacteria? And although many cancer researchers would trade their eyeteeth for a cell with a built-in, easy- to-read counter that ticks over reliably each time it divides, nature apparently has not deemed such a thing fit enough to survive in the wild. It may seem a simple matter of genetic engineering to rewire cells to glow in the presence of a particular toxin, to manufacture an intricate drug, or to keep track of the cells' age. But creating such biological devices is far from easy. Biologists have been transplanting genes from one species to another for 30 years, yet genetic engineering is still more of a craft than a mature engineering discipline. Read the full article at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0009FCA4-1A8F- 1085-94F483414B7F0000. __________________________________________________________________________ TWO NEW VERY HOT JUPITERS Based on a European Southern Observatory report From Astrobiology Magazine 11 May 2004 A European team of astronomers has discovered two new extra-solar planets. These are the second and third planets to be discovered by the transit method, where a planet orbits in front of a star and blocks some of the starlight reaching Earth. The larger a planet is relative to a star, the more light it blocks. An Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) survey detected a temporary brightness "dip" for 41 stars. In order to determine if these dips were caused by other stars or by orbiting planets, the astronomers measured radial velocities for the stars. Radial-velocity observations measure the Doppler shift of starlight as a star shifts toward and away from Earth. These shifts occur as a planet and star orbit around a common center of mass. The light shifts indicate the nature of the orbiting object, because the size of the light variations is directly related to the mass of the companion object. Most of the 41 objects targeted by OGLE turned out to be binary star systems. But for two of the objects, OGLE-TR-113 and OGLE-TR-132 [banner image], the measured velocity changes indicated planetary-mass companions in extremely short-period orbits. The planets orbit their stars in less than 2 Earth days. Such planets are called "very hot Jupiters" because of their mass and very high surface temperatures. The OGLE-TR-132 planet orbits once every 1.69 Earth days, at a distance of 4.6 million kilometers (0.0306 AU). The OGLE-TR-113 planet orbits its star once every 1.43 days at a distance of only 3.4 million kilometers (0.0228 AU). The planet Mercury is 17 times farther away from the Sun than this planet is from its star. The surface temperature of the OGLE-TR-113 planet probably is above 1,800°C. Both of the new planets orbit remote stars in the Milky Way galaxy, in the direction of the southern constellation Carina. For OGLE-TR-113, the parent star is an F-type, meaning it is slightly hotter and more massive than the Sun. This star is located about 6,000 light-years away. The orbiting planet is about 35 percent heavier than Jupiter, and 10 percent larger in diameter. The OGLE-TR-132 system is about 1,200 light-years away. This planet is about as heavy as Jupiter and about 15 percent larger in diameter, although its size is still uncertain. It orbits a K- dwarf, a star that is cooler and less massive than the Sun. "Very hot Jupiters" may be quite rare; there is probably one for every 2,500 to 7,000 stars. The distribution of orbital periods for "hot Jupiters" detected from radial velocity surveys seems to drop off below 3 days, and no planet had been found previously with an orbital period shorter than about 2.5 days. Astronomers are puzzled how such massive planetary objects end up so close to their stars. So far, more than 120 planets orbiting other stars have been discovered by radial-velocity surveys. Other surveys are attempting to find the faint signatures of other worlds through photometric transit measurements. While the detection of a planet by the radial velocity method yields a lower estimate of planetary mass, transit measurements can determine the exact mass, radius, and density of a planet. The OGLE survey was originally devised to detect microlensing events, by monitoring the brightness of a very large number of stars at regular intervals. Over the past four years, OGLE also has included a search for periodical shallow "dips" of the brightness of stars caused by the transit of small orbiting objects, such as small stars, brown dwarfs or Jupiter- size planets. The OGLE team has announced 137 planetary transit candidates from their survey of about 155,000 stars in two southern sky fields. The observations of the two new planets were performed in March 2004 with the FLAMES multi-fiber spectrograph on the 8.2-m VLT Kueyen telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile. The discovery team consists of François Bouchy and Frédéric Pont at Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) in France, Nuno Santos of the Lisbon Astronomical Observatory, Portugal, Claudio Melo of ESO-Chile, Michel Mayor, Didier Queloz and Stéphane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. Frédéric Pont is now associated with the Geneva Observatory. They are publishing a research article about their discovery in the European research journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics ("Two new 'very hot Jupiters' among OGLE transiting candidates"). Future space-based searches for planetary transits, like the COROT and KEPLER missions, together with ground-based radial velocity follow-up observations, should be able to detect planets as small as Earth. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article965.html. __________________________________________________________________________ INTERVIEW WITH BROTHER GUY CONSOLMAGNO, CURATOR OF METEORITES AT THE VATICAN OBSERVATORY By Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine 12 May 2004 Dr. Guy Consolmagno divides his time between Tucson, Arizona, where he observes asteroids and Kuiper Belt comets with the Vatican's 1.8 meter telescope on Mt. Graham, and Castel Gandolfo, Italy, home of the Vatican meteorites. The Vatican Observatory established a research branch in Arizona in 1981 when the growing population of Rome made the sky too bright for astronomical observations. Consolmagno is an author, Vatican astronomer and curator of the Vatican's meteorite collection. His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system. His work in asteroid and meteorite studies prompted the International Astronomical Union to name an asteroid, 4597 Consolmagno, after him in 2000. Dr. Consolmagno earned his Bachelor of Science in 1974 and Master of Science in 1975 in Earth and Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona in 1978. From 1978-80 he was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the Harvard College Observatory, and from 1980-1983 continued as postdoc and lecturer at MIT. He has also spent several terms as a visiting scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and as a visiting professor at Loyola College, Baltimore, and Loyola University, Chicago. Astrobiology Magazine's managing editor, Henry Bortman, had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Consolmagno at the Astrobiology Science Conference, at NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California. Astrobiology Magazine (AM): I have to confess--no pun intended--that I didn't know the Vatican had a curator of meteorites. Can you describe what it is you do? Guy Consolmagno (GC): I do meteorite research. I'm also a planetary scientist, and I'm interested in the origin and evolution of the planets, especially the small bodies. I've worked on everything from the icy moons of Jupiter, to the origins of the moon, to observing Kuiper Belt objects. AM: And how did you come to work for the Vatican? GC: Long story. I'd been an astronomer for 15 years before I decided to enter the Jesuits. And I did my undergraduate work at MIT and my doctorate at Arizona. And at one point I wondered why was I wasting my time doing astronomy when people are starving in the world--a little voice of conscience. So I joined the Peace Corps. While I was there, I discovered that I loved teaching. But mostly I discovered that the people in Africa, the people in Kenya, where I was, wanted to know about astronomy. That's what they wanted from me. And they were as fascinated and as excited about it as I was, as anyone in America. And I understood then why it's important. It's one of those things that makes us more than just well-fed cows. It satisfies a really deep hunger to know, to go someplace, to explore. And that is a hunger that is as human, as basic to human beings as food and shelter and anything else. And it's denied to a person only at the cost of denying them their humanity. By telling poor people, "No, no, you have to go hunt for food, you can't do astronomy," you are saying that they're less than human. And that's wrong. And it's a tragedy. AM: Do you see the study of astronomy as a spiritual pursuit? GC: Absolutely. When I came back from the Peace Corps, I taught for four years, and enjoyed it so much I decided to teach full-time. And so I entered a teaching order, the Jesuits. What I didn't realize was that they were going to pull me out of teaching to do full-time research at the Vatican. There's a small group of about a dozen Jesuits at the Vatican. I'm one of them. We come from all over the world. We all do just full- time astronomy. But in addition, I do a lot of public talks and things like my participation in this conference. And the reason why the Church supports astronomy-- AM: That was my next question. GC: --goes back to, in sense it goes back to the reform of the calendar, back in 1582. They hired an astronomer to work out how to make the calendar work right. There's also a sense that the Church, in modern times, wants to show the world that it's not afraid of science, that it supports science, that it thinks science is a wonderful thing. Not only to reassure the scientists, but also to reassure the religious people science is a good thing. Don't listen to people who say you have to choose one or the other. And there's two things going on there. One is the sense that, if God made the universe, and he made it good, and he loved the universe so much that, as the Christians believe, he sent his only son, it's up to us to honor and respect and get to know the universe. I think it was Francis Bacon who said that God sets up the universe as a marvelous puzzle for us to get to know him by getting to know how he did things. By seeing how God created, we get a little sense of God's personality. And that means, among other things not going in with any preconceived notions. We can't impose our idea of how God did things. It's up to us to see how the universe actually does work. AM: Isn't the belief that God created the universe a preconceived notion? GC: It is. And it's a preconceived notion that in one form or another every scientist has to have. Because here's the other side: to be a scientist you have to have two fundamental assumptions, so fundamental you don't even think about it. You assume that the universe makes sense, that there really is an objective reality; there really is a logic to this; it's not just chaos; there really are laws to be found. We're so used to that assumption, you don't realize it. A lot of cultures don't have that. And the other assumption you have to make is that it's worth doing. If your idea, if your religion is to meditate and rise above the physical universe, this corrupting physical universe, you might say, you're not going to be a scientist, you're not going to be interested in Mars. So it's a religious statement to say the physical universe is worth devoting my life to. Seeing how the universe works is worth spending a lifetime doing. AM: Why is it a religious statement? GC: By religious I mean that it is based on certain fundamental assumptions you have about how the universe works and what your place in the universe is. And ultimately, that's a religious assumption. Whether it's my religion or somebody else's religion, lots of people with lots of religions are looking at science. I'm not saying it's only one religion that has that assumption. But I'm saying that there are religions that don't. There are brilliant cultures throughout history who have had fabulous mathematics and glorious ethical systems--and no science. It really is an important fundamental assumption that you have to have, especially day-to-day as a scientist. It's what gets you up in the morning. You know, one of the scary things as a scientist is that you're not punching a clock. There's probably nobody looking over your shoulder to see if you're working today. It's only after two years, when you haven't produced anything, that you don't get the next grant and then you're out of a job. But day-by-day, what gets you up, what makes you do the work? Why are you excited about this stuff? And why do you think that it's worth doing, when people are starving in the world? AM: And what's your answer? GC: My answer is the answer I gave before. That it's one of the things that makes us human and, for me, it's one of the things that bring me into close personal touch with God. AM: You're at an astrobiology conference, and the goal of astrobiology is to understand the origin of life on Earth and to search for life elsewhere, including other intelligent life. So let's just go for the big prize. Suppose another intelligent species is discovered. What would that do to the Church's beliefs about God creating the universe, and Earth, and the creatures on Earth, and sending his only son--which is what it says in the book--to this planet, where there is an intelligent species, perhaps one among millions? GC: There are five hypotheticals there. So, "I don't know," "I don't know" and "How the heck could I know?" But, I'm also a science fiction fan... AM: Have you read The Sparrow? GC: Yes, and I hated it. But that's a whole different issue. Nobody in that book had a sense of humor. Nobody in that book knew how to laugh. But here are three scenarios. The most likely one: We find an intelligent civilization and there's no way in creation we can communicate with them because they're so alien to us. We can't talk to dolphins now. In which case, we'll never know. Second scenario: We find the intelligent civilization. We can communicate. We discover that they have the two essentials that theologians talk about for the human soul, intelligence and free will. They know who they are, they're self-aware, and they're able to do something about it. I think dogs are self-aware, but they don't have a whole lot of free will. Maybe computers are the same sort of thing. Human beings have to have both. That means if you're going to have freedom, you've got the capability of doing right and wrong. There is evil in the world, that's an observed fact. There is the need to overcome evil in the world. There's that need for salvation that we all have. I can't imagine they wouldn't need it, if they've got the same freedom we've got. If you want to trade good bible quotes, here's one: The beginning of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word." The Word is, of course, Jesus, the Word is the second person of the Trinity, the Word is the salvation, the Word is the incarnation of God in the universe, who according to the Gospel is there before the universe was made. The one point in space-time that's the same on every timeline. So that the salvation occurs and is made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ here. Is it possible that there are other Words in other languages to other cultures? Beats the heck out of me. But that's scenario number two. And people have talked about that for hundreds of years, the idea that there could be other lives--this is classic Catholic poetry. And that's what it is, it's poetry, it's not theology. 'Cause it's so many hypotheticals. A third scenario: We find a dozen civilizations out there, and a bunch of Jehovah's witnesses go up and convert them all. At the end of the day, every civilization is Christian, except the human race is still not too sure about this. I mean, anything's possible. AM: But you left one out: They convert us. Because how do we know they don't have an equally powerful set of beliefs? GC: It's not like beliefs come with power attachments to them. We can't even convert ourselves. AM: All right, forget "powerful." A "deeply felt" set of beliefs. GC: Well, the only analogy we have is how different civilizations on the face of the Earth have interacted as they came in contact. AM: The Church's record isn't so good on that one. GC: Oh, it's a lot better than you think. It's a lot better than you think. Don't believe the anti-clerical enlightenment people who were spreading all sorts of lies to cover their own rear end. It's the Church who was protecting the indigenous people in South America, against the military. AM: I don't think they were protecting them in California. GC: Well, read your history. Am I saying they did everything perfectly? No. They sure did in Paraguay. The point is, if you're going to convert somebody, you have to treat them as an equal. There are people, when they came to the Americas, who thought that, well, we can enslave these people because they don't have souls. And the Church said, "You can't do that." If you're sending a missionary to somebody, you're implicitly saying they're equal. The other thing that happens is that each side learns from the other, inevitably. And the sense of acculturation continually goes on. It went on when the missionaries from Italy showed up in Ireland. Irish sensibilities became part of the Christian milieu. German sensibilities. Russian sensibilities. Every culture has added something to the mix, and brought something out of the mix. It's inevitable. You can't pretend that it's a one-way street. Even if you wanted it to be a one-way street, it wouldn't be. AM: Let's shift topics a bit. What is the focus of your meteorite research? GC: My particular interest is actually the physical fabric of the meteorite. Our understanding of the origin of the solar system involves the solar nebula, condensation of a lot of, essentially, dust. And we can picture how you go from tiny grains of dust to maybe kilometer-sized balls of dust. But that's not what we see in our museums. What we see are rocks. Well-compressed, well-lithified rocks. When and where did that happen? How did that happen? So we've gone back and measured the actual porosity of the meteorites, to look physically at the fabric of them. Individually by looking at them in thin section and with an SEM (scanning electron microscope), just point- counting where the cracks are. But also in hand sample, in bulk, using helium pycnometry and other methods to measure the densities. And one of the interesting things that came out of that is that we came up with the first really good set of meteorite densities about the time we were getting asteroid densities, and we see that they don't match at all. The asteroids are a good 20 percent less dense than the meteorites, which has fit in with new ideas that the asteroids are not big lumps of rock, they're piles of rubble, or at the very least, very fractured rocks. So this is telling us about the processes that went on four and a half billion years ago. AM: And why does the Vatican fund this research? GC: There's a political reason. It's a simple one, that they want the world to know that the Church isn't afraid of science, that they like science, that science is great, this is our way of seeing how God created the universe, and they want to make as strong a statement as possible that truth doesn't contradict truth, that if you have faith, then you're not going to ever be afraid of what science is going to come up with. Because it's true. And the one time in history that they screwed up on this, the Galileo affair, the Church was wrong. And we've admitted it was wrong. How many times has science abused the Church? How often have you heard a scientist apologize to the Church? AM: Do you think that was the only time in history that it happened? GC: The whole scientific enterprise really does coincide well with Christian theology. The whole idea that the universe is worth studying is a Christian idea. The whole mechanism for studying the physical universe comes straight out of the whole logic of the scholastic age. Who was the first geologist? Albert the Great, who was a monk. Who was the first Chemist? Roger Bacon, who was a monk. Who was the first guy to come up with spectroscopy? Angelo Secchi, who was a priest. Who was the guy who invented genetics? Gregor Mendel, who was a monk. Who was the guy who came up with the Big Bang theory? Georges Lemaître, who was a priest. There is this long tradition; most scientists before the 19th century were clerics. Who else had the free time and the education to gather leads and measure star positions? AM: Okay, but you brought up Galileo, I didn't. Are you saying that was a single incident, or was it a period of time-- GC: A bit of both. AM: --and if it was a period of time, when do you think it changed, and how and why do you think it changed? Because it took a pretty long time to apologize. GC: Well, yes and no. You probably aren't aware of all the other apologies before the most recent apology. Nobody knows really why Galileo was gone after. You can read all the documents. They're in translation in a marvelous book by Finocchiaro, The Galileo Affair. For most of Galileo's life he was lionized, he was treated like a hero, including by people in the Church. His book, The Assayer, has the Church censor saying, "We're honored to live in a time with a man this wonderful." When Galileo got into trouble at the end of his life, it was a real shock. It was a complete reversal of everything that had been said up to that point. And so the historical question is, why did it happen? And the answer is, we don't know. You can go to Amazon.com and find 300 books on Galileo, every one of them with a different answer. Which is to say, there was something going on, and it wasn't simply a science versus religion thing the way that Berthold Brecht describes it in his play. If you relied on JFK, the movie, to figure out what happened in the assassination of Kennedy, you'd be in as good shape. You've got to remember the Galileo affair occurred at the height of the Reformation and the 30 Years' War. These were really stressful times in Europe. Europe was falling apart. And it was a uniquely bad time for a lot of people in a lot of directions. Could it happen again? Of course it could happen again. As long as there's human beings in the Church--and the last time I saw, most of us are--and as long as there are human beings who are scientists, there will be inevitable conflicts, there will be people who think they know better, and there will be people who will be right and people who will be wrong. The Church will always make mistakes. Scientists will always make mistakes. We're human beings. But if you look at the whole sweep of history, for most of its history, the Church has thought that studying science is great. And there's been a fringe of religious fundamentalists--not Catholics--who have tried to warp science to their particular peculiar theology. In the same time, there have been a bunch of science fundamentalists, who have tried to use science as a substitute religion. And neither of those operations really works very well. And both of them, I think, come out of a lack of confidence. The religious fundamentalists, basically, are scared that they don't have faith, which is why they cling so tightly to what little they've got. The science fundamentalists, I think some of them just want to be taken seriously as scientists and they think, well I have to show that I've rejected anything else. So in that sense, science and religion are very separate. And Stephen Jay Gould had it right up to that point in his book, Rocks of Ages. But what he misses is that every human being is a person with religious beliefs, who also is a scientist. At the fundamental level--Why do I do this? What am I looking for? Why do I choose this question instead of that question to study? What kind of picture of God do I get at the end of the day when I see that the universe is not just a dome over a flat Earth, the way that Genesis describes it, but is infinite numbers of multiverses? What science does is expand my view of how big God is. And as I said before, my fundamental beliefs of how the universe works, which cannot be proved by science, are the assumptions I start with before I can build a logical system. Those assumptions direct what science I do and why I do it. AM: What do you hope to get out of being here at the Astrobiology Science Conference? GC: Oh, having a good time. And, fundamentally, that's why we do science, because it's really enjoyable. I'm also working on a research project with Lynn Rothschild on whether or not life could be transported in the pore spaces of meteorites. And so we want to talk about that as well. In addition, in some way, I'm waving the Church flag. Just by walking around with this badge that says "Vatican Observatory," I'm reminding people that, yes, there is indeed a religious aspect, and indeed, an ethical aspect to science. That's what the session I'm participating in here is about--that we are human beings, that we do have more than just science in our lives. And the science is great and wonderful, and when done right, is done not for money or for our own prestige or our own glory but because we want to find out what's the truth. That's the best way to do science. That's the most fun. One of the nice things about being paid by the Vatican is that I don't have to worry about NASA politics. I don't have to write grant proposals. I don't have to find out what's the flavor of the month this month. I can do anything I want. AM: You don't have to worry about Vatican politics? GC: Nope. They barely know we exist. My instructions when I arrived there were: do good science, period. AM: Does the Vatican fund research other than its own research? Does it have a relationship to ESA (European Space Agency), for example? GC: No. The Vatican's actually a pretty small outfit, per se. The budget of the Vatican is smaller than the budget of most archdioceses in the U.S., because they don't have all the schools and the hospitals and things. So the fact that we get the money we get, which is probably under a million a year, is still a substantial commitment, just to do science. But we're the only thing they can afford to do directly. There's also a Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which are 120 great scientists from around the world, any religion, every religion, who sit as a group to advise the Vatican on issues worth worrying about. For instance, in the 80s, they were the ones who got the Pope to really speak out about nuclear winter and nuclear disarmament. AM: Do you have any final comments to make? GC: No. I don't expect to convert anybody here. I don't expect to convert any aliens. If I can get people to think and if I can get people to laugh, what more do I need to do? Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article966.html. __________________________________________________________________________ NASA SELECTS NEW EXPLORER SCHOOLS NASA release 04-153 12 May 2004 NASA has selected 50 new Explorer Schools, representing 34 states. The Explorer Schools Program is a major NASA education effort to inspire the next generation of explorers that may one day venture to the moon, Mars and beyond. The education initiative was launched on June 30, 2003. The program sends science and mathematics teachers "back to school" at NASA centers during the summer to acquire new resources and technology tools. The program uses NASA's unique content, experts and resources to make learning science, mathematics and technology more appealing to students. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, Associate Administrator for Education Dr. Adena Loston, astronauts, students and teachers participated in today's announcement. "Students in classrooms today are the space explorers of tomorrow. Their future role is vital to keeping our nation's technological and space exploration goals a reality," said Administrator O'Keefe. "We commit ourselves to working closely with our nation's schools to foster learning environments that will inspire young people to understand and protect our home planet, explore the universe and search for life." The announcement completed a week of activities that included workshops and tours of NASA's Kennedy Space Center for students and educators attending the 2004 Leadership Institute/2003 NASA Explorer Schools Student Symposium in Cocoa Beach, FL. The Explorer Schools Program is sponsored by NASA's Education Enterprise in collaboration with the National Science Teachers Association. The program establishes a three-year partnership between NASA and the 50 Explorer Schools teams each spring. The teams of teachers and education administrators represent many diverse communities. During the commitment period, NASA education specialists and scientists provide investigation opportunities and professional development for the teams to spark innovative science and mathematics instruction directed specifically at students in grades four through nine. "NASA's mission is to inspire the next generation of explorers by helping to make learning science and mathematics more fun," Loston said. "The NASA Explorer Schools Program provides a promising avenue to positively and uniquely impact science and math instruction in our nation's classrooms." Eighty percent of the 2004 Explorer Schools are located in high poverty areas, and 74 percent represent predominantly minority communities. Sixty percent of the competitively selected school teams are represented in both high poverty and high minority populations. For a list of the Explorer Schools on the Internet, visit http://explorerschools.nasa.gov. For information about NASA Education programs on the Internet, visit http://education.nasa.gov. For information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov. Contact: Dwayne Brown NASA, Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1726 __________________________________________________________________________ NASA, STANFORD FORM SPACE BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP NASA/ARC release 04-42AR 12 May 2004 NASA and Stanford University are launching an exciting new joint venture to develop technologies, instruments and systems to conduct physiological monitoring of humans in support of basic and applied space biology research. Under the auspices of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, the new National Center for Space Biological Technologies (NCSBT) will focus on enhancing capabilities for medical monitoring and biological experimentation for future space exploration. "We are extremely excited to be the host of such an important venture," said NASA Ames Center Director G. Scott Hubbard. "By combining the talent and the knowledge of NASA scientists and academic researchers, we pursue discovery, innovating new technologies that will bring real solutions for space travel as well as for improving peoples' lives on Earth," Hubbard said. "In light of current, highly ambitious human exploration goals, there is now a greater need to advance human physiologic monitoring and to conduct efficient, relevant space biology experiments," said John Hines, Astrobionics Program Manager, "To support exploration, we must deepen our understanding of the effects of prolonged spaceflight on humans and other organisms, from the level of molecules and cells to the entire creature." The technical mission of this NASA-funded $7.5 million endeavor is to conduct and promote basic and applied R&D for a range of biological technologies important to NASA's current and future activities. The new venture is designed to provide numerous commercial spin-off opportunities for medical and biological analytical and monitoring systems. "Our collaboration focuses cutting-edge technology and expertise on NASA's major challenges in biological technology," said the director of the newly established center, Dr. Antonio J. Ricco of Stanford University. "To develop new sensors to track astronauts' health, and new microdevices to monitor how space travel affects living organisms, we must work at the frontiers of medical diagnostics and research." Based at Stanford University, NCSBT will include the university's faculty, staff and students working in interdisciplinary teams. In the future, NCSBT activities will also take place in NASA Research Park, a world-class R&D campus located in the heart of the Silicon Valley adjacent to NASA Ames Research Center. "I'm absolutely thrilled," said NCSBT Principal Investigator Dr. Gregory Kovacs of Stanford University. "This center is a chance for us in the academic community to participate in exciting life sciences research and human exploration. Fabulous and interesting projects await our best and brightest, and we could not ask for a better situation," he added. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to couple quality academic research with practical needs across the entire spectrum from immediate to long term," said Kovacs. "With the existing strong life sciences interest within NASA and the new space exploration vision, the time is right for such a center to bring together the right people and resources to assist NASA in reaching its scientific and medical goals." One of the project's major technical goals is to harness modern sensors and data processing methods to provide focused and relevant information for a variety of tasks, including astronaut screening before Extra Vehicular Activity screening, launch and de-orbit monitoring, routine in- flight feedback to the crew members, and ground training. Environmental sensors will be developed and integrated with advances in direct monitoring of the status of human bodies. On-going efforts will include testing, improving and deploying advanced monitoring systems. The center will also contribute to expanding NASA's knowledge of the effects of microgravity, radiation, and other space-related factors on living systems. This improved understanding of how space environments affect peoples' bodies will help to develop sophisticated countermeasures and therapies for future space travelers. "With the guidance of our advisory board members--leaders from academia, industry, NASA, and other government laboratories around the nation--we hope some of the center's advances in biological technologies can form the basis for future advances in medical care," said Ricco. Future developments of the NCSBT will also be transferable to the private sector for broader use of the newest medical technologies. The medical monitors developed by the center may find many uses in clinical medicine here on Earth. Such instruments could be used to diagnose cardiac disease, sleep disorders, and a variety of other physical conditions. "We are also developing an instrument to keep tabs on the immune systems of humans," ventured Hines. "Our immediate purpose is to meet NASA's needs, but then, these novel devices can be transitioned into the commercial world to benefit the people who contribute their tax money to enable such research." Contact: Victoria Steiner NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-0176 E-mail: Victoria.L.Steiner@nasa.gov __________________________________________________________________________ EXTREME ECOSYSTEM By Ron Koczor From NASA Science News 13 May 2004 Humans don't like being alone. So when Richard Hoover, a microbiologist at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, travels, he looks to see where the locals hang out. Not in hotels, though, or in restaurants or nightclubs. The places he looks are more exotic: deep mines under the permafrost of Alaska and Siberia, the high mountains of Antarctica, and the salty, alkaline bottom of California's Mono Lake. And what does he find? Life, in abundance. Richard Hoover is an extremophile hunter. He searches the most inhospitable places for life-forms that love extremes: scalding heat, freezing cold, salt, lye, darkness. And like other researchers exploring the limits of life on our planet, he's found a surprising variety of species ranging from simple bacteria to plants and animals. He also finds that species of extremophiles depend on each other to make a living--much like ordinary life-forms do. "The diversity of life on Earth boggles the mind," marvels Hoover. There are hundreds of thousands of green plant species. Green algae alone comes in thousands of different varieties, he says. There are millions of species of animals. More than 6,000 species of bacteria and 3,600 viruses have been named. Researchers suspect there are more than a million species of fungus, although only 70,000 or so have been identified. Few (and perhaps none) of these species live in splendid isolation. They depend on others. Plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide, and minerals to create organic compounds (sugars, proteins, fats, etc.). Animals take these compounds for their own needs. When animals die, they return to minerals and carbon dioxide and the cycle renews. Cooperation between species is common. For example, the tropical African Gray Parrot eats fruit from trees. For reasons no one understands, these birds sling bits of fruit containing seeds far from the tree. This helps the trees spread their seeds and reproduce. Many instances are well documented of other animals helping spread plants through their droppings. At the complex plant/animal level in a biologically rich environment, interdependence of species seems to be conducive to life. But what about simpler lifeforms found in extreme environments? Do they too exhibit such interdependent life styles? NASA is interested because the agency is tasked to explore for life in the Universe. Many scientists expect the first signs of life confirmed off Earth--on Mars, within comets, or in the suspected oceans of Europa--will be unicellular lifeforms such as bacteria, archaea, or diatoms rather than complex technological species. Understanding how these species live in extreme conditions is vital to NASA's mission. Hoover and microbiologist Elena Pikuta of the University of Alabama in Huntsville are working to answer some of these questions by studying lifeforms in California's Mono Lake. They recently announced the discovery of a third new species of bacteria, Desulfonatronum thiodismutans, living in the lake in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. All three of Pikuta and Hoover's new species are extremophiles. The bacteria thrive in the dark mud of Mono Lake, devoid of oxygen with 3 times higher salinity than sea water and alkalinity that approaches lye. This third new species is particularly interesting because of its niche in the extreme ecology of the lake. This bacterium obtains its energy from sulfur and other inorganic compounds. It does not require sunlight or other organic materials to thrive and is a type of organism known as a chemolithotroph. Hoover and Pikuta's two previous new species, Tindallia californiensis and Spirochaeta americana are also extremophiles from Mono Lake, but ingest organic materials. These organisms are known as organotrophs. Together they paint a picture of interlinked and interdependent life, even under extreme conditions. For example, D. thiodismutans gets its energy from hydrogen and sulfur compounds in the minerals of the lake mud. From these it creates sugars and other organic materials. T. californiensis can consume simple amino acids and other chemicals and also produces complex organic compounds such as sugars, fats, proteins, etc. S. americana ingests the complex organic compounds and excretes hydrogen and other gases. When it dies, it returns to minerals and the cycle is complete. Unlike the plant/animal cycle in our "normal" environment, this bacterial cycle does not necessarily need visible energy from sunlight to drive photosynthesis. It can be driven completely by the chemical energy of the reactions. So in a dark, extreme environment, life appears to develop the same interdependent strands, with different species finding the niche that allows each to thrive. One day, perhaps, life-forms like these will be found on other worlds. The work of Hoover and Pikuta is telling us that if we find one species, we should look for more. Extremophiles, like "ordinary" life-forms, don't like being alone. Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/13may_ecosystem.htm. __________________________________________________________________________ EVIDENCE OF METEOR IMPACT FOUND OFF AUSTRALIAN COAST NASA release 04-159 13 May 2004 An impact crater believed to be associated with the "Great Dying," the largest extinction event in the history of life on Earth, appears to be buried off the coast of Australia. NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the major research project headed by Luann Becker, a scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Science Express, the electronic publication of the journal Science, published a paper describing the crater today. Most scientists agree a meteor impact, called Chicxulub, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, accompanied the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But until now, the time of the Great Dying 250 million years ago, when 90 percent of marine and 80 percent of land life perished, lacked evidence and a location for a similar impact event. Becker and her team found extensive evidence of a 125-mile- wide crater, called Bedout, off the northwestern coast of Australia. They found clues matched up with the Great Dying, the period known as the end-Permian. This was the time period when the Earth was configured as one primary land mass called Pangea and a super ocean called Panthalassa. During recent research in Antarctica, Becker and her team found meteoric fragments in a thin claystone "breccia" layer, pointing to an end-Permian event. The breccia contains the impact debris that resettled in a layer of sediment at end- Permian time. They also found "shocked quartz" in this area and in Australia. "Few Earthly circumstances have the power to disfigure quartz, even high temperatures and pressures deep inside the Earth's crust," Becker said. Quartz can be fractured by extreme volcanic activity, but only in one direction. Shocked quartz is fractured in several directions and is therefore believed to be a good tracer for the impact of a meteor. Becker discovered that oil companies in the early 70's and 80's had drilled two cores into the Bedout structure in search of hydrocarbons. The cores sat untouched for decades. Becker and co-author Robert Poreda went to Australia to examine the cores held by the Geological Survey for Australia in Canberra. "The moment we saw the cores, we thought it looked like an impact breccia," Becker said. Becker's team found evidence of a melt layer formed by an impact in the cores. In the paper, Becker documented how the Chicxulub cores were very similar to the Bedout cores. When the Australian cores were drilled, scientists did not know exactly what to look for in terms of evidence of impact craters. Co-author Mark Harrison, from the Australian National University in Canberra, determined a date on material obtained from one of the cores, which indicated an age close to the end-Permian era. While in Australia on a field trip and workshop about Bedout, funded by the NSF, co-author Kevin Pope found large shocked quartz grains in end-Permian sediments, which he thinks formed as a result of the Bedout impact. Seismic and gravity data on Bedout are also consistent with an impact crater. The Bedout impact crater is also associated in time with extreme volcanism and the break-up of Pangea. "We think that mass extinctions may be defined by catastrophes like impact and volcanism occurring synchronously in time," Becker said. "This is what happened 65 million years ago at Chicxulub but was largely dismissed by scientists as merely a coincidence. With the discovery of Bedout, I don't think we can call such catastrophes occurring together a coincidence anymore," she added. For information and images about the research on the Internet, visit http://beckeraustralia.crustal.ucsb.edu/. For information about NASA's Astrobiology research on the Internet, visit http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/. Contacts: Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1547 Cheryl Dybas National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA Phone: 703-292-7734 Gail Gallessich University of California, Santa Barbara Phone: 805-893-7220 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article969.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0405/14impact/ http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/asteroid_nearly_ended_life_earth.h tml __________________________________________________________________________ WAYSTATIONS TO MARS Edited testimony from David Morrison, President's Commission on the Moon, Mars and Beyond From Astrobiology Magazine 13 May 2004 David Morrison is a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, where he participates in a variety of research programs. Internationally known for his research on small bodies in the solar system, Dr. Morrison is the author of more than 135 technical papers, has published a dozen books, and asteroid 2410 Morrison is named in his honor. He testified before the President's Commission on the Moon, Mars and Beyond on April 16, 2004. If you had to summarize astrobiology in an elevator, in 30 seconds, (you would say) it's the study of how life begins and evolves--that is, where did we come from? Does life exist elsewhere in the universe--are we alone? And, what is life's future on Earth and beyond--where are we going in space? These are the defining terms for astrobiology, but you'll notice they also appear in other forms in the NASA vision and mission statements. Astrobiology is naturally directed toward the planet Mars. It is the most likely abode of life elsewhere in the solar system, and is also the only planet that I can imagine humans establishing a permanent presence within the 21st century. While it's hostile by Earth standards, the gravity, atmosphere, temperatures, diurnal cycle, and resources like water on Mars make it a uniquely attractive target for human exploration. I would like to emphasize that Mars is equally attractive because of the possibility of finding evidence for life--past or perhaps present--probably microbial life, but that is really no less interesting to the biologist. We will need to search carefully for evidence of life on Mars and do so before we send astronauts. I'd like to point out that there are profound implications of almost anything we learn about life on that planet. If there is no life on Mars today, or if life once existed there but has perished, then clearly we want to understand what went wrong with Mars and to draw lessons for the stewardship of our own planet. If we find life, and it's genetically related to Earth life with DNA and RNA, then we will probably have established that microbial life forms can be exchanged between worlds by hitchhiking on meteorites. We will have the opportunity to study how our cousins have evolved for four billion years in a completely independent and alien environment on Mars. If there's life there and it's not related to us, if it does not use the same sort of genetic system we do, then we will truly have discovered independent origin, a second genesis for life within the solar system. And that discovery will infinitely enrich our understanding of the fundamentals of life and also encourage us to look for other inhabited worlds. Any of these discoveries would surely rank among the most important scientific results of this or any other century. Clearly, once we send humans to Mars, we will carry a vast load of terrestrial microbes at the same time. So, I would like to stress the importance of carrying out a careful robotic search for evidence of life before we land humans. This is not to delay sending humans to Mars, but to argue for a robust robotic system over the next 25 years. I'd like to speak a little bit about asteroids. Asteroids is one of the places where astrobiology really, really counts because the "astro" part the asteroids can collide with planets and have profound effects on biological evolution. The near-Earth asteroids come closer to us than any other objects in space and sometimes collide with our planet. They should be a part, I think, of any long-term plan for the future. Asteroids are important for three reasons. They're leftover building blocks of the planets, which makes them of great interest to scientists. As a potential resource, they could provide important material such as iron and water in space. And since they do occasionally collide with the Earth, we may someday need to defend our planet against such an impact. It's only in the last 15 years that we recognized this asteroid impact hazard is serious. We know in particular that the impact 65 million years ago did away with the dinosaurs and, incidentally, with most mammals and most other life forms on Earth at the same time. That could happen again. It is improbable. That is to say, impacts don't happen very often. But without better knowledge, we cannot be sure that our generation won't be the one to experience such a threat. Today, NASA, with support from the Air Force and many individuals, is carrying out the Spaceguard survey to find asteroids and chart their orbits before they hit the Earth, to provide decades of warning. And that is going very well. Probably as studies that are under way come to fruition, we will extend that survey to smaller objects and ultimately should be able to predict the next impact--whether it's a large object that could kill us all, or a small one that would simply obliterate a city. These are intrinsically unlikely events. We're not in the business of calculating the probabilities of impact any more. We're looking at asteroids one at a time and determining if there are any out there that will hit in our lifetime, or our children's or grandchildren's lifetime. And the final note is that in addition to searching for asteroids, I think it's only prudent that we begin to develop the technology for defending ourselves. This is the one natural hazard that we can defend ourselves from. An incoming asteroid, given decades of warning, can be deflected so it will miss the planet entirely. We understand that in principle. It's probably reasonable that we should start to develop that technology. One particular proposal that intrigues me is to use one of the three Prometheus missions to do a demonstration. To go to a small asteroid, use the electric propulsion and deflect it a tiny bit, make a measurable change in its orbit, so we can stand up to the people of the world and say, "We're not only searching for potential threats from asteroids, we're beginning to develop the technology that ultimately could defend our planet from this sort of threat from space." Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article968.html. __________________________________________________________________________ WHAT WOULD A MARTIAN DRIVE? Based on the testimony of David Morrison, Jonathan Lunine and Michael Carr before the President's Commission on Moon to Mars and Beyond From Astrobiology Magazine 14 May 2004 Chartered to study how best to set priorities for the next moon and Mars initiative a newly-formed Presidential Commission--including four prominent scientists--held its first public forum and announced its nine commissioners. One task for the blue-ribbon panel, chaired by Defense veteran, Pete Aldridge, is to sustain a space exploration goal for several generations. The following session is the first installment of a question and answer session between leading space scientists and the commissioners, including Neil Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium and Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Dr. Jonathan I. Lunine is professor of planetary science and physics and the chair of the theoretical astrophysics program at the University of Arizona. Dr. Michael Carr is an astrogeologist in with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. David Morrison is a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Edited Q & A session with David Morrison, Jonathan Lunine and Michael Carr: Part I Maria Zuber: There has been a lot of discussion on the Commission whether or not the search for life should be the central scientific tenet for exploration. There's a lot of interesting things to explore that don't involve life. Suppose we look more closely at Mars and we don't find life, does that cut off planetary exploration? Could each of you comment on how the search for life fits into a broader scheme of exploration, and whether or not that search should be the driving factor in the scientific aspect of the exploration. David Morrison: My own belief is that life is the most important organizing principle, although not the only one. But I said life, not just the search for life. It really takes two elements. For the scientist and indeed for the public also, finding evidence of life on another world and comparing that with the life on our own is basic. But the other basic thing is the moving of our life from its home planet to other worlds; the expansion of terrestrial life into the solar system. I think that's equally important. Michael Carr: With respect to Mars, I do believe that life is what is driving and what should drive the program in its early years. I am not a biologist; I'm a geologist. I'm interested in how different planets work. I'm interested in the planet's interior and the planet's geological history, but I just don't see that as strong a rationale as the life issue, which is very real for Mars. Jonathan Lunine: From my point of view, if you look at human cultures throughout history, every human culture has a set of stories that essentially addresses the question of their role and humans' role in the cosmos. And so I would see life as an organizing factor, or an organizing motivator, I should say, in exploration. But in the broader sense, we all want to know what our place is in the universe, how the universe came to be, and how planets came to be, and then how life came to be. And by natural extension, whether we are something that is extraordinarily rare or unique, an intelligent species on a habitable planet, or whether we are a very common outcome of the evolution of the universe. So it isn't just the search for other life on a planet in our solar system, or another planet that is like the Earth orbiting around another star. It is the understanding of our place within the universe and whether we represent a singular or a common phenomenon. Paul Spudis: One thing that we have found out in the past 20 years of exploration is that the surface of Mars is a sterilizing environment. There is UV there, there's a very oxidizing surface, so I'm not so much worried about the contamination of the surface. And it seems to me if you're going to look for extant life it is going to be at depth in the planet somewhere because it can't exist on the surface. But aside from that, let's assume that we do have a robotic program and we do have a series of sample returns, and let's further assume, for the moment, for the sake of argument, that each one is negative. You don't find life in each sample return. How many of those do you require before you declare that Mars does not have life and never has? Michael Carr: Of course, we can't answer that question. We've got to sample different environments and we've got to ensure that we understand the planet well enough that we know the range of environments that are there. For example, you say it's unlikely that there is life near the surface today. We don't know whether active hydrothermal systems are present, in which you could have life almost at the surface. We don't know how deep below the surface one would have to go to find conditions where life terrestrial life could survive. Until we explore globally more of the planet, and go to some of these places where we're suspicious that terrestrial life could survive, I think we should defer sending people there. Paul Spudis: You sort of set it up as a predicate, that in order to assure that we're not contaminating, we need to address this question first. And what I'm asking is, if you can't define the criteria by which you're willing to make that call, essentially you're saying, "Never go with people." Michael Carr: I am not really saying that. But I'm saying that, given the range of environments on Mars, you should sample as many as could probably sustain life. Then, seeing what you find there, make some sort of prudent judgment that perhaps the chance of finding life right at the surface is pretty close to zero. You'll never prove that there's no life there. Paul Spudis: So, essentially, it's a non-falsifiable hypothesis. David Morrison: The problem is initially, as you say, on the surface. The surface is a pretty unpleasant place for terrestrial life. And so it may be possible to go there without risking a contamination of the subsurface. In that case, all you have to do is establish that there's no Mars life at the surface and you can defer till later the question of probing down perhaps kilometers below the surface to an aquifer. But it's a dynamic question. I don't think you can set requirements now for what we'll be doing 25 years from now. Laurie Leshin: I have a specific question about the Moon, which we haven't talked about much here with you. In understanding the origin of life on our planet, the Moon has a very important role to play. I wonder if any of you have comments on how the science we can do on the Moon can help us in this quest to understand where we came from and where we're going, what role the Moon can play there, because that's where we're going first with humans. David Morrison: The Moon is very exciting to geologists. But to biologists it's of interest also because it's the place we go to find out what the first billion years of history of Earth and Mars were like. And I know that my astrobiologists are interested in defining the conditions under which the planets formed, the early bombardment, the time scale for those events that were crucial at the time life was forming on Earth. So it's a very interesting place to study habitability, but perhaps not to study life itself. Laurie Leshin: So in order to understand the snapshot in time when life was emerging on our planet--which is not well preserved on our planet, we don't have a good rock record of that--the Moon is a great way to go to explore that. Jonathan, do you want to say anything about that? Jonathan Lunine: I was also going to say, and you articulated it already, that the first half billion years of the Earth's history is lost to us in the geologic record, and it's there on the Moon. So it's a crucially important object from that point of view. It could very easily have been that we would not have had the Moon. It was the result of a particular large impact at a particular angle and in a way we lucked out, I suppose. And that, too, is important because those large impacts that build terrestrial planets also brought in the water and the organics that were the raw material for life, and the leftover from that large impact is orbiting a quarter million miles away from us. So understanding its composition tells us something about the things that were hitting the Earth at the time and supplying these materials. Neil Tyson: Jonathan, you noted you had this dream of a perfect night sky even being a city person. Perhaps were you not a city person, you could not have dreamed it because it would be out there every night. So, in the city where there is no night sky, that's the place where you dream about a night sky--I'm wondering if that was part of it. Jonathan Lunine: Well, it helped that I live four blocks from the Hayden Planetarium. Neil Tyson: David, I think you made an assumption that if we find life on Mars, and we find that life to be DNA-based, then we would be related to Martians. Is there any way to test for whether life might have no trouble making DNA wherever life forms, so that DNA itself might be what's inevitable in wherever you would find life? David Morrison: Well, that's a good question. We know all life is related on Earth. We can do the analysis of the genomes and see the amount of divergence between one microbe and another, which is related to the time since their last common ancestor. If we found a group of microbes on Mars that fit that pattern, but with a deep divergence billions of years ago so it's not just "Do DNA and RNA exist?" but are the patterns put together in ways that there is some resemblance to the common ancestry we have here? Then I think we would come to that conclusion. If it was totally different, we'd say this was an independent origin of life and there probably is a whole spectrum of interesting possibilities in between. Neil Tyson: How much of the incentive to return samples from Mars or anywhere else is because people are not thinking more robotically about such an exercise? In this vision we are charged with thinking about how to use in situ resources, how to go far beyond what even we do today in terms of robotics, telerobotics, and the like. Why is it so hard to imagine setting up a remote lab so that you don't actually have to bring the rock back to Earth to put it in your Earth lab? Can you imagine a remote lab that does all the same things? David Morrison: The quick answer is no, not today. Whatever capability we have to build a lab on Mars, surely our labs back at Earth will be decades ahead of that. So by bringing it back you always have access to the best technology. Michael Carr: There's a geologist at JSC (Johnson Space Center) who calculated the total mass of all the instruments that are currently working on the lunar samples. And it was a staggeringly large number. And it is not just the mass but the sophistication of the instruments and the sample preparation and so forth that are needed to prepare samples for analysis. I find it almost impossible to imagine a remote lab on the Moon or on Mars doing what we can do with samples returned here to the Earth. Laurie Leshin: I'm not going to spend time arguing with Mike about whether or not we should send humans to Mars. What we're really talking about is intelligent sampling. You made the comment that if Opportunity hadn't had wheels and just was able to reach out, that really wouldn't have been very intelligent sampling. And so since it can drive over, it can be more intelligent. Well, humans would be the ultimate in intelligent sampling. At least we hope we would train them well and would have geologists in the bunch. Michael Carr: I've just spent three months helping drive these rovers around Mars. I think we're doing fieldwork pretty well. We did intelligently look at that outcrop and sample it. We got microscopic imaging of it, we got analysis of it, we got mineralogy. We have a very limited set of instruments, and we were doing fieldwork right there at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article970.html. __________________________________________________________________________ PUNCHING THROUGH THE NIGHT'S CURTAIN Based on testimony of David Morrison, Jonathon Lunine and Michael Carr before the President's Commission on Moon to Mars and Beyond From Astrobiology Magazine 15 May 2004 Chartered to study how best to set priorities for the next moon and Mars initiative a newly-formed Presidential Commission--including four prominent scientists--held its first public forum and announced its nine commissioners. One task for the blue-ribbon panel, chaired by Defense veteran, Pete Aldridge, is to sustain a space exploration goal for several generations. The following session is the second installment of a question and answer session between leading space scientists and the commissioners, including Neil Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium and Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Dr. Jonathan I. Lunine is professor of planetary science and physics and the chair of the theoretical astrophysics program at the University of Arizona. Dr. Michael Carr is an astrogeologist in with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. David Morrison is a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Edited Q & A session with David Morrison, Jonathon Lunine and Michael Carr: Part II Laurie Leshin: When the President announced the vision, I think he stated very well that the goal is to advance the economic security and scientific interest of the nation, and so science is an important leg of that stool, if you will. It's one of the legs that holds up the exploration vision, and to me it's so compelling to hear you talk about how we stand on the precipice of being able to make some of these discoveries that would truly change our view of ourselves and fundamentally change people here on this planet. And I just wanted to get you all to talk a little bit more about that what you think it would mean to actually be enabled to go off and aggressively pursue and make these incredible discoveries. You can talk about how the public responds to what you do, what you've observed in your careers in terms of how people engage with this idea of the quest for understanding how we fit in; I'm pushing you to take the science hat off and speak from the heart. Michael Carr: I've been working on Mars for 30 years and I continue to be amazed at how interested the public is in what we're doing on Mars. I give public talks and the place is jammed. There are people standing around the walls and there are people lying on the floor in front. Our web site for the Mars rovers had more hits than any web site in the history of the Internet. There were more hits than there are people on Earth. The interest is just astonishing. And I think it does reflect back to what I talked about at the beginning of my talk, this feeling of awe about the universe and the pride we have the capability and we are doing this. We are going out there and exploring and I think it resonates enormously with the public and I think the response is indicative of that. David Morrison: We have all had that sort of experience. This week at Ames Research Center we had open house, and more than 700 people came to hear about Mars and specifically to talk about the search for life on Mars. It included the mayor of one of the local towns, CEOs, little kids, everybody. That seems to be an interesting thing to everyone as well as to scientists. And I remind you of the great interest that was aroused a little less than ten years ago with the Mars rock--ALH84001--that had the President holding a press conference, it had all of this coverage for the possible discovery of fossil microbes. Think how much more it would be if we actually found real life and were able to analyze it the way we do the genomics on our own life and make comparisons. I think we would all be blown away. Jonathan Lunine: I would add two things. I do from time to time read the foreign press, in particular Italian newspapers. And about the only non- jaundiced coverage of the United States is the coverage of science and space exploration. Actually mostly space exploration, because on the biological side there's the whole issue of human embryos and so on. And so it brings home to me again the point that this kind of activity of exploration and discovery is an activity of humankind that we are doing as leaders of this effort because of our technology and wealth. But it is something that brings everybody along. And there are very few activities, I think, that this nation is engaged in today where we can say that. I also would add that Dr. Tyson's point about the lack of ability to see the sky is not a trivial issue. Fewer and fewer people are able to actually look up at the sky and commune with the universe the way humans have done for presumably tens of thousands of years. And so we're drawing a curtain across that sky, and space exploration is the only way that we can punch through that curtain now. But in some ways it's a race against time, because we will eventually close off to ourselves the heavens, and it won't be a part of our experience at night anymore. And I wonder what that will do to our thirst for exploration. David Morrison: The other issue that I mentioned, defending our planet from asteroids, is something else that the public very much resonates with. Our impact hazard web site at Ames is the most popular web site that Ames maintains. And there are people who think that it's a reasonable thing for us, as the one superpower, the leading technical nation on Earth, to do--to assume some responsibility for protecting us against a catastrophe that could be avoided. Maria Zuber: That's a good lead-in to my next question. You mentioned a possible nuclear propulsion mission and the Prometheus project as one way of testing the technology for asteroid deflection. But we've been charged by the President to think about how humans and robots could work together in space, and when it might be appropriate. Has any thought been given to how humans could contribute to the asteroid deflection problem, and if not, should they be? David Morrison: I think a couple of Hollywood movies were made along those lines. Maria Zuber: That's not what I'm talking about. [Laughter] David Morrison: A robot is not an independent thing. It is run by people; it is built by people; it is controlled by people. So humans are very much involved in all of what we call robotic exploration. I think right now we are talking about the ability to give a first demonstration of controlled moving an asteroid robotically relatively inexpensively, and we don't for that purpose need asteroids, we need humans, although we may later. Pete Aldridge: Let me butt in here for just a minute. It does seem that the mission, the vision, for the Moon, Mars and Beyond would be developing technologies that are directly applicable that if we found some potential dangers, could be used for the purpose of asteroid defense. David Morrison: Indeed. This leads to a robust infrastructure in space. If we become a true space-faring civilization and a multi-planet species, then probably, if there were an asteroid threat a century or two in the future, you would just contract out to someone like Jim Benson and say, "Go take care of it." The structure would be there. Pete Aldridge: I know in the press conference the President did mention the fact that while national security was a different path, the technologies that are associated with it do contribute to national security, and I would guess defense of asteroids is very much related to national security as anything we know about. Carly Fiorina: I'm struck always, when I listen to people like you describe the enthusiasm of the public and watch each of us get spellbound all over again. I'm always struck by the difference between that reaction and the cynicism and pessimism that any discussion of a NASA mission always elicits. And, in fact, when the President announced this mission, there was the inevitable discussion of "Why go? It's not affordable." From a political point of view we rapidly spiral down into all the reasons it's a bad idea and it can't be done. And I wonder if you have a view on why that is. Jonathan Lunine: Well, let me take the first crack. There are several issues. One issue is that I think there is a general misperception in the public as to how much we actually spend on space endeavors, and very often if this comes up in class or I'm giving a public talk, I'll ask people how much they think this nation spends on space exploration. And usually no one answers because people confuse millions and billions and so on, and then I say, "OK, let's take out a dollar bill. This is a federal tax dollar; how much of this dollar bill is spent on NASA?" And they usually come back with a gross overestimate: twenty cents, forty cents, fifteen cents. And I tell them it's a penny and they don't believe it. So I think some of the cynicism and mistrust really has to do with the fact that people somehow believe that we are spending a very large fraction of our national wealth on space exploration and we're not. Pete Aldridge: In fact, it's less than a penny. Jonathan Lunine: It's now less than a penny. It's half a penny. Pete Aldridge: Point seven [0.7]. Jonathan Lunine: It's almost a half percent. Michael Carr: As far as the scientific exploration of the solar system, the missions like Voyager and Viking and the present Mars rovers and so on, I find nothing but enthusiasm. I think there is enthusiasm for true exploration--going to places that people have not seen before. I think the cynicism with respect to NASA has come from another source. I think it's come from long-term problems with Shuttle and Space Station, that have been extremely costly, and promises were made that were not fulfilled. I think that's where the cynicism has come. I think one redeeming aspect of the agency is its continual exploration of building things like Hubble, and on the science side. The science side continues to be inspirational. I don't encounter much cynicism associated with that aspect of the agency. Pete Aldridge: Dave, you want to comment on that? David Morrison: I'm a NASA employee. I'm enthusiastic. The people I work with are enthusiastic, the public I speak to is enthusiastic. That's all I can say. And it is centered on the science and exploration, which is what I know something about. Pete Aldridge: It is interesting to note that if you ask people about the space program, nobody would really argue against the robotic missions or the scientific missions and some of the things that NASA is doing. Seems like the criticism comes when the human spaceflight element is where the question and the controversy surrounds it. I know that that's only about a third of the NASA budget. The rest of it is other things. Robert Walker: I remember, though, in the Hubble mission, some of us who were supporters of the Hubble mission in its earliest days and helped come up with the funding for it took a lot of public hits when it ended up having a flawed mirror. There was not universal enthusiasm for some of that. And as somebody who has fought for about 20 or 25 years now to see that Gravity Probe B ultimately flies, I can assure you that there are some science missions that have a lot of critics and concerns about them. Neil Tyson: The three of you spoke about public interest in talks you've given and web site hits and the like. I wonder, Dr. Carr, could you foresee that same level of public interest in this vision if life were a lesser part of that vision and it became more of sort of a planetary geology exercise rather than a "life in the universe" exercise? Because in my personal experience I don't see the public enthusiasm with rocks, if the rocks are not specifically tied to the search for life. In your own experience, what have you seen in this regard? Michael Carr: I do think the potential for life is a grabber. But I also think that just exploration, irrespective of the prospects for life, resonates with the public and that when we go to Io or Europa or whatever, people are interested. Neil Tyson: New places. Michael Carr: Other places where really there isn't a life issue well, there is with Europa, but not with Io. And yet people are interested people are really interested in what's out there. Neil Tyson: So, not to put words in your mouth, but to maintain public support and to have checkpoints on progress, you might then suggest that we install milestones of new places to go, to see new ridges to climb over, so that there is a new thing people can look forward to that they haven't seen before. Michael Carr: A new place to go could be a different planet but it could also be just going over the horizon. Jonathan Lunine: But I have to say that ultimately people are interested in these worlds in the context of whether either they do have life or whether someday people are going to be climbing over those ridges, and so there is always the connection in some way between the rocks and biology either our own or some strange biology we haven't discovered yet. David Morrison: Let's recall Ray Bradbury's statement. If there is no life on Mars now, there still can be in the future, and we will be the Martians. We are in that transition from being citizens of planet Earth to being citizens of the solar system. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article971.html. __________________________________________________________________________ WHY MOVE AN ASTEROID? Testimony of Edward Lu, B612 Foundation, before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space of the Senate Commerce Committee, 7 April 2004, before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space dealing with defense against asteroid impacts. From Astrobiology Magazine 16 May 2004 Thank you for the opportunity today to discuss a bold new proposal to demonstrate altering the orbit of an asteroid. I represent the B612 foundation, a group of astronomers, engineers, and astronauts, concerned about the issue of asteroid impacts. Recent developments have now give n us the potential to defend the Earth against these natural disasters. To develop this capability we have proposed a spacecraft mission to significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015. Why move an asteroid? There is a 10 percent chance that during our lifetimes there will be a 70 meter asteroid that impacts Earth with energy 10 megatons (roughly equivalent to 700 simultaneous Hiroshima sized bombs). There is even a very remote one in 50,000 chance that you and I and everyone we know, along with most of humanity and human civilization, will perish together with the impact of a much larger kilometer or more sized asteroid. We now have the potential to change these odds. There are many unknowns surrounding how to go about deflecting an asteroid, but the surest way to learn about both asteroids themselves as well as the mechanics of moving them is to actually try a demonstration mission. The first attempt to deflect an asteroid should not be when it counts for real, because there are no doubt many surprises in store as we learn how to manipulate asteroids. Why by 2015? The time to test, learn, and experiment is now. A number of recent developments in space nuclear power and high efficiency propulsion have made this goal feasible. The goal of 2015 is challenging, but doable, and will serve to focus the development efforts. How big of an asteroid are we proposing to move? The demonstration asteroid should be large enough to represent a real risk, and the technology used should be scaleable in the future to larger asteroids. We are suggesting picking an asteroid of about 200 meters. A 200 meter asteroid is capable of penetrating the atmosphere and striking the ground with an energy of 600 megatons. Should it land in the ocean (as is likely), it will create an enormous tsunami that could destroy coastal cities. Asteroids of about 150 meters and larger are thought to be comprised of loose conglomerations of pieces, or rubble piles, while smaller asteroids are often single large rocks. The techniques we test on a 200 meter asteroid should therefore also be applicable to larger asteroids. What does "significantly alter the orbit" mean? If proposed asteroid searches are enacted, we expect to have decades or more of warning before an impact. Given this amount of warning, to prevent an impact only requires that the orbital velocity of an asteroid be altered by a small amount, less than of order 1 cm/sec, or about 0.02 MPH. This is a tiny velocity increment, considering that the orbital speeds of asteroids are of order 70,000 MPH. However, this is still a very difficult task since the mass of a 200 meter asteroid is of order 10 million tons. Why does the asteroid need to be moved in a "controlled manner"? If the asteroid is not deflected in a controlled manner, we risk simply making the problem worse. Nuclear explosives for example risk breaking up the asteroid into pieces, thus turning a speeding bullet into a shotgun blast of smaller but still possibly deadly fragments. Explosions also have the drawback that we cannot accurately predict the resultant velocity of the asteroid--not a good situation when trying to avert a catastrophe. Conversely, moving an asteroid in a controlled fashion also opens up the possibility of using the same technology to manipulate other asteroids for the purposes of resource utilization. How can this be accomplished? This mission is well beyond the capability of conventional chemically powered spacecraft. We are proposing a nuclear powered spacecraft using high efficiency propulsion (ion or plasma engines). Such propulsion packages are currently already under development at NASA as part of the Prometheus Project. In fact, the power and thrust requirements are very similar to the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter spacecraft, currently planned for launch around 2012. The B612 spacecraft would fly to, rendezvous with, and attach to a suitably chosen target asteroid (there are many candidate asteroids which are known to be nowhere near a collision course with Earth). By continuously thrusting, the spacecraft would slowly alter the velocity of the asteroid by a fraction of a cm/sec--enough to be clearly measurable from Earth. What will we learn from this? It is important to remember that this mission is merely a first attempt to learn more about the mechanics of asteroid deflection. There are a number of technical complications, as well as many unknowns about the structure and composition of asteroids. However, the way to make progress is to build, fly, and test. Much of what we will learn is generic to many proposed asteroid deflection schemes, with the added benefit of being able to answer important scientific questions about asteroids themselves. The best way to learn about asteroids is to go there. How does this fit into the new Exploration Initiative at NASA? In the near term, this mission would be an ideal way to flight test the nuclear propulsion systems under development as part of the Prometheus Project. It could also serve as a precursor to a crewed mission to visit an asteroid. Such missions have been proposed as intermediate steps to test spacecraft systems for eventual longer term crewed missions to Mars. In the longer term, the ability to land on and manipulate asteroids is an enabling technology for extending human and robotic presence throughout the solar system. If we are to truly open up the solar system, this mission is a good way to start. It is likely that someday we will utilize asteroids for fuel, building materials, or simply as space habitats. The B612 mission would mark a fundamental change in spacecraft in that it would actually alter in a measurable way an astronomical object, rather than simply observing it. Human beings must eventually take charge of their own destiny in this way, or we will someday go the way of the dinosaurs when the next great asteroid impact occurs. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article972.html. __________________________________________________________________________ RAY BRADBURY: THE ILLUSTRATED SPACEMAN Edited testimony of Ray Bradbury, President's Commission on the Moon, Mars and Beyond From Astrobiology Magazine 16 May 2004 Ray Bradbury is the author of classic works of science fiction such as, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. He has published more than five hundred works, including short stories, novels, plays, screenplays, television scripts, and verse. Beyond his literary contributions, Bradbury also serves as an "idea consultant" for civic, educational and entertainment projects. He provided the concept and script for the United States Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and contributed to Disney's Spaceship Earth at EPCOT and the Orbitron at the Disneyland parks in Paris and Anaheim. On April 15, Bradbury again was asked to share his ideas, this time for the President's Commission on Implementation on U.S. Space Exploration Policy. In testimony given to a panel chaired by Edward "Pete" Aldridge,Jr., Bradbury spoke of his vision for our destiny in space. Testimony by Ray Bradbury (portions of the testimony have been edited) I'm writing a new book called, Too Soon From the Cave, Too Far From the Stars. In other words, we're the in-between generation. We've been out of the cave about ten thousand years, we're on our way to Alpha Centauri, with a way stop on the Moon and Mars. We know very little about the generation of life on Earth; we've tried to explain it to ourselves but it's very difficult--we have no answers. But I worked with the Smithsonian a few years ago creating a planetarium show about the universe, the Big Bang, and what have you. In doing that, I got to thinking about the generation of life on Earth and what we're doing here. There's not one of us who hasn't laid awake at night, or laid out on a hill and looked at the universe and wondered, "What's it all about? Why are we here?" Well my idea is this: that there's no use having a universe--billions of stars and all creation before us--if there's no audience. So the universe, in mysterious ways, created life on Earth as an audience for this miraculous experience of being alive in the universe. We will witness, and we will celebrate. Now here we are on the threshold of space, going on to the Moon, which we should never have left, and going on to Mars. I'd like to put this in a framework for you. Five hundred years ago, three Italians set out from various parts of Europe. Christopher Columbus set out representing Spain. And then England came along, with Giovanni Caboto representing Henry the Eighth, and then a third person, Verrazzano, another Italian, set out for India. So on the way to India, all three of them bumped into a huge obstruction. An obstruction that was empty, that was uncivilized, that was cold, and rejected them. Christopher Columbus did not land on the main continent of this huge obstruction on his first trip. Giovanni Caboto examined the northern regions of this unknown continent. Only one man, Verrazzano, landed on the shore somewhere near Kitty Hawk. That's fascinating to think about, isn't it? Four hundred years before Kitty Hawk, an Italian lands on an empty shore, and four hundred years later the Wright Brothers take off into the air above the Earth. Now those people, and those kings, and the whole population of Europe could not possibly predict that these three Italians would found a nation of 300 million people that would become the center of civilization, the center of a new thing called democracy, and change the history of world, and become the most powerful power of the world. Now we are called upon, viewing the moon and Mars, to guess ahead five hundred years. That's almost an impossible task, but we must try to do it. Try to imagine that the moon is a base, and Mars is a new landing place, and a creation for civilization will burgeon in the next five hundred years, in one thousand years, in ten thousand years, and become the center of a new frontier in the move outward, someday, to Alpha Centauri. Why? Because life wants to exist, wants to survive, wants to be free of the conflicts of Earth, even as America, when it was created, was free of the conflicts of Europe. So we're going into space to be free of the conflicts and politics of the various nations, and to become one new nation on the planet Mars. I can think of nothing more exciting to all the children of the world and to their parents, who are infected by the joy and the love of their children for space. Looking at it in a very practical way, we are spending roughly a billion dollars a day at this time for armaments, for war, for conflicts, for doubt, for hatred at times. If we take one day each year, and spend the money of that one day on space travel, we can do it. So 364 days for armaments, and one day for rockets, for our destiny on the moon, and for our future civilization of freedom and a new democracy on Mars. Questions from the Presidential Panel Edward "Pete" Aldridge, Jr.: One of the issues this commission has to worry about is to ensure that the program is sustainable for the decades it will take us to begin this journey. Do you have any thoughts about how we continue to sell this to the American taxpayer for it to be sustainable over this period of time? Bradbury: Just the way I told it to you. If they see their destiny, if they see their children, and their children's children, in a new future that's brighter and better and more wonderful than this. It has to be sold on an aesthetic level, on a level of relating ourselves to the universe, and to the gift of life which we wish to solve and preserve. That is the way you sell it. Try not to speak of impossible gifts, like gold, which Cortez talked about, or spices, which the Kings of England and France spoke of, but the aesthetic thing, the human thing, of the entire race of people on the Earth at this time looking to the sky, and saying, "Look what we've done." Here is an antidote to war; here is a relief away from war; here is something wonderful as against the bad news we're getting almost every night from all over the world. At this very moment there are innumerable wars being fought all over the world at various locations. So if we sell it on the basis of a new freedom, a new movement away from the politics, and the horror and terror of Earth, I think people will recognize how true this is. Neil DeGrasse Tyson: There is a credible rebuttal to the space program which suggests, quite independent of dreams of space, that spending money on Earth to improve our life on Earth should be where any extra money might go. The credibility of that is simply that we know we have problems on Earth. I worry sometimes that, going into space, we take our problems there. Why should we believe that if we go to Mars there wouldn't still be wars? Could you comment on that--the role of space in our dreams of a Shangri-La, versus the role of what we might do on Earth to fix it. Bradbury: Consider the social situation in England at the time that Henry the Eighth sent Giovanni Caboto. There were all sorts of problems that hadn't been solved. The problem of a true democracy had not been solved in England. If they'd stayed there, and only worked on that, there would have been no America. In France, in the time of Francis the First, when he sent Verrazzano over, they had a mess of problems--they had not as yet had the revolution two or three hundred years in the future. They had problems that should have made them stay home. Why should Verrazzano go anywhere? And in Spain, problems again, and in Italy, where Columbus came from. All over Europe, there were problems--there were plagues, there were all kinds of wars, of countries invading one another--Italy being invaded by Austria, Sweden being invaded by Spain. All of these problems, we look back on and say, "Thank God they didn't try to solve these problems only, but sent three voyagers out to invent America." We're always going to have problems. We solve them. The role of medicine in America in the last eighty years is remarkable. When I was born in 1920, people died by the millions. By the time I was 30 years old, penicillin and sulfanilamide had been invented. Nobody could have predicted that. You don't lag behind, you move ahead on all the fronts at once. You take the good things with you into space. We're not going to take our problems with us, we'll refine ourselves along the way, and the first people that land there will be responsible citizens. They will be the first Martians, and then they will look back at Earth, and call more people up. So I do not believe we'll bring our problems with us. We will take representatives from every country in the world at some future time. I would like to send, on the first manned expedition to Mars, three Italians. If we can find any living relatives of Columbus, and Caboto, and Verrazzano--wouldn't that be remarkable if we could send them on the first manned rocket to Mars. Paul Spudis: Americans are a very pragmatic people. We embrace innovation, engineering, hardheaded facts, the bottom line. What you've outlined is a rationale based on an aesthetic appreciation, which traditionally has never gathered much political support in this country. While we can appreciate the aesthetic aspects, getting it to be a selling point is very difficult because people expect practical results. So given that background, how do we appeal to that practical side of the American public? I might suggest that one way is to say that space is a source of wealth. It's a source of virtually unlimited wealth. That seems to me something that would appeal to the American public much more than an aesthetic appreciation--even though that would resonate, I think a practical approach would resonate with a much larger segment of the population. Do you agree with that or not? Bradbury: There's a scene in Moby Dick, where Ahab is going after the white whale, and Starbuck says to him, "Where's the profit in this?" And Ahab touches his heart and he says, "The profit is here, man, the profit is here." So the answer to all this is not incredible wealth, but incredible wealth of love and well being--a freedom to express joy instead of sorrow and melancholy. It has to be sold on the basis of a higher aesthetic, but an exciting one. Again, ask your children, and they will respond with shouts of joy! They will not demand gold or silver, or all the profits that we're speaking of on a practical level--they want the joy of going to space. I talked with all the astronauts in Houston thirty years ago, before we moved into space with the Apollo project. I went down for Life magazine to do a series of articles about our plans to go to the moon. I was in a room with eighty astronauts, and they were all being very practical, all very practical. But it was announced from the front of the room by the Life editor that Ray Bradbury was sitting in the back of the room. Sixty astronauts jumped to their feet and rushed toward me. Why were they doing that? Because of the joy of knowing I cared about space. That I knew what it was to go up and look back for that first view of Earthrise, the joy of space, the joy of being on Mars, and the joy of finally moving to Alpha Centauri. It's on this higher level that children can give us this gift--we have to look to the children, and not the practical people, who say, "Stay here and solve the problems before you move." Because if you stay here, you'll stay here forever, and Earth will be a mausoleum if we stay here for ten thousand years. We cannot do that. Maria Zuber: In your book, The Martian Chronicles, it took several tries for humans to get to Mars successfully and then to start to form colonies. In the NASA culture now, it's very risk adverse because we've had some failures. What would happen if The Martian Chronicles played out when we sent the first people to Mars, and there were failures right at the beginning? What would it take to tell America and the rest of the world to keep on going? Bradbury: Well, when you think of the history of sea travel--thousands of people had to die in order to come to America. Thousands of people had to die of various diseases on the coasts of America. Millions of people, finally, sacrificed to make America what it is. So the answer to all this is, no matter what, we will prevail. You have to set yourself against this. We all have personal things that happen during our lives. In the last year, I've lost many of my friends, I've lost members of my family, but you don't give up, do you? You simply do not give up. That's the answer--you prevail, you move ahead, and you finally succeed. What we did here in America took millions of people working, and tens of thousands of people dying, and we finally did it. And we are the beacon to the world, because we would not let ourselves be destroyed. Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article974.html. __________________________________________________________________________ A BIT OF TITAN ON EARTH HELPS IN THE SEARCH FOR LIFE'S ORIGINS By Lori Stiles University of Arizona release 17 May 2004 While the Cassini spacecraft has been flying toward Saturn, chemists on Earth have been making plastic pollution like that raining through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon, Titan. Scientists suspect that organic solids have been falling from Titan's sky for billions of years and might be compounds that set the stage for the next chemical step toward life. They collaborate in University of Arizona laboratory experiments that will help Cassini scientists interpret Titan data and plan a future mission that would deploy an organic chemistry lab to Titan's surface. Chemists in Mark A. Smith's laboratory at the University of Arizona create compounds like those condensing from Titan's sky by bombarding an analog of Titan's atmosphere with electrons. This produces "tholins"--organic polymers (plastics) found in Titan's upper nitrogen-methane atmosphere. Titan's tholins are created by ultraviolet sunlight and electrons streaming out from Saturn's magnetic field. Tholins must dissolve to produce amino acids that are the basic building blocks of life. But chemists know that tholins won't dissolve in Titan's ethane/methane lakes or oceans. However, they readily dissolve in water or ammonia. And experiments performed 20 years ago show that dissolving tholins in liquid water produces amino acids. So given liquid water, there may be amino acids brewing in Titan's version of primordial soup. Oxygen is the other essential for life on Earth. But there is almost no oxygen in Titan's atmosphere. Last year, however, Caitlin Griffith, of UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, discovered water ice on Titan's surface (see "Titan Reveals a Surface Dominated by Icy Bedrock" online at http://uanews.org, the article search number is 7248). UA planetary scientist Jonathan Lunine and others theorize that when volcanoes erupt on Titan, some of this ice could melt and flow across the landscape. Similar flows could result when comets and asteroids slam into Titan. Better still, Titan's water may not immediately freeze because it's probably laced with enough ammonia (antifreeze) to remain liquid for about 1,000 years, Smith and Lunine noted in a research paper published in last November's issue of Astrobiology. So although Titan is extremely cold-- about 94 degrees kelvin (minus 180 degrees Celsius or minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit)--water may briefly flow across the surface, supplying oxygen and a medium for chemistry, they conclude. To further understand how all this might work together, Smith's group is generating tholins in the lab, analyzing their spectroscopic properties, and trying to understand their chemistry. We're trying to learn how the compounds will react with molten water on Titan's surface, what compounds they'll make, and, therefore, what we should really be looking for," Smith explained. "We're not just looking for atmospheric plastic sitting on the surface, but the result of time and energy input over billions of years." "We want to know what sorts of molecules have evolved, and whether they've evolved along pathways that might provide insights into how biological molecules developed on primordial Earth," he said. "Some of what we've learned so far in our experiments is that these materials are gross mixtures of incredibly complex molecules," Smith added. "Carl Sagan spent the last 10 years of his life studying these compounds in experiments like ours. What we've found complements his work. We see the same spectroscopic signatures." But Smith's group also has found that there is a component of these molecules that is very reactive and could easily, within a reasonable time frame, react on the surface of Titan to yield oxygenated compounds. "And that's what we¹re just starting to unravel now," Smith said. "Our work will get much more interesting this fall, in our experiments at the Advanced Light Source of the Lawrence Berkeley Lab," he added. "We'll be using a synchrotron to create tholins photochemically, using very energetic photons to break up this Titan gas by vacuum ultraviolet radiation." Vacuum ultraviolet radiation hits nitrogen and methane molecules in Titan's upper planetary atmosphere and blasts them apart. Scientists don't know if this produces the same kinds of polymers that are formed from an electrical discharge. "When you can crack nitrogen and methane molecules with light, you might get polymers similar to those formed when an electrical discharge cracks them apart," Smith said. "Or you may get different polymers. The chemistry is quite complex, and we just don't know the answers to so many of the simplest questions. But that's one of the reasons we'll conduct the experiments at Berkeley." The work going on in Smith's lab is important to scientists on NASA's Cassini Mission and possible follow-up missions to Saturn. The Cassini orbiter was launched in 1997 and is to launch a probe into Titan's atmosphere in December. The Huygens probe will float to Titan's surface next January. "Titan's thick orange aerosol haze layer is basically a bunch of organic plastics--polymers of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen," said Smith, head of UA's chemistry department. "The particulates eventually settle on Titan¹s surface, where they produce the organic feedstock for any organic chemistry going on." Cassini's Huygens probe will be the first instrument to actually sample this aerosol. It will give scientists some rudimentary chemical information on this material. But the probe won't tell them much about organic chemistry at Titan's surface. A follow-up mission to Titan that includes a robotic organic chemistry laboratory will give scientists a much more detailed look at the surface. The experiment is being designed by Lunine and Smith in collaboration with researchers from Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Lunine leads NASA's Astrobiology Institute focus group on Titan and is one of three interdisciplinary Cassini mission scientists for the Huygens probe. "We don't really know how life formed on the Earth, or on whatever planet it formed," Lunine said. "There are no traces left of how it happened on Earth, because all of Earth's organic molecules have been processed biochemically by now. Titan is our best chance to study organic chemistry in a planetary environment that has remained lifeless over billions of years." Downloadable photos are available online at http://uanews.org (access these images from imageBase, keyword: tholin). Contacts: Mark A. Smith Phone: 520-621-2115 E-mail: msmith@u.arizona.edu http://www.chem.arizona.edu/faculty/profile/profile.php?fid_call=smit Jonathan I. Lunine Phone: 520-621-2789 E-mail: jlunine@lpl.arizona.edu Lori Stiles UA News Services Phone: 520-621-1877 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0405/17titanlife/ http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/faking_titan_in_lab.html. __________________________________________________________________________ THE SECOND CONFERENCE ON EARLY MARS: GEOLOGIC, HYDROLOGIC, AND CLIMATE EVOLUTION AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR LIFE, SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT Lunar and Planetary Institute release http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/earlymars2004/ 12 May 2004 Sponsors: Lunar and Planetary Institute National Aeronautics and Space Administration Conveners: Steve Clifford, Lunar and Planetary Institute Jack Farmer, Arizona State University Robert Haberle, NASA Ames Research Center Horton Newsom, University of New Mexico Tim Parker, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Meeting update October 11 - 15, 2004 Jackson Hole, Wyoming The response to the first announcement has been outstanding, with indications of interest received from a broad range of terrestrial and planetary researchers. If you are planning to attend the meeting, we ask that you complete and submit an electronic preregistration form as soon as possible. Conference seating cannot be guaranteed beyond the first 125 registrants and the hotel room block consists of 80 rooms, which will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. Preregistration will also ensure that you will receive any reminders and late-breaking announcements related to the meeting via e-mail. Purpose and scope The influx of new data from the MER rovers, Mars Express, and other recent spacecraft missions to Mars; progress in early climate modeling; the growing evidence of the role of water in the planet's evolution; and the rapid pace of new discoveries about the origin and diversity of life on Earth have reinvigorated interest in both the conditions that prevailed on Mars during its first billion years of geologic history and their implications for the development of life. These issues were first addressed during the First Conference on Early Mars that was held in April 1997 at the LPI in Houston, Texas. This interdisciplinary meeting attracted approximately 185 terrestrial and planetary scientists from a variety of fields. The Second Conference on Early Mars is intended as the scientific successor to the 1997 meeting, sharing the same interdisciplinary scope and emphasis on discussion and debate. The purpose of the conference is twofold: 1) to consider how impacts, volcanism, and the presence of abundant water affected the physical and chemical environment that existed on Mars 4 G.y. ago, particularly as it related to the nature of the global climate, the existence of a primordial ocean, the origin of the valley networks, the geologic and mineralogic evolution of the surface, the potential presence of local environments that may have been conducive to the development of life, the origin of life (both on Earth and Mars) and the preservation of its signature in the geologic record; and 2) to discuss the investigations that might be conducted by present and future missions to test the hypotheses arising from (1). Time and location This five-day meeting will be held from October 11-15, 2003 at the Snake River Lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This location was chosen due to its proximity to the hydrothermal sites in Yellowstone National Park, which will be the focus of the mid-conference field trip on Wednesday, October 13. Abstracts: deadline and scope Any scientist with relevant theoretical, experimental, or field experience is strongly encouraged to participate and to submit an abstract (deadline for electronic submission: 5:00 PM U.S. Central Daylight time, Tuesday, July 13, 2004). Abstracts may address any relevant aspect of early Mars or Earth research, including, but not limited to: * Climatic, geologic, and hydrologic evolution * SNC meteorites, crustal composition, and planetary volatile inventories * Ocean and groundwater aqueous geochemistry * Origin of life * Life in extreme environments * Remote Sensing and in situ investigations to address the above Student travel awards The Mars Program Office would like to announce that travel funding has been made available for undergraduate and graduate students to attend the Conference on Early Mars. Students must be U.S. citizens. Competitive selection of up to eight students will be made by NASA Headquarters. Funding will be provided as a post-workshop reimbursement, with up to $1000 per award available for transportation, lodging, and per diem. Students wishing to be considered for this assistance must submit the downloadable Travel Grant Application form, accompanied by a two-page CV, including a list of any professional publications (meeting abstracts and peer-reviewed journal publications), and return it to Marguerite Syvertson (mls@jpl.nasa.gov or fax 818-354-8333) by July 13, 2004. Also, please indicate on the separate LPI abstract submission form that you are a student applying for a Student Travel Award. Applications will be notified of the conveners' decision no later than August 20, 2004. For additional information regarding the conference format, abstract submission procedures, registration, and accommodations, please check the full text of this announcement at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/earlymars2004/. The meeting organizers strongly encourage the redistribution of this announcement to any colleagues who you believe might have an interest in participating in this meeting. __________________________________________________________________________ PROGRAMS WILL SHARE EXCITEMENT OF MARS ROVERS NASA/JPL release 2004-127 18 May 2004 Two free public programs in Pasadena this week will present the dramatic story of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers. Nagin Cox of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, will show pictures and describe the adventure on Thursday evening, May 20, at JPL and on Friday evening, May 21, at Pasadena City College. She is deputy chief of the engineering team for the rovers and for the spacecraft that delivered the rovers to Mars. The twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are now exploring Mars in extended missions after successfully completing all tasks set for them in their primary three-month missions at sites halfway around Mars from each other. Spirit is approaching hills where scientists hope it will find older rocks than the rover has examined so far. Opportunity, in its first two months after landing, found evidence of an ancient body of water. It is now perched at the edge of a stadium-sized crater where exposed rocks might nreveal more about the region's wet past. The rovers' landings in January, aided by parachutes and airbags, provided breathtaking moments. The story Cox will tell begins earlier, with design and building of the spacecraft at JPL in preparation for launches from Florida in mid-2003. At JPL, Cox worked on NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter before switching to Mars missions. She holds engineering and psychology degrees fro