Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter Volume 12, Number 26, 25 July 2005 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, but individual authors retain the copyright of specific articles. 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) ANTARCTIC ECOSYSTEM DISCOVERED--NEW SPECIES OF MARINE LIFE MAY BE UNCOVERED Hamilton College release 2) METHANE'S IMPACTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE MAY BE TWICE PREVIOUS ESTIMATES By Krishna Ramanujan 3) ASTRONOMERS DEBATE WHETHER OLDEST KNOWN DUST DISK WILL EVER FORM PLANETS Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics release 05-25 4) SPACE STATION HARVEST RELIEVES CREW'S MINDS, APPETITES By Brad Amburn 5) PIGS IN SPACE By Morris Jones 6) MELT THROUGH THE ICE TO FIND LIFE From Universe Today 7) CYBORG ASTROBIOLOGIST COULD HELP ASTRONAUTS FIND LIFE ON MARS By Larry Klaes 8) CHLOROPHYLL AND CLIMATE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN NASA/GSFC release 9) INTERPLANETARY WHODUNIT--METHANE ON MARS By David Tenenbaum 10) DUSTIEST STAR COULD HARBOR A YOUNG EARTH Gemini Observatory release 11) SEEKING DEEP SPACE SALT LOVERS By Rocco Mancinelli 12) NASA QUEST CHALLENGES STUDENTS TO STUDY MARS ON EARTH NASA/ARC release 05-41AR 13) MARS HAS BEEN IN THE DEEP FREEZE FOR THE PAST FOUR BILLION YEARS, STUDY SHOWS California Institute of Technology release 14) A TRIP TO MARS NEEDS WASTE From SpaceDaily 15) SEARCHING FOR THE BIOLOGICAL OBJECTS ON MARS By Alexander Zeltsman 16) METHANE ON EARTH--COMMON CHEMICAL, ELUSIVE QUARRY By David Tenenbaum Announcements 17) IMAGINE MARS: HUD NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORKS GET INVOLVED! NASA/JPL webcast announcement Mission Reports 18) CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS FOR 14-20 JULY 2005 NASA/JPL release 19) NASA ANNOUNCES DEEP IMPACT FUTURE MISSION STATUS NASA release 05-193 20) MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 21) MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 22) NASA'S NEW MARS ORBITER WILL SHARPEN VISION OF EXPLORATION NASA release 05-195 _____________________________________________________________________ ANTARCTIC ECOSYSTEM DISCOVERED--NEW SPECIES OF MARINE LIFE MAY BE UNCOVERED Hamilton College release 18 July 2005 The chance discovery of a vast ecosystem beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf will allow scientists to explore the uncharted life below Antarctica's floating ice shelves and further probe the origins of life in extreme environments. Researchers discovered the sunless habitat after reviewing a recent underwater video study examining a deep glacial trough in the northwestern Weddell Sea following the sudden Larsen B shelf collapse in 2002. "This is definitely the biggest thing I've ever been involved with in the Antarctic," said Eugene Domack, a geosciences professor and lead author of the report detailing the ecosystem. The article will be published in the July 19 issue of Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union. "Seeing these organisms on the ocean bottom--it's like lifting the carpet off the floor and finding a layer that you never knew was there." Domack suggests the strong possibility that new species of marine life may be uncovered in continuing analyses of the area as ecosystem experts sample the site. The international expedition was there on a U.S. Antarctic Program cruise to study the sediment record in the area vacated by the former ice shelf. The crew recorded a video of the seafloor at the end of its mission and only later discovered a thriving clam community, mud volcanoes and a thin layer of bacterial mats. The discovery was made during a trip to Antarctica this spring led by Domack to continue his ongoing investigation of the causes for the collapse of a massive ice sheet known as Larsen B. He was accompanied by a group of Hamilton undergraduate students along with students and professors from five other institutions including Colgate University. Domack has taken more than 100 undergraduates to Antarctica since 1987. These expeditions are among the very few that include undergraduate student researchers. This was the second year of a three-year multi-institutional, international effort that combines a variety of disciplines and integrates research with educational opportunities. In 2004, Domack was awarded $851,941 from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs in support of these expeditions. This discovery could provide evidence for researchers to better understand the dynamics within the inhospitable sub-ice setting, which covers more than 1.5 million square kilometers [nearly 580,000 square miles] of seafloor, or an area of the same magnitude to the Amazon basin in Brazil or the Sahara Desert. The ecosystem, known as a "cold-seep" (or cold-vent) community, is fed by chemical energy from within the Earth, unlike ecosystems that are driven by photosynthesis or hot emissions from the planet's crust. Domack and his coauthors propose that methane from deep underwater vents likely provide the energy source capable of sustaining the chemical life at the observed 850-meter [approximately 2800-foot] depth. Such extreme cold-vent regions have previously been found near Monterey, California, where the phenomenon was discovered in 1984, in the Gulf of Mexico, and deep within the Sea of Japan. The recent report, however, presents the first finding of the type in the Antarctic, where the near-freezing water temperatures and almost completely uncharted territory will likely provide a baseline for researchers to probe portions of the ocean floor that have been undisturbed for nearly 10,000 years. The researchers speculate, for example, that the ice shelves themselves may have played a critical role in allowing the chemical habitat to thrive on the seafloor when it otherwise might not have established itself. Domack noted, however, that the collapse of the Larsen B Shelf has opened the pristine chemical-based ecosystem to disturbances and debris that have already begun to bury the delicate mats and mollusks established within the underwater environment. He added that there may be a sense of urgency to investigate the unusual seafloor ecology below the Larsen shelf because of the likelihood of increased sediment deposition. In addition, he suggests that the newfound system may provide incentive to launch studies to other remote undersea environments in the Poles and in other glacial settings such as Lake Vostok, also in the Antarctic, to further explore the little-understood connection where ice sheets, the seafloor, and circulating water meet. The researchers indicate that the knowledge gained from any subsequent studies could enhance the examination of subterranean water on Earth or the hypothesized ocean beneath the surface on the Jovian moon Europa. The research was supported by National Science Foundation grants to Hamilton College, Colgate University, and Southern Illinois University. Journal reference: E. Domack et al., 2005. A chemotrophic ecosystem found beneath Antarctic ice shelf. Eos, 86(29):269-272, http://www.agu.org/pubs/2005EO290001.pdf. Contact: Vige Barrie Phone: 315-859-4623 E-mail: vbarrie@hamilton.edu Read the original news release at http://www.hamilton.edu/news/more_news/display.cfm?ID=9638. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050718_antarctic_life.html http://www.terradaily.com/news/antarctic-05m.html _____________________________________________________________________ METHANE'S IMPACTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE MAY BE TWICE PREVIOUS ESTIMATES By Krishna Ramanujan NASA/GSFC release 18 July 2005 Scientists face difficult challenges in predicting and understanding how much our climate is changing. When it comes to gases that trap heat in our atmosphere, called greenhouse gases (GHGs), scientists typically look at how much of the gases exist in the atmosphere. However, Drew Shindell, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, believes we need to look at the GHGs when they are emitted at Earth's surface, instead of looking at the GHGs themselves after they have been mixed into the atmosphere. "The gas molecules undergo chemical changes and once they do, looking at them after they've mixed and changed in the atmosphere doesn't give an accurate picture of their effect," Shindell said. "For example, the amount of methane in the atmosphere is affected by pollutants that change methane's chemistry, and it doesn't reflect the effects of methane on other greenhouse gases," said Shindell, "so it's not directly related to emissions, which are what we set policies for." Chemically reactive GHGs include methane and ozone (carbon dioxide, the most important GHG, is largely unreactive). Once methane and the molecules that create ozone are released into the air by both natural and human-induced sources, these gases mix and react together, which transforms their compositions. When gases are altered, their contribution to the greenhouse warming effect also shifts. So, the true effect of a single GHG emission on climate becomes very hard to single out. Some of the major investigations into the state of our warming planet come from a series of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment. These reports involved the work of hundreds of climate experts. The reports rely on measurements of greenhouse gases as they exist in the atmosphere, after they may have mixed with other gases. In other words, the findings in the report do not reflect the quantities that were actually emitted. Shindell finds there are advantages to measuring emissions of greenhouse gases and isolating their impacts, as opposed to analyzing them after they have mixed in the atmosphere. His study on the subject was recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. In the study, when the individual effects of each gas on global warming were added together, the total was within 10 percent of the impacts of all the gases mixed together. The small difference in the two amounts was a sign to Shindell that little error was introduced by separating the emissions from one another. After isolating each greenhouse gas and calculating the impact of each emission on our climate with a computer model, Shindell and his colleagues found some striking differences in how much these gases contribute overall to climate change. The leading greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons. These gases are called 'well mixed' greenhouse gases because of their long lifetimes of a decade or more, which allows them to disperse evenly around the atmosphere. They are emitted from both man-made and natural sources. Ozone in the lower atmosphere, called tropospheric ozone, a major component of polluted air or smog that is damaging to human and ecosystem health, also has greenhouse warming effects. In the upper atmosphere, ozone protects life on Earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. According to new calculations, the impacts of methane on climate warming may be double the standard amount attributed to the gas. The new interpretations reveal methane emissions may account for a third of the climate warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases between the 1750s and today. The IPCC report, which calculates methane's affects once it exists in the atmosphere, states that methane increases in our atmosphere account for only about one sixth of the total effect of well-mixed greenhouse gases on warming. Part of the reason the new calculations give a larger effect is that they include the sizeable impact of methane emissions on tropospheric ozone since the industrial revolution. Tropospheric ozone is not directly emitted, but is instead formed chemically from methane, other hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. The IPCC report includes the effects of tropospheric ozone increases on climate, but it is not attributed to particular sources. By categorizing the climate effects according to emissions, Shindell and colleagues found the total effects of methane emissions are substantially larger. In other words, the true source of some of the warming that is normally attributed to tropospheric ozone is really due to methane that leads to increased abundance of tropospheric ozone. According to the study, the effects of other pollutants were relatively minor. Nitrogen oxide emissions can even lead to cooling by fostering chemical reactions that destroy methane. This is partly why estimates based on the amount of methane in the atmosphere give the gas a smaller contribution to climate change. Molecule for molecule, Methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, but CO2 is much more abundant than methane and the predicted growth rate is far greater. Since 1750, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, though the rate of increase has slowed during the 1980-90s, and researchers don't understand why. Controlling methane could reap a big bang for the buck. Another bonus of this perspective is that in order to manage greenhouse gases, policy decisions must focus on cutting emissions, because that's where humans have some control. "If we control methane, which the U.S. is already starting to do, then we are likely to mitigate global warming more than one would have thought, so that's a very positive outcome," Shindell said. "Control of methane emissions turns out to be a more powerful lever to control global warming than would be anticipated." Sources of methane include natural sources like wetlands, gas hydrates in the ocean floor, permafrost, termites, oceans, freshwater bodies, and non-wetland soils. Fossil fuels, cattle, landfills and rice paddies are the main human-related sources. Previous studies have shown that new rice harvesting techniques can significantly reduce methane emissions and increase yields. Journal reference: D. T. Shindell et al., 2005. An emissions-based view of climate forcing by methane and tropospheric ozone. Geophysical Research Letters, 32:L04803, http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005.../2004GL021900.shtml. Read the original news release at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/methane.html. An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.terradaily.com/news/climate-05zzzt.html. _____________________________________________________________________ ASTRONOMERS DEBATE WHETHER OLDEST KNOWN DUST DISK WILL EVER FORM PLANETS Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics release 05-25 18 July 2005 Every rule has an exception. One rule in astronomy, supported by considerable evidence, states that dust disks around newborn stars disappear in a few million years. Most likely, they vanish because the material has collected into full-sized planets. Astronomers have discovered the first exception to this rule--a 25-million-year-old dust disk that shows no evidence of planet formation. "Finding this disk is as unexpected as locating a 200-year-old person," said astronomer Lee Hartmann of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author on the paper announcing the find. The discovery raises the puzzling question of why this disk has not formed planets despite its advanced age. Most protoplanetary disks last only a few million years, while the oldest previously known disks have ages of about 10 million years. "We don't know why this disk has lasted so long, because we don't know what makes the planetary formation process start," said co- author Nuria Calvet of CfA. The disk in question orbits a pair of red dwarf stars in the Stephenson 34 system, located approximately 350 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows that its inner edge is located about 65 million miles from the binary stars. The disk extends to a distance of at least 650 million miles. Additional material may orbit farther out where temperatures are too low for Spitzer to detect it. Astronomers estimate the newfound disk to be about 25 million years old. They calculated the age by modeling the central stars within the system, since stars and disk share the same age. The appearance of the disk itself also supports an advanced age. "The disk looks a lot different than most other disks we've seen. This disk looks a lot more evolved than those around younger stars," said Hartmann. Hartmann and Calvet hold opposite opinions about the eventual fate of the disk around Stephenson 34. "Most stars, by the age of 10 million years, have done whatever they're going to do," said Hartmann. "If it hasn't made planets by now, it probably never will." Calvet disagreed. "This disk still has a lot of gas in it, so it may still form giant planets." Both astronomers emphasize that such debates are a natural part of the scientific process. "Some people expect scientists to have all the answers. But research is all about exploring the edge of what is known," said Hartmann. "That's what makes it so exciting!" In the future, Hartmann and Calvet plan to search for more old disks in order to learn why some disks survive so much longer than most others. "It's important to find more objects like this because they give us clues about the conditions that influence the formation of planets," said Calvet. This research will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. JPL is a division of Caltech. Additional information about the Spitzer Space Telescope is available on the Internet, at: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer. High- resolution artwork to accompany this release is available online at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/press/pr0525image.html Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists organized into seven research divisions study the origin, evolution, and ultimate fate of the universe. Journal reference: L. Hartmann, et al., 2005. The accretion disk of the lithium- depleted young binary St 34. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 628:L147-L150, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/issues/ApJL/v628n2/19556 /brief/19556.abstract.html. For more information, contact: David A. Aguilar Director of Public Affairs Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Phone: 617-495-7462 E-mail: daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu Christine Pulliam Public Affairs Specialist Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Phone: 617-495-7463, Fax: 617-495-7016 E-mail: cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1652.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-05zo.html http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0507/18dustdisk/ http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/25_million_years_dust_disk_fo rm_planets.html _____________________________________________________________________ SPACE STATION HARVEST RELIEVES CREW'S MINDS, APPETITES By Brad Amburn From Space.com 19 July 2005 Gail Bingham remembers vividly the day in 1996 when a team at the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) in Moscow lost 100 of his crew members in the institute's international space station simulation chamber. This loss was felt by few, but to the three- member team participating in the six-month ground isolation study, those 100 stalks of wheat were part of the crew. "When their mission was over, I remember the crew commander came up to me and said how important our experiment was to him," said Bingham, the chief scientist at the Space Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University in North Logan. Bingham was running a study with colleagues at IBMP to harvest 100 wheat stalks in a growth chamber on the simulator, just one of many experiments in Bingham's ongoing study of vegetation growth in space, studies he has conducted on the ground and in space at two different space stations. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050719_ibmp_plants.html. _____________________________________________________________________ PIGS IN SPACE By Morris Jones From SpaceDaily 19 July 2005 Information on the upcoming Shenzhou 6 mission is gradually trickling out from official sources, as the launch date for the mission draws closer. As usual, China remains very guarded about the overall program that's planned for the flight, but the little we have learned from a recent media statement gives us scope for some speculation. China is still being vague about the launch date and the precise duration of the mission, with some sources citing September, while others say the mission will fly in early October. The duration of the flight still seems to range from four to five days, depending on the sources consulted, and how the sources are interpreted. Such vagueness is possibly the result of a secrecy policy, but it could also reflect uncertainties by mission planners. ...China has also released information on another simple experiment to be flown on Shenzhou 6, noting that pig spermatozoa will be carried on the spacecraft. The spermatozoa will be returned to Earth and used in breeding experiments, through in-vitro fertilisation. Biologists will search for any genetic changes in the resultant "space pigs" that could be caused by exposure to cosmic rays. As a scientific experiment, the pig spermatozoa flight has much to recommend it. It's light, non-hazardous, and probably requires little intervention by the crew. Searching for genetic mutations caused by radiation in space could be useful for China's enormous pork industry, but the experiment will also have implications for human spaceflight. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life- 05zzzd.html. _____________________________________________________________________ MELT THROUGH THE ICE TO FIND LIFE From Universe Today 19 July 2005 Scientists can tell us what our climate on Earth was like in past by examining ice cores taken from glaciers. Tiny bubbles of air are trapped in the ice and maintain a historical record of ancient atmospheres. The effects of life make their mark in these ice samples as well. What if you examined the icecaps on Mars, or the layers of ice on Europa? NASA is considering a proposal for a small spacecraft that would land on Mars or Europa and melt its way through the ice, collecting data as it descended, searching for clues about the presence of life. Read the full article at http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/dig_through_ice_life.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CYBORG ASTROBIOLOGIST COULD HELP ASTRONAUTS FIND LIFE ON MARS By Larry Klaes From Universe Today 19 July 2005 When humans first step onto the surface of Mars in the coming decades, they'll be like kids in a candy store; so many rocks to turn over or chip away at. Is that discolored patch algae? A team of Spanish engineers are working on a Cyborg Astrobiologist that could help observe the landscape with a video camera, see what the astronauts see, and suggest places that might be interesting for further study. Larry Klaes reports on this interesting new technology, but he thinks robots could use a system like this even sooner. Read the full article at http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/cyborg_astrobiologist.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CHLOROPHYLL AND CLIMATE IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN NASA/GSFC release 19 July 2005 Around the equator in much of the Pacific Ocean, concentrations of ocean plant life are generally low. This "marine desert" occurs because this part of the ocean is low in iron, a key nutrient that the ocean's tiny plants-called phytoplankton-require. However, during the La Niņa episode that followed the strong El Niņo in 1997, satellites recorded a major phytoplankton bloom in the equatorial Pacific. For about one month, the desert became a garden, where plants flourished, died, and sank into the deep ocean. These images show satellite-measured chlorophyll concentrations in the Pacific Ocean during the La Niņa bloom in August 1998 (top left); in December of 1999 (top right), which was a typical year; and during the 1997 El Niņo (bottom right). The graph at lower left shows the chlorophyll concentration of the region from September (S) of 1997 through December (D) of 2000. Chlorophyll concentrations increase from purple (very low) to red (high). During the La Niņa bloom an area of very high chlorophyll occurs around 140 degrees West; this area corresponds to the peak in the graph, which reaches its maximum in August 1998. These data were collected by the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS). What is it about El Niņo and La Niņa cycles that could account for these dramatic swings in plant productivity in the Pacific? Iron content in the remote Pacific is low because the area is far from land-based sources of iron, such as sediment and dust. The iron that is available in the water comes from upwelling of deeper ocean waters. During normal years, winds blowing from east to west across the eastern Pacific off the coast of South America drive the surface water away from land. Cold, nutrient-rich water wells up from the deep to replace it. During El Niņo events, the winds virtually disappear, and upwelling becomes very weak. Without nutrients, phytoplankton concentrations plummet, as do the concentrations of the microscopic animals- zooplankton-that eat the phytoplankton, and the fish that eat the zooplankton. The explosiveness of the August 1998 bloom was the result of two factors. As the strong El Niņo of 1997 weakened, the winds returned. Upwelling increased the concentration of iron and other nutrients rapidly, allowing phytoplankton to start recovering. The second factor that helped the bloom become so large was the scarcity of zooplankton predators. Because the population of zooplankton had also crashed during the El Niņo "famine" in 1997, the recovering phytoplankton populations had a short window in which they weren't being grazed by their predators. Scientists who studied chlorophyll concentrations in the Pacific during and after the 1997 El Niņo estimate that the amount of carbon that made its way into the deep ocean in the remains of dead phytoplankton increased by a factor of 8 during the event. Images courtesty Xiujun Wang, University of Maryland, Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. Journal reference: X. Wang, et al., 2005. Ecosystem dynamics and export production in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific: a modeling study of impact of ENSO. Geophysical Research Letters, 32:L02608, http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005.../2004GL021538.shtml. Read the original news release at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_i d=16972. _____________________________________________________________________ INTERPLANETARY WHODUNIT--METHANE ON MARS By David Tenenbaum From Astrobiology Magazine 20 July 2005 Mars is the planet that refuses to say "die." In 1996, after centuries of speculation about canals, icecaps and vegetation, NASA's David McKay reported seeing traces of ancient bacteria in a meteorite from Mars. Scientists have debated this finding ever since, and many now believe that the intriguing traces are probably not of biological origin. Within the last few years, however, two simple chemicals intimately associated with life on Earth have been discovered on Mars. Large amounts of frozen water were discovered at the surface, and traces of methane appeared in the atmosphere. Water is necessary for life as we know it, and most of the methane on Earth is made by microbes. Although the twin discoveries redoubled interest in the possibility of life on Mars, nobody is suggesting that anything is living on the planet's surface, where temperatures average minus 63 degrees Celsius and harmful ultraviolet radiation pierces the thin atmosphere. On Mars, as on Earth, temperatures rise as you go deeper down into the planet. Somewhere between a dozen and a thousand meters below the surface, conditions may be warm enough for liquid water, which is necessary for even non-biological methane production on Earth. But could a living ecosystem be hidden deep under the martian surface? On Earth, subterranean microbes survive without sunlight, free oxygen, or contact with the surface. The question becomes more intriguing when you consider that most deep-Earth microbes are primitive, single-celled organisms that power their metabolism with chemical energy from their environment. These microbes are called "methanogens" because they make methane as a waste product. Three NASA missions have discovered signs of water on Mars. In 2000, Mars Global Surveyor images of gullies suggested to many that water recently flowed on the martian surface. In May 2002, the gamma ray spectrometer on Mars Odyssey found a huge deposit of hydrogen in shallow polar soil--a sure sign of water ice. Then, in December 2004, researchers using the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity announced that they had discovered rocks that had been formed by the periodic flooding of water on the surface. Such findings support the idea that Mars was warm and wet billions of years ago. While water is a necessary condition for life, methane may be actual evidence of life. In the past two years, three separate research groups have seen spectral signs of methane on Mars: * In 2003, Michael Mumma of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) detected methane using spectrometers at two large earthbound telescopes. He has since told several scientific meetings that large variations exist in methane concentration on Mars. In a presentation at a NASA Astrobiology Institute meeting in April 2005, Mumma said the detection of martian methane varied with geography: there was an average of 200 parts per billion (ppb) detected at the equator, and 20 to 60 ppb near the poles. * Vladimir Krasnopolsky, a research professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, also detected methane on Mars. Like Mumma, Krasnopolsky used spectrometers on Earth-based telescopes. He calculated a global average of 11 ppb, with a range of 7 to 15 ppb. The data, as Krasnopolsky reported to a European Geosciences Union meeting in April 2004, came from 1999 observations of the whole planet's disk. "We didn't try to make localized measurements because we did not expect any variation from place to place," Krasnopolsky told Astrobiology Magazine. * In December 2004, the European Space Agency's Mars Express delivered the first methane data from a Mars orbiter. In the journal Science, Vittorio Formisano of the Institute of the Physics of Interplanetary Space in Rome and colleagues reported measurements made with the satellite's Planetary Fourier Spectrometer. Their measurements were similar to Krasnopolsky's numbers: a concentration of 10 ppb, plus or minus 5 ppb. Although the Krasnopolsky and Formisano studies independently pointed to similar concentrations of methane, some planetary scientists express skepticism because the amount detected is very faint. "The detections have been right at the detection limit of the instruments," says William Boynton of the University of Arizona, principal investigator on the gamma ray spectrometer on Mars Odyssey. "I'm not completely convinced it's a solid detection yet. It's likely, but I wouldn't put it in the bank." The matter of methane The methane on Mars was detected with spectrometry--the analysis of light waves. Because each atom and molecule emits and absorbs characteristic wavelengths of light, spectrometers can determine the composition of distant objects by measuring these wavelengths. To study gases in the atmosphere of Mars, spectroscopists use instruments that can analyze the infrared light that is emitted when solar radiation warms the planet's surface. As that infrared radiation speeds toward Earth, gases in the martian atmosphere can block, or absorb, certain frequencies. When the infrared light is concentrated in a telescope and separated by a spectroscope's diffraction grating, the missing wavelengths show which particular atoms or molecules have absorbed light en route to Earth. Thus, a methane "line" on a spectroscope curve is a reflection of the light that methane has blocked. There are complications, however. When faint light from a planet is collected in a terrestrial telescope, atoms and molecules in space or in Earth's atmosphere will block some wavelengths. Spectroscopists must compensate for these non-martian signals. And because Mars is moving relative to Earth, the absorption lines appear in the "wrong" places until additional compensations are made. Any methane on Mars today is not a legacy of ancient conditions, because solar radiation would destroy the molecules in the atmosphere within 600 years. Instead, the methane either was brought to Mars on comets or meteorites, or it was made on Mars. If we have glimpsed some made-on-Mars methane, was it made by geological or chemical processes--or by biology? _____________________________________________________________________ DUSTIEST STAR COULD HARBOR A YOUNG EARTH Gemini Observatory release 20 July 2005 The star, going by the unassuming name of BD +20 307, is shrouded by the dustiest environment ever seen so close to a Sun-like star well after its formation. The warm dust is believed to be from recent collisions of rocky bodies at distances from the star comparable to that of the Earth from the Sun. The results were based on observations done at the Gemini and W. M. Keck Observatories, and were published in the July 21 issue of the British science journal, Nature. This finding supports the idea that comparable collisions of rocky bodies occurred early in our solar system's formation about 4.5 billion years ago. Additionally, this work could lead to more discoveries of this sort which would indicate that the rocky planets and moons of our inner solar system are not as rare as some astronomers suspect. "We were lucky. This set of observations is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack," said Inseok Song, the Gemini Observatory astronomer who led the U.S.-based research team. "The dust we detected is exactly what we would expect from collisions of rocky asteroids or even planet-sized objects, and to find this dust so close to a star like our Sun bumps the significance way up. However, I can't help but think that astronomers will now find more average stars where collisions like these have occurred." For years, astronomers have patiently studied hundreds of thousands of stars in the hopes of finding one with an infrared dust signature (the characteristics of the starlight absorbed, heated up and reemitted by the dust) as strong as this one at Earth-to-Sun distances from the star. "The amount of warm dust near BD+20 307 is so unprecedented I wouldn't be surprised if it was the result of a massive collision between planet-size objects, for example, a collision like the one which many scientists believe formed Earth's moon," said Benjamin Zuckerman, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, member of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, and a co-author on the paper. The research team also included Eric Becklin of UCLA and Alycia Weinberger formerly at UCLA and now at the Carnegie Institution. BD +20 307 is slightly more massive than our Sun and lies in the constellation Aries. The large dust disk that surrounds the star has been known since astronomers detected an excess of infrared radiation with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) in 1983. The Gemini and Keck observations provide a strong correlation between the observed emissions and dust particles of the size and temperatures expected by the collision of two or more rocky bodies close to a star. Because the star is estimated to be about 300 million years old, any large planets that might orbit BD +20 307 must have already formed. However, the dynamics of rocky remnants from the planetary formantion process might be dictated by the planets in the system, as Jupiter did in our early solar system. The collisions responsible for the observed dust must have been between bodies at least as large as the largest asteroids present today in our solar system (about 300 kilometers across). "Whatever massive collision occurred, it managed to totally pulverize a lot of rock," said team member Alycia Weinberger. Given the properties of this dust, the team estimates that the collisions could not have occurred more than about 1,000 years ago. A longer history would give the fine dust (about the size of cigarette smoke particles) enough time to be dragged into the central star. The dusty environment around BD +20 307 is thought to be quite similar, but much more tenuous than what remains from the formation of our solar system. "What is so amazing is that the amount of dust around this star is approximately one million time greater than the dust around the Sun," said UCLA team member Eric Becklin. In our solar system the remaining dust scatters sunlight to create an extremely faint glow called the zodiacal light (see image above). It can be seen under ideal conditions with the naked eye for a few hours after evening or before morning twilight. The team's observations were obtained using Michelle, a mid-infrared spectrograph/imager built by the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, on the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope, and the Long Wavelength Spectrograph (LWS) at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Keck I. Journal reference: I. Song et al., 2005. Extreme collisions between planetesimals as the origin of warm dust around a Sun-like star. Nature, 436(7049):363-365, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7049/abs/nature03853.html. Read the original news release at http://www.gemini.edu/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=138&Itemi d=0&limit=1&limitstart=0. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-05zp.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/dustiest_star__bd__20_307.htm l _____________________________________________________________________ SEEKING DEEP SPACE SALT LOVERS By Rocco Mancinelli From Space.com 21 July 2005 Each recent report of liquid water existing elsewhere in the solar system--be it ice on comets, oceans on Europa, or more recently water on Mars--has reverberated through the international press and excited the imagination of humankind. Why? Because in the last few decades we have come to realize that where there is liquid water on Earth, virtually no matter what the physical conditions, no matter where, there is life. What we previously imagined were insurmountable physical and chemical barriers to life, such as extremes in temperature, pH, and radiation, are now seen as yet another niche harboring so-called "extremophiles." This realization, coupled with new data on the survival of microbes in the space environment, as well as modeling of the potential for transfer of life between planets, suggests that life could be more common than previously thought. This raises several profound questions, one of which is: If life were to be found beyond Earth, would it be the result of an independent origin, or merely a distant relative? There are several potential niches for life elsewhere in the universe, as well as terrestrial niches that we consider extreme, that may not be at all extreme from either an evolutionary, or even a physiological point of view. UV radiation tolerance, acidophily (acid lovers), alkilophily (base lovers), thermophily (heat lovers), halophily (salt lovers), and anaerobiosis (oxygen haters) may all be cases in point. Here I concentrate on the geochemical extremes of salinity and desiccation. Although not identical, they are related. Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_saltlovers_050721.html. _____________________________________________________________________ NASA QUEST CHALLENGES STUDENTS TO STUDY MARS ON EARTH NASA/ARC release 05-41AR 21 July 2005 As NASA turns its attention to preparing for human travel to the Moon and Mars, there are many hurdles to overcome. This fall, the NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and NASA Quest will open the school year with a challenge to students, primarily in grades 5-8, to work with NASA scientists to design solutions to these obstacles. During October and November, students are invited to join NASA researchers Jennifer Heldmann, William J. Clancey and Chris McKay and other leading scientists as they embark on a Mars analog study at California's Lassen Volcanic National Park. By studying snowfields in the park, scientists hope to learn more about the development and use of technologies needed to help understand and explore the moon and Mars. They will also learn about polar ice caps and the possible life that could exist there. "Live interactive Webcasts and contact with real NASA scientists on the job provide the opportunity for students to fully experience the thrill of participating in actual research while developing their own solutions to problems NASA is working on," said Mark Leon, education director at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley. "We hope this experience will inspire and encourage the study of math, science and engineering, as students become a part of the NASA team exploring the universe," he added. There is no place on Earth exactly like Mars; however, some locations share similar characteristics and are considered as analogs to study Mars. For example, scientists can study the biology, geology, and meteorology of places like Lassen Volcanic National Park to learn more about past and present environments on Mars and how to prepare for human and robotic space missions. This NASA Quest Challenge features Mars analog research being conducted to help develop and test technologies that some day will enable scientists to conduct research on lunar and planetary surfaces. NASA Quest challenges typically span six to eight weeks. The activities are designed around problem-based learning and designed to assist teachers by incorporating the content into their educational standard's requirements. On July 29, the principal scientists will introduce themselves and their work to park staff and visitors at a campfire presentation at Lassen Volcanic National Park. As the scientists determine where this fall's research will take place, journals of the trip will be posted online. During the month of September, a live introductory webcast will take place from the park, so students around the world can observe NASA scientists at work. The NASA Quest web site contains a summer reading list for teachers and students to acquaint themselves with the background material. For information about the NASA Quest Challenge on the Internet, visit http://quest.nasa.gov/challenges/marsanalog. For information about the NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, please visit http://exploration.nasa.gov/. For information about NASA Quest, please visit http://quest.nasa.gov. For information about Lassen Volcanic National Park, please visit http://www.nps.gov/lavo/. For information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov. Contact: Michael Mewhinney NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA Phone: 650-604-3937 or 650-604-9000 E-mail: Michael.Mewhinney@nasa.gov An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0507/23marsquest/. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS HAS BEEN IN THE DEEP FREEZE FOR THE PAST FOUR BILLION YEARS, STUDY SHOWS California Institute of Technology release 21 July 2005 The current mean temperature on the equator of Mars is a blustery 69 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Scientists have long thought that the Red Planet was once temperate enough for water to have existed on the surface, and for life to possibly have evolved. But a new study by Caltech and MIT scientists gives this idea the cold shoulder. In the July 22 issue of the journal Science, Caltech graduate student David Shuster and MIT assistant professor Benjamin Weiss (formerly a Caltech student) report that their studies of martian meteorites demonstrate that at least several rocks originally located near the surface of Mars have been freezing cold for four billion years. Their work is a novel approach to extracting information on the past climate of Mars through the study of martian meteorites. In fact, the evidence shows that during the last four billion years, Mars has likely never been sufficiently warm for liquid water to have flowed on the surface for extended periods of time. This implies that Mars has probably never had a hospitable environment for life to have evolved, unless life could have gotten started during the first half- billion years of its existence, when the planet was probably warmer. The work involves two of the seven known "nakhlite" meteorites (named after El Nakhla, Egypt, where the first such meteorite was discovered), and the celebrated ALH84001 meteorite that some scientists believe shows evidence of microbial activity on Mars. Using geochemical techniques, Shuster and Weiss reconstructed a "thermal history" for each of the meteorites to estimate the maximum long-term average temperatures to which they were subjected. "We looked at meteorites in two ways," says Weiss. "First, we evaluated what the meteorites could have experienced during ejection from Mars, 11 to 15 million years ago, in order to set an upper limit on the temperatures in a worst-case scenario for shock-heating." Their conclusions were that ALH84001 could never have been heated to a temperature higher than 650 degrees Fahrenheit for even a brief period of time during the last 15 million years. The nakhlites, which show very little evidence of shock-damage, were unlikely to have been above the boiling point of water during ejection 11 million years ago. Although these are still rather high temperatures, the other part of the research addressed the long-term thermal history of the rocks while they resided on Mars. They did this by estimating the total amount of argon still remaining in the samples, using data previously published by two teams at the University of Arizona and the NASA Johnson Space Center. The gas argon is present in the meteorites as well as in many rocks on Earth as a natural consequence of the radioactive decay of potassium. As a noble gas, argon is not very chemically reactive, and because the decay rate is precisely known, geologists for years have measured argon as a means of dating rocks. However, argon is also known to "leak" out of rocks at a temperature-dependent rate. This means that if the argon remaining in the rocks is measured, an inference can be made about the maximum heat to which the rock has been subjected since the argon was first made. The cooler the rock has been, the more argon will have been retained. Shuster and Weiss's analysis found that only a tiny fraction of the argon that was originally produced in the meteorite samples has been lost through the eons. "The small amount of argon loss that has apparently taken place in these meteorites is remarkable. Any way we look at it, these rocks have been cold for a very long time," says Shuster. Their calculations suggest that the martian surface has been in deep-freeze for most of the last four billion years. "The temperature histories of these two planets are truly different. On Earth, you couldn't find a single rock that has been below even room temperature for that long," says Shuster. The ALH84001 meteorite, in fact, couldn't have been above freezing for more than a million years during the last 3.5 billion years of history. "Our research doesn't mean that there weren't pockets of isolated water in geothermal springs for long periods of time, but suggests instead that there haven't been large areas of free-standing water for four billion years. Our results seem to imply that surface features indicating the presence and flow of liquid water formed over relatively short time periods," says Shuster. On a positive note for astrobiology, however, Weiss says that the new study does nothing to disprove the theory of "panspermia," which holds that life can jump from one planet to another by meteorites. Weiss and his supervising professor at Caltech, Joe Kirschvink (the Van Wingen Professor of Geobiology), several years ago showed that microbes could indeed have traveled from Mars to Earth in the hairline fractures of ALH84001 without having been destroyed by heat. In particular, the fact that the nakhlites have never been heated above about 200 degrees Fahrenheit means that they were not heat- sterilized during ejection from Mars and transfer to Earth. Journal reference: D. L. Shuster and B. P. Weiss, 2005. Martian surface paleotemperatures from thermochronology of meteorites. Science, 309(5734):594-600, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5734/594. Contact: Robert Tindol Phone: 626-395-3631 E-mail: tindol@caltech.edu Read the original news release at http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press_Releases/PR12718.html. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1654.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-05i.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/so_cool_mars_4_billion_year_f reeze.html _____________________________________________________________________ A TRIP TO MARS NEEDS WASTE From SpaceDaily 21 July 2005 On the long space trip from Earth to Mars "the crew won't be able to get by with a bag lunch and Portapotty," says Arthur Teixeira, a professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Florida. Teixeira presented a plan for how NASA could deal with waste deposal during such a voyage at this week's Institute of Food Technologists annual meeting. Teixeira estimates the Mars trip would take six to eight months. The ship would likely remain on the planet for 18 months before Mars and Earth's orbits would bring them close enough together for the return trip. In all, the six-person crew would be off the Earth's surface for about three years. Teixeira's plan hinges on patented technology developed by the university called Sequential Batch Anaerobic Composting (SEBAC) that is currently used in landfills. That system turns waste into compost by cycling material among different containers. Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetravel- 05zzzd.html. _____________________________________________________________________ SEARCHING FOR THE BIOLOGICAL OBJECTS ON MARS By Alexander Zeltsman 22 July 2005 A future rover, or an astronaut, charged among other tasks with search for life on Mars, must benefit from the today rover imagery [2]. The searcher, trained to visually recognize the candidate objects like those that can be observed and analyzed right now in the rover made pictures, will be much more efficient than if we were to pretend that life search has yet to be done totally from scratch. Consequently, the detection of life candidate objects and images, development of methods of their analysis, of their concepts, and incorporation of results into the search for life program, should be a priority. Consider some of the issues involved. If in the process of object shape recognition, we were able to obtain at will the desired pictures and stereo pairs, we certainly could find out all that there is to know about that object's shape. However, in case of martian imagery we have limited number of pictures of an object. How can we then be able to see what we see, namely the features that those images actually show? One method geared towards that goal, is conversion of the stereo pair's information into 3D physical model, which then can be examined at will. Computer program MARSOMETRY has been developed, which takes as input pixel coordinates of related to the object of interest identifiable points, and produces as output the orthogonal coordinates of those points, along with a map with those points shown. The algorithm used in the program, is consistent with PANCAM optical characteristics [4]. Before we take a look at actual model of the geometry of possible martian plant, let us consider results for PANCAM calibration target [4]. Its geometry has been recovered from the stereo pair taken by the Spirit on Sol 16, 2P127783627EFF0327P2367L7M1/R1M1. The precision obtained, apparently, should be sufficient for the shape recognition applications arising from MER PANCAM imagery. [Fig. 1, 2, 3] Let us introduce now an interesting object photographed by Spirit on Sol 111, images 2P136234337EFF3600P2401L7M1/R1M1. Below are a red- cyan anaglyph made of the clipped from originals stereo pair [1], and a color rendition [3]. [Fig. 4, 5] For the modeling we use 3 base plane points, 2 points for tracking stalk shadow, and 8 object surface points. Below are the map produced by MARSOMETRY, and a picture of the measurement model built. Modeling points located on the object surface, represented by the blue balls, stalk top and bottom by the red balls, and tip of stalk shadow by a green ball. One has to conclude that general appearance of object, as seen in the anaglyph, is consistent with model. [Fig. 6, 7] It is possible to create concepts of this object, which would remain consistent with the model and object appearance. Here is one feasible example. [Fig. 8] Although different, those concepts would have enough of features that are present both in the model and in the actual item--features that make this object a possible candidate for a martian plant [3]. As always, deep gratitude goes to NASA for making this work and much more possible, by taking the magnificent pictures of Mars surface, and generously providing full public access to them. References 1. NASA image gallery, http://origin.mars5.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all 2. Zeltsman, A. (2005) Visual Detection of life on Mars? Marsbugs, 12(20):2-3 3. Isenberg, H. (2004-2005) PanCam true color images from Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers, http://mars.gh.wh.uni-dortmund.de/mer/spirit/111 4. Bell III J. F. et al. (2003) The Mars Exploration Rover Athena Panoramic Camera (Pancam) Investigation, J. Geophys. Res., Special issue on the Mars Exploration Rover mission, 73,83 Contact: Alexander Zeltsman 10 Hackamore Court Tinton Falls, NJ 07753 Phone: 732 922-0122 Fax: 732 922-0122 E-mail: Azeltsman2@comcast.net _____________________________________________________________________ METHANE ON EARTH--COMMON CHEMICAL, ELUSIVE QUARRY By David Tenenbaum From Astrobiology Magazine 25 July 2005 In trying to understand the Mars-shaking news about methane on the Red Planet, astrobiologists look, as usual, to the home planet for instruction. The 1700 parts per billion (ppb) of methane in Earth's atmosphere is almost entirely produced by biology. Less than 1 percent comes from non-biological (abiogenic) processes, such as volcanism. In recent years, new information--all of it relevant to the Mars debate--has emerged about both biological and non-biological sources of Earth's methane. Methanogens at work! Almost all the methane on Earth is made, directly or indirectly, by organisms. A small proportion comes from buried, decomposing plants, whose insoluble parts become a material called kerogen. When kerogen breaks down through thermal "cracking," the result is methane, as well as longer-chain hydrocarbons like ethane, propane, and butane. [Methane, the simplest hydrocarbon, has one carbon and four hydrogens (CH4). Ethane has two carbons and six hydrogens (C2H6). The formula for propane is C3H8, and butane is C4H10.] Much more methane comes from anaerobic microbes called methanogens. Some methanogens are called "extremophiles" because they can prosper under extreme acidity, alkalinity, or saltiness--conditions once thought intolerable to life. Methanogens can also tolerate extreme temperatures. Methanopyrus kandleri, for example, lives in the 80 to 100 degrees C water around black smokers in the Gulf of California. Other methanogens live below 0 degrees C in Antarctica. Methanogens are "extremely widespread on Earth," says Stephen Zinder, a microbiologist at Cornell University in New York. "Anywhere there is a place that usually doesn't have oxygen, you find them. Whether it's in the gastrointestinal tract, the soil, or the deep subsurface, you find them." Although they are anaerobes, methanogens can sometimes survive--if not reproduce--when exposed to small concentrations of oxygen. Methanogens living in wetlands produce about 21 percent of the methane in Earth's atmosphere, says Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan (Atreya was a co-author of the Science paper on the methane results from Mars Express.). Methanogens in the guts of cows and other ruminant produce about 20 percent. Microbes in termites and similar organisms make 15 percent of atmospheric methane, and in rice paddies, about 12 percent. Other major sources include natural gas releases and biomass burning. On Earth, a large amount of methane is locked inside ice crystals under permafrost and beneath the continental shelves. These deposits of methane hydrate, also called methane clathrate, are vast. They are thought to contain far more carbon than all fossil fuels put together. If clathrates are so dominant as a methane storage on Earth, why not on Mars too? Clathrates form on Earth under certain combinations of pressure and temperature, and some scientists think these combinations could occur on Mars as well. Making methane without biology Although nearly all methane on Earth has a biological origin, scientists have recently begun to appreciate how many ways abiogenic methane can be generated. The essential precondition for abiogenic methane, says Juske Horita of the Chemical Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is the presence of molecular hydrogen (H2) and carbon dioxide (CO2). "If you put CO2 and hydrogen together, thermodynamics dictates that it has to go to methane," says Horita. The reaction speed is dependent on pressure, temperature, and the presence of catalysts. Since carbon dioxide is common in so many environments, finding sources of abiogenic methane is largely a search for hydrogen and suitable catalysts for the reaction. Abiogenic methane does not form in Earth's atmosphere, even though CO2 is abundant, because molecular hydrogen is so rare. Most abiogenic methane is generated by the "serpentinization" reaction, which forms the mineral serpentine. At mid-oceanic ridges, water heated by magma reacts with rocks like olivine, which contain high levels of the catalysts iron and magnesium. During serpentinization, hydrogen liberated from water reacts with carbon from carbon dioxide to form methane. The reaction creates heat and vast deposits of serpentine on the ocean floor. Until recently, the abiotic water-mineral-carbon dioxide reactions, including serpentinization, were thought to require 200 degrees C water, and no one knows if water on Mars goes deep enough to get that hot. There are indications that similar methane-making reactions could take place in cooler conditions. Horita, for example, notes that serpentinization may be occurring in 50 to 70 degrees C water in Oman and the Philippines. And in 1999, Horita and Michael Berndt, a geochemist then at the University of Minnesota, published a recipe for a related reaction that makes methane in the presence of a nickel-iron mineral catalyst. While the reaction made methane in a few days at 200 degrees C, Horita suspects it would also work, although more slowly, at 50 to 70 degrees C. To his knowledge, that experiment has not been done. Researchers have found other ways to make methane, using different catalysts and minerals. In May 2004, Dionysis Foustoukos and William Seyfried Jr. of the University of Minnesota made methane, ethane and propane at 390 degrees C and 400 times the atmospheric pressure at Earth's surface, using a chromium-bearing mineral as catalyst. In September 2004, Henry Scott of Indiana University at South Bend published a study which found that, by subjecting iron oxide, calcite, and water to the intense heat and pressure of Earth's mantle, methane formed. Yet despite the multiple discoveries of new pathways to abiogenic methane, most methane on Earth is biogenic. "So much methane is produced by bacteria on Earth, it's widespread, it's everywhere," says Horita. "As a part of the global methane budget, I don't think [abiogenic is] important. However, abiogenic may be locally important, possibly including Mars." Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1657.html. _____________________________________________________________________ IMAGINE MARS: HUD NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORKS GET INVOLVED! NASA/JPL webcast announcement 21 July 2005 Have you ever wondered what it would be like to build a community on Mars? Well, a group of students from a HUD Neighborhood Network Resource Center found out! They participated in NASA's "Imagine Mars" project and worked with engineers, scientists, and architects from their local community to design and create their own Mars community. Did they have buildings, cars, robots, gardens, or...? Tune in on August 4 to learn how they did it, see their designs, hear some of the students talk about their experiences, and find out how to get involved. If you have questions during the webcast, send in an e- mail--we'll be answering your questions live! Then, after the webcast, log in to our live web chat to ask any questions we missed during the program. See you on Mars! Date: August 4, 2005 Webcast Time: 1:00 PM Pacific Time (2:00 Mountain Time, 3:00 Central Time, 4:00 Eastern Time) Live web chat immediately following. Webpage: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/webcast.html. _____________________________________________________________________ CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS FOR 14-20 JULY 2005 NASA/JPL release 22 July 2005 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired Wednesday, July 20, from the Madrid tracking stations. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm. Thursday, July 14 (DOY 195): Cassini passed by Rhea today for a non-targeted encounter. The RADAR instrument performed scatterometry and radiometry observations of that moon to constrain the bulk density of the top decimeter of the surface, and to help constrain the surface thermal properties. The main event today was Cassini's second targeted flyby of Enceladus. A non-targeted encounter took place on February 17, 2005 at a range of 1172 km. At that time the Dual Technique Magnetometer (MAG) saw a remarkable signature in Saturn's magnetic field in the vicinity of Enceladus suggesting the presence of ions surrounding the icy moon. Gases may be originating from the surface or possibly the interior of Enceladus. The first targeted encounter was on March 9, 2005 at a distance of 500 km. The encounter this week had originally been designed to be flown at an altitude of 1000 km. Because the February and March flybys suggested intriguing magnetic and atmospheric signatures, the Cassini science community was very interested in obtaining more detailed data. After investigating the situation, the Program approved the release of a new reference trajectory lowering the flyby altitude to 175 km. This is Cassini's lowest-altitude flyby of any object to date. For this encounter the entire suite of Magnetospheric and Plasma Science instruments took high data-rate science. MAG monitored the interaction of Enceladus with the Saturnian magnetospheric plasma to determine whether it generates an internal magnetic field, and engaged in measurements that will yield unique observations of Saturn's internal magnetic field. The Cosmic Dust Analyzer took measurements to help determine the density of the E Ring, and of the dust surrounding Enceladus. The Radio and Plasma Wave Science instrument (RPWS) executed many observations in the immediate vicinity of Enceladus that will help characterize the plasma wave spectrum, and searched for evidence of pickup ions. All the Optical Remote Sensing instruments participated in a hectic campaign to obtain high-resolution mosaics and spectra of Rhea and Enceladus during their respective flybys. Of primary interest to the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph is an occultation by Enceladus of the star Bellatrix during Cassini's closest approach which will help constrain Enceladus' atmospheric species and density. The Composite Infrared Spectrometer obtained its only temperature measurement of Enceladus' winter north polar night region, which has been in darkness for more than eight years, and also looked for active surface sources that may contribute material to Saturn's E Ring. Further icing on the cake today included additional non-targeted flybys of the Saturnian moons Prometheus, Methone, and Epimetheus. Friday, July 15 (DOY 196): Following yesterday's very successful Enceladus flyby, the Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) performed its fifth occultation experiment intended to measure the properties of Saturn's rings and atmosphere. The orbit 11 RSS Saturn/Rings Egress occultation completed successfully over the DSS stations at Canberra for the first segment of the occultation. Then these stations overlapped with the Madrid stations for 45 minutes before Madrid was left to cover the second segment. This was the first occultation implemented within a Ground Movable Block (GMB) and did not require a Live Inertial Vector Propagator Update shortly prior to the occultation. Out of the eight diametric occultations taking place between May and September of this year, this occultation occurred over the lowest ground antenna elevation angles, not exceeding 30 degrees of elevation. This made it very challenging in terms of developing an optimum pointing strategy for Ka-band. Monday, July 18 (DOY 199): Cassini enters Solar Conjunction today with a separation angle of 4 degrees. During conjunction, communications with the spacecraft become degraded due to interference from the sun. For the next nine days the Spacecraft Operations and Mission Support and Services offices will participate in a campaign where multiple non-operational commands are sent to the spacecraft on a daily basis to obtain link characterizations. In addition, Commands will be sent to the spacecraft to modify the System Fault Protection Command Loss Timer (CLT) strategy during the conjunction period. Part of the fault protection system monitors communications with the ground. If for any reason a CLT command is not received by the spacecraft before the expiration of the time limit, the spacecraft will assume there is a "problem," call fault protection and put Cassini into safe mode until the "problem" is resolved. This is a common feature on all spacecraft and CLT commands are sent each time Cassini has a DSN pass to prevent the expiration of the time limit. As was mentioned in the report last week, the Program approved raising the T7 flyby altitude from 1025 to 1075 km to avoid the risk of atmosphere-induced torques that could possibly result in spacecraft loss of attitude control and safing. Today the Navigation team released a new reference trajectory 050207 to accommodate these changes. The final sequence products for S13 were made available in the Program file epository for team review. Uplink Operations sent commands to the spacecraft to disable RPWS sounder operations, turn the Ka-band ON for an RSS Solar Conjunction demo, load the ISS version 1.4 flight software in to the cameras, and repair the SSR partitions for CDS, ACS and the instruments. A workshop on the surface of Titan was hosted by the USGS in Flagstaff, Arizona on July 18 and 19. The goal of the workshop was to develop an integrated picture of Titan from data sets returned over the last year regarding primarily the surface, but also including the atmosphere, especially as it relates to the surface, and use this as an aid to planning the remainder of the Cassini prime mission. Items that were discussed included a summary of the main findings from each team, opportunities for integrated data interpretation, the development of cooperative observations and the TITEWAD web-based GIS planning tool, ground-based support measurements, aftermarket changes to the science operations plan, and extended mission planning. Tuesday, July 19 (DOY 200): An Atmospheric Science Preview meeting was held today to highlight interesting Saturn observations being conducted in Revs 9-15. In the October time frame, another preview meeting will be held to cover the Equatorial Orbits, i.e. Revs 15-24ish. Wednesday, July 20 (DOY 201): An S15 Science Operations Plan Update process project briefing and waiver disposition meeting was held today. It was reported in the Significant Events last week that an encounter strategy meeting for Enceladus2 through Titan5 was held on July 7. Well, I goofed. The notice was distributed on the 7th. The actual meeting does not occur until July 22. Sorry about that! The RADAR data previously reported as delivered to the archive is now on-line at the PDS Imaging Node/USGS. To access the data link to http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/Admin/resources/cd_cassini.html. The data will also be placed on-line at the Imaging Node/JPL so that users can search for products based upon geometry. Check out the Cassini web site at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for the latest press releases and images. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://cl.exct.net/?ffcd16-fe551676746d057b7d1d- fe28167073670175701c72 http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/050719fantasy.html http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/050719shepherds.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/f_ring_prometheus_pandora.htm l http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/fantasy_made_real_tethys.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/prometheus_on_the_edge_of_rin gs.html _____________________________________________________________________ NASA ANNOUNCES DEEP IMPACT FUTURE MISSION STATUS NASA release 05-193 20 July 2005 As NASA's Deep Impact flyby spacecraft prepares to execute its sixth trajectory correction maneuver, program managers at agency headquarters in Washington are investigating future options. Today's scheduled burn places the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly past Earth in late December 2007. The maneuver allows NASA to preserve options for future use of the spacecraft. "This maneuver will keep the spacecraft in the vicinity of the inner planets, thereby making the task of tracking and communicating with it easier," said NASA's Director of Solar System Division, Science Mission Directorate, Andy Dantzler. Dantzler announced today that all investigators interested in using the Deep Impact Flyby Spacecraft for further science investigations must submit proposals to the 2005 Discovery Program Announcement of Opportunity for a Mission of Opportunity. "All proposals for use of the Deep Impact spacecraft will be evaluated for science merit and feasibility along with all submitted proposal for Missions of Opportunity," he said. "The spacecraft is being offered as is. Proposers must include mission management and spacecraft operations in the total proposed funding." Further details will be posted by the end of July on the Discovery Program acquisition site http://centauri.larc.nasa.gov/discovery. For information about Deep Impact on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact. Contacts: Dolores Beasley or Erica Hupp NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1753 or -1237 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1656.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050720_flyby_update.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deepimpact-05o.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deepimpact-05p.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/deep_impact_sixth_trajectory_ correction_maneuver.html _____________________________________________________________________ MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES NASA/JPL/MSSS release 14-20 July 2005 The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available. Pair of Craters (Released 14 July 2005) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/07/14 Curved and Pitted Ridge (Released 15 July 2005) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/07/15 West Arabia Barchans (Released 16 July 2005) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/07/16 Tharsis Flood Features (Released 17 July 2005) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/07/17 Cerberus Troughs (Released 18 July 2005) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/07/18 Mars at Ls 249 Degrees (Released 19 July 2005) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/07/19 Crater in Daedalia (Released 20 July 2005) http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/07/20 All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are archived at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/index.html. Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. _____________________________________________________________________ MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES NASA/JPL/ASU release 18-22 July 2005 Crater Comparison (Released 18 July 2005) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050718A.html Complex Crater (Released 19 July 2005) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050719a.html Crater Interior with Internal Craters (Released 20 July 2005) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050720a.html Infilled Crater (Released 21 July 2005) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050721a.html Infilled Crater (Released 22 July 2005) http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20050722a.html All of the THEMIS images are archived at http://themis.la.asu.edu/latest.html. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. _____________________________________________________________________ NASA'S NEW MARS ORBITER WILL SHARPEN VISION OF EXPLORATION NASA release 05-195 21 July 2005 NASA's next mission to Mars will examine it in unprecedented detail from low orbit. It will provide more data about that intriguing planet than all previous missions combined. Launch opportunities begin August 10 for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The orbiter and its launch vehicle are nearing final stages of preparation at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, FL. The spacecraft will examine martian features ranging from the top of the atmosphere to underground layering. Researchers will use it to study the history and distribution of martian water. It will also support future Mars missions by characterizing landing sites and providing a high-data-rate communications relay. "Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is the next step in our ambitious exploration of Mars," said NASA's director, Mars Exploration Program, Science Mission Directorate, Douglas McCuistion. "We expect to use this spacecraft's eyes in the sky in coming years as our primary tools to identify and evaluate the best places for future missions to land." The spacecraft carries six instruments for probing the atmosphere, surface and subsurface to characterize the planet and how it changed over time. One of the science payload's three cameras will be the largest-diameter telescopic camera ever sent to another planet. It will reveal rocks and layers as small as the width of an office desk. Another camera will expand the present area of high- resolution coverage by a factor of 10. A third will provide global maps of martian weather. The other three instruments are a spectrometer for identifying water- related minerals in patches as small as a baseball infield; a ground- penetrating radar, supplied by the Italian Space Agency, to peer beneath the surface for layers or rock, ice and, if present, water; and a radiometer to monitor atmospheric dust, water vapor and temperature. Two additional scientific investigations will analyze the motion of the spacecraft in orbit to study the structure of the upper atmosphere and the martian gravity field. "We will keep pursuing a follow-the-water strategy with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter," said Dr. Michael Meyer, Mars exploration chief scientist at NASA Headquarters. "Dramatic discoveries by Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and the Mars Exploration Rovers about recent gullies, near-surface permafrost and ancient surface water have given us a new Mars in the past few years. Learning more about what has happened to the water will focus searches for possible martian life, past or present." Dr. Richard Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, project scientist for the orbiter, said, "Higher resolution is a major driver for this mission. Every time we look with increased resolution, Mars has said, 'Here's something you didn't expect. You don't understand me yet.' We're sure to find surprises." The orbiter will reach Mars in March 2006. It will gradually adjust the shape of its orbit by aerobraking, a technique that uses the friction of careful dips into the planet's upper atmosphere. For the mission's 25-month primary science phase, beginning in November 2006, the planned orbit averages about 190 miles above the surface, more than 20 percent lower than the average for any of the three current Mars orbiters. The lower orbit adds to the ability to see Mars as it has never been seen before. To get information from its instruments to Earth, the orbiter carries the biggest antenna ever sent to Mars and a transmitter powered by large solar panels. "It can send 10 times as much data per minute as any previous Mars spacecraft," said JPL's James Graf, project manager. "This increased return multiplies the value of the instruments by permitting increased coverage of the surface at higher resolution than ever before. The same telecommunications gear will be used to relay critical science data to Earth from landers." To loft so big a spacecraft, weighing more than two tons fully fueled, NASA will use a powerful Atlas V launch vehicle for the first time on an interplanetary mission. The mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. For information about Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on the Web, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro. Contacts: Dolores Beasley NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC Phone: 202-358-1753 Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA Phone: 818-354-6278 Additional articles on this subject are available at: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050721_mars_cold.html http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mro-05e.html http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/mars_orbiter_will_sharpen_exp loration_vision.html _____________________________________________________________________ End Marsbugs, Volume 12, Number 26.