Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter
Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 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
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Articles and News
Announcements
Page 1
MARINERS TO THE RED PLANET: INTERVIEW WITH
WILLIAM MOMSEN
From Astrobiology Magazine
Page 11
NASA SEEKS PARTNERSHIP IN DIGITAL IMAGERY
NASA release 04-137
Page 12
Page 4
ANCIENT PEBBLES PROVIDE NEW DETAILS ABOUT
PRIMEVAL ATMOSPHERE
By Geoff Koch
NIAC CALL FOR PROPOSALS
By Robert Cassanova
Page 12
NIAC STUDENT VISIONS OF THE FUTURE PROGRAM
By Robert Cassanova
AN INTERVIEW WITH BEN BOVA
By Leslie Mullen
Page 12
SPACE BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE SUMMER SCHOOL
By Tom Scott
UNLOCKING LANGUAGE IN SPACE AND ON EARTH
By Diane Richards
Page 12
NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX
By David J. Thomas
Page 4
Page 5
Page 5
MULTINATIONAL TEAM OF SCIENTISTS FINDS EARLY
LIFE IN VOLCANIC LAVA
Scripps Institution of Oceanography release
Page 6
THREE TOUGH QUESTIONS
From Astrobiology Magazine
Page 7
DO MER PHOTOS SHOW EXTANT MARTIAN
ORGANISMS (PART 2 OF 2)?
By Francisco J. Oyarzun
Page 9
Mission Reports
Page 12
CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
NASA/JPL release
Page 13
MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES
NASA/JPL/MSSS release
Page 13
MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES
NASA/JPL/ASU release
HOW ADVANCED COULD THEY BE? THE PHYSICS OF
EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL CIVILIZATIONS (INTERVIEW
WITH MICHIO KAKU)
From Astrobiology Magazine
MARINERS TO THE RED PLANET: INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM
MOMSEN
From Astrobiology Magazine
sensor, and hence the TV camera, pointed directly at the planet. When the
planet came in view of the TV camera with a narrow field of view (one
degree), it started taking a series of pictures as the spacecraft swept across the
planetary surface."
19 April 2004
Joining Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab forty years ago, William Momsen was in
charge of making sure Mars could be seen up close. Momsen worked on the
Mariner series, which were the first spacecrafts to leave Earth for the outer
reaches of our solar system. The Mariners were conceived as small-scale,
frequent explorers to the near planets in our solar system: Mars, Venus and
Mercury.
In 1964, while the Mariner IV spacecraft beamed back its first images of
Mars—and the first close views of any planet, Momsen had the responsibility
to transition their martian flyby from a wide angle to a tight one degree field
of view. The spacecraft followed on the coat tails of a mission that never
reached Mars, Mariner III. "Actually," noted Momsen the tracking command
"was sent twice, to make sure. The time came, the button was pushed, and
then the eternity of the wait. If it didn't work, there wouldn't have been time
to restart the platform and try again... We held our collective breaths."
"Since it would not be known exactly where the spacecraft would be as it
passed Mars," within 6,118 miles, noted Momsen, "the TV camera was
mounted on the scan platform. A few hours before it reached the planet,
power was applied, and the platform bobbed up and down. When the planet
came in view of the wide-angle (40 degree field of view) sensor, the platformdriving motor switched from scanning to tracking mode, which kept the scan
The Mariner missions greatly modified our scientific views about Mars. As
late as the 1950's, Mars was still thought a possibly habitable world of canals,
since telescopes could not resolve much on the surface other than what some
believed were connected waterways. When Mariner IV imaged frost on some
craters and a cloud in the atmosphere, the mission team was startled and at
first suspected a malfunction. "No one had been to Mars before, so we really
had no idea what to expect." When Mariner IV revealed a crater-ridden
portion of the red planet, Mars looked less hospitable. Momsen wrote:
"Among many important discoveries, [Mariner] consigned the 'canal' theory to
limbo".
The Mariner series showed that interplanetary exploration was possible. It
was the "longest and most complex deep space mission" attempted. Some of
the earliest Mariner technologies seem today to be scrappy. Coloring of Mars
images necessarily included teletype numbers drawn in with various shades of
gold and brown crayons. The microwave signal transmitted with less power
than a modern cellphone, but from 100's of millions of miles away. The total
spacecraft power used could fire up two 100-watt light bulbs.
The flyby mission took eight months to get to Mars, but lasted 24 minutes
taking pictures. JPL issued about a dozen progress reports in 12 months. The
magnetic tapes recording from radio dishes in Canberra, Australia,
Johannesburg, South Africa, and Goldstone, California were limited to only
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
2
parts of pictures because of an 8 bit per second transmission from Mars.
These tapes were mailed to JPL via courier to be reassembled into pictures
covering 150 mile areas on Mars.
As JPL described the process at the time, "After the pictures are finally
processed, they will be released to the public as scientists continue their
intensive investigation of what can be learned from man's first close-up look
at Mars."
But when Mariner IX later would photograph Mars' great volcanoes, valleys,
and erosion patterns that looked like dry riverbeds, that imagery eventually
started the scientific debate that continues today. What happened to Mars,
what is the martian surface history, and what was the fate of liquid water?
Momsen shared his personal Mariner experiences with Astrobiology
Magazine, to reveal how space pioneers got their jobs done on the first flight
to Mars.
Mariner mission control, JPL, 1965.
NASA/Caltech/JPL.
Image credit:
AM: As the scan subsystem engineer, you had to get the tracking just right or
there would be no Mars pictures. When a spacecraft is hurtling supersonic
towards a flyby, with a 12-minute one-way transmission time, how does one
gauge precisely when to flip the switch? A JPL press release from February
1965 announced "This time lag could seriously affect accomplishing mission
objectives."
WM: We relied on two signals. The first was the scan platform position. Of
course, with a transmission time of 12 minutes, we could see where it had
been 12 minutes ago. By plotting the platform position on graph paper, we
could obtain a plot of where it had been at any time, and predict where it
would be any time in the future. The second signal was the output from the
optical sensor. At first, it was zero, pointing in outer space.
When it started "seeing" the planet, we could correlate that with the scan
position signal. From that we could calculate at what position in a future
cycle the planet would be centered in the field of view, when the signal should
arrive at the spacecraft. Then we subtracted 12 minutes (plus some other
factors) to arrive at a time when the command should be sent.
Mariner IV flyby across face of Mars, July 14, 1965.
NASA/JPL.
Image credit:
Astrobiology Magazine (AM): You joined Caltech's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in 1962 and worked on the Mariner program to return the first
close-up images of Mars. In your recollections of that time, you mentioned a
grant to the laboratory of $250,000 for a reflecting pond, which the mission
team wanted to divert to a quick and dirty flyby of Venus. Was it really
possible financially to do a mission like that in 1962?
William Momsen (WM): Although there was a Mariner-Venus program, I
was not affiliated with it, only the Mars mission. We begged them to give us
the funds for a new mission, but the funds were allocated for landscaping. I
believe it would have been possible to send a quick and dirty probe to Venus
for that amount, using the many spares left over from other missions. That
would not include the cost of the launch vehicle, however.
AM: Mariner IV returned the first close views of Mars [and was also the first
spacecraft to leave Earth for the outer reaches of the Solar System]. But the
spacecraft used less power than two 100-watt light bulbs. Sometimes it is
recounted that the average digital wrist watch today has more computing
power than the manned lunar landers did in 1969. In retrospect, would you
see computing power as one of the big performance differences between then
and now?
WM: Mariner IV didn't require heavy computer power, as most of the
functions were rather simple, such as timing events, multiplexing data, etc.
There was no need for complex computations. Of course, current missions
need the power to perform more complex functions.
AM: The European Beagle 2 lander was intended to send back a faint 5-watt
signal from 200 million miles away on Mars. That was like picking up less
than a mobile phone broadcasts terrestrially. Wouldn't Mariner's 10-watt
radio transmitter therefore also have less broadcast power than an average
cellphone today? Goldstone and other dishes in the Deep Space Network
were used to receive that signal? [The faint signal was one-tenth of onebillion-billionth of a watt].
WM: Yes. To capture that microwatt signal, a 210 foot parabolic dish
antenna at Goldstone, California, was employed. Mariner had two antennas, a
low-gain omnidirectional, which could beam low data rates in the general
direction of Earth when lock was lost. The other was a high-gain, narrow
beam antenna, used when it was pointed at Earth.
AM: You were co-engineer on the scan sub-system, which had to transition
the spacecraft from scanning mode (40 degree field of view) towards tracking
(1 degree FOV). This made sure the TV camera could keep the planet in its
pointing direction. When you first got tracking, did Mariner adjust itself
duing flyby on power or with gyroscopes or both?
WM: The spacecraft attitude was fixed. The only part that moved was the
scan platform, with the TV camera mounted on it. The spacecraft was on a
fixed trajectory, which couldn't be determined exactly, stabilized in roll on
Canopus, and pitch and yaw on the Sun. If Canopus or Sun lock was lost, the
guidance system was controlled by the gyros. For that reason, the TV camera
was mounted on the scan platform, which nodded up and down as it passed
the planet. As designed, when a sensor "saw" the planet, it waited until the
Mars image was centered in its field of view. Then the scan platform motion
was inhibited, and it stopped with the TV camera pointed at the center of the
planet.
AM: What was special about locking Mariner navigation on the star Canopus
when cruising from Earth to Mars? Would any star have worked with the
proper guidance plans?
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
3
data received from the spacecraft. Engineers could not send commands to the
spacecraft; these were sent from the tracking stations. We specified the time
and the event.
AM: During last year's 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, many
historical accounts indicated that the events of November 1962—only two
years before Mariner's launch in 1964—were really the first strong imprint
that live TV made on American consciousness. For instance, many people
recounted they didn't believe TV (like the internet today) until they could read
the story in newsprint. In 1964-65, JPL released about a dozen press releases
over the mission lifetime, compared to what at last count was four million web
hits on the current Mars-JPL web site. Any thoughts on how Mariner was a
TV event, from a controller point of view? And what was the role of teletype
for command and control?
WM: I didn't get much chance to watch TV, being in the control room most of
the time. Teletypes (operating in receive mode only) were a "last ditch"
source of raw data, in case our computers went down. Interpreting this data
was quite daunting and painstaking—it was much easier displayed on a screen
or printed out. It took some getting used to, picking up the telephone and
saying "Bus Chief, this is Space Chief" without breaking into laughter. (No,
we didn't wear funny hats).
AM: Among the early discoveries of Mariner, one was the lack of a sensible
magnetic field on Mars. There are current theories that this loss of core
magnetism quickly dispersed what might have been a much thicker, warmer
atmosphere once. The loss of the atmosphere then may have dispersed any
liquid surface water under pressures about 1% of our Earth's. What remains
are erosion patterns of that 4 million year trek in time. Was the lack of a
strong magnetometer reading a big surprise then?
In 1965, Mariner IV saw whitish crater rims, a
scientific result since not only had craters not been seen
close, but later orbital pictures (inset) show frost
forming on crater embankments. Lower left shows
frost, middle lower shows what may be seepage
erosion, lower right shows a dust devil moving across
dunes. Image credits: NASA/JPL/MSSS.
WM: I'm not an expert in guidance systems, but it was one of the brighter
stars. I suppose another would have done as well, but that is the one they
chose.
AM: You tell an amusing story that power fluctuations were large, and you
noticed a white film on the components from a subcontractor. What was the
cause of the power problem?
WM: The problem was, when the subcontractor had finished soldering on the
components, they washed the board with green soap found in a 5-gallon can in
the men's room! This left a conductive film on the components, which
prevented their proper operation.
AM: All the overtime you put into Mariner allowed you to get a Jaguar
eventually. What was the fate of your maroon Jaguar, which you were able to
purchase from overtime 12 hour daily schedules? Still around?
WM: I wish I still had it! Sadly, it got too many speeding tickets and I was
forced to put it up in the garage. Through disuse, the seals dried out. I sold it
when I moved to Florida.
AM: There are scores of pyrotechnics on virtually all modern spacecrafts,
including the current rovers. When engineers refer to how critical a
pyrotechnic bolt or cable cutting is to the success of a mission, it seems to
have the air of single-point failures. But even Mariner had lots of pyro. Is
this the most reliable way to fasten and unfasten no matter what kind of harsh
space environments?
WM: Pyrotechnic squibs are ultra-reliable, being in sealed containers. Often
they were backed up by a second unit.
AM: Mariner launched on November 28, 1964 without incident. Most of your
workstations for subsystems had mainly TV monitoring and some telephone
capabilities to send diagrams or equations. What was the main way for
engineers to communicate with the spacecraft?
WM: The TV monitors and telephones were for the different specialists to
communicate with each other. We had various printers and plotters to display
WM: I was elected to comment on the encounter to an audience of big wigs,
including Dr. Van Allen. I predicted the time at which we should see the
magnetic field in the data. Well, it didn't, and I thought the magnetometer
must be broken. Surprise isn't the word for it!
AM: The first images were 40,000 pixels total covering a 150 mile square
area on Mars, which today would be considered a 200x200 pixel, gray-scale
"thumbnail". The received lines of teletype numbers were stapled, side by
side, to a board, arbitrary colors were assigned to sets of numbers, and each
number was colored with crayons by hand. Twenty images could be stored on
a tape recorder. How long would this data transmission involve for JPL when
awaiting the next image?
WM: Our data rate at Mars was 8 1/3 bits per second (bps—yes, bits!). There
were 5 million bits of data from the 20 pictures. They were stored on a tape
recorder and played back over an 8-day period. In comparison, the Spirit and
Opportunity rovers have three modes of communications:
1) Low gain antenna from Rover to Earth (120 bps).
2) High gain antenna from Rover to Earth (12Kbs—12,000 bps).
3) UHF relay from Rover to an orbiting satellite (128Kbs—128,000 bps).
AM: Two things stood out early in those Mariner images, a cloud and lots of
craters. The clouds were unexpected because of the thin atmosphere?
WM: Exactly. We assumed it was a flaw in the camera lens. (Oh no! Not
another instrument "failure"!)
AM: And the martian craters were almost like a view of our own Moon. Was
that interpreted to be evidence of a cold, dead place where no active erosion
was weathering these impact remnants?
WM: True. Of course, it just happened that we were looking at a part of Mars
that was featureless except for heavy cratering.
AM: The flyby photographed a 4000 mile long pass across the face of Mars:
"When the first of up to 21 pictures is taken, Mariner's camera will be pointing
at the northern martian desert Amazonis. The camera's coverage will then
sweep southeast below the martian equator covering the Mare Sirenum, the
southern desert Phaethontis, Aonius Sinus and into the terminator or shadow
line." About how much of the surface could be viewed during the flyby?
WM: Less than 1%, an atypical part of the planet. If a flyby from another
civilization happened to take pictures of the Sahara desert, they would
probably conclude that the rest of the planet was similar.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
AM: Mariner 9 saw the first glimpse of dry riverbeds on Mars. Sometime
around 1997, when the controversy first ignited over the fossil-like shapes in a
martian meteorite, it was said that twenty years earlier, the "Viking
experiments had ruined Mars for biologists, but saved Mars for geologists."
Any thoughts on the ups and downs that the whole Mars exploration program
has followed over four decades, and how our view of Mars is being shaped
today?
4
Stanford geologists Donald R. Lowe and Dennis K. Bird, and senior Stanford
researcher Robert E. Jones, also contributed to the research.
Early life
Scientists have long agreed that some sort of greenhouse effect started
relatively soon after the Earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago. Microbial
life appeared as early as 3.8 billion years ago when the sun was 25 percent
dimmer than it is today. Absent some process to retain and amplify heat, the
planet would have been a frozen wasteland and the first bacteria would not
have appeared so soon.
The exact mix of these ancient greenhouse gases is poorly understood, in large
part because of the paucity of data. Weathering rinds—discolorations near the
surface of pebbles that give evidence of reactions that occurred billions of
years ago with the primeval atmosphere—offer useful evidence. But the
steady churning of the Earth's crust through plate tectonics ensured that most
of these pebbles, and all their accompanying information, have long since
been recycled.
The researchers say the pebbles they analyzed, found in drill cores taken at the
Royal Sheba gold mine in South Africa, were rolled into smooth, round
shapes in a 3.2 billion-year-old river or stream system. "This outcrop [in
South Africa] is unique in its preservation," Bird said. "Few remain that
haven't been modified in some way by tectonic and metamorphic processes."
Clouds and frost cover on the north Martian pole from
Mars Orbital Camera. Image credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS.
WM: We certainly have revised our view of Mars over the last 30 years.
From a barren, moon-like planet, to one with possible evidence of past surface
water, to today's ongoing analyses of the martian rocks and soil, our views
will most certainly be revised again.
AM: To bring us to the present, what are your activities today, and what are
your initial impressions of this generation of Mars rovers? Do you have a
personal hunch about the questions of water [or even microbial life] on Mars?
WM: Today I am retired, and am fascinated by Spirit and Opportunity. I
watch everything I can regarding the rovers on TV and the internet. There is
certainly water in the polar caps. There may be more in the form of
permafrost, or even in the form of liquid underground, warmed by vulcanism.
If so, microbial life is possible. "Extremophiles" are organisms living in the
most inhospitable conditions on Earth.
If, indeed, there are fossils on Mars, we will probably have to wait for human
exploration, or be extremely lucky. It's hard enough to find them on Earth.
Who knows? There are many questions to be answered and some that haven't
even been asked yet. We will continue to be fascinated as Mars' story
unfolds.
Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article930.html.
ANCIENT PEBBLES PROVIDE NEW DETAILS ABOUT PRIMEVAL
ATMOSPHERE
By Geoff Koch
Stanford University release
20 April 2004
Analysis of 3.2-billion-year-old pebbles has yielded perhaps the oldest
geological evidence of Earth's ancient atmosphere and climate. The findings,
published in the April 15 issue of the journal Nature, indicate that carbon
dioxide levels in the early atmosphere were substantially above those that
exist today and above those predicted by other models of the early Earth. The
research implies that carbon dioxide, perhaps aided by another greenhouse gas
such as methane, helped to keep the planet warm enough for life to form and
evolve.
"The early mix of greenhouse gases is relevant to the evolution of atmospheric
oxygen and the conditions in which life arose," said Angela Hessler, a
geology professor at Grand Valley State University, who completed the
research as a doctoral student at Stanford University. "A more detailed
picture of early Earth might serve as a proxy for exploring the history of
nearby planets in the solar system."
Early atmosphere
Hessler's geochemical analysis of the rinds, which include an iron-rich
carbonate, allowed the team to determine the minimum amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere when the carbonate was formed. This amount is
several times higher than the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
today, consistent with the current understanding that life evolved in a
dramatically different environment than exists today.
Other research by the Stanford group suggests that carbon dioxide levels
gradually declined during the 500 million years after the formation of the
pebbles. As the continents became stable, and surface weathering and
photosynthesis evolved, it is likely that carbon dioxide was more readily
removed from the atmosphere.
Methane, another greenhouse gas produced by decaying biomass, may have
combined with carbon dioxide to maintain warm or even hot surface
temperatures. Earlier work by the study's authors suggests that surface
temperatures on the 3.2-billion-year-old Earth may have topped 60 degrees
Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).
Geologic samples with evidence of atmospheric chemistry in the Archaean
Eon, the first two billion years of Earth's history, are separated by 500 million
years. So despite the new information in the Nature study, attempts to
understand Earth's ancient history still involve lots of inferences and educated
guesses.
The authors, whose research was funded by the NASA Exobiology Program
and the National Science Foundation, agree on the need for more hard
evidence. "There can be little doubt about the importance of empirical
geologic observations for constraining future climate models of Earth's early
atmosphere," they wrote.
Read the original news release at
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/2004/lowe421.html.
An additional article on this subject is available at
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/early-earth-04e.html.
AN INTERVIEW WITH BEN BOVA
By Leslie Mullen
From Astrobiology Magazine
21 April 2004
Ben Bova is best known for his imaginative science fiction novels, such as
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, where humans of the future travel to these planets
and sometimes discover new life forms. In his newest book, Faint Echoes,
Distant Stars: The Science and Politics of Finding Life Beyond Earth, Bova
again touches on the possibility of alien life. His book provides an overview
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
of the current science of astrobiology, examining recent discoveries and
suggesting what they could mean for the search for life elsewhere. Bova also
discusses the politics and personalities that so often influence the direction
and future of science. In this exclusive interview with Astrobiology
Magazine, Bova shares his thoughts about astrobiology, space travel, and the
discoveries of the future.
Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Why did you decide to write a book about the
scientific field of astrobiology?
Ben Bova (BB): About five years ago, when I was invited to attend the first
NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology, I found the subject so
intriguing that I immediately began to plan writing a book about it.
AM: You say that Jupiter may be the most likely place to find extraterrestrial
life, since the planet has organics, water and energy. Yet Jupiter is rarely seen
as a likely place for life by most astrobiologists. Do you have any thoughts
about what sort of creatures could exist there?
BB: Most scientists ignore Jupiter because of the enormous difficulties of
exploring the planet. However, in my novel, Jupiter, I postulated a biosphere
that included airborne species below the Jovian cloud deck, and gigantic
aquatic species in the planet-wide ocean that girdles Jupiter.
AM: In your book, you say there are interest groups who are afraid of what
astrobiologists might find, so they are working to block the search for alien
life. Do you think it likely that astrobiologists might open some Pandora's
Box that we would later regret, and that is reason enough to not look for life
elsewhere?
BB: I think such fears are exaggerated. As I pointed out in Faint Echoes,
Distant Stars, we can use the International Space Station or a dedicated space
station as an isolation laboratory in which to study samples returned from
other worlds, without fear of contaminating the Earth. We have more to fear,
I believe, from fundamentalist religionists who worry that astrobiological
research flies in the face of their biblically revealed truths. And, of course,
there are the Yahoos in Congress and elsewhere who chopped SETI out of the
federal budget.
AM: NASA missions and studies often are at the mercy of politics. As you
note in your book, missions must continually fight budget battles in order to
survive from inception to launch. Do you think President Bush's call to go
back to the moon and then send a man to Mars is likely to survive over time?
BB: I believe it will survive, mainly because President Bush has already
allocated funding to the program. The battle will be over how large and how
fast the program can be. If President Nixon had proposed such a program in
1972, we could have been conducting this interview on Mars today.
AM: But do you think, given the proper political backing, we would have
been able to overcome the technological obstacles and health hazards of
establishing a base on Mars within that time frame?
BB: I don't see the technological obstacles and health hazards as being
tremendous problems for Mars missions. Humans have lived in space for
more than a year aboard the Mir space station. With incremental
improvements in existing technology, we could go to Mars in an open-loop
life support mode, sending re-supply vehicles ahead of the crewed mission.
Radiation shielding will be needed for solar storms, of course. By rotating the
spacecraft to give artificial gravity, the problems of long-term weightlessness
can be averted. Of course, a closed-loop life support system would be
preferable, although the practical answer might be a partially closed, partially
open loop.
5
even injured in the Three Mile Island incident. Nuclear propulsion for deep
space missions makes sense.
AM: Toward the end of your book, you predict that within a decade, we will
discover extraterrestrial life, and we also will create life in the lab from
nonliving chemicals. What do you think would be the repercussions of these
advances?
BB: Shock and awe, at first, among the general population. Then, as they see
that the world is not coming to an end, they will gradually accept the idea that
we are not alone in the universe. For scientists, the great question will be to
determine if extraterrestrial life comes from the same origin as our own, or has
arisen independently.
Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article933.html.
UNLOCKING LANGUAGE IN SPACE AND ON EARTH
By Diane Richards
From Space.com
22 April 2004
When Dr. Laurance Doyle lectures to undergraduates, he tells them "math is
not in the chalk," it is a tool they can use to understand the universe. Doyle
finds math everywhere; in the signatures of radio waves that might reveal
communication technology on other worlds; the distribution and orbits of
planets circling distant stars; and in the calls of marine mammals.
...He also works with biologists Brenda McCowan and Sean Hauser, of the
University of California, Davis, studying non-human communication systems
to better understand the nature of language and intelligence, which in turn has
direct relevance to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
Quantitative tools for intelligence studies are and few and far between,
making the Drake Equation term Fi (fraction of planets on which intelligence
develops) one of the most elusive facets of SETI research.
Read the full article at
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_richards_doyle_040422.html.
MULTINATIONAL TEAM OF SCIENTISTS FINDS EARLY LIFE IN
VOLCANIC LAVA
Scripps Institution of Oceanography release
22 April 2004
Scientists from the United States, Norway, Canada, and South Africa have
identified what is believed to be evidence of one of Earth's earliest forms of
life, a finding that could factor heavily into discussions of the origins of life.
The team, which includes a scientist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography
at the University of California, San Diego, found microscopic life colonized in
ancient volcanic lava dating nearly 3.5 billion years old, during a time known
as the Archean. The findings are reported in the April 23 issue of the journal,
Science. The team includes Harald Furnes and Neil Banerjee of the
University of Bergen, Norway; Karlis Muehlenbachs of the University of
Alberta, Canada; Hubert Staudigel of Scripps Institution; and Maarten de Wit
of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
AM: One of the problems facing long-term space travel is propulsion.
NASA's Project Prometheus is studying the possibility of using nuclear
fission-based systems for space missions of long-duration. As you note,
nuclear propulsion is a very controversial topic; where do you stand on this
issue?
In 2001, Staudigel and his colleagues documented how microscopic
organisms, smaller than the width of a human hair, are able to eat their way
into volcanic
rock
to form
long,
worm-like tubes (see
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/pressreleases/staudigel_rockeaters.cfm). The new
study, which describes a similar finding in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, a
location several hundred miles east of Johannesburg, South Africa, near
Swaziland, proves that microbial processes that can be seen today also
occurred during the earliest stages of the planet's history at the roots of life's
origins. The Barberton Greenstone Belt was formed in an underwater setting
in the planet's oceanic crust but is now uplifted and accessible to land-based
field work. Until the team's expedition last June, this area had not been
extensively explored for signs of early life.
BB: Nuclear power is the safest method yet devised for generating electricity,
by any measure you care to apply. Fossil fuels pollute the atmosphere and
contribute to greenhouse warming. Hundreds of coal miners are killed every
year. Oil tankers pollute the oceans. Gas lines explode. Even with
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, nuclear energy is far safer. No one was
"Our evidence is amongst the oldest evidence for life found so far," said
Staudigel, a research geophysicist at the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of
Geophysics and Planetary Physics at Scripps. "This area within the oceanic
crust is a favorable place for the origin of life. It offers relatively easy access
to seawater and volcanic environments such as deep-sea hydrothermal
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
systems-including a wide range of catalysts that are required in the origin of
life."
6


Staudigel also argues that the region's previous geographic position in a
submarine environment below the ocean floor may have provided protection
from the life-stunting effects of meteorites that bombarded Earth's surface
billions of years ago. "This finding may allow us to cross-reference the visual
clues of these microbial fossils with their chemical fingerprints," said
Staudigel. "They may help us understand biological and chemical processes
that occurred 3.5 billion years ago, which is only one billion years after the
accretion of Earth from the solar nebula."


one hundred million times more than the number of ants in the
entire world
one hundred million times the dollar value of all the market-priced
assets in the world
ten billion times the number of cells in a human being
one hundred billion times the number of letters in the 14 million
books in the Library of Congress.
The scientists identified the microbes in an area of Barberton with ample
volcanic eruptions called "pillow lavas." These are formed when undersea
volcanoes erupt and spew lava, which cools quickly to form tube-like
structures. Over time these tubes harden and, when dissected by erosion, form
pillow-like formations.
"When the planet was three-and-a-half billion years old there were no plants
or animals to eat," said Staudigel. "So to make a living these microbes
adapted to eating volcanic rock. That's all there was."
The scientists now plan to carefully analyze the microbes with sensitive
instruments to characterize their ancient activities within the pillow lava.
The study was funded by the Norwegian Research Council, the National
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the U.S. National
Science Foundation, the Agouron Institute and the National Research
Foundation of South Africa.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California, San
Diego, is one of the oldest, largest, and most important centers for global
science research and graduate training in the world. The National Research
Council has ranked Scripps first in faculty quality among oceanography
programs nationwide. Now in its second century of discovery, the scientific
scope of the institution has grown to include biological, physical, chemical,
geological, geophysical, and atmospheric studies of the earth as a system.
Hundreds of research programs covering a wide range of scientific areas are
under way today in 65 countries. Scripps operates one of the largest U.S.
academic fleets with four oceanographic research ships and one research
platform for worldwide exploration.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the web: http://scripps.ucsd.edu
Scripps News on the web: http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu
Contacts:
Mario Aguilera or Cindy Clark
Phone: 858-534-3624
E-mail: scrippsnews@ucsd.edu
Read the original news release at
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=631.
Additional articles on this subject are available at:
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article935.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/lava_life_040422.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-04zu.html
THREE TOUGH QUESTIONS
From Astrobiology Magazine
In a universe brimming with stars, the search for life is in part a numbers
game. Image credit: NASA/STScI/ESA.
In the realm of astrobiology, it may be said that most meaningful terrestrial
analogies to the number of stars in the known universe are indeed biological:
only a fertile biosphere can yield such large numbers. The earth's biological
census currently lists around 28,000 species with a backbone—a miniscule
number of advanced species (vertebrates) relative to the microbial ecosphere.
So to further the comparison, one may ask: how many living "things" the
Earth itself can accommodate in its volume? If one cubic inch can hold ten
billion animal or plant cells, and if one stacked these cells across both the land
and oceans to a thickness of fifteen feet, the planet would be a vast teeming
mass of biology—literally, life as far as the eye could see. The thickness of
fifteen feet, while extreme overpopulation on the land, is likely an
underestimate given the depth of the more three-dimensional ocean biosphere
or the realms of winged species.
In this way, the ceiling on the carrying capacity of Earth for cellular life is
vast, since about ten million times the number of plant or animal cells could
pack the planet than the number of stars in the visible universe. Compared to
70 sextillion, the cellular capacity terrestrially is estimated to be what can be
called one undecillion, or ten raised to the power of 30.
25 April 2004
Q: How many stars have scientists examined so far?
Q: Approximately how many stars are there in the universe?
A: The number of stars in the visible universe is estimated to be 70 sextillion,
or 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (seven followed by twenty-two zeros).
Such a vast population can be compared in a list of the very biggest numbers
imaginable, with some terrestrial references borrowed from a combination of
science and poetry:

ten times more than the number of grains of sand on Earth

eleven times the number of cups of water in all the Earth's oceans

ten thousand times the number of wheat kernels that have ever
been produced on Earth
A: In any great detail, perhaps about 10,000 stars. It depends on if the
question refers to whether stars are looked at in visual light or as radio
sources. It also is not so much the stars themselves, but the number of
habitable planets that is important.
Using terrestrial radio telescopes, Berkeley's SETI@home project stores about
100 million candidate radio signals, and classifies about 200 of these
candidates as "interesting". For direct observations, the 2004 French COROT
mission will look at 50,000 to 60,000 stars and should find a few dozen
terrestrial planets and several hundred close-in gas-giant planets during a twoto three-year mission. In 2006, the Kepler mission, or Extrasolar Terrestrial
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
7
Planet Detection Mission, is designed to look for transiting or earth-size
planets that eclipse their parent stars [in a sky survey of 100,000 stars].
Scientists expect to find thousands of planets, and perhaps 50 Earth-like
candidates.

Larger object, shaped like a cocoon, apparently suspended by invisible
filaments;
Heads at the end of thin semirigid stalks anchored in rock;
Larger head, dangling from thread.
One goal of the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) will be to find and
characterize any Earth-like planets orbiting 250 of the closest stars. This
search will focus on the habitable zone, which is defined by the range of
temperatures where liquid water, and thus the conditions for the formation of
life, might be present. TPF will make detailed observations of the
atmospheres of the most promising candidates to search for the spectral
signatures of habitability and of life. Next steps beyond TPF may include a
"Planet Imager" to provide more detailed images and/or spectroscopy of any
planets found by TPF.
To make this collage, I went back to the NASA originals, and applied a 35%
normal edge enhancement to all clippings except the very first, which is
unretouched. In Part 1, I explained how I've tried to compensate for the low
resolution in the originals, without introducing artifacts. Unless otherwise
stated, repeated clippings in the images that follow are 15% normal edge
enhanced, whereas the left copy is unretouched.
The challenge to astrobiologists is to determine what biosignatures can be
expected on any living planet. Knowing what to look for on a living planet is
not trivial. When the Galileo spacecraft flew by Earth on its way to Jupiter,
the spacecraft turned its instruments toward Earth to look for signs of life.
Other than the radio signals and the lights being on at night, the signs of life
from Earth were surprisingly subtle. There was a complex green color on the
continents (which was known as terrestrial plants) and chemicals like carbon
dioxide, oxygen, methane, and nitrites coexisting in the atmosphere—a
chemical impossibility unless maintained by something like life.


Let us proceed
Curls. A larger squiggle than the ones surrounding the "cocoon" of Figure 4,
can be seen in Figure 8, photographed at Gusev, in sun and in shade, two-anda-half hours apart. It appears crescent-shaped in both cases, except the
crescent's opening is in opposite directions. I surmise that the shape is
helicoidal, slightly more than a full turn, with one (lower) end attached to the
rock, and that the apparent movement is an illusion caused by the differing
illumination. Figure 9 shows three crescent shapes sharing the same hole.
Q: In doing a radio search, what kinds of signals are looked for?
A: SETI radio search involves a frequency that is relatively quiet, between
1000 and 10,000 MHz—just above the frequencies used by electronic pagers
and some wireless cell phones at 900 MHz. The most abundant molecules are
hydrogen, either neutral gas at 1420 MHz or combined with oxygen at 1640
MHz. In the spectrum of background that rains on our planet from interstellar
space, this quiet region is called the 'water-hole ', because water molecules
(necessary for life as we know it terrestrially), has this vibration.
Modern SETI efforts began with a paper written by physicists Giuseppe
Cocconi and Philip Morrison. They published in the science press in 1959.
Cocconi and Morrison suggested that the microwave frequencies between
1000 and 10,000 megahertz would be best suited for interstellar
communications.
Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article938.html.
DO MER PHOTOS SHOW EXTANT MARTIAN ORGANISMS (PART
2 OF 2)?
By Francisco J. Oyarzun
Figure 8. Opportunity, Sol 76. Local time, upper, is 10:11:40; lower, is
12:30:39. From
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/076/2M133104659EFF2200P2
977M2M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/076/2M133113225EFF2200P2
977M2M1.JPG
26 April 2004
Summary thus far
Figure 9. Opportunity, Sol 62. Notice, among other details, the radial
pattern at the tip of the same stone. From
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/m/062/1M133692453EFF0874P2
956M2M1.JPG
The above illustration is a collage of the highlights shown in figures 1 through
7 of Part 1 (Marsbugs 11(17):12-15, 20 April 2004, or online at
http://homepage.mac.com/ttelos/BioMars/OrganisMER/index.html). We see,
clockwise from top left:

Arced filaments in radial pattern, detached from substrate (Spirit pancam
at Gusev; the others are all microscopic imager closeups, at about 30
microns per pixel, taken by rover "Opportunity" at Meridiani Planum);

Wispy bridges between neighboring pebbles (two examples);

Filaments spanning a gap, too thin to be seen individually (and therefore
very fragile), manifest in that they trap dust particles in a "dotted line"
pattern;
Extrusions and "star mouths". Even before Spirit left its landing pad, rover
team members were struck by the unexpected degree of cohesiveness or
"muddyness" of the Gusev regolith. But it takes more than cohesiveness to
explain the extruded appearance, with obvious directionality, of the silt (?) in
Figure 10A, also from Gusev. Now that we have seen filaments, is it not
reasonable to suspect that these "worm droppings" are being held together by
some kind of hyphae or tissue that had some reason to orient themselves in a
preferred direction? Actually, there is more to these extrusions (?) than
directionality. Figure 10B is from the exact same take, and shows similar
textures, in the shape of mouths, with cross- or star-shaped operculi. Are we
looking at organisms, that start out as "mouths" and end up as silt-covered
squiggles?
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
8
Strings of what? From a distance, sand banks take on the color of the
pervasive brick-colored dust, whereas the sand under the monolayer of
"pebbles" is dark, as could be seen after the rover caused a little avalanche.
Figure 12, from the same sand bank named "Serpent," shows a long vertical
filament studded with bumps, that survived the avalanche, along with other
similar filaments in the dark sand. Are these some kind of root, or are they
organisms in their own right? (Thermodynamically, at least, a nonphotosynthetic organism buried in sand could in principle make a living off
the simultaneous presence of oxygen and carbon monoxide, continually
replenished by the solar wind's interaction with the martian ionosphere.)
Figure 12. Normal edge enhancement: 35%; from
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/073/2M132842058EFF2000P2
977M2M1.JPG
Figure 10 A (top), B (bottom). Both from the same take, Spirit, Sol 70:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/070/2M132590791EFF1800P2
977M2M1.JPG
Monolayer of pebbles over sand. Speaking of cohesiveness, is it not
remarkable that, when Spirit dug into the sand bank named "Serpent" on Sol
73, it would find that the sand bank was capped by a monolayer of round
pebbles, of almost uniform size, but that there were no such pebbles in the
sand below? Could such pebbles have grown in situ, in a light-dependent
process? Figure 11 shows that most of these "pebbles" are far from simple!
Additionally, there are naked near-spherical pebbles, in a narrow range of
sizes (dubbed "blueberries" by the Opportunity team), abundantly at both
sites. They seem oddly incongruous amid the shards, pyramids, and jaggies of
Gusev: see, for example, the splendid color photographs at
http://www.keithlaney.com/spirit_color_images.htm. Could it be that those
are but the naked remnants of the filigreed "pebbles" of Figure 11?
"Belly-up pillbugs." On Sol 60, Spirit abraded a rock named "Humphrey"
and, in so doing, uncovered the fossil-like patterns I show in Figure 13. These
are bilaterally symmetric, with a segmented line along the axis of symmetry,
from whence markings like ribs (veins? legs?) project. Compare that with the
much larger, dust-covered object in Figure 14 (Spirit, Sol 50). Do those all
belong in the same phylum? Do we have a jumble of such in Figure 15? If
so, then here's a conundrum: the "belly-up pillbugs" of Figures 14 and 15 are
bilaterally symmetric, yet the "jumble" (Fig. 15) comes from the same
monolayer of "pebbles" as shown in the clippings of Fig. 11 A and B, where
we saw a number of apparently similar features that are radially symmetric.
The question is: are the "mouths" of Figure 11 a form intermediate between
radially and bilaterally symmetric? On Earth, the usual state of affairs is that
a macroscopic organism does not, during the course of its macroscopic size,
undergo a change of symmetry. Then again, consider the round seed (radially
symmetric, at the resolution of these photographs) of a barrel cactus: it
germinates to unfold a pair of cotyledons (bilateral symmetry), and
subsequently grows into a radially symmetrical barrel.
Figure 13. Normal edge enhancement: 35%; from
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/060/2M131691503EFF1155P2
959M2M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/060/2M131690648EFF1155P2
959M2M1.JPG
Figure 11 A (top), B (bottom). Normal edge enhancement: 35%; A from:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/073/2M132841379EFF2000P2
977M2M1.JPG
Figure 14. Normal edge enhancement: 25%; from
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/050/2M130796312EFF09BVP2
953M2M1.JPG
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
9
So the least we have, right now, is a loss of certainty that Mars is either dead,
or at best harbors subterranean microbes. Perhaps 2004 will be remembered
as a turning point. On January 1st, the mission planners had been so certain
that they could not possibly find evidence for extant life on the surface of
Mars, that there was not even a spectrometer on board capable of detecting
organic pigments.
Suddenly, images come back that challenge that
assumption. We go from there's no way (there can be macroscopic organisms
alive today on Gusev, or on Meridiani) to: "prove it!".
MER images have been coming in almost daily since January, and are now
expected to continue at least until September. I entreat anyone with a serious
interest in actual organisms (Mars bugs!) to examine the originals with a
collector's eye: even in the clippings I've shown here, there are organic shapes
other than the ones I've pointed out (example: "tiny mouths," individually and
packed). The amount of data coming in from the ground every week now, is
more than all the ground-based data in existence on New Year's Day, 2004.
But to maximize the return, we need to see more close-ups of stones with
holes in them, particularly from Gusev: stones like the ones I show in Figure
16, for example. If you, dear reader, think you can convince the Spirit team to
do that, please do try!
Figure 16. Spirit Sol 97, pancam. No edge enhancement. From
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/p/097/2P134972159EFF2700P27
60R1M1.JPG
Acknowledgements
Figure 15 A (top, original), B (bottom, 35% normal edge enhanced). From
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/m/073/2M132842785EFF2000P2
977M2M1.JPG
Discussion
In the days since publication of Part 1, I have received feedback from
paleontologists and others, to the effect that: (a) the shapes shown here do not
correspond with any known fossils from Earth; (b) biogenicity of these shapes
is far from proven. I'll take (a) at face value, and agree, of course, with (b).
What we do have right now, is a falsifiable hypothesis that claims that at least
some of the shapes I show are biogenic ("hypothesis A"). To counter that, a
different explanation ("hypothesis B") has to be offered that is at least as
precise ("it could be anything" is not sufficient). For example (see figures 6
and 7 of Part 1, or summary collage, here): suggest a natural, nonbiological
mechanism that produces a bunch of free-standing heads at the end of thin
stalks anchored in rock (or, produces a head dangling from a filament), or, at
the very least, show a specimen of such structures, known by scrutiny to be
non-biogenic; then we'll have a valid counter to hypothesis A.
It used to be that hypothesis A could be ruled out, a priori, on the grounds
that:
1. The planet is too cold, too dry, and the atmosphere too thin, for liquid
water to exist at the surface, and therefore too desiccating for any life
form that we know of. Status: Said physics is true of pure water, but not
necessarily of brines. A team of scientists (including Nathalie Cabrol,
the original proponent of Gusev as a landing site, and currently part of
the Spirit team [8]) found natural brine pools in Antarctica that stay
liquid down to -50ºC—and, they do harbor life. Price and others [9]
have confirmed metabolism down to at least -20ºC.
2. (Hitchcock and Lovelock's objection, 1967 [10]): the composition of the
atmosphere does not reflect any photosynthetic activity. Status: in a
paper currently under review, I examine that question myself, carbon
monoxide and oxygen, in particular (800 and 1300 ppm respectively, but
reportedly generated in a 2:1 ratio in Mars' ionosphere), and conclude
that the measured atmospheric ratio thereof is consistent with a low level
of photosynthesis (especially, one that fixes CO rather than CO2).
3. Viking's labeled release experiments came out negative. Status: Since
1997, over a dozen peer-reviewed papers have come out to dispute that
claim [11].
I thank and congratulate all the scientists, engineers, and support personnel
that have designed, built and monitored the MER rovers; the US Congress and
taxpayers for footing the bill; my family for their tolerance of this obsession;
and Dr. David J Thomas for publishing this paper in record time!
References and endnotes
[8] Wynn-Williams, D. D., N. A. Cabrol, E. A. Grin, R. M. Haberle, C. R.
Stoker. Seepage channels as eluants for subsurface relict biomolecules on
Mars? Astrobiology 1(2):165-184 (2001).
[9] Price, B. F. and T. Sowers. Temperature dependence of metabolic rates
for microbial growth, maintenance, and survival. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Science 101(13):4631-4636 (2004).
[10] Hitchcock, D. R. and J. E. Lovelock (1967).
atmospheric analysis. Icarus 7:149-59 (1967).
[11]
Observe
the
extensive
http://www.biospherics.com/mars/.
Life detection by
bibliography
listed
at
Contact:
Francisco J. Oyarzun
E-mail: francisco-o@earthink.net
Read the original article at
http://homepage.mac.com/ttelos/BioMars/OrganisMER/index.html.
HOW ADVANCED COULD THEY BE? THE PHYSICS OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL CIVILIZATIONS (INTERVIEW WITH MICHIO
KAKU)
From Astrobiology Magazine
26 April 2004
To consider habitable worlds, advanced civilizations, and how to find and
classify them, Astrobiology Magazine had the chance to discover from Dr.
Michio Kaku that the laws of physics has much to say about such
possibilities—at least much more than where you might expect speculation to
lead you from our tiny corner of the universe. Dr. Michio Kaku graduated
from Harvard in 1968 with highest honors, and number one in his physics
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
class. He went on to the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of
California in 1972, and in 1973 Dr. Kaku held a lectureship at Princeton
University. Today, he holds the Henry Semat Professorship in Theoretical
Physics at the City University of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for
over 25 years.
Dr. Kaku is an internationally recognized authority in theoretical physics and
the environment. His most popular and best selling books include
Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps
and the Tenth Dimension and Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the
21st Century, which have been widely translated in different languages.
Every week, he hosts an hour-long program, "Explorations in Science", which
covers topics in science, technology, war, and politics.
Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Can you comment on how physics has steadily
moved Earth's place from one of uniqueness (or anthropomorphism) to
viewing our position as one tiny corner among possibly billions of habitable
worlds available for evolving complex life?
Michio Kaku (MK): This question is no longer a matter of idle speculation.
Soon, humanity may face an existential shock as the current list of a dozen
Jupiter-sized extra-solar planets swells to hundreds of earth-sized planets,
almost identical twins of our celestial homeland. This may usher in a new era
in our relationship with the universe: we will never see the night sky in the
same way ever again, realizing that scientists may eventually compile an
encyclopedia identifying the precise co-ordinates of perhaps hundreds of
earth-like planets.
Today, every few weeks brings news of a new Jupiter-sized extra-solar planet
being discovered, the latest being about 15 light years away orbiting around
the star Gliese 876. The most spectacular of these findings was photographed
by the Hubble Space Telescope, which captured breathtaking photos of a
planet 450 light years away being sling-shot into space by a double-star
system.
But the best is yet to come. Early in the next decade, scientists will launch a
new kind of telescope, the interferometry space telescope, which uses the
interference of light beams to enhance the resolving power of telescopes. For
example, the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), to be launched early in the
next decade, consists of multiple telescopes placed along a 30 foot structure.
With an unprecedented resolution approaching the physical limits of optics,
the SIM is so sensitive that it almost defies belief: orbiting the earth, it can
detect the motion of a lantern being waved by an astronaut on Mars!
The SIM, in turn, will pave the way for the Terrestrial Planet Finder, to be
launched late in the next decade, which should identify even more earth-like
planets. It will scan the brightest 1,000 stars within 50 light years of the earth
and will focus on the 50 to 100 brightest planetary systems. All this, in turn,
will stimulate an active effort to determine if any of them harbor life, perhaps
some with civilizations more advanced than ours.
AM: How does one begin to consider these prospects scientifically?
MK: Although it is impossible to predict the precise features of such
advanced civilizations, their broad outlines can be analyzed using the laws of
physics. No matter how many millions of years separate us from them, they
still must obey the iron laws of physics, which are now advanced enough to
explain everything from sub-atomic particles to the large-scale structure of the
universe, through a staggering 43 orders of magnitude.
Specifically, we can rank civilizations by their energy consumption, using the
following principles:
1) The laws of thermodynamics. Even an advanced civilization is bound by
the laws of thermodynamics, especially the Second Law, and can hence be
ranked by the energy at their disposal.
2) The laws of stable matter. Baryonic matter (i.e., based on protons and
neutrons) tends to clump into three large groupings: planets, stars and
galaxies. (This is a well-defined by product of stellar and galactic evolution,
thermonuclear fusion, etc.) Thus, their energy will also be based on three
distinct types, and this places upper limits on their rate of energy
consumption.
3) The laws of planetary evolution. Any advanced civilization must grow in
energy consumption faster than the frequency of life-threatening catastrophes
(e.g., meteor impacts, ice ages, supernovas, etc.). If they grow any slower,
they are doomed to extinction. This places mathematical lower limits on the
rate of growth of these civilizations.
10
In a seminal paper published in 1964 in the Journal of Soviet Astronomy,
Russian astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev theorized that advanced
civilizations must therefore be grouped according to three types: Type I, II,
and III, which have mastered planetary, stellar and galactic forms of energy,
respectively. He calculated that the energy consumption of these three types
of civilization would be separated by a factor of many billions.
AM: How long will it take for a civilization to reach Type II and III status?
MK: Berkeley astronomer Don Goldsmith reminds us that the earth receives
about one billionth of the suns energy, and that humans utilize about one
millionth of that. So we consume about one million billionth of the suns total
energy. At present, our entire planetary energy production is about 10 billion
billion ergs per second. But our energy growth is rising exponentially, and
hence we can calculate how long it will take to rise to Type II or III status.
Goldsmith says, "Look how far we have come in energy uses once we figured
out how to manipulate energy, how to get fossil fuels really going, and how to
create electrical power from hydropower, and so forth; we've come up in
energy uses in a remarkable amount in just a couple of centuries compared to
billions of years our planet has been here... and this same sort of thing may
apply to other civilizations."
Physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute for Advanced Study estimates that,
within 200 years or so, we should attain Type I status. In fact, growing at a
modest rate of 1% per year, Kardashev estimated that it would take only 3,200
years to reach Type II status, and 5,800 years to reach Type III status. Living
in a Type I,II, or III civilization.
For example, a Type I civilization is a truly planetary one, which has mastered
most forms of planetary energy. Their energy output may be on the order of
thousands to millions of times our current planetary output. Mark Twain once
said, "Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about
it." This may change with a Type I civilization, which has enough energy to
modify the weather. They also have enough energy to alter the course of
earthquakes, volcanoes, and build cities on their oceans.
Currently, our energy output qualifies us for Type 0 status. We derive our
energy not from harnessing global forces, but by burning dead plants (e.g., oil
and coal). But already, we can see the seeds of a Type I civilization. We see
the beginning of a planetary language (English), a planetary communication
system (the Internet), a planetary economy (the forging of the European
Union), and even the beginnings of a planetary culture (via mass media, TV,
rock music, and Hollywood films).
By definition, an advanced civilization must grow faster than the frequency of
life-threatening catastrophes. Since large meteor and comet impacts take
place once every few thousand years, a Type I civilization must master space
travel to deflect space debris within that time frame, which should not be
much of a problem. Ice ages may take place on a time scale of tens of
thousands of years, so a Type I civilization must learn to modify the weather
within that time frame.
AM: If followed to its conclusion, does this imply that any technologically
advanced civilization that is bounded geographically (or terrestrially) must
collapse after a few thousand years just on the cusp of its Type I
classification?
MK: Artificial and internal catastrophes must also be negotiated. But the
problem of global pollution is only a mortal threat for a Type 0 civilization; a
Type I civilization has lived for several millennia as a planetary civilization,
necessarily achieving ecological planetary balance. Internal problems like
wars do pose a serious recurring threat, but they have thousands of years in
which to solve racial, national, and sectarian conflicts.
Eventually, after several thousand years, a Type I civilization will exhaust the
power of a planet, and will derive their energy by consuming the entire output
of their suns energy, or roughly a billion trillion trillion ergs per second.
With their energy output comparable to that of a small star, they should be
visible from space. Dyson has proposed that a Type II civilization may even
build a gigantic sphere around their star to more efficiently utilize its total
energy output. Even if they try to conceal their existence, they must, by the
Second Law of Thermodynamics, emit waste heat. From outer space, their
planet may glow like a Christmas tree ornament. Dyson has even proposed
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
looking specifically for infrared emissions (rather than radio and TV) to
identify these Type II civilizations.
Perhaps the only serious threat to a Type II civilization would be a nearby
supernova explosion, whose sudden eruption could scorch their planet in a
withering blast of X-rays, killing all life forms. Thus, perhaps the most
interesting civilization is a Type III civilization, for it is truly immortal. They
have exhausted the power of a single star, and have reached for other star
systems. No natural catastrophe known to science is capable of destroying a
Type III civilization. Faced with a neighboring supernova, it would have
several alternatives, such as altering the evolution of dying red giant star
which is about to explode, or leaving this particular star system and
terraforming a nearby planetary system.
11
(If this sounds a bit familiar, that's because it was the basis of the film, 2001.
Originally, Stanley Kubrick began the film with a series of scientists
explaining how probes like these would be the most efficient method of
exploring outer space. Unfortunately, at the last minute, Kubrick cut the
opening segment from his film, and these monoliths became almost mystical
entities).
AM: When we interviewed superstring theorist, Brian Greene, he was
somewhat philosophical about harnessing Planck-scale energies, or whether
even cutting edge physics could offer a means of ever manipulating space in a
way that allows for a Type III civilization to emerge. Like planetary survival
seems a hurdle for Type I, is the Type III civilization's crisis something
comparable to learning to manipulate space itself in ways not imaginable yet?
AM: Frank Drake, in formulating the probability for civilizations to reach the
maturity for interstellar communication, has commented that the survivability
factor is the hardest one to evaluate or predict. Would you conclude that this
uncertainty is maximum as well, or does another unknown dominate your
considerations?
MK: There is also the possibility that a Type II or Type III civilization might
be able to reach the fabled Planck energy with their machines (10^19 billion
electron volts). This is energy is a quadrillion times larger than our most
powerful atom smasher. This energy, as fantastic as it may seem, is (by
definition) within the range of a Type II or III civilization.
MK: There are roadblocks to an emerging Type III civilization. Eventually, it
bumps up against another iron law of physics, the theory of relativity. Dyson
estimates that this may delay the transition to a Type III civilization by
perhaps millions of years.
The Planck energy only occurs at the center of black holes and the instant of
the Big Bang. But with recent advances in quantum gravity and superstring
theory, there is renewed interest among physicists about energies so vast that
quantum effects rip apart the fabric of space and time. Although it is by no
means certain that quantum physics allows for stable wormholes, this raises
the remote possibility that a sufficiently advanced civilizations may be able to
move via holes in space, like Alice's Looking Glass. And if these civilizations
can successfully navigate through stable wormholes, then attaining a specific
impulse of a million seconds is no longer a problem. They merely take a
short-cut through the galaxy. This would greatly cut down the transition
between a Type II and Type III civilization.
But even with the light barrier, there are a number of ways of expanding at
near-light velocities. For example, the ultimate measure of a rockets
capability is measured by something called "specific impulse" (defined as the
product of the thrust and the duration, measured in units of seconds).
Chemical rockets can attain specific impulses of several hundred to several
thousand seconds. Ion engines can attain specific impulses of tens of
thousands of seconds. But to attain near-light speed velocity, one has to
achieve specific impulse of about 30 million seconds, which is far beyond our
current capability, but not that of a Type III civilization. A variety of
propulsion systems would be available for sub-light speed probes (such as
ram-jet fusion engines, photonic engines, etc.)
AM: To reach Type III classification, a civilization has to cross the light
barrier in some way not understood today in physics—that is, if the galaxy is
their "home". Since relativity imposes time dilation in ways that are
catastrophic to most forms of biology we can imagine, does this imply the
inevitable rise of machines as favored for exploration on the path to Type III
status?
MK: In science fiction, the search for inhabitable worlds has been
immortalized on TV by heroic captains boldly commanding a lone star ship,
or as the murderous Borg, a Type III civilization which absorbs lower Type II
civilization (such as the Federation). However, the most mathematically
efficient method to explore space is far less glamorous: to send fleets of "Von
Neumann probes" throughout the galaxy (named after John Von Neumann,
who established the mathematical laws of self-replicating systems).
A Von Neumann probe is a robot designed to reach distant star systems and
create factories which will reproduce copies themselves by the thousands. A
dead moon rather than a planet makes the ideal destination for Von Neumann
probes, since they can easily land and take off from these moons, and also
because these moons have no erosion. These probes would live off the land,
using naturally occurring deposits of iron, nickel, etc. to create the raw
ingredients to build a robot factory. They would create thousands of copies of
themselves, which would then scatter and search for other star systems.
Similar to a virus colonizing a body many times its size, eventually there
would be a sphere of trillions of Von Neumann probes expanding in all
directions, increasing at a fraction of the speed of light. In this fashion, even a
galaxy 100,000 light years across may be completely analyzed within, say, a
half million years.
If a Von Neumann probe only finds evidence of primitive life (such as an
unstable, savage Type 0 civilization) they might simply lie dormant on the
moon, silently waiting for the Type 0 civilization to evolve into a stable Type
I civilization. After waiting quietly for several millennia, they may be
activated when the emerging Type I civilization is advanced enough to set up
a lunar colony. Physicist Paul Davies of the University of Adelaide has even
raised the possibility of a Von Neumann probe resting on our own moon, left
over from a previous visitation in our system aeons ago.
Second, the ability to tear holes in space and time may come in handy one
day. Astronomers, analyzing light from distant supernovas, have concluded
recently that the universe may be accelerating, rather than slowing down. If
this is true, there may be an anti-gravity force (perhaps Einstein's
cosmological constant) which is counteracting the gravitational attraction of
distant galaxies. But this also means that the universe might expand forever in
a Big Chill, until temperatures approach near-absolute zero. Several papers
have recently laid out what such a dismal universe may look like. It will be a
pitiful sight: any civilization which survives will be desperately huddled next
to the dying embers of fading neutron stars and black holes. All intelligent
life must die when the universe dies.
AM: So is there is kind of inevitable end for intelligent life, no matter how
advanced the particular civilization may become?
MK: Astronomer John Barrows of the University of Sussex writes, "Suppose
that we extend the classification upwards. Members of these hypothetical
civilizations of Type IV, V, VI and so on, would be able to manipulate the
structures in the universe on larger and larger scales, encompassing groups of
galaxies, clusters, and superclusters of galaxies." Civilizations beyond Type
III may have enough energy to escape our dying universe via holes in space.
Lastly, physicist Alan Guth of MIT, one of the originators of the inflationary
universe theory, has even computed the energy necessary to create a baby
universe in the laboratory (the temperature is 1,000 trillion degrees, which is
within the range of these hypothetical civilizations).
Read the full article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article939.html.
Additional articles on this subject are available at:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/seti-04d.html
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/advanced_civilization_become.ht
ml
NASA SEEKS PARTNERSHIP IN DIGITAL IMAGERY
NASA release 04-137
21 April 2004
NASA wants to make the historic imagery captured by the agency's
exploration activities accessible to the public. NASA has requested proposals
to digitize and consolidate agency analog, still, film, video and graphic
imagery for easier public online research and retrieval.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
12
A comprehensive database of historical, educational and commercially viable
material will be developed by a partnership between NASA and an
organization or group. NASA has more than 115,000 film and video titles and
millions of still images documenting the history of America's space program.
NASA will review proposals from organizations sharing the agency's mission,
values and goals that could provide entrepreneurial opportunities, in a
nonreimbursable relationship, to provide public access to these vast imagery
archives. Through partnerships with the private sector, NASA hopes to
continue to inspire the next generation of explorers, while sharing the
tremendous archives of imagery gathered during America's exploration of
space.
October, 2004, in Seattle, Washington. Travel, per diem, and cash awards
will be offered to students whose advanced concept descriptions are selected
for a poster presentation during the meeting. The due date for proposals is no
later than September 1, 2004. Full proposal procedures and additional
information
are
available
at
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/students/NSVFP_Call_9-1-04.pdf.
For information about this request for proposals on the Internet, visit
http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/cgi- bin/eps/bizops.cgi?gr=D&pin=04#109967
or
http://www1.eps.gov/spg/NASA/HQ/OPHQDC/06%2D04%2D2004%2DHB
D/listing.html.
On behalf of Professor Anatolii Grigoriev, Head of the Institute for
Biomedical Problems and Professor Vsevolod Tkachuk, Dean of the Faculty
of Medicine, Lomonosov Moscow State University, I would like to inform
you about The Fourth International Summer School, "Space Biology and
Medicine" to be held in Moscow, Russia, June 21 - July 04, 2004. I would
like to invite your colleagues and students to participate in the School. All the
details are available at our web site, http://www.cep.ru.
For information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet, visit
http://www.nasa.gov.
Contacts:
Doc Mirelson/Sonja Alexander
NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC
Phone: 202-358-1600/1761
SPACE BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE SUMMER SCHOOL
By Tom Scott
26 April 2004
NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ASTROBIOLOGY INDEX
By David J. Thomas
http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/
27 April 2004
NIAC CALL FOR PROPOSALS
By Robert Cassanova
NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts release
SETI articles
http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles4.html
23 April 2004
Astrobiology Magazine, 2004. How advanced could they be? The physics of
extra-terrestrial civilizations. Astrobiology Magazine.
This release of the NIAC Phase I Call for Proposals, CP 04-01, is a
continuation of the process to identify and nurture revolutionary advanced
concepts that may have a significant impact on the future of aeronautics and
space. I invite you to respond with innovative and technically credible
advanced concepts that will initiate a paradigm shift and redefine the possible
in aeronautics and space. The NIAC is particularly interested in receiving
proposals for innovative and visionary concepts that could make significant
leaps beyond current plans and programs for aerospace endeavors and be
supportive of the recently announced NASA goals for human and robotic
exploration of the solar system.
Astrobiology Magazine, 2004.
Magazine.
NIAC hosted the NIAC Phase I Fellows Meeting and Workshop on March 2324, 2004 in Arlington, Virginia. The purpose of the meeting was to offer an
opportunity for the currently funded, Phase I Fellows and NIAC Student
Fellows to present the results of their concept development efforts and to
explore additional emerging technologies and concepts. In addition, invited
keynote speakers gave inspiring overviews of emerging technologies and
updates on major space exploration programs. The presentations of all of the
speakers will be available soon on the NIAC web site. You may find it
helpful to review these Phase I Fellows presentations to gather a perspective
of the concepts that NIAC has recently funded. Descriptions of other
previously funded concepts are also available on the NIAC web site by
clicking on the button, "Funded Studies" on the NIAC homepage.
J. U. Adams, 2004. On the fringes of life. The Scientist, 18(7):25.
Many of you in the technical community are familiar with previous NIAC
Calls for Proposals. You should especially note that there are some changes
in this Call and you should read the Call carefully. Please check the NIAC
web site periodically to receive any updates or additional guidance regarding
CP 04-01. Proposals are due no later than midnight June 7, 2004. Anticipated
contract start date is October 1, 2004.
Three tough questions.
D. Richards, 2004. Unlocking language in space and on Earth. Space.com.
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, 2004. Multinational team of scientists
finds early life in volcanic lava. SpaceDaily.
Evolution (biological, chemical and cosmological) articles
http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles5.html
R. R. Britt, 2004. New case for oldest life on Earth. Space.com.
H. Furnes, N. R. Banerjee, K. Muehlenbachs, H. Staudigel and M. de Wit,
2004. Early life recorded in Archean pillow lavas. Science, 304(5670):578581.
R. A. Kerr, 2004. New biomarker proposed for earliest life on Earth. Science,
304(5670):503.
G. Koch, 2004. Ancient pebbles provide new details about primeval
atmosphere. SpaceDaily.
University of Alberta, 2004. Lava life. Astrobiology Magazine.
Extrasolar planets articles
http://www.lyon.edu/projects/marsbugs/astrobiology/online_articles7.html
Additional information is available at http://www.niac.usra.edu/.
Astrobiology Magazine, 2004.
Magazine.
NIAC STUDENT VISIONS OF THE FUTURE PROGRAM
By Robert Cassanova
NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts release
CASSINI SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
NASA/JPL release
23 April 2004
The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is pleased to announce
another installment of the NIAC StudentVisions of the Future Program
(NSVFP). The NSVFP offers the opportunity for undergraduate students to
be selected for participation in the NIAC Annual Meeting to be held in
Astrobiology
Nearby planet nursery.
Astrobiology
15-21 April 2004
The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Wednesday, April 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
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
Position" web page located at http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=t7EurH10FXBO3BCLCXxIg.
13
Outreach team members attended Huygens public day at the European Space
Agency, where a presentation was given on Cassini to approximately 100
attendees. A new bookmark is now available through the Cassini Outreach
Office. Focused upon Cassini-Huygens' arrival at Saturn, copies are available
upon request for general distribution. Copies of the literacy bookmark were
included in JPL education materials sent to NASA CORE for inclusion in the
"extreme solar system" package. This package will be offered through the
NASA CORE catalog to educators across the US. The bookmarks announce
Cassini's literacy program and direct interested educators to the web site.
Cassini has sighted Prometheus and Pandora, the two F-ring-shepherding
moons whose unpredictable orbits both fascinate scientists and wreak havoc
on
the
F
ring.
For
more
information
link
to
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=fnLtQB2Ee99O3BCLCXxIg..IA05387.jpg&type=image.
Science activities on-board for cruise sequence C44 include repetitive blocks
of imaging with ride along instrument participation, Ultraviolet Imaging
Spectrograph scans of the Saturnian system and optical navigation (OPNAV)
images. The repeating imaging blocks will be used to develop Saturn
approach movies to study the planet's atmosphere and its temporal variations,
as well as search for new satellites, observe Titan, search for diffuse ring
material, and map atomic species within the system.
Additional on-board activities included a downlink of a confirmation that a
patch to fix the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) Instrument
Expanded Block (IEB) load buffer was successful. Also completed was the
uplink of commands to load the Solid State Recorder (SSR) with the new
ACS A8.6.7 flight software. The load process began on 19 April and
completed on 21 April. Readouts indicate that the load was successful.
The sequence development process for tour sequences S01 and S02 continued
this week. S01 has entered the Preliminary Sequence Integration and
Validation 2 (PSIV) development phase. A preliminary Sequence Change
Request (SCR) Approval Meeting was held to disposition thirty-two requests.
All participating teams delivered Spacecraft Activity Sequence Files back to
the file repository. An SCR Approval meeting was also held for S02. Six
requests were dispositioned. Both the Sub Sequence Generation (SSG)
Science Allocation Panel meeting and the SSG waiver meeting for S02 were
cancelled. There are no changes in Deep Space Network (DSN) tracking
times for S02. CIRS and Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS)
are still doing thermal analysis for the Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) critical
sequence and the SOI target working team science activities.
Science Operations Plan (SOP) Implementation for sequences S29 and S30
began this week. This is a two and a half month process to design, in
significant detail, the science and other spacecraft activities for the period
covering March 28, 2007 to June 11, 2007. Major science activities include
four targeted flybys of Titan, which will allow Cassini's cloud penetrating
RADAR to image Titan's surface. In one of the Titan flybys, the Cassini's
Radio Science instrument will also skip radio waves through the layers of
Titan's atmosphere to produce a density and temperature profile of Titan's
thick atmosphere.
Work on other sequences in the development pipeline continues.
Implementation of the Science Operations Plan (SOP) for S27 and S28 is at
the halfway point. The engineering team has submitted its review of the first
draft of the integrated plan. The rest of the flight team will now follow up on
any issues identified by the engineers.
In the last week, 496 Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) images and 36 Visual
and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) cubes were returned and
distributed, bringing the total of images acquired since the start of Approach
Science up to 3725, and the number of cubes up to 734. A delivery
coordination meeting was held for the Spacecraft Operations Office Maneuver
Automation Software (MAS) version 4.4, and the Mission Support and
Services Office Electronic Command Request Form (eCRF) version 1.3
Cassini has sighted Prometheus and Pandora, the two F-ring-shepherding
moons whose unpredictable orbits both fascinate scientists and wreak havoc
on the F ring. Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) is visible left
of center in the image, inside the F ring. Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles
across) appears above center, outside the ring. The dark shadow cast by the
planet stretches more than halfway across the A ring, the outermost main
ring. The mottled pattern appearing in the dark regions of the image is 'noise'
in the signal recorded by the camera system, which has subsequently been
magnified by the image processing. The F ring is a narrow, ribbon-like
structure, with a width seen in this geometry equivalent to a few kilometers.
The two small, irregularly shaped moons exert a gravitational influence on
particles that make up the F ring, confining it and possibly leading to the
formation of clumps, strands and other structures observed there. Pandora
prevents the F ring from spreading outward and Prometheus prevents it from
spreading inward. However, their interaction with the ring is complex and
not fully understood. The shepherds are also known to be responsible for
many of the observed structures in Saturn's A ring. Image credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA, manages the Cassini
mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
An additional article on this subject is available at
http://www.astrobio.net/news/article934.html.
Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 18, 27 April 2004
14
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 GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGES
NASA/JPL/MSSS release
15-21 April 2004
The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the
Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available.
19-23 April 2004
Mesa in Granicus Valles (Released 15 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=jGfjLKSCKOdO-3BCLCXxIg
Rampart Craters and Hematite (Released 19 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=PMG61iC8R6lO-3BCLCXxIg
Collapsed Subsurface Channel (Released 16 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=PmqqVB_C8yxO-3BCLCXxIg
Elysium Mons Crater (Released 20 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=41ZJ0SMqj2JO-3BCLCXxIg
Fretted Terrain Valley (Released 17 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=eAxq8HE-9lJO-3BCLCXxIg
Multinational Research in Memnonia Fossae (Released 21 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=36X8N82tAupO-3BCLCXxIg
North Mid-latitude Crater (Released 18 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=x4KlPkbHJp1O-3BCLCXxIg
Multinational Research in the Southern Hemisphere (Released 22 April
2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=Eft2mRVCGsFO-3BCLCXxIg
Dusty Collapse Pit (Released 19 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=JYMQ3Mbgc1hO-3BCLCXxIg
Gullies in Craters in Noachis Terra (Released 23 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=7dXCITRC8LlO-3BCLCXxIg
Buttes in Memnonia (Released 20 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=5Jdtz_Pb_tRO-3BCLCXxIg
All of the THEMIS images are archived at
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=dk7BawoZgTdO-3BCLCXxIg.
Pit Chain on Olympus (Released 21 April 2004)
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=JOngemS4VoxO-3BCLCXxIg
All of the Mars Global Surveyor images are
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=np7GGg2qimFO-3BCLCXxIg.
MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES
NASA/JPL/ASU release
archived
at
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
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.
End Marsbugs, Volume 11, Number 18.