Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology NewsletterVolume 11, Number 30, 3 August 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.

At 20 times the size of Earth, the largest sunspot observed since the November 2003 series of solar storms is now pointed directly at Earth. Its unusually large size also means that it is now visible to the naked eye (although you should never look at the Sun without a proper filter). The implications of this spot have scientists on the edge of their seats—if the active region generates coronal mass ejections (CMEs), massive explosions with a potential force of a billion megaton bombs, it will be a fairly direct hit to Earth and its satellites and power grids. The last large solar events occurred in the fall of 2003 when seventeen major flares erupted on the Sun. Currently, sunspot group AR 10652 has generated several medium-sized flares and CMEs over the past three and a half days. This view is from the SOHO spacecraft’s Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) instrument from July 23, 2004, at 16:00 UTC. Over the next few days, the region has the potential for unleashing more and larger solar storms. The SOHO is located in an orbit approximately one

million miles from Earth in order to gain an unobstructed view of the Sun. It carries 12 instruments and is a joint NASA/ESA mission. More information is available at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=16616.

Articles and News

Page 2 BOEING DELIVERS JIMO SPACECRAFT DESIGN PROPOSALBoeing release

Page 3 INSIDE THE GIANTS: PUZZLING DIFFERENCES IN JUPITER AND SATURNBy Robert Roy Britt

Page 3 UNIQUE OBSERVATIONS OF NEWBORN STAR PROVIDE INFORMATION ON SOLAR SYSTEM'S ORIGINVanderbilt University release

Page 4 ET FIRST CONTACT "WITHIN 20 YEARS"By Marcus Chown

Page 4 RESEARCHERS REVIEW EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF MODERN ALGAETexas A&M University release

Page 4 SCRIPPS RESEARCHERS DOCUMENT SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN THE DEEP SEA—CLIMATE AND FOOD SUPPLY FLUCTUATIONS MAY HOLD MAJOR CONSEQUENCES FOR LIFE IN THE ABYSSScripps Institution of Oceanography release

Page 5 EAVESDROPPING ON OLYMPUS—LET THE GAMES BEGINFrom Astrobiology Magazine

Page 6 SPINNING BRAINSBy Patrick L. Barry and Tony Phillips

Page 7 DOUBLE WHAMMY: ASTEROIDS DELIVERED ONE-TWO PUNCHBy Robert Roy Britt

Page 7 ANALYSIS: BUSH STANDS BY HIS SPACE PLANBy Frank Sietzen

Page 7 SPACE SCIENCE PIONEER VAN ALLEN QUESTIONS HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT By Leonard David

Page 7 CHINA TO LAUNCH SECOND MANNED SPACE MISSION IN 2005From Agence France-Press and SpaceDaily

Page 7 THE SPILLPROOF EARTH—ELECTRONS TO PASS THE "WHITE GLOVE" OVER A SPACEPROBEFrom Astrobiology Magazine

Page 9 NASA PLAYS KEY ROLE IN LARGEST ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIMENT IN HISTORY NASA/GSFC release 2004-242

Page 10 HOWLING AT THE MOON: SPACE ENTREPRENEURS SEE RED OVER MARS FAVORITISM By Leonard David

Page 10 METEORITE FROM OMAN RECORDS ITS LUNAR LAUNCH SITE AND DETAILED HISTORY By Lori Stiles

Page 11 NASA INVITES PUBLIC TO EXPLORE "RED PLANET" VIA INTERNETNASA/ARC release 2004-74AR

Page 12 THE DARKENING EARTH: LESS SUN AT THE EARTH'S SURFACE COMPLICATES CLIMATE MODELSBy David Appell

Page 12 HOW SPECIAL IS THE SOLAR SYSTEM?Royal Astronomical Society release

Page 12 LIFE ON MARS LIKELY, SCIENTIST CLAIMSBy Leonard David

Announcements

Page 12 NASA SELECTS FUTURE MISSION CONCEPTS FOR STUDYNASA/JPL release 2004-186

Page 13 NASA INVESTIGATORS SELECTED FOR HUMAN AND ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGYNASA release 2004-248

Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 30, 3 August 2004

Page 13 NASA RELEASES BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT FOR EXPLORATIONNASA release 2004-249

Page 14 NASA ANNOUNCES SPACE RADIATION MATERIALS RESEARCH GRANTSNASA release 2004-255

Page 14 ESA IS LOOKING FOR FEMALE VOLUNTEERS FOR A BED-REST STUDY IN TOULOUSE NEXT YEARESA release 45-2004

Mission Reports

Page 14 CASSINI UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

Page 17 MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

Page 18 MARS EXPRESS IMAGESESA releases

Page 19 MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGESNASA/JPL/MSSS releases

Page 19 MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGESNASA/JPL/ASU releases

Page 20 ROSETTA: MONITORING NEW AVIONICS SOFTWAREESA release

BOEING DELIVERS JIMO SPACECRAFT DESIGN PROPOSALBoeing release

19 July 2004

Boeing delivered its conceptual design proposal Friday, July 16, for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO), a spacecraft that could become the nation’s first nuclear-fission-powered exploration vehicle with technologies applicable to future Mars and lunar missions. The JIMO reactor would provide more than 100 times more usable onboard power than has been available to previous science probes and demonstrate nuclear reactors can be operated safely and reliably in space to provide electrical power needed for propulsion and scientific exploration.

A Boeing-led team of engineers and program planners is working with JPL on a groundbreaking initiative that heralds a new era in space science and exploration. The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) spacecraft would be the nation’s first nuclear fission reactor-powered scientific spacecraft. It is part of NASA’s Project Prometheus, the space agency’s endeavor to develop safe nuclear power and high-efficiency electric propulsion to open the solar system. With the planet Jupiter as its backdrop, this artist's rendering shows JIMO orbiting the ice-covered Jovian satellites Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. One purpose of the mission is to begin studying the subsurface water ocean suspected to exist on Europa, which could harbor simple extraterrestrial life. JIMO would be the first probe to have the power to orbit multiple planetary objects for weeks at a time. John J. Rankin, artist.

"Through Project Prometheus, NASA is developing space nuclear power and electric propulsion technologies that have the potential to revolutionize space exploration. As envisioned, JIMO would change how humans explore the solar system," said Mike Mott, Boeing NASA Systems vice president and general manager. "The Boeing team has the large-scale systems integration capability and experience to make it a success."

Boeing submitted the proposal in conjunction with its ongoing $11.8 million Phase A study contract with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), one of three awarded last year to study options for the reactor, power conversion, electric propulsion and other JIMO subsystems. The orbiter’s proposed mission is to

explore Jupiter’s three ice-covered Galilean moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa and would launch no earlier than 2015, as outlined in the national Vision for Space Exploration.

Boeing’s analysis of the proposed mission would have the JIMO spacecraft embark on a direct five- to eight-year interplanetary journey to reach the icy moons avoiding the time intensive gravity assists often used to sling chemically propelled space probes toward their final destinations. Once at Jupiter, the available power and propulsion systems would give JIMO the capability to explore each icy moon extensively for 30 days or more, providing unprecedented science data about the frozen worlds. The spacecraft would extensively explore the moons’ composition, history and potential for sustaining life. The venture supports the Vision for Space Exploration and NASA’s main goal to explore the universe and search for life.

"Boeing believes that the prudent use of nuclear power is one key to safely and reliably conducting the exploration initiatives NASA is undertaking for America’s future," said Joe Mills, Boeing vice president leading the company’s JIMO efforts. "The Boeing team has a long heritage of successful nuclear power programs and brings technical and management expertise to support the government in this critical area."

The Boeing JIMO program is being led by Phantom Works in partnership with Boeing NASA Systems along with support from Electron Dynamic Devices Inc., for electric propulsion research; Boeing Satellite Systems for spacecraft engineering; and Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power for power conversion and management technologies.

Boeing’s partners include BWX Technologies Inc., Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., and General Dynamics Electric Boat. A JIMO spacecraft contractor is expected to be selected in the fall of 2004. Phase B would include the development of system requirements and a preliminary design of the spacecraft. Phase C/D would follow next for the full-scale design, fabrication, integration and test of the space system. Phase E would include launch and post-launch operations. NASA may then contract for up to three additional spacecraft for missions to other outer planet destinations.

Phantom Works is the advanced research and development unit and catalyst of innovation for Boeing. Through its Integrated Defense Advanced Systems group, it provides leading edge systems and technology solutions to Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (IDS), one the world's largest space and defense businesses.

For more information about the Boeing JIMO initiative, visit http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/prometheus/.

Contacts: Tanya E. Deason-SharpBoeing NASA SystemsPhone: 281-226-6070E-mail: tanya.e.deason-sharp@boeing.com

Glen GolightlyBoeing Phantom Works Phone: 714-372-4742E-mail: glen.golightly@boeing.com

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Regina W. CarterBWX Technologies, Inc.Phone: 434-522-5158E-mail: rwcarter@bwxt.com

Emilia ReedBall Aerospace Technologies & CorpPhone: 303-939-6551E-mail: ereed@ball.com

Neil RuenzelGeneral Dynamics Electric Boat Phone: 860-433-8556

An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0407/27jimo/.

INSIDE THE GIANTS: PUZZLING DIFFERENCES IN JUPITER AND SATURNBy Robert Roy BrittFrom Space.com

20 July 2004

Scientists aren't sure what the interiors of Jupiter and Saturn look like or how the planets formed. But a new study of their insides suggests they took different paths to giant status. Researchers modeled 50,000 what-ifs of internal structure using real data from the two planets and lab experiments that show how material behaves under extreme pressure. They found Saturn has a huge core and Jupiter may have none.

"Heavy elements are concentrated in Saturn's massive core, while those same elements are mixed throughout Jupiter, with very little or no central core at all," said Didier Saumon of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The result, published last week in the Astrophysical Journal, agrees with similar studies but is far more comprehensive. "These conclusions are now very firm," Saumon said in a telephone interview.

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planet_formation_040720.html.

UNIQUE OBSERVATIONS OF NEWBORN STAR PROVIDE INFORMATION ON SOLAR SYSTEM'S ORIGINVanderbilt University release

21 July 2004

A new study has caught a newborn star similar to the sun in a fiery outburst. X-ray observations of the flare-up, which are the first of their kind, are providing important new information about the early evolution of the sun and the process of planet formation. The study, which was conducted by a team of astronomers headed by Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology and included David Weintraub from Vanderbilt, is reported in the July 22 issue of the journal Nature.

Last January, Jay McNeil, an amateur astronomer in West Kentucky, discovered a new cloud of dust and gas in the Orion region. Previously the cloud, now named the McNeil nebula, was not visible from earth. But a new star inside the dark cloud had flared up in brightness, lighting up the surrounding nebula. Looking back at the images taken of this part of the sky revealed that a young star about the size of the sun had burst into visibility last November. Despite the fact that hundreds of telescopes scan the sky nightly, the discovery of a new star is an extremely rare event, having occurred only twice in the last century. What made this star even more special was the fact that it appears to be an extremely young star-far less than a million years old-that is about the same mass as the sun. Astronomers know of fewer than a dozen of these stars, which they call FU-Orionis-type. Although this is the third FU-Orionis that has been caught in the act of flaring, it is the first that has occurred in modern times when its behavior could be monitored not only in visible light, but also in radio, infrared and X-ray wavelengths.

"In FU-Orionis stars, these outbursts are very brief," says Weintraub, associate professor of astronomy. "They brighten by as much as 100 thousand times in a few months and then fade away over a number of months."

In this X-ray image taken with the Chandra X-ray Observatory in early March, the small orange object near the center is v1647. Photo courtesy of David Weintraub.

Knowing that time was short, Kastner and Weintraub submitted an emergency request for viewing time on the orbiting Chandra X-ray observatory. Because X-rays are generated by extremely violent events, they provide a critical window for observing extreme stellar flare-ups of this sort. The astronomers were granted two viewing times in early and late March. Using Chandra, the astronomers discovered that the star, which has been officially named V1647 Ori, was a very bright X-ray source in early March, but its X-ray brightness had decreased substantially by the end of the month before the star disappeared from view behind the sun. At the same time, the new star was fading in visible and infrared wavelengths.

In addition, the astronomers learned that Ted Simon from the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii had taken some serendipitous X-ray images of the same area in 2002 for another purpose. These showed no X-rays coming from the V1647 Ori's location at that time, supporting the idea that the recent X-ray production was directly associated with the star's flare-up. Kastner and Weintraub propose a novel mechanism to explain their observations. Many stars, including the sun, produce X-rays by a mechanism that depends on the star's rotation rate and convection depth. But the astronomers calculate that the temperature of the gas that is producing the X-rays at V1647 ORI is substantially higher than can be explained by this traditional mechanism.

Observations of V1647 Ori indicate that it possesses a "protoplanetary" disk-a thin disk extending out from a star's equator that contains dust and gas left over from the star's formation and from which planets form. Kastner and Weintraub argue that the flare was touched off by a sudden avalanche of disk material falling onto the surface of the star and that this was the source of the intense X-rays as well as the other forms of radiation. If their hypothesis is correct, X-ray observations may help discriminate between young stars that possess protoplanetary disks and those that don't, Weintraub says.

There is a disagreement among astronomers about whether FU-Orionis stars undergo outbursts of this sort only once, several times or dozens of times before they settle into maturity. Other astronomers who have looked further back in the astronomical records for V1647 Ori have found that it also flared up in 1965, which provides added support for the multiple outburst theories.

Other participants in the study were Michael Richmond at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Nicolas Grosso and H. Ozawa at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, A. Frank at the University of Rochester, Kenji Hamaguchi at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Arne Henden at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Kastner and Weintraub have been awarded time to conduct additional observations on Chandra so that they can measure the X-ray activity of the new star beginning in October when it becomes visible once again.

Read the original news release at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news/releases?id=13096.

An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0407/22newbornstar/.

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ET FIRST CONTACT "WITHIN 20 YEARS"By Marcus ChownFrom New Scientist

21 July 04

If intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades. That is the bold prediction from a leading light at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California. Seth Shostak, the SETI Institute's senior astronomer, based his prediction on accepted assumptions about the likelihood of alien civilizations existing, combined with projected increases in computing power.

Shostak, whose calculations will be published in a forthcoming edition of the space science journal Acta Astronautica, first estimated the number of alien civilizations in our galaxy that might currently be broadcasting radio signals. For this he used a formula created in 1961 by astronomer Frank Drake which factors in aspects such the number of stars with planets, how many of those planets might be expected to have life, and so on. Shostak came up with an estimate of between 10,000 and one million radio transmitters in the galaxy.

Read the full article at http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996189.

RESEARCHERS REVIEW EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF MODERN ALGAETexas A&M University release

21 July 2004

Trees and grass are usually the only "heroes" that come to mind for consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen for planet Earth, but they have allies in the water: phytoplankton, or in another word, algae. Phytoplankton are mostly single-celled photosynthetic organisms that feed fish and marine mammals. They are responsible for nearly 50 percent of the earth’s annual carbon-dioxide consumption and more than 45 percent of the oxygen production. Despite the important roles of modern phytoplankton, their evolutionary origins and rise to prominence in today’s oceans was an unresolved question in marine science.

In the first study that looks at phytoplankton from combined perspectives of biology, chemistry and geology, researchers from three countries, including Texas A&M University at Galveston Assistant Professor Antonietta Quigg, who specializes in algae ecology and chemistry, examined modern phytoplankton development and reviewed their evolutionary history. Findings of the project appear in the current issue of Science magazine. Funding for the study is supported by a grant through the National Science Foundation Biocomplexity program, which aims to make new advances by bringing people together from different fields.

Despite the early origins of cyanobacteria, an essential component of modern phytoplankton, the ancestors of the majority of phytoplankton that dominate the modern seas did not appear until 250 million years ago, the researchers note. This is fairly recent in geological terms. Cyanobateria appeared 3.8 billion years ago. A cyanobacterium is a single-celled photosynthetic organism, which with the help of sunlight could make carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and energy providing chemicals.

The researchers showed that modern phytoplankton began to form at a time when the low oxygen conditions characterized much of the world’s oceans. Since a cyanobacterium was capable of producing oxygen and nutrients, another bacterium, or a one-celled organism, ate the cyanobacterium, kept a part of the cyanobacterium undigested, and let it function as an oxygen and energy generating organelle. This added the photosynthesis function to the eater, and transformed it into the phytoplankton that would later dominate the sea.

The researchers found that changes in sea level, water chemistry and the amount of carbon-dioxide in the water, and even the evolution of grass-eating animals on land all contributed to the rise of the three dominant phytoplankton groups. For example, rising sea levels provided more ecospace for the phytoplankton, promoting increased diversity among the phytoplankton.

Quigg, coauthor of the Science magazine article said the study could help scientists understand the effects of increased carbon dioxide, or the green

house gases on life in the ocean at present and in the future. "One way to do that is to understand what was happening in the past," Quigg says. "If we have a theory or an idea, we could look in the past and check if that idea works." She says since some algae do very well with increase carbon dioxide and some do poorly, the evolutionary history will tell, with increased carbon-dioxide, what changes there may be in the types of algae in the water and how that will affect the fish and marine mammals that eat the algae.

"If you have an ocean full of algae that use a lot of carbon-dioxide, then we may be able to resolve the problem of green house effect," Quigg says. "But if you have an ocean full of algae that do not like to use carbon-dioxide, then you are in big trouble. Carbon-dioxide will keep increasing."

Quigg started participating in the study as a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University and continued the research after she joined Texas A&M at Galveston. Other coauthors of the article are Paul G. Falkowski, professor of biochemistry, biophysics and physiological adaptation, Oscar Schofield, associate professor of marine biology and ocean optics, Miriam E. Katz, assistant research professor at Rutgers University, Andrew H. Knoll, professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard University, John A. Raven, professor of biology at University of Dundee, UK, and F. J. R. Taylor, professor of biology at University of British Columbia, Canada.

Read the original news release at http://www.tamu.edu/univrel/aggiedaily/news/stories/04/072104-5.html.

An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-04zzu.html.

SCRIPPS RESEARCHERS DOCUMENT SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN THE DEEP SEA—CLIMATE AND FOOD SUPPLY FLUCTUATIONS MAY HOLD MAJOR CONSEQUENCES FOR LIFE IN THE ABYSSScripps Institution of Oceanography release

22 July 2004

Although it covers more than two-thirds of Earth's surface, much of the deep sea remains unknown and unexplored, and many questions remain about how its environment changes over time. A new study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, has shed new light on significant changes in the deep sea over a 14-year period. Scripps Institution's Henry Ruhl and Ken Smith show in the new issue of the journal, Science, that changes in climate at the surface of the ocean may be impacting communities of larger animals more than 13,400 feet below the ocean surface. Important climatic changes such as El Niño and La Niña events are well known to affect regional and local areas, but Ruhl and Smith describe how such changes also can extend to the deep ocean, one of Earth's most remote environments.

Scientists prepare to launch a "sled" used for capturing images of the deep sea environment. The sled takes nearly two-and-a-half hours to reach its destination more than 13,000 feet deep.

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"Large animals, the kind you would be able to see if you were standing on the bottom of the ocean, may be impacted by climate just the same as animals in shallow water or terrestrial environments," said Ruhl.

In 1999, Smith and colleague Ronald Kaufmann showed that seafloor-dwelling animals were experiencing a long-term food shortage. The new study indicates that food supplies have since increased and that climate, food supplies and the abundance of large animals on the seafloor are linked.

Since 1989 members of Smith's laboratory team have studied a deep-sea location in the eastern North Pacific Ocean approximately 136 miles west of Point Conception off the central California coast. "Station M," as the location is known, has been the site of one of the longest time-series studies of any abyssal area in the world.

"It's important to study these places on a long timescale because you can't predict what is going to happen by just studying it once," said Smith, a research biologist in the Marine Biology Research Division at Scripps. "If you have changes such as these in such a large portion of the globe, you've got to pay attention to it."

Ruhl and Smith use time-lapse photography, sediment traps and a host of other equipment to capture basic ecological information related to the seafloor community.

Left: an image of the animal, Psychropotes longicauda, on the seafloor at Station M. Right: tracks made by the sea urchin, Echinocrepis sp., are clearly visible from the camera sled.

The Science paper illustrates a stark contrast in the community structure of the 10 most dominant mobile animals before and after the powerful 1997-1998 El Niño/La Niña event. Animals examined as part of the study include deep-ocean sea cucumbers, urchins and brittle stars. While numbers of some animals decreased when food supplies were low during the 14-year period, certain other species seemed to thrive on such conditions. For a number of possible reasons, some of these animals may have a competitive advantage during food shortages.

During their many trips to Station M, the researchers worked aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon. Each expedition began with a 30-hour trip out of San Diego heading northwest covering 300 miles. The researchers typically remained at Station M for a week or more to complete the various tasks necessary to retrieve, maintain and deploy instrumentation.

One of the key pieces of equipment they used is a camera mounted on a "sled" that moves across the ocean bottom. Once lowered overboard, the device takes nearly two-and-a-half hours to reach its more than 13,000-foot-deep destination. A small animal-collecting net also makes the trip so the scientists can retrieve and inspect the various animals seen in the photography. The camera records about one photograph every five seconds. One hour of images can lead to weeks of analysis for the scientists. Forty-eight such photo transects (one transect can be nearly one mile across) were analyzed as part of the study.

"The ocean is a source of food for human populations, but it's also a place of waste disposal," said Smith. "It's important to consider how you impact the deep sea. In that view it's puzzling that we don't study the deep sea in more detail."

Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation.

Contacts:Mario Aguilera or Cindy ClarkPhone: 858-534-3624

E-mail: scrippsnews@ucsd.edu

Read the original news release at http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=640.

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1102.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-04zzv.html

EAVESDROPPING ON OLYMPUS—LET THE GAMES BEGINFrom Astrobiology Magazine

22 July 2004

As the world prepares for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, one can ask the question: "Are we on Earth the only ones who will watch the games?"

Recall that a key story point in the Carl Sagan novel, Contact, relies on the unique premise that we are not the only onlookers. Sagan's scenario depends on the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as symbolically transmitting our existence beyond the solar system. Earth inhabitants showed their interest in contests for national pride and athletic skills to a listening audience on the nearby star Vega. In the novel and screenplay based on the book, our own message in a bottle then boomerangs back to us, as a greeting from another world that they have heard us.

The plot device that the Earth leaks intelligent signals has appeared in many science fiction stories of first contact. Broadcasting early radio shows or even reruns of I Love Lucy to another culture on the home world, much less another planet, has long been a source of potential bemusement. How would such a randomly selected reflection of our culture be interpreted?

Left: the first TV transmission from Earth, the 1936 Berlin games, and now the farthest strong signal from an electromagnetically-leaking planet. Because of the Second World War these were to be the last Olympics until 1948. Right: Arecibo, the world's largest dish, radio telescope (in Puerto Rico).

Perhaps Sagan chose to single out first transmission as the 1936 Berlin Games because the content is so antithetical to what we might have hoped for. Or in an ideal case, a warlike contest of brawn and nationalism seems less than what one might have planned as a friendly greeting. What as a species could show us as less prepared for greeting another civilization than the way we greet each other? After all the '36 Games advertised the politics of a nationalistic Germany, on the precipice of the bloodiest war in human history, when virtually no part of our globe could remain untouched by battle and conflict. Even the notion of competitive games or a contest to rank national and individual power, while oftentimes used historically to trigger truces or peace talks, also represents a metaphor for unabashed cultural ambitions and seemingly arbitrary or artificial borders that simply disappear when viewed from space.

In that context, what maturity can humans portray to species even more unlike ourselves, not just athletically but intellectually, culturally or morally? As David Grinspoon noted on this dilemma in his book, Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life, an advanced civilization observing happenings on Earth might easily reply to our first signal: "Humans of the planet Earth, you want to encounter other beings? First you have to learn to live with your different people?" Was this challenge encapsulated by the 1936 Berlin Olympics?

From his years in designing SETI strategies, University of Washington Professor, Woody Sullivan thinks what Hollywood did with Carl Sagan's book, Contact, particularly the first half, is about as close as a popular film can get to what it's like to do real SETI research. Much of the opening

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sequence owes a debt to Sullivan, since he spearheaded the scientific understanding that the Earth is leaking electromagnetic signals all the time, mainly from TV and some military radars. Twenty-five years ago, "most SETI was set up mainly to look at beacons from another civilization. But we don't have a devoted beacon broadcasting from Earth even. A priori, we don't know that a civilization would set up a beacon. But we Earthlings are leaking all the time, just from our daily activities."

Just as the film, Contact, begins, the viewer is taken on a voyage, as if riding such a signal from the depths of the universe until it zooms back towards Earth. Before Sullivan's work, previous SETI strategists more often thought of broadcast sources from another civilization as likely to be directed beacons, or singularly devoted transmitters. Instead Sullivan supposed a viewpoint about the more constant background noise, one that unavoidably might date back to the film's key plot-point when the advanced civilization finds the first terrestrial TV broadcast—the carrier signal when Adolf Hitler hauntingly introduced the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. "These are not great examples of our civilization," said Sullivan.

"I call this eavesdropping," continues Sullivan. "Sometimes when you eavesdrop, you get a better idea of what is really going on, say at a party. So when another civilization is eavesdropping on us, they may actually get a better idea about what is going on with Earth. There is more to Earth, as a planet, than what we could send on the gold record that traveled on the Voyager spacecraft. We, as a planet, are not just about listening to Chuck Berry."

It is, according to Sullivan, easy to miss whether TV coverage of the Olympics can serve as an effective SETI message. Particularly when the picture itself, the moving color image, is the least of what an advanced civilization might want to watch, the physics of TV is more important than the actual content carried. Sullivan notes "the input is not actual TV programs in the broadcast signal. But I was talking first about the video carrier, which is a single frequency carrier. Your TV locks onto it. You can't get the whole program information. From another planet, you could get a lot or dozens of those carriers, about a rotating planet with Doppler shifts. That communicates a lot of information to a receiver."

Whether the 1936 or 2004 Olympics represents a global signal that we leak apparently has less to do with the event itself and more to do with the electromagnetic spectrum. Sullivan considers "what signals we Earthlings are optimally leaking to our neighbors... should be broadly spread, strong, and possibly discernable as an intelligent signal... So for a good signal for reception, you want to balance a trade-off between both powerful and broad-area beaming."

Sitting down to watch the Olympics from 10 to 100 light-years away may not reveal much of interest about a race of carbon-based bipeds. We will leak the 2004 Games to travel into deep space, just like we did with the 1936 Games. Most of what qualifies as signals of sufficient persistence and strength have a small probability of reaching just the right antenna. But chances are better that another civilization will not be caught watching our TV.

Sullivan concludes TV is only one way we declare ourselves outside our solar system: "Military radar, called the Ballistic Military Early Warning System or BMEWS, is a very powerful broadcast, but carries no real information. There are a couple other strong radars on the planet. The strongest radar is Arecibo, but it covers a very tiny bit of sky. The odds that you were in that patch, or broadcast path, is unlikely."

Whatever the source of our leaked signals, there is a timeliness to considering how we decorate our own local solar neighborhood. As the SETI Institute's Jill Tarter, often cited as the inspiration for the lead scientist in the movie, Contact, describes: "When you realize that you live in the first generation of humans with access to a technology that might answer the age-old question, 'Are we alone?' all other scientific questions fade in importance."

Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1093.html.

SPINNING BRAINSBy Patrick L. Barry and Tony PhillipsFrom NASA Science News

23 July 2004

One day, astronauts might travel through the solar system onboard spinning spaceships. Can human brains adapt?

Next time you go to a playground, try this. Bring along a ball and a friend, and get on the merry-go-round. Try throwing the ball to your friend across the ride from you, or even just a few feet beside you, and see if they can catch it on the first attempt. They won't be able to, guaranteed. In fact, your throw will be way off. You'll feel your arm pulled strangely to one side as you make the throw, and once in flight, the ball will veer wildly.

Physicists call this the "Coriolis effect," and it happens on any spinning platform. Hurricanes swirl because of the Coriolis effect, the spinning platform being Earth itself. Contrary to popular belief, Coriolis forces do not control your bathroom drains—Earth doesn't spin that fast. But playing ball on a merry-go-round is definitely a Coriolis experience.

Space travel could be a Coriolis experience, too. Researchers have long known that spinning spaceships like a merry-go-round could solve a lot of problems. In weightlessness, astronaut's bones and muscles weaken. It's tricky to eat and drink, and even use the bathroom. Inside a spinning spaceship, on the other hand, there would be an artificial gravity (due to centrifugal forces) that keeps bodies strong and makes everyday living easier.

An artist's concept of a spinning spaceship. Image credit: John Frassanito & Associates, Inc.

The problem is, spinning spaceships also come with a strong Coriolis effect. Tossed objects veer. Reach out to touch a button ... and your finger lands in the wrong spot. Could astronauts adapt to this? And if so, could they adapt well enough to perform dependably in the life-threatening environment of space?

That's what researchers James Lackner and Paul DiZio are trying to figure out. With support from NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research, these two scientists are performing a series of experiments with people in rotating chambers to learn how well astronauts might adjust to life onboard spinning spaceships. They also hope to find training techniques that could help ease the transition from non-spinning to spinning, and back again.

A rotating room used by Lackner and DiZio in their experiments at the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Laboratory, Brandeis University.

"Experiments done in the 1960s seemed to show that people did not adapt well to rotation," says Lackner, the Meshulam and Judith Riklis Professor of Physiology at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. "But in those experiments, the subjects didn't have well-defined goals for their movements.

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We've found that when a specific goal is given for the motion, people adapt rather quickly."

Given specific motion goals (such as reaching out to touch a target), people in their study learned to move accurately after only 10 to 20 attempts. Such a rapid adjustment surprised the researchers.

Says DiZio, an associate professor of psychology at Brandeis, "we speculate that when a goal is present, the brain dictates the desired motion to the muscles more precisely. Deviations from that motion are detected more readily by sensory feedback to the brain."

Why should people have this natural ability to adapt to rotation? Our bodies and brains might have evolved, to a degree, to deal with the Coriolis effect. Every time you turn and reach for something simultaneously, you have a brief Coriolis experience: turning atop an office chair; playing basketball; spinning to see what made that strange noise behind you! In each case, your brain makes on-the-fly Coriolis adjustments.

Other discoveries surprised the researchers, too. For example, after rotating for a while, people in their study no longer perceived the Coriolis effect. The veering pull on their arms and legs seemed to vanish. Their brains had compensated for it, so their minds no longer took notice of it. Even stranger, when test-subjects first return to a non-rotating environment, they report feeling a Coriolis-pull in the opposite direction. It's just a trick of the mind, notes DiZio. After another 10 to 20 attempts at a goal-oriented motion, their brains readjust to the non-rotating world, and the phantom effect goes away.

DiZio and Lackner have found that people can adapt to rotational speeds as fast as a carnival-ride-like 25 rpm. That's about as fast as people turn their bodies during day-to-day life. For comparison, a spinning spaceship would likely rotate more slowly, perhaps 10 rpm, depending on the size and design of the craft.

To exert more control over the conditions of their experiment, the researchers have tried something innovative: simulating the Coriolis effect with a robotic arm. Seated subjects would try to make certain motions with their arm while the robotic arm gently pulls on their wrist in a way that mimics the Coriolis effect. The advantage of this approach is that the robotic arm can be reprogrammed to pull in a variety of ways, thus testing how subjects respond to different conditions. Using the arm, DiZio and Lackner have discovered that people can adapt to a small, variable force even when it's masked by a larger, constant force. So, for example, astronauts should be able to adapt to a variable Coriolis effect in spite of some constant background force, such as the steady push of a spacecraft's ion-propulsion thrusters.

Many questions remain un-answered. Do results based on arm motions apply to the whole body? Does carrying heavy tools make a difference? After adapting once, can a person re-adapt more easily later? What's the best way to train astronauts for life in a rotating home? Lackner and DiZio plan to tackle these questions and more as their research continues in the months to come.

Read the original article at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/23jul_spin.htm.

DOUBLE WHAMMY: ASTEROIDS DELIVERED ONE-TWO PUNCHBy Robert Roy BrittFrom Space.com

26 July 2004

A pair of 35-million-year-old craters on Earth thought to have been carved by comets now appears to be the result of a broken asteroid that generated a slowly delivered shower of debris over millions of years. One crater is in Chesapeake Bay off the Maryland coast. The other, called the Popigai crater, is in north-central Siberia. Estimates of their age suggest they were created a mere 10,000 years apart. Scientists had thought a comet shower of some sort had left the two scars.

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/asteroid_shower_040726.html.

ANALYSIS: BUSH STANDS BY HIS SPACE PLANBy Frank SietzenFrom UPI and SpaceDaily

26 July 2004

President George W. Bush's new space exploration plan has received a burst of hard-core support in Congress, aimed at blocking any attempt to cut its funding, and backed up by a rare veto threat from the president himself. This development has emerged in the wake of action by a House appropriations subcommittee last week, which cut the administration's NASA budget request for fiscal year 2005 by more than $1 billion.

Bush had sought an FY 2005 NASA budget of $16.2 billion, a $866 million increase over the current year. The subcommittee, however, approved a NASA budget of $15.149 billion. That amount would not only slash the entire increase the administration had requested, but also would cut NASA to $229 million below the FY 2004 amount. Every element of the new space exploration plan was cut, as were all other programs related to it.

Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacetravel-04zp.html.

SPACE SCIENCE PIONEER VAN ALLEN QUESTIONS HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT By Leonard DavidFrom Space.com

26 July 2004

A leading space scientist has called to question the validity of human spaceflight, suggesting that sending astronauts outward from Earth is outdated, too costly, and the science returned is trivial. The human spaceflight critic is no stranger to space—in fact he’s a pioneer in the space science arena from the premier days of satellites orbiting Earth.

James van Allen, Regent Distinguished Professor at the University of Iowa, is the noted discoverer of radiation belts encircling Earth. His seminal finding—labeled the Van Allen radiation belts—stemmed from the scientist’s experiment that flew on Explorer 1, America’s first satellite to successfully orbit the Earth back on January 31, 1958.

Van Allen’s appraisal of manned space missions—"Is Human Spaceflight Obsolete?"—is carried within the pages of the Summer 2004 volume of Issues in Science and Technology.

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/vanallen_spaceflight_040726.html.

CHINA TO LAUNCH SECOND MANNED SPACE MISSION IN 2005From Agence France-Press and SpaceDaily

27 July 2004

China is expected to launch its second manned spacecraft, Shenzhou VI, on a five-day mission in the second half of next year, state media quoted a Chinese space expert as saying Tuesday. Huang Chunping, chief of the China Manned Space Program's rocket carrier system, added China would realize its dream of space walk with the launch of Shenzhou VII, although he did not specify a date, Xinhua news agency reported.

Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/040727185643.og7higl6.html.

THE SPILLPROOF EARTH—ELECTRONS TO PASS THE "WHITE GLOVE" OVER A SPACEPROBEFrom Astrobiology Magazine

27 July 2004

Texas A&M nuclear researchers are working with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory to examine how electron beam technology can sterilize spacecraft components. Dr. Suresh Pillai, director of the National Center for Electron Beam Food Research, and Dr. Lee Braby, a research professor in the department of nuclear engineering, received a grant from NASA to investigate

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how electron-beam irradiation can contribute to keeping future spacecrafts from seeding other planets and moons inadvertently.

"Deep space missions must be properly sterilized to distinguish between organisms brought from Earth and those that may be indigenous to other planetary bodies, such as Mars," Pillai said in a Texas A&M report. This concern culminated in the wording of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which said that nations should pursue studies of solar system bodies "so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth."

"Electron-beam irradiation is potentially a better solution than dry-heat sterilization, the key NASA-approved technique," said Pillai. When this method of sterilization is used, electrons are accelerated between two charged anodes and cathodes until they are sufficiently fast to damage the biology of whatever microbes might be tyring to hitch-hike an unwanted extraterrestrial voyage. The technique is already widely used in the plastics and food preservation industries.

A thin section of Strain 121, the so-called "unboilable bug" which survives high-pressure autoclave heating to a record breaking 121 degrees Celsius, or about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. "Growth at 121 C is remarkable," reported discoverers of Strain 121, Lovley and Kashefi, "because sterilization at 121°C, typically in pressurized autoclaves to maintain water in a liquid state, is a standard procedure, shown to kill all previously described microorganisms and heat-resistant spores." (The white bar equals one micron.) Image credit: Derek Lovley, U. Mass., Amherst.

NASA's Planetary Protection Program aims to preserve pristine conditions both going outwards and when returning future samples to Earth. John Rummel of the Office of Planetary Protection and Michael Meyer of NASA's Astrobiology Program wrote that Earth is surprisingly hard to wipe off what otherwise might appear to retain its pristine mint conditions. "On Earth," noted Meyer and Rummel, "living organisms are distributed throughout our planet: in rock at depths of over 1,000 meters (about 3,000 feet), in soil frozen for more than 3 million years, in 110-degree Celsius (230-degree Fahrenheit) seawater and so on. Life can reach high abundances in the right environments (a human body contains about 50 percent nonhuman cells, by number, and sheds about 50,000 living cells per day). It is impossible, under normal conditions, to visit Earth and not encounter life." By a similar token, outgoing spacecraft have to be wiped clean using a combination of heat, low-humidity and gamma irradiation in those cases where the electronics are suited for such exposures.

Pillai said dry-heat sterilization involves heating components at 110°C for at least 40 hours. Unlike dry heat, electron beams sterilize at relatively lower temperatures and involve radiation-damage to microbial DNA for the techniques success at preserving spacecraft cleanliness.

"Unfortunately, many components are heat sensitive and undergo deterioration making them incompatible with heat sterilization," Pillai said.

The research will revolve around heat-sensitive materials such as low-temperature adhesives, polymers used in making lander balloons and printed circuit board materials. The focus will be on developing electron-beam technology for spacecraft materials and components.

"The proposed work will advance electron-beam sterilization technology to an operational level," Pillai said. "This will be a major advance towards adding a new and highly capable sterilization technique to the current limited NASA planetary protection tool set."

NASA's instruction on planetary protection expresses this careful approach to protecting from cross contamination: "The conduct of scientific investigations of possible extraterrestrial life forms, precursors, and remnants must not be jeopardized. In addition, the Earth must be protected from the potential hazard posed by extraterrestrial matter carried by a spacecraft returning from another planet. Therefore, for certain space-mission/target-planet combinations, controls on organic and biological contamination carried by spacecraft shall be imposed in accordance with directives implementing this policy."

Requirements for forward decontamination vary from Category I, for missions to bodies of no biological interest (for example, the Sun), to Category IV, where a spacecraft will land on a planet of potential biological interest. Category V is reserved for missions that visit another solar system body (other than the Moon) and return to Earth.

The category five catastrophe

David Grinspoon, a planetary scientist who spearheaded the Magellan mission to Venus, noted that fictional accounts of space probes spreading microbes into another potentially unprotected biosphere has been a traditional concern. "You may not know it," wrote Grinspoon, "but NASA is guarding you against this danger through the Office of Planetary Protection, which is charged with preventing the inadvertent spreading of life between worlds during space exploration... NASA is also making concerted efforts to prevent 'forward contamination,' in which we would be the evil alien invaders who seed other planets with Earth bugs. NASA crashed the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter... in an effort to avoid the remote possibility that the spacecraft would one day smash into Europa and cause an unforgivable planetary pandemic on that watery moon. ...[The Mars probes, Spirit and Opportunity] have all been carefully sterilized so that we will not return to Mars one day to find Earthly life forms that we accidentally deposited in an earlier voyage."

The only samples that have been returned to Earth so far have come from the moon. Astronauts on the Apollo missions returned 379 kilograms (835 pounds) of rock and soil from the Moon, and three Russian spacecraft (Luna 16, 20 and 24) also returned moon samples. The samples were kept in sealed containers until they arrived at their respective laboratories for study. Some proposals discuss having both the European Space Agency and NASA launch martian sample return missions by 2011, with samples returning to Earth by 2016.

Sample return missions currently in progress include spacecraft designed to sample a comet, an asteroid, and the solar wind. Although life is not likely to be found in these places, the precursor chemicals that make life possible may be present. NASA's Stardust mission, launched in 1999, will reach comet Wild 2 in January 2004. Stardust will return to Earth with both cometary and interstellar dust particle samples in January 2006. NASA's Genesis mission was designed to collect solar wind samples. The spacecraft was launched in August of 2001 and has now collected particles coming off the sun. The samples will be returned to Earth in September 2004. Japan's MUSES-C spacecraft, launched May 2003, is headed for asteroid 1998 SF36. After its arrival in June 2005, the spacecraft will gather up to one gram of material from a variety of sites on the asteroid. The samples are expected to arrive back on Earth by June 2007. In looking forward to these and other missions, any addition to the tools available for handling life's bountiful productivity may broaden the kinds of future space hardware that passes our own planet's ultimate "white glove" test.

Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1100.html.

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NASA PLAYS KEY ROLE IN LARGEST ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIMENT IN HISTORY NASA/GSFC release 2004-242

27 July 2004

Researchers from around the globe participating in the world’s largest environmental science experiment, the Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), will, fittingly, convene in Brazil this week. From July 27-29, some 800 researchers will attend the Third International Scientific Conference of the LBA in Brasilia, Brazil, to discuss key findings on how the world’s largest rainforest impacts the ecological health of Amazonia and the world. Never before has so much information about the Amazon been assembled for presentation at once.

Amazon River, Brazil. A Landsat Image of the Amazon River, Brazil, on November 30, 2000. Image credit: NASA, Landsat.org, Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, Michigan State University.

LBA is partly funded by NASA. Also, scores of projects that feed the Amazon experiment depend heavily on NASA’s vast expertise in satellite information, computer modeling, and providing infrastructure for large-scale field campaigns. The overall experiment concentrates on how the Amazon forest and land use changes within the region affect the atmosphere, and regional and global climate. In turn, LBA also studies how climate changes influence the biological, chemical and physical functioning of the forest itself.

LBA Study Sites. LBA sites span the Amazon from the headwaters in the Andes, along the river and its tributaries in the Amazon Basin, to the River’s mouth in coastal Brazil. Image credit: Map courtesy LBA science team, adapted by Robert Simmon.

Topics discussed at the conference will include: the carbon cycle, the water cycle, human land use, ecosystem processes and human health, agricultural applications, and other topics relating to the Amazon. The conference will

also allow researchers and Brazilian policy makers to discuss ways to use LBA results to create public policies for the Amazon region that foster a healthy environment and provide for sustainable development.

Forest Clearing in Central Rondonia, Brazil (1986-1997). These Landsat images show forest clearing in Central Rondonia, Brazil between 1986 and 1997. The red areas are still forested. Image credit: NASA.

NASA plays a key role in LBA research. Satellites provide data for studying land use changes and their impacts on climate. Scientists hope to learn more about the Amazon forest’s role in sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) traps heat and adds to global warming. Plant life absorbs CO2 from the air during photosynthesis and stores it in stems, leaves and roots. In order to understand regional and global carbon balances, researchers must quantify how much carbon is taken up by the rainforest as well as how much is released back to the atmosphere when forests are cleared or burned.

In the Amazon, deforestation, selective logging, fires and forest re-growth all play major roles in the carbon balance. In the Brazilian Amazon region alone, annual clear-cutting and burning of forests cover about 20,000 square kilometers (7,700 square miles or about the area of New Jersey). NASA data products from various instruments on the Landsat series of satellites have documented the history of deforestation in the Amazon since the 1970s. LBA researchers have found ways to measure both logging area and logging damage using Landsat and experimental new sensors on NASA’s EO-1 satellite.

Ecosystem models and NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites have helped scientists understand how the exchange of carbon between the forest and atmosphere differs over the course of the year. Also, LBA studies have found forest uptake of CO2 is not enough to keep pace with carbon that is returned to the atmosphere when forests are cut. Burning practices to clear fields for farming often result in fires spreading to adjacent forests. These large fires create air pollution and can contribute to respiratory problems in people. Thick smoke has forced airports to close, and has caused highway accidents. Satellite retrievals of concentrations of airborne particles from NASA’s MODIS instrument have been used by Brazil’s Center for Weather Prediction and Climate Studies to create models that can predict fire risk and smoke transport in near-real time.

Satellite data also help scientists study how particles from fires impact climate and weather. These particles, known as aerosols, can both heat and cool the air, depending on size, shape and color.

Scheduled to end in 2006, LBA is considered an international scientific success, with 61 projects completed and 59 in progress. The efforts include more than 1,000 researchers from institutions in Brazil, the United States, eight European countries and several other countries of the Amazon Basin (Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and Ecuador). LBA is financed by Brazilian funding agencies, NASA and the European Union.

For information and images about this research on the Internet, visit http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0727lba.html.

Contacts:Gretchen Cook-AndersonNASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-0836

Krishna RamanujanNASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MDPhone: 607-273-2561

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Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.spacedaily.com/news/eo-04zzzg.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0407/27environment/

HOWLING AT THE MOON: SPACE ENTREPRENEURS SEE RED OVER MARS FAVORITISM By Leonard DavidFrom Space.com

28 July 2004

The ability of NASA to rise to the occasion and put into practice U.S. President George W. Bush's vision for space exploration appears to be up for grabs as his 2005 budget request now founders in Congress. Meanwhile entrepreneurs believe the U.S. space agency's preoccupation with Mars is eclipsing in importance our closest celestial neighbor: the Moon.

Throughout its history, NASA has prided itself on meeting precise, right-to-the-second launch windows. This time, however, the stakes are higher than the targets the agency typically shoots for.

Yet while NASA undergoes an internal overhaul, financial roadblocks have appeared. The President's 2005 budget request, containing the seed money for his ambitious Moon-to-Mars and beyond plan, has so far been rejected by a congressional panel, removing $1.1 billion from the $16.2 billion request.

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/news/rtm_nasa_040728.html.

METEORITE FROM OMAN RECORDS ITS LUNAR LAUNCH SITE AND DETAILED HISTORY By Lori StilesUniversity of Arizona release

29 July 2004

Scientists have pinpointed the source of a meteorite from the moon for the first time. Their unique meteorite records four separate lunar impacts. They are the first to precisely date Mare Imbrium, the youngest of the large meteorite craters on the moon. That date, 3.9 billion years ago, is a new key date for lunar and even terrestrial stratigraphy, the scientists say, because life on Earth would have evolved only after heavy meteorite bombardment ended.

Photograph of SaU 169 obtained during initial inspection in the lab. Maximum dimension is 7 cm. Image credit: Peter Vollenweider.

Geologists who found the meteorite and scientists from Swiss, Swedish, German, British, and Arizona laboratories who analyzed the unique stone report their work in the July 30 issue of Science. Swiss geologist Edwin Gnos is first author of the article titled "Pinpointing the Source of Lunar Meteorite: Implications for the Evolution of the Moon." Gnos, Ali Al-Kathiri and Beda Hofmann found the 206-gram (7-ounce) meteorite in Oman on January 16, 2002. The geologists were on a joint meteorite search expedition sponsored by the Government of Oman, the Natural History Museum of Berne and the University of Berne.

X-ray tomograph showing the interior of the meteorite. White are feldspar fragments, olivine and pyroxene appear dark, and the fine-grained matrix gray. Note the textural change in to top part of the image marking the regolith, and the large rock clast in the center of the image. Image credit: EMPA, Dübendorf, Switzerland.

"The desert in Oman is the new place to find meteorites," said A. J. Tim Jull of the University of Arizona in Tucson. Jull directs the National Science Foundation Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Laboratory. He analyzed beryllium and carbon isotopes that told how long the meteorite was in space after it was launched from the moon and how long ago it fell to Earth at Oman.

Scientists who've acquired the special permits needed to search for meteorites in Oman and North Africa during the past half-dozen years have been amply rewarded, Jull said. Seven of the 30 known lunar meteorites have been found in Oman, and five have been found in North Africa. One was found in Australia and the rest have been found in Antarctica. Hot or cold, arid climates preserve meteorites from quickly weathering, Jull noted.

Gnos, Al-Kathiri and Hofmann recognized in the field that the meteorite was of lunar or martian origin because it wasn't magnetic. Meteorites from planetary bodies don't contain metal. And, typical of lunar rocks, it was greenish colored and contained white angular feldspar inclusions.

But when they tested it with a Geiger counter, they found it was no typical lunar rock. They found it contained high levels of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium. Gamma ray-spectroscopy lab tests told them that the ratios between these elements fit only one enigmatic group of lunar rocks called "KREEP," the acronym of K for potassium, REE for rare earth elements, and P for phosphate.

"At that moment, it was clear that the rock had something to do with the large Imbrium impact basin, the right eye of the man in the moon," Gnos et al. report on the Web at http://www.geo.unibe.ch/sau169. The Imbrium impact basin on the lunar nearside is the only area where KREEP rocks are found. KREEP rocks are known both from samples returned by the Apollo missions and by NASA's Lunar Prospector Orbiter radioactivity survey in 1998-99.

The scientists conducted a battery of laboratory tests to piece together a detailed history of the meteorite, named Sayh al Uhaymir (SaU) 169. They summarize SaU 169's history: At 3.909 billion years ago, plus or minus 13 million years An asteroid

collides with the moon, forming the 1160 km (720-mile) diameter Imbrium impact basin. Crushed and molten rocks mix and solidify to form the main rock type in meteorite SaU 169.

At 2.8 billion years ago, a meteorite hits the moon, forming the 25 km (15-mile) diameter Lalande crater south of the Imbrium basin. The

impact blasts material, including the main rock type in SaU 169, from depth and deposits it as an ejecta blanket around the crater. The ejecta there mixes with other lunar soil.

At 200 million years ago, another impact brings the rock that will become a meteorite to within a half-meter (20 inches) of the lunar surface.

At less than 340,000 years ago, another impact hits the moon, producing a crater a few kilometers in diameter and ejects SaU 169 from the moon.

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The scientists studied NASA images and identified a young, 3 km (1.8-mile) diameter crater 70 km (43 miles) north-northeast of Lalande as the meteorite's likely launch site. Jull measured beryllium 10 in SaU 169 and determined the meteorite's moon-to-Earth transit time at around 300,000 years. He also measured carbon 14 in SaU 169, which shows the meteorite fell in present-day Oman around 9,700 years ago, plus or minus 1,300 years.

Rock slice of SaU 169. The two main lithologies visible are impact melt breccia (light colored) and regolith (dark area). Note that both rock types contain abundant rock fragments comprising magmatic and volcanic rocks, metamorphic rocks, and rock breccias. Volcanic rock and rock breccias are restricted to the regolith part. Image credit: Peter Vollenweider.

"Without the Apollo and Luna sampling programs, and especially the huge advance in knowledge of the Moon acquired during investigations in the last 20 30 years, we would only be able to tell that SaU 169 is an exceptional lunar rock," the scientists said on their web site. "Without background information from such missions as Clementine and Lunar Prospector, we could never have linked ages and chemical data with lunar surface information."

"SaU is a rock which demonstrates impressively how rocks can travel, like a ping-pong-ball, from one body to another," they said.

Related web sites

SaU 169 meteorite: http://illite.unibe.ch/sau169/NSF-Arizona AMS Lab: http://www.physics.arizona.edu/ams/index.htmlUniversity of Arizona science news: http://uanews.org/science

Contacts:Lori Stiles UA News ServicesPhone: 520-621-1877

A. J. Tim JullPhone: 520-621-6816 E-mail: jull@email.arizona.edu

Edwin Gnos Phone: (+41) 31 631 84 93 (office), (+41) 31 631 39 36 (lab) E-mail: gnos@geo.unibe.ch

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://cl.extm.us/?fe821c757d6c027b71-fe28167073670175701c72http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon_rock_040729.html

NASA INVITES PUBLIC TO EXPLORE "RED PLANET" VIA INTERNETNASA/ARC release 2004-74AR

29 July 2004

NASA scientists have modified a scientific Web site so the general public can inspect big regions and smaller details of Mars' surface, a planet whose alien terrain is about the same area as Earth's continents. After adding "computer tools" to the "Marsoweb" Internet site, NASA scientists plan to ask volunteers from the public to virtually survey the vast red planet to look for important

geologic features hidden in thousands of images of the surface. The Web site is located at http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/index.html.

"The initial reason to create Marsoweb was to help scientists select potential Mars landing sites for the current Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission," according to Virginia Gulick, a scientist from the SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, who works at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley. "The Web site was designed just for Mars scientists so they could view Mars data easily," she added.

But when the first Mars Exploration Rover landed on Mars in January, the general public discovered Marsoweb. More than a half million "unique visitors" found the page, and the Web experienced about 26.7 million "hits" in January.

"An interactive data map on Marsoweb allows users to view most Mars data including images, thermal inertia, geologic and topographical maps and engineering data that includes rock abundance," Gulick said. Thermal inertia is a material's capacity to store heat (usually in daytime) and conduct heat (often at night). "The engineering data give scientists an idea of how smooth or rocky the local surface is," Gulick explained.

To examine a large number of distinctive or interesting geologic features on the red planet close up would take an army of people because Mars' land surface is so big. Such a multitude of explorers—modern equivalents of America's early pioneers—may well survey details of Mars through personal computers.

Researchers hope that volunteers will help with an upcoming Mars imaging experiment. NASA scientists are getting ready for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) that will fly on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission, slated for launch in August 2005. Gulick, co-investigator and education and public outreach lead of the HiRISE team, said that the experiment's super high-resolution camera will be able to capture images of objects on Mars' surface measuring about a yard (one meter) wide.

User-friendly 'Web tools' soon will be available to the science community and the public to view and analyze HiRISE images beginning in November 2006 and to submit image observation requests, according to HiRISE scientists. If all goes according to plan, a request form will be on the Internet for use by scientists and the public about the time of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launch in 2005. Marsoweb computer scientist Glenn Deardorff, Gulick and other HiRISE team members are now designing Web-friendly software "tools" to allow the public to examine and evaluate HiRISE images.

"We will ask volunteers to help us create 'geologic feature' databases of boulders, gullies, craters—any kind of geologic feature that may be of interest," Gulick explained. "Scientists or students can use these databases to propose theories about Mars that could be proven by future exploration."

Preliminary details about Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE's exploration of Mars are on the World Wide Web at http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/hirise/. The current Marsoweb site includes animated "fly-throughs" of some Mars locations. The site also permits users to fine-tune Mars images for brightness, contrast and sharpness as well as make other adjustments.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, operated by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions for the NASA Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

Contact:John Bluck NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CAPhone: 650-604-5026 or 604-9000E-mail: jbluck@mail.arc.nasa.gov

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_web_040802.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/public_invited_help_catalog_mars.html

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THE DARKENING EARTH: LESS SUN AT THE EARTH'S SURFACE COMPLICATES CLIMATE MODELSBy David Appell From Scientific American

Much to their surprise, scientists have found that less sunlight has been reaching the earth's surface in recent decades. The sun isn't going dark; rather clouds, air pollution and aerosols are getting in the way. Researchers are learning that the phenomenon can interact with global warming in ways that had not been appreciated.

"This is something that people haven't been aware of," says Shabtai Cohen of the Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences in Bet Dagan, Israel. "And it's taken a long time to gain supporters in the scientific world." Cohen's colleague Gerald Stanhill first published his solar dimming results 15 years ago.

Read the full article at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=5&articleID=000C3AAE-D82A-10F9-975883414B7F0000.

HOW SPECIAL IS THE SOLAR SYSTEM?Royal Astronomical Society release

3 August 2004 On the evidence to date, our solar system could be fundamentally different from the majority of planetary systems around stars because it formed in a different way. If that is the case, Earth-like planets will be very rare. After examining the properties of the 100 or so known extrasolar planetary systems and assessing two ways in which planets could form, Dr. Martin Beer and Professor Andrew King of the University of Leicester, Dr. Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Dr. Jim Pringle of the University of Cambridge flag up the distinct possibility that our solar system is special in a paper to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In our solar system, the orbits of all the major planets are quite close to being circular (apart from Pluto’s, which is a special case), and the four giant planets are a considerable distance from the Sun. The extrasolar planets detected so far—all giants similar in nature to Jupiter—are by comparison much closer to their parent stars, and their orbits are almost all highly elliptical and so very elongated. "There are two main explanations for these observations," says Martin Beer. "The most intriguing is that planets can be formed by more than one mechanism and the assumption astronomers have made until now—that all planets formed in basically the same way—is a mistake." In the picture of planet formation developed to explain the solar system, giant planets like Jupiter form around rocky cores (like the Earth), which use their gravity to pull in large quantities of gas from their surroundings in the cool outer reaches of a vast disc of material. The rocky cores closer to the parent star cannot acquire gas because it is too hot there and so remain Earth-like. The most popular alternative theory is that giant planets can form directly through gravitational collapse. In this scenario, rocky cores—potential Earth-like planets—do not form at all. If this theory applies to all the extrasolar planet systems detected so far, then none of them can be expected to contain an Earth-like planet that is habitable by life of the kind we are familiar with. However, the team is cautious about jumping to a definite conclusion too soon and warns about the second possible explanation for the apparent disparity between the solar system and the known extrasolar systems. Techniques currently in use are not yet capable of detecting a solar-system look-alike around a distant star, so a selection effect might be distorting the statistics—like a fisherman deciding that all fish are larger than 5 inches because that is the size of the holes in his net. It will be another 5 years or so before astronomers have the observing power to resolve the question of which explanation is correct. Meanwhile, the current data leave open the possibility that the solar system is indeed different from other planetary systems. Contacts:Dr. Martin Beer

University of Leicester, UKPhone: +44 (0)116 2231802E-mail: martin.beer@astro.le.ac.uk Professor Andrew KingUniversity of Leicester, UKPhone: +44 (0)116 2522072E-mail: ark@astro.le.ac.uk Dr. Mario LivioSpace Telescope Science Institute, USAPhone: +1 410 338 4439E-mail: mlivio@stsci.edu Dr. Jim PringleUniversity of Cambridge, UKPhone: +44 (0)1223 337513E-mail: jep@ast.cam.ac.uk

LIFE ON MARS LIKELY, SCIENTIST CLAIMSBy Leonard DavidFrom Space.com

3 August 2004

Those twin robots hard at work on Mars have transmitted teasing views that reinforce the prospect that microbial life may exist on the red planet.Results from NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers are being looked over by a legion of planetary experts, including a scientist who remains steadfast that his experiment in 1976 proved the presence of active microbial life in the topsoil of Mars.

"All factors necessary to constitute a habitat for life as we know it exist on current-day Mars," explained Gilbert Levin, executive officer for science at Spherix Incorporated of Beltsville, Maryland.

Levin made his remarks here Monday at the International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, the 49th annual meeting of Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_microorganisms_040803.html.

NASA SELECTS FUTURE MISSION CONCEPTS FOR STUDYNASA/JPL release 2004-186

29 July 2004

NASA has selected nine studies, including one from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, to investigate new ideas for future mission concepts within its Astronomical Search for Origins Program. Some of the new mission ideas will survey one billion stars within our own galaxy; measure the distribution of galaxies in the distant universe; study dust and gas between galaxies; study organic compounds in space and investigate their role in planetary system formation; and create an optical-ultraviolet telescope to replace NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The products from these concept studies will be used for future planning of missions complementing the existing suite of operating missions, including NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and developmental missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Terrestrial Planet Finder.

Each of the selected studies will have eight months to further develop and refine concepts for missions addressing different aspects of Origins Program science. The Origins Program seeks to address the fundamental questions: "Where did we come from?" and "Are we alone?" NASA received 26 proposals in response to this call for mission concepts.

The selected proposals and their principal investigators are: A Background Limited Infrared-Submillimeter Spectrograph for Spica:

Revealing the Nature of the Far-Infrared Universe, Matt Bradford, JPL, Pasadena, CA. The study will enable far-infrared spectroscopy of the galaxies that make up the far-infrared background out to distances of some of the farthest galaxies known today. Its spectral surveys will chart the history of creation of elements heavier than helium and energy production through cosmic time. (Note: Spica is a Japanese mission).

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Origins Billion Star Survey, Kenneth Johnston, U.S. Naval Observatory, Washington, DC. The survey will provide a complete census of giant extrasolar planets for all types of stars in our galaxy and the demographics of stars within 30,000 light-years of the Sun.

The Space Infrared Interferometric Telescope, David Leisawitz, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. This imaging and spectral Michelson interferometer operating in the mid- to far-infrared region of the spectrum. Its very high angular resolution in the far-infrared will enable revolutionary developments in the field of star and planet formation research.

Cosmic Inflation Probe, Gary Melnick, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA. The probe will measure the shape of cosmic inflation potential by conducting a space-based, near-infrared, large-area redshift survey capable of detecting galaxies that formed early in the history of the universe.

High Orbit Ultraviolet-visible Satellite, Jon Morse, Arizona State University, Tempe. This mission will conduct a step-wise, systematic investigation of star formation in the Milky Way, nearby galaxies and the high-redshift universe; the origin of the elements and cosmic structure; and the composition of and physical conditions in the extended atmospheres of extrasolar planets.

Hubble Origins Probe, Colin Norman, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. This mission seeks to combine instruments built for the fifth Hubble servicing mission: Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and Wide Field Camera 3. This new space telescope at the forefront of modern astronomy will have a unifying focus on the period when the great majority of star and planet formation, heavy element production, black-hole growth and galaxy assembly took place.

The Astrobiology Space Infrared Explorer Mission: A Concept Mission to Understand the Role Cosmic Organics Play in the Origin of Life, Scott Sandford, Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA. This is a mid- and far-infrared space observatory optimized to spectroscopically detect and identify organic compounds and related materials in space, and understand how these materials are formed, evolve and find their way to planetary surfaces.

The Baryonic Structure Probe, Kenneth Sembach, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD. The probe will strengthen the foundations of observational cosmology by directly detecting, mapping and characterizing the cosmic web of matter in the early universe, its inflow into galaxies, and its enrichment with elements heavier than hydrogen and helium (the products of stellar and galactic evolution).

Galaxy Evolution and Origins Probe, Rodger Thompson, University of Arizona. The probe will observe more than five million galaxies to study the mass assembly of galaxies, the global history of star formation, and the change of galaxy size and brightness over a volume of the universe large enough to determine the fluctuations of these processes.

More information on NASA's Origins Program is available on the Internet at http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/.

Contacts:Jane Platt Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CAPhone: 818-354-0880

Donald SavageNASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-1727

An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/search_for_origins_shortlist.html.

NASA INVESTIGATORS SELECTED FOR HUMAN AND ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGYNASA release 2004-248

30 July 2004

NASA's Office of Exploration Systems has selected the proposals of 50 NASA investigators from its ten field centers to support the human and robotic technology goals and objectives of the Vision for Space Exploration. Total value of the work is approximately $570 million through fiscal year 2008.

"The Office of Exploration Systems was created to assist the agency in achieving its new strategic direction of establishing human and robotic space exploration as its primary goal," said Associate Administrator Rear Admiral Craig E. Steidle, USN (Ret.). "The selection of these investigators and the technologies they have proposed will help NASA meet the challenging goals and objectives of leaving low-Earth orbit and returning to the moon and then Mars. These technologies may also benefit our lives on Earth much like the Apollo missions led to the development of medical diagnostic tools such as the CT scan."

The selection was made in response to an intramural call for proposals and is the first of several steps towards developing new partnerships among NASA, industry and academia. The Human and Robotic Technology (H&RT) investment portfolio resulting from these partnerships will have a positive affect on future exploration missions. The selected proposals support the following H&RT programs: Advanced Space Technology Program, Technology Maturation Program, and Innovative Technology Transfer Partnerships Program.

For the names of the winning proposals and more information about Exploration Systems on the Internet, visit http://exploration.nasa.gov/. For more information about NASA on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov.

Contact:Michael BraukusNASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-1979

NASA RELEASES BROAD AGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT FOR EXPLORATIONNASA release 2004-249

30 July 2004

NASA's Office of Exploration Systems has released a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Human and Robotic Technology (H&RT) system-of-systems that will seek research and technology development proposals in support of the nation's Vision for Space Exploration. The Vision for Space Exploration gives NASA a new focus and clear objectives to establish a sustained and affordable human and robotic space exploration program to explore the solar system, first returning to the moon and then Mars.

"The Office of Exploration Systems is opening up its programs to industry and academia," said Associate Administrator Rear Admiral Craig E. Steidle, USN (Ret.). "This is a significant opportunity for vendors to become involved in an open competitive process. We have adopted a new approach to reach outside expertise to work with us in developing partnerships that will benefit the nation's goals for space exploration."

This BAA is open to industry, universities and nonprofit organizations in support of the Advanced Space Technology Program (ASTP) and the Technology Maturation Program (TMP). The BAA is open for one year through July 27, 2005. ASTP is seeking proposals in areas such as advanced concepts, technology databases, advanced materials, health management technologies, energy storage, advanced chemical propulsion, and space communications and networking. TMP is seeking proposals in areas such as highly-reliable/autonomous deep-space cryogenic-propellant refueling systems; robust and reconfigurable habitation systems; space assembly, maintenance and servicing systems; and surface environmental management systems.

For more information about Exploration Systems on the Internet, visithttp://exploration.nasa.gov/. For more information about NASA on the Internet, visit http://www.nasa.gov.

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Contact:Michael BraukusNASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-1979

NASA ANNOUNCES SPACE RADIATION MATERIALS RESEARCH GRANTSNASA release 2004-255

2 August 2004

NASA has selected 19 researchers to conduct ground-based research in space radiation biology and space radiation shielding materials. Sponsored by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, this research will use the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (SRL) and the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, NY. The SRL provides beams of radiation that are the same type and energy as found in space. They will be used for studies in radiation physics and biology in order to accurately predict and manage radiation risk in space. NASA received 70 proposals in September 2003 in response to this research announcement. All proposals were peer-reviewed by scientific and technical experts from academia, government and industry. The awarded grants total approximately $13.5 million.

"To enable the accomplishment of the Vision for Exploration, protecting humans from the damaging effects of cosmic radiation is one of the most critical problems that NASA must solve," said Guy Fogleman, associate director for human health and performance. "These newly selected research projects are an integral part of NASA's strategy to solve this problem," he added.

For more information on space research and a listing of the selected researchers, listed by state, along with their institutions and their research titles, please see http://spaceresearch.nasa.gov/.

Contacts:Dolores BeasleyNASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-1753

ESA IS LOOKING FOR FEMALE VOLUNTEERS FOR A BED-REST STUDY IN TOULOUSE NEXT YEARESA release 45-2004

3 August 2004

In preparation for a 60-day Female Bed-Rest Study, which starts in January/February 2005, an official call for candidates to participate as test subjects has been issued. The study is a joint venture between the European Space Agency (ESA), the French space agency (CNES), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). It will be carried out by MEDES, the French Institute for Space Medicine and Physiology, in its clinical research facility at the Rangueil hospital in Toulouse, France. The Bed-Rest Study will need 24 female candidates who will remain in bed, slightly tilted head down at six degrees below horizontal, for a total of 60 days, to simulate the physiological effects of an extended period in weightlessness as experienced by astronauts. Within the framework of various research protocols, the study will assess the role of nutrition and physical exercise in countering the adverse effects of long-duration weightlessness on female astronauts.

So far little is known of how the female body is affected by weightless conditions. This is because the majority of previous ground-based studies have been carried out on male volunteers, and because relatively few women have flown in space to date. The study will help advance knowledge of gender differences in the experience of extended exposure to weightlessness. The 24 test subjects will be split into three groups of eight. One will be the control group, receiving no extra stimulus over the course of the 60-day bed-rest period. The second group will undertake an exercise program whilst in bed during this time. The third will receive a nutritional supplement over the course of the 60 days. For the 21 days prior to the 60-day bed-rest period, the test subjects will take part in the collection of baseline data. During the 20

days following the bed-rest period they will undergo similar tests, for comparison with the baseline data.

The research protocols come from a variety of international research teams selected through strict review by international experts. These protocols will assess the three groups to draw conclusions relating to specific areas including muscle condition, blood parameters, cardiovascular condition, changes in immune system, bone formation and psychological wellbeing. All research areas, objectives and protocols of the study have been approved by the responsible French ethical committee in Toulouse and will comply fully with all applicable national and international laws and regulations.

With the European Space Agency's future plans for human space exploration, the results expected from this research will prove valuable in planning long-duration human missions. This research will also have clinical significance on Earth, advancing knowledge and pointing to improved methods to assist recovery by bedridden patients, and providing countermeasures to conditions associated with reduced physical activity.

Details of the requirements to be met by candidates, the conditions of participation and the application to become one of the participants in the Female Bed-Rest Study can be found at: www.medes.fr/ltbrw. Information can also be obtained by phone: +33 825 82 54 84 for international calls (€0.20/min) and 0 825 82 54 84 from inside France (€0.15/min).

Contacts:Franco BonacinaESA Media Relations DivisionPhone: +33 1 5369 7155Fax: +33 1 5369 7690

Peter JostLife Science Medical DoctorDirectorate of Human SpaceflightPhone: +31 71 565 6612Fax: +31 71 565 3661E-mail: peter.jost@esa.int

CASSINI UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

Saturn's Rings Offer a Fresco of ColorNASA image advisory 2004-185, 22 July 2004

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05421Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

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With shimmering pinks, hues of gray and a hint of brown, a newly released image of Saturn's rings resembles a fresco where nature is the painter. The Cassini spacecraft captured this exquisite natural color view a few days before entering orbit around Saturn.

The images that make up this composition were obtained from Cassini's vantage point beneath the ring plane with the narrow angle camera on June 21, 2004. The image was taken at a distance of 6.4 million kilometers (4 million miles) from Saturn.

The brightest part of the rings, curving from the upper right to the lower left in the image, is the B ring. Many bands throughout the B ring have a pronounced sandy color. Other color variations across the rings can be seen. Color variations in Saturn's rings have previously been seen in Voyager and Hubble Space Telescope images. Cassini images show that color variations in the rings are more distinct in this viewing geometry than they are when seen from Earth.

Saturn's rings are made primarily of water ice. Since pure water ice is white, it is believed that different colors in the rings reflect different amounts of contamination by other materials, such as rock or carbon compounds. In conjunction with information from other Cassini instruments, Cassini images will help scientists determine the composition of Saturn's ring system.

In the 1980s, two Voyager spacecraft flew by Saturn as did Pioneer 11 in 1979. Those fly-by missions raised tantalizing questions that can now be addressed by Cassini's planned four year tour. Scientists have waited 25 years for an opportunity to answer these questions.

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 Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For this and other images and information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. Images are also available at the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Cassini Significant Events for 15-21 July 2004NASA/JPL release, 23 July 2004

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, July 21. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm.

On-board science activities this week included solar wind measurements by the Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) instruments, Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) observations of Saturn's aurora and inner

magnetosphere, and Imaging Subsystem observations of the southern hemisphere of Iapetus.

Spacecraft activities included a reaction wheel assembly bias and the removal of the Saturn Orbit Insertion critical sequence from the SSRs. This activity involved the uplink of several real-time commands over a period of three days. The procedure executed normally.

The Cosmic Dust Analyzer discovered a dust particle carrying an electrical charge of almost 10 fC at a Saturn distance of 26 Rs and -16 degrees latitude. This is the first such detection in the Saturn environment, and the first since detection of particle charges in 2000. The charges of previous interplanetary particles were below 4 fC. The signal detected now is more than two times stronger and it is well above the detection threshold of about 1 fC.

Science Operations Plan (SOP) Implementation of tour sequences S31/S32 has completed and a wrap up meeting is scheduled for next week. Official port #1 for SOP Implementation of S33/S34 occurred with the delivered files merged and the resulting products delivered to ACS for end-to-end pointing profile analysis. SOP Implementation for S35/S36 began this week. SOP update preliminary port#1 for tour sequence S05 occurred this week. The files were merged and a report identifying problem areas to be worked was generated and distributed to the team.

The Integration and Test Laboratory has begun retesting the Probe Relay and Release sequences. This activity will be ongoing for several weeks.

At the final sequence change request and waiver disposition meeting for S03, it was determined that a re-evaluation of star ID (SID) suspend commanding built for the sequence was needed. As there was margin remaining in the development schedule, it was decided to slip delivery of the final products, receipt of review of final products, delivery of the final package, and the final approval meeting by two days. ACS analysis subsequently showed no issues related to SID Suspend commanding. Final sequence products are now available, and the final Sequence Integration & Validation package has been distributed to the team. A command approval meeting (CAM) was held to approve 7 of the 9 instrument expanded block files to be uplinked to the spacecraft prior to the start of S03. The remaining files will be CAMed later in the week.

A delivery coordination meeting was held this week for Telemetry, Tracking, Command & Data Management software v28.2.1. A Software Review / Certification Requirements meeting was held for Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer 9.0 flight software (FSW). This delivery includes the functions in an FSW patch that was applied during C44 and S01, as well as double buffering of the bus interface unit (BIU), use of DTSTART interrupt, and writing status information to BIU memory. The FSW was accepted for operational use with one follow-up action item. The software is scheduled to be uplinked to the spacecraft on September 1.

On July 21, Cassini once again provided an image that was used as Astronomy Picture of the Day. This spectacular picture of the shadow of Saturn on the rings, along with all the most recent images may be viewed at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

Titan's Purple Haze Points to a Fuzzy PastNASA image advisory 2004-187, 29 July 2004

Encircled in purple stratospheric haze, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, appears as a softly glowing sphere in this colorized image taken on July 3, 2004, one day after Cassini's first flyby of that moon. Titan has a dense atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen with a few percent methane. The atmosphere can undergo photochemical processes to form hazes.

Images like this one reveal some of the key steps in the formation and evolution of Titan's haze. The process is thought to begin in the high atmosphere, at altitudes above 400 kilometers (250 miles), where ultraviolet light breaks down methane and nitrogen molecules. The products are believed to react to form more complex organic molecules containing carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen that can combine to form the very small particles seen as haze.

This ultraviolet view of Titan has been falsely colored. The main body is colored pale orange as seen in true color images. Above the orange disc are two distinct layers of atmospheric haze that have been brightened and falsely colored violet to enhance their visibility. It is not currently understood why there are two separate haze layers. This and other questions await answers as

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the four-year Cassini tour continues, with many more planned flybys of Titan. The upcoming October 2004 flyby of Titan will be 30 times closer than that of July 2.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06090Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

For this and other images and information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. Images are also available at the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

Cassini Significant Events for 22-28 July 2004NASA/JPL release, 30 July 2004

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Wednesday, July 28. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm.

On-board science activities included Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph observations of Saturn's aurora as well as solar wind measurements by the suite of Magnetospheric and Plasma Science instruments. Spacecraft events included the uplink of instrument expanded block files, the background sequence, and an ACS reaction wheel assembly bias all in preparation for S03. S03 begins execution on board the spacecraft on Friday July 30.

A wrap up meeting was held for Science Operations Plan (SOP) Implementation of tour sequences S31/S32. The products have been archived and will resurface in February of 2007 for the start of the Aftermarket process. Analysis of the Port 1 S33/S34 products by the Attitude Control System Team has concluded. Teams are now making revisions for preliminary Port 2 next week. SOP update official port#1 for tour sequence S05 occurred this week. The files were merged and a report identifying problem areas to be worked was generated and distributed to the team.

The Aftermarket decision meeting to determine what changes will be accepted for S07 was cancelled. The number of requested changes was less than the number of allocated work units for this sequence and is well within the resources of the team to implement.

As part of S03 development activities, a command approval meeting was held for Cosmic Dust Analyzer flight software load files. These files will be uplinked to the spacecraft next week. Development of S04 continued with the publication of two versions of the Preliminary Sequence Integration and

Validation (PSIV) Cycle 1 integrated sequence products. One version contained the background sequence only; the other version included the background sequence, a science mini-sequence, and an Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer mini-sequence.

During the course of last week, 108 Cassini-related papers were presented at this year's Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) meeting in Paris, France. On Saturday, an all-day Cassini session was very well attended. Each team presented invited papers along with additional scientific papers.

A Titan workshop is planned for early September at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. At this workshop the Cassini Orbiter observations of the atmosphere of Titan and other relevant ground-based observations will be reviewed. Participants will re-assess their understanding of the upper atmosphere of Titan with the specific objective of validating the engineering models of Titan's atmosphere that are to be used for the final Huygens probe release preparatory activities. The workshop is open to all Cassini-Huygens scientists and invited non Cassini-Huygens scientists. Check the Goddard web site for more information.

Cassini Outreach participated in ASTROCON2004, a meeting of the Astronomical League (AL), Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (A.L.P.O.), American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) July 20-24, 2004 in Berkeley CA. Around 300 mostly amateur astronomers from around the USA and from Finland and Australia attended. Cassini Outreach participated in a solar system panel discussion, provided outreach material for a JPL Solar System Ambassador display table, and visited several conference venues with Cassini connections. Chabot Space & Science Center (Oakland, CA) was showing Ring World, and had a model of Cassini prominently displayed near the entrance. Lick Observatory (San Jose, CA) staffers were shown the Cassini images of the Keeler Gap in Saturn's A ring. At the closing banquet aboard the USS Hornet aircraft carrier (Alameda, CA), speaker Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean was presented with a set of Cassini postcards and stickers. After looking at the images he commented to Cassini Outreach "What a successful mission Cassini is"!

The Cassini Project Science Office hosted the first monthly telecon of science results from the mission this week. The Cassini-Huygens Analysis and Results of the Mission (CHARM) is an informal telecon where invited speakers discuss recent released findings from the spacecraft's 4-year tour of Saturn. Telecons are held on the last Tuesday of every month. The next scheduled CHARM telecon will occur Tuesday, August 31. Contact charm_leads@dcs04.jpl.nasa.gov for more information.

The new Saturn Observation Campaign (SOC) worldwide members map can be seen on the SOC members' page at http://soc.jpl.nasa.gov/images/members-worldmap.gif. SOC currently has 340 members in 43 US states and also in 43 countries around the world.

Cassini and Mars Outreach hosted the International Storytelling Center at CalTech this week. Scientists, engineers and outreach staff from both areas are participating in the event.

A beautiful picture of Saturn's Rings was Astronomy Picture of the Day on July 23. Please link to http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for additional articles, images and information.

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

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Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO.

Contacts:Carolina Martinez Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CAPhone: 818-354-9382

Heidi FinnCassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OperationsSpace Science Institute, Boulder, COPhone: 720-974-5859

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1097.htmlhttp://www.astrobio.net/news/article1101.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04zzb.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04zzc.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/saturn-titan-04r.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04zze.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04zzf.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040719dione.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040721rhea.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040722ringscolor.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040723tethys.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040726mimas.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040727titan.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040728titanhaze.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040730titanpurple.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/tethys_revealed.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/icy_enceladus.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/saturns_death_star_mimas.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/cassini_closer_to_titan.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/cassini_crescent_view_titan.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/titans_purple_haze.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/icy_tethys.html

MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

Spirit Survives 200 Sols!28 July 2004

On sol 198, Spirit completed a long overnight reading by the Mössbauer spectrometer on a rock target called "Sabre," then ground a second rock abrasion tool hole on a target called "Mastodon." The alpha particle X-ray spectrometer was placed in the fresh hole in preparation for a reading, which was started during the overnight Odyssey communication pass.

A rock outcrop with a view of the surrounding landscape beckons NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on sol 203 (July 29, 2004) of its journey of exploration on the red planet. This view is a mosaic of images taken by the rover's navigation camera at a position labeled as Site 80, near the top of the "West Spur" portion of the "Columbia Hills." Directly ahead are rock outcrops that scientists will examine for clues that might indicate the presence of water in the past. In the upper right-hand corner is the so-called "sea of basalt," consisting of lava flows that lapped onto the flanks of the hills.

On sol 199, Spirit completed a 6-hour early morning alpha particle X-ray spectrometer reading on Mastodon. After a midday nap to conserve energy, Spirit took pictures with the microscopic imager to create a mosaic of the rock abrasion tool hole. Spirit then placed the Mössbauer instrument in the hole and began a 20-hour overnight reading.

Sol 200, ending on July 26, was a busy day for Spirit. Spirit completed the overnight Mössbauer reading on the rock abrasion tool hole, took a midday nap, stowed the arm, bumped back to take pictures and readings of the hole with the panoramic camera and miniature thermal emission spectrometer, then drove about 52 feet (16 meters). Due to the nature of the terrain, the drive was done in 6-wheel mode to minimize errors (rather than the current standard 5-wheel mode to conserve the aging right front wheel). Engineers carefully targeted Spirit's drive to end in a location with favorable tilt to the north to point the solar panels toward the Sun, giving Spirit as much power as possible as the Sun hangs low in the sky during martian winter.

Spirit will continue to drive up the Columbia Hills and search for more rock outcroppings.

Opportunity Sees Double30 July 2004

Opportunity marked its 180th sol on Mars without pausing to celebrate. Originally slated for missions of 90 sols each, both Spirit and Opportunity have passed the double-mission milestone and are continuing their phenomenal journeys of discovery. On sol 177 Opportunity performed a two-hour rock abrasion tool grind on the target "Diamond Jenness," then took the resulting hole's picture with the microscopic imager. Surface debris and the bumpy shape of the rock apparently contributed to a shallow and irregular hole, only about 2 millimeters or 0.08 inches deep, not enough to take out all the bumps and leave a neat hole with a smooth floor. The alpha particle X-ray spectrometer examined the rock's composition in the abraded area during early morning of sol 178.

This self-portrait of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity comes courtesy of the Sun and the rover's front hazard-avoidance camera. The dramatic snapshot of Opportunity's shadow was taken as the rover continues to move farther into "Endurance Crater."

The team decided that sol 178 would be used to grind into "Diamond Jenness" again in hopes of deepening the hole. The sequence went extremely well with the rock abrasion tool grinding almost an additional 5 millimeters (about 0.2 inches). The rover then started a Mössbauer spectrometer reading of the deepened hole.

On sol 179 the rover completed the Mössbauer integration, gathered some remote-sensing data, then positioned the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on

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the abraded hole for an early-morning integration at cold temperature on sol 180. This double integration of the hole (once on sol 178 at an intermediate depth and then a second one at full depth) will give the science team a unique opportunity to evaluate how the composition changes with depth.

On sol 180, which ended on July 27, the rover stowed its arm and drove back up the slope about 1.5 meters (about 5 feet), then turned a little to the right to go back down about 0.5 meters (about 1.6 feet). The drive up was to gain a vantage point from which to image the abraded hole in "Diamond Jenness" with the panoramic camera and to evaluate characteristics of the driving on this particular terrain. The drive back down and to the right served to position the rover for potentially proceeding farther into the crater (avoiding a sandy patch to its left). It also left the rover at a better angle for communications in the afternoon. The drive went well, with less slip that anticipated, reinforcing the team's confidence in driving back up out of the crater on some future sol.

In general, the rover continues to perform well, benefiting from a predominantly northward tilt and the greater solar-array energy that affords. The Mars Odyssey orbiter continues to perform as the rover's primary source of data return. The location on the slope of "Endurance Crater" and intensive use of the instrument arm hinder rover drivers from orienting Opportunity optimally for the radio relays to Odyssey. The level of communication is acceptable for now and the team expects that, some sol, Opportunity will venture back out of the crater to explore to new places. When the rover is on flatter ground, the team can optimize communications with Odyssey more often.

Daily MER updates are available at:http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_spirit.htmlhttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_opportunity.html

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/07/19/mars.rovers.ap/index.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzy.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzz.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzza.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzzb.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzzc.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzzd.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzzg.html

MARS EXPRESS IMAGESESA releases

"Yardangs" on Mars 23 July 2004

(http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMN6GV4QWD_0.html)

This image of "yardangs", features sculpted by wind-blown sand seen here near Olympus Mons on Mars, was obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft. This image was taken during orbit 143 with a resolution of 20 meters per pixel. This scene shows a structure south of Olympus Mons, at 6°N latitude and 220°E longitude, which was probably formed by the action of the wind.

Loose sand fragments were transported by wind, and impacted on the bedrock, slowly removing parts of the surface, like a sand-blaster. If the winds blow in the same direction for a long enough period, "wind-lanes", as shown in the picture, can occur. On Earth, the remnants of these features which have not been eroded away are called "yardangs". Where the surface consists of more resistant material, the force of the wind may not be strong enough to cause this sand-blasting. This might be the reason for the three flat regions (the first in the foreground on the left, and the others top right), which measure about 17 by 9 kilometers.

Fractured crater near Valles Marineris 27 July 2004

(http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMG6OV4QWD_0.html)

This perspective image of a fractured crater near Valles Marineris on Mars was obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft. The image was taken during orbit 61 in January 2004 with a resolution of 12.5 meters per pixel. It shows part of a cratered landscape to the north of the Valles Marineris, at 0.6°S latitude and 309°E longitude, with this crater having a fractured base.

This crater has a rim diameter of 27.5 kilometers and is about 800 meters deep. It is not known yet how these fractures are generated. On Earth, polygonal fractures may occur in contracting material, which breaks at weak zones. For example, we may see this appearing in cooled lava, dried clay or frozen ground.

Perspective view of deposits in Melas Chasma2 August 2004

This image of the southern part of Valles Marineris, called Melas Chasma, was obtained by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board the ESA Mars Express spacecraft. This image was taken at a resolution of approximately 30 meters per pixel. The displayed region is located at the southern rim of the Melas Chasma, centred at Mars latitude 11°S and Mars longitude 286°E. The images were taken on orbit 360 of Mars Express.

This perspective view has been turned in such a way that the observer has a view of the southern scarp, almost 5000 meters high. The basin on the floor of the valley is on the opposite side, bordered by a ridge. On its flanks it is possible to make out some layering. However, the nature of the bright material, possibly some kind of deposit, is still unknown.

This perspective view was created by using the nadir (vertical view) channel and one stereo channel of the HRSC to produce a digital model of the terrain. Please note that image resolution has been reduced for use on the internet.

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(http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMFKTV4QWD_0.html)

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1097.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-04r.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-general-04s.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/fractured_crater_mars.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/new_perspective_melas_chasma.html

MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGESNASA/JPL/MSSS releases

16-28 July 2004

The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available.

Boulder Tracks (Released 15 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/15/index.html

Terra Sirenum Slope (Released 16 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/16/index.html

Melas Sedimentary Rocks (Released 17 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/17/index.html

Troughs Near Ascraeus (Released 18 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/18/index.html

South Polar Terrain (Released 19 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/19/index.html

Polar Barchans (Released 20 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/20/index.html

Light and Dark Slope Streaks (Released 21 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/21/index.html

Gordii Fossae Troughs (Released 22 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/22/index.html

Polar Layers and Dunes (Released 23 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/23/index.html

Layers in Oudemans (Released 24 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/24/index.html

South Polar Terrain (Released 25 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/25/index.html

Galle Scene (Released 26 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/26/index.html

Spotty Dunes (Released 27 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/27/index.html

Outcrop in Iani (Released 28 July 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/07/28/index.html

All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are archived at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/index.html.

Mars Global Surveyor was launched in November 1996 and has been in Mars orbit since September 1997. It began its primary mapping mission on March 8, 1999. Mars Global Surveyor is the first mission in a long-term program of Mars exploration known as the Mars Surveyor Program that is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO.

MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGESNASA/JPL/ASU releases

19-23, 26-30 July 2004

Channel Floor Yardangs (Released 19 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040719a.html

Yardangs and Crosshatching (Released 20 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040720a.html

A Change of Direction (Released 21 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040721a.html

A Question of Interpretation (Released 22 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040722a.html

Complete Makeover (Released 23 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040723a.html

Decorrelation Stretch near Cerberus Fossae (Released 26 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040726A.html

Canyon in DCS Color (Released 27 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040727A.html

DCS Color near Mare Cimmerium (Released 28 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040728A.html

Kaiser Crater DCS (Released 29 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040729A.html

DCS in Hesperia Planum (Released 30 July 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040730A.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.

ROSETTA: MONITORING NEW AVIONICS SOFTWAREESA release

2 August 2004

In the reporting period (23 July to 30 July 2004) the spacecraft was monitored daily to ensure the correct behavior of its avionics systems after the upload

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and activation of the new version 7 of the on-board software. Taking the opportunity of this period of daily contact a number of tests were carried out, which in turn served as confidence checks of the functionality of the new software: the two Navigation Cameras were checked out on 25 July and the first

pictures received showed the Earth-Moon system from a distance of 70 million km

for the first time the new strategy for reaction wheel offloading in an optimized attitude was used on 27 July, to reduce fuel consumption in high disturbance torques conditions the redundant Transfer Frame Generator (TFG) and Decoder were tested as part of the redundancy commissioning

a special Star Tracker test was carried out on 29 July to track stars that have been identified for elimination from the catalogue

a new thermal characterization exercise was carried out on 29 July, to observe the thermal behavior of the spacecraft when the Sun is shining on the –Z side with an inclination of 50 degrees over the +X axis.

The TC files containing the patch commands for the redundant avionics processors have been uplinked to the on-board mass memory. The patch of the redundant processors to the new software version 7 is planned for the beginning of August.

At the end of the last New Norcia pass in the reporting period (DOY 212) Rosetta was at 71.9 million kilometers from the Earth. The one-way signal travel time was 3 minutes 59 seconds.

Read the original news release at http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=35642.

End Marsbugs, Volume 11, Number 30.

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