Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology NewsletterVolume 11, Number 32, 17 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.

This false-color image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a dying star (center) surrounded by a cloud of glowing gas and dust. Thanks to Spitzer's dust-piercing infrared eyes, the new image also highlights a never-before-seen feature—a giant ring of material (red) slightly offset from the cloud's core. This clumpy ring consists of material that was expelled from the aging star. The star and its cloud halo constitute a "planetary nebula" called NGC 246. When a star like our own Sun begins to run out of fuel, its core shrinks and heats up, boiling off the star's outer layers. Leftover material shoots outward, expanding in shells around the star. This ejected material is then bombarded with ultraviolet light from the central star's fiery surface, producing huge, glowing clouds—planetary nebulae—that look like giant jellyfish in space. In this image, the expelled gases appear green, and the ring of expelled material appears red. Astronomers believe the ring is likely made of hydrogen molecules that were ejected from the star in the form of atoms, and then cooled to make hydrogen pairs. The new data will help explain how planetary nebulas take shape, and how they nourish future generations of stars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CfA [http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA06755_modest.jpg].

Articles and News

Page 2 OZONE LOSS CAUSED GENETIC MUTATIONS AT TIME OF MASS EXTINCTIONOpen University release 4882

Page 2 SCIENCE MORE CREATIVE AND LESS "TRUE" THAN MANY BELIEVE, EDUCATOR SAYSBy Craig Chamberlain

Page 3 PLANET SURVEY: KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOORBy Rosmary Sullivant

Page 4 CANADIAN PRIVATE SPACE RACE CONTENDER NAMES LAUNCH DATEFrom Agence France-Presse

Page 4 SPACE-RACE ROCKET BLOWS UPBy Alan Boyle

Page 4 ARMADILLO AEROSPACE'S X PRIZE PROTOTYPE CRASHES By Leonard David

Page 4 PLURALITY OF WORLDS—FROM THE OLYMPICS TO TODAYFrom Astrobiology Magazine

Page 6 WATER ON MARS ELUSIVE, SAYS TEXAS A&M RESEARCHERTexas A&M University release

Page 6 LIFE HAS EVOLVED TO EVOLVERice University release

Page 7 SATURN'S MOON TITAN: PREBIOTIC LABORATORY (INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN LUNINE)By Henry Bortman

Page 7 UNDERSEA HABITAT BECOMES EXPERIMENTAL HOSPITAL FOR NEEMO 7NASA release 2004-264

Page 8 TECHNOLOGY ALREADY EXISTS TO STABILIZE GLOBAL WARMING: ANALYSIS SHOWS HOW TO CONTROL CARBON EMISSIONS FOR 50 YEARS

Princeton University release

Page 9 SHARPEST IMAGE EVER OBTAINED OF A CIRCUMSTELLAR DISK REVEALS SIGNS OF YOUNG PLANETSUniversity of Hawaii release

Page 10 RUSSIAN ALIEN SPACESHIP CLAIMS RAISE EYEBROWS, SKEPTICISM By Robert Roy Britt

Page 10 E-MAILS ILLUSTRATE FINE LINE BETWEEN THE BRILLIANT AND THE BIZARREBy Seth Shostak

Page 11 SCIENTISTS DISCOVER GANYMEDE HAS A LUMPY INTERIORNASA/JPL release 2004-200

Page 11 VENUS: HOTHOUSE PLANET (INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GRINSPOON)By Henry Bortman

Page 13 SUN-LIKE SOLAR SYSTEMS UNDETECTEDBy Brad Amburn

Announcements

Page 13 VETERAN ASTRONAUT TO ADDRESS MARS SOCIETY CONVENTIONMars Society release

Mission Reports

Page 13 CASSINI-HUYGENS UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

Page 15 MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

Page 16 MARS EXPRESS UPDATESESA releases

Page 17 MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGESNASA/JPL/MSSS release

Page 18 MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES

Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 32, 17 August 2004

NASA/JPL/ASU release Page 18 MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER MISSION STATUSNASA/JPL release 2004-196

OZONE LOSS CAUSED GENETIC MUTATIONS AT TIME OF MASS EXTINCTIONOpen University release 4882

26 July 2004

Research into the world's worst mass extinction, which led to the loss of 90 per cent of living species 250 million years ago, has found that the historical tragedy also involved some disturbing genetics mutations. The Open University's Dr. Mark Sephton, who was part of an international team of scientists from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom who uncovered the remarkable new information, said, "The mother of all mass extinction just got worse". The findings are to appear in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) magazine, published today.

"In our work we have found that at the time of the end-Permian extinction increased amounts of ultraviolet light filtered through the Earth's surface and caused damage to the DNA in plant spores. The results were abnormalities that prevented plant life from reproducing and a consequent collapse of terrestrial ecosystems," says Dr. Sephton. "The cause of the increased intensity of ultraviolet light was a disruption in the Earth's ozone shield. Massive volcanic activity that was taking place in Siberia at this time forced chlorine and bromine containing gases into the stratosphere where they catalytically destroyed ultraviolet-absorbing ozone gases. It was only when volcanic activity subsided, that life on earth could begin to recover from its biggest ever catastrophe."

Dr. Sephton believes the results heed an important warning for today's society: "We are bringing the effect of human activity on ozone depletion under control but the end-Permian example shows us that natural volcanic activity can cancel out all our good efforts".

Contact:Gabi NobisOpen University Media Relations OfficerPhone: 01908 655026E-mail: g.nobis@open.ac.uk

Read the original news release at http://www3.open.ac.uk/events/8/2004727_36728_nr.doc.

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

SCIENCE MORE CREATIVE AND LESS "TRUE" THAN MANY BELIEVE, EDUCATOR SAYSBy Craig ChamberlainUniversity of Illinois release

2 August 2004

Science is not just evidence, but intuition. It is not just procedures, but creativity. Its conclusions are not set in stone, but ever-changing and open to question as part of a dynamic social enterprise. Yet the predominant view in schools and among the general public is that science is completely rational, objective, procedural, authoritative and free of cultural influence—a prescribed and trusted means for finding "the truth," says Fouad Abd-El-Khalick (FOO-ahd OBD-ell HOLL-ick), an education professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

It's a view of science that often warps science-related public policy discussions; probably discourages many talented and creative students, especially girls, from the study of science, and causes many to distrust science completely when research claims conflict, Abd-El-Khalick said. For those reasons and others, it is a view that he and other science education reformers are working to change.

"We need an approach to teaching science that is more authentic to (the) nature of science, to what science really is," he said. (Abd-El-Khalick avoids using "the" in front of the phrase because the exact nature of science is something that continues to be debated.)

To illustrate his point, he noted the ever-changing nature of health claims. "How many times have we heard that eggs are good for you in one decade, and the next decade, eggs are not good for you, and back again?" Abd-El-Khalick said. Many react by asking, "If science is the truth, how come the scientists are changing on us?" They grow to distrust science itself, or think the scientists don't know what they're doing.

But that reaction is a consequence of a "culture of school science" in the United States and elsewhere that says science, properly practiced, will produce certainties. Yet "the examples are countless whereby scientific claims tend to change," he said.

Students and their teachers need to view science with more "tolerance for ambiguity," Abd-El-Khalick said. They need to develop an attitude of "committed relativism." That attitude, he said, accepts that "we do not know the truth, but at the same time, not everything goes. We can say we know certain things with certain reliability, but we do not say that these things will not change in the future."

The objective, authoritative view of the nature of science disfavors girls, Abd-El-Khalick said, because girls' learning styles tend to favor subjectivity, creativity, and collective endeavor, which allow them to feel empowered as participants in the process of creating knowledge. Scientific ideas taught in a competitive atmosphere and as the authoritative truth, only to be accepted, do not provide that sense of empowerment, he said.

"Advancing more authentic views of (the) nature of science as a historical, creative, passionate, and social endeavor aimed primarily at understanding and problem-solving... will help create classroom environments that are likely to encourage more girls to pursue science," he said.

Changing the views of students and teachers about the nature of science is a key theme in two key science education reform documents, "Science for All Americans," published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the "National Science Education Standards," published by the National Research Council.

Abd-El-Khalick has spent more than eight years studying how and when students' views about the nature of science are formed, and how they might be influenced to change. His research has involved students and teachers from elementary school through college, as well as pre-service teachers.

"One of the most interesting things we've found is that students' and teachers' views are not necessarily coherent. They're actually fragmented, they're fluid, they're changing," he said.

His research and that of others strongly suggests that just doing science will not significantly sway students' views about the nature of science, he said, though many teachers and researchers continue to believe otherwise. Courses on the history of science have been touted as a means for teaching students about the nature of science, but Abd-El-Khalick has found that they also have little influence on their own. He argues that courses must incorporate activities that encourage students to reflect on what specific observations, experiments or historical episodes have to teach about the nature of science. He has written a number of those activities himself.

His more recent research is looking at children's conceptions of how we learn about the natural world, and how those conceptions change through the elementary, middle and high school years. A principal aim of this research into students' epistemological development—rarely done with other than college students and adults—is to learn when students begin moving away from right-and-wrong, black-and-white views of the world and knowledge. The point when that happens might be the point when students are more open to an authentic view about the nature of science.

The results are still preliminary, Abd-El-Khalick said, "but some really interesting things are coming out that show some changes might be happening in high school that we probably did not think were happening at that level."

Promoting a more-authentic view about the nature of science in our science-based culture is no small concern, Abd-El-Khalick said. "Our view of (the)

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nature of science has very significant implications for the way we teach science in schools, the way we talk about science in culture, the way we draw on science to make informed decisions about personal and societal science-related issues."

Contact:Craig ChamberlainPhone: 217-333-2894E-mail: cdchambe@uiuc.edu

Read the original news release at http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/0802science.html.

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

PLANET SURVEY: KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOORBy Rosmary SullivantNASA PlanetQuest release

2 August 2004

The Milky Way is a big, diverse neighborhood. And if you're hoping to find Earthlike planets that may harbor life, you'll need to figure out a way to narrow the search. The search for planets begins with stars, because the dusty discs around stars spawn young planets. Are stars of certain ages or in certain locations more likely to include planets like Earth within their realms? What about binary stars? Are they good places to look?

Artist's concept of the Space Interferometry (SIM) mission. Image credit: NASA.

The Extrasolar Planet Interferometric Survey aims to help answer those questions. A project of NASA's Space Interferometry Mission, planned for launch in 2009, the survey will look closely at a hundred nearby stars and more broadly at several thousand distant stars to see if they have planets and if there are Earthlike planets among them.

"The result will be an inventory of planetary systems in different environments," said the survey's principal investigator, Dr. Michael Shao of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.

The survey will take advantage of Space Interferometry Mission's ability to measure the positions and distances of stars outside own solar system much more precisely than ever before. It will also be able to detect planets orbiting distant stars indirectly by measuring the change in a star's position, called an astrometric wobble, caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet. The mission will provide enough information about these faraway planets to determine which might be similar to Earth in mass and temperature.

The search is on

For the first part of their survey, Shao and his colleagues will make multiple observations of about 100 nearby stars. Since another Space Interferometry Mission team, headed by Dr. Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley, will also be studying nearby stars in a different study, the researchers held a "draft pick" of the closest 200 stars.

"It turned out that we had slightly different criteria," Shao said. "Our team slightly favors luminous stars, because we're interested in stars where if there were Earthlike planets in the habitable zone, they would be easiest to detect." The habitable zone is that fortunate spot that Earth occupies in relation to the Sun—close enough to be warm but not so far away that it is cold. "More luminous stars have a habitable zone further away from the star resulting in a larger astrometric wobble," he said.

For the second part of the survey, Shao's team will observe more than 2,000 stars of different types and different ages. They're also choosing stars in different locations in the galaxy, some in the Milky Way's spiral arms, between the arms, and outside the galaxy's disc.

"We want to know what types of stars are likely to produce planets, no planets, or multiple planet systems," Shao said. "Some stars are young and hot. Are they too young to have planets formed? We don't know enough yet about the planet formation process."

The survey team will use the Space Interferometry Mission's ability to study planets' orbits as well. "Multiple planet systems can get tricky. When you have two big Jupiter-like planets and they're not in the right orbit, they could perturb each other so much that one gets thrown out of the solar system. It can be a violent system for millions of years. We want to be able to figure out where orbits are stable," Shao said.

Orbital shape matters, too. "Planets in our solar system have circular obits, but the vast majority of planets found outside our solar system have elliptical orbits," Shao said. "They may be very cold when far from the Sun and very hot when close to Sun. We're much more likely to find life where the temperature is more uniform."

Shao's survey will help pave the way for the planned Terrestrial Planet Finder Mission, which will be able to observe planets outside of our solar system directly for the first time ever. The mission is planned for a 2014 launch.

"We'll help create a target list for the Terrestrial Planet Finder in its quest to find habitable planets," Shao said. "We'll be able to suggest where to look, and because we'll be able to determine a planet's orbit, we'll know also know when to look—when the planet will be most detectable."

Read the original news release at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/news/planetSurvey.html.

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

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CANADIAN PRIVATE SPACE RACE CONTENDER NAMES LAUNCH DATEFrom Agence France-Presse

5 August 2004

A Canadian entry in a private space race chasing a 10 million dollar prize designed to spur private sub-orbital flight named a launch date Thursday for its sleek but sinister black rocket Wild Fire. The Toronto-based da Vinci project is seen as top challenger to US-based SpaceShipOne which in June became the first privately-financed manned flight into space. Canadian astronaut Brian Feeney plans to blast off from a remote launch site in central Saskatchewan province on October 2, days after SpaceShipOne is due to make its own bid for the X Prize.

Read the full article at http://www.spacedaily.com/2004/040805215635.6hsuznai.html.

SPACE-RACE ROCKET BLOWS UPBy Alan BoyleFrom MSNBC

9 August 2004

A spaceship built on a shoestring budget went up—and down—in flames during its maiden flight on Sunday. But no one got hurt, and the young rocket engineers behind the Rubicon 1 rocket said they were staying in the private-sector space race despite the setback. After months of smaller-scale tests and computer modeling, Space Transport Corp. launched the Rubicon for the first time from a privately owned plot of forest just south of Olympic National Park, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The company was founded two years ago by engineers Phillip Storm and Eric Meier, both 26, to go after the $10 million Ansari X Prize for suborbital space travel. With Sunday's failure, the X Prize now seems out of reach—but Space Transport's partners are still hoping to cash in on a future wave of space tourism.

Read the full article at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5642831/.

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/09/bc.privaterocket.ap/index.htmlhttp://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spacetransport_crash_040809.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/2004/040809211451.2kp6gfaq.html

ARMADILLO AEROSPACE'S X PRIZE PROTOTYPE CRASHES By Leonard DavidFrom Space.com

10 August 2004

Armadillo Aerospace of Mesquite, Texas has reported a crash last weekend of their prototype X Prize rocket. The launch took place in a 100 acre test site, with high expectations of seeing another successful boosted hop. The vehicle had been operating perfectly on all tests prior to the mishap. The unpiloted vehicle shot up to nearly 600 feet in an August 7 test, but then ran out of fuel, crashing to the ground. Telemetry from the vehicle was received from the rocket all the way to the time of impact, not too distant from its takeoff point.

"The vehicle hit the ground basically sideways, a little tail first," reported John Carmack, leader of the group. He is co-founder and chief technical engineer of id Software, responsible for the highly successful Doom computer game, among others.

"$35,000 of rocket is now a whole lot of primo Armadillo Droppings," Carmack reported on their web site. "It's a good thing Doom 3 is selling very well," he added.

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/armadillo_crash_040810.html.

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

PLURALITY OF WORLDS—FROM THE OLYMPICS TO TODAYFrom Astrobiology Magazine

10 August 2004

"As in the daytime there is no star in the sky warmer and brighter than the sun, likewise there is no competition greater than the Olympic Games". —Pindar, Greek lyric poet, 5th century BC

The Summer Olympics in Athens began Friday. More than two thousand years ago (776 BC), the first Olympic Games were held in Greece. When the Modern Games were revived in 1896, founder Pierre de Coubertin again chose Athens as the host city. In 2004, the games returned to their birthplace for only the third time (the 28th Olympiad) and the event offers a chance to memorialize the beginnings of a self-conscious Greek view of its place not only in the world, but in the universe. The Greek aesthetic took the worldview that humans are the measure of all things, thus creating Western civilization, but this bias may have muddied a question of other worlds, where humans are off the scale.

As an unbroken chain linking the plurality of countries, the trademark interlocking five rings of the modern Olympic movement represents the five continents. By the same token, a similar chain of thought stretches back to the first Olympics, two millenia ago, when Greek thinkers speculated about a plurality of worlds.

While few would question the existence of the many flags and countries that the Olympics rings encircle, there has been considerable contention surrounding a less earth-centered competition. Philosophers were the first natural scientists: Aristotle, Democritus, Epicurus and Pythagorus. Their debates were fiercesome, like athletic contests of philosophy.

Flagging the many philosophies

Locked in conflict were the many schools of thought, some like the Epicureans claiming the Earth was not the only planet occupied by life forms and others like the followers of Aristotle and Plato who argued that "if creation was a composite, it would be subject to dissolution and decay."

The writings of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) present an array of arguments against astrobiology and the modern picture of innumerable, Earth-like worlds. Foremost because our solar system's motions were directed by a Prime Mover on the outskirts of the farthest planet—at that time, Saturn—then multiple solar systems would require multiple Prime Movers—an idea that Aristotle rejected as philosophically and religiously unacceptable.

Aristotle's position did not go unchallenged. Like a battle of Olympic philosophers, the Epicureans and Pythogoreans all had their chance to enter the ring. Concerning the structure and evolution of the universe, the most influential Epicurean proponent was the Roman poet Lucretius (99-55 B.C.) who asserted: "Granted, then, that empty space extends without limit in every direction and that seeds innumerable are rushing on countless courses through an unfathomable universe... it is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created and that all those particles are accomplishing nothing."

This point of view was given new relief when the fifteenth century scientists, particularly Isaac Newton, rediscovered Lucretius's poem and the Epicureans' world-view. Their response was to formulate the laws of physics by explicitly stating a defining reference frame. Motion was defined from a central axis that itself can move. Echoing Lucretius, this same sentiment was revisited in the popular imagination in the film, Contact, based on Carl Sagan's novel, when the astronomer, Dr. Ellie Arroway, repeats the Epicurean question, "Do you think there's people on other planets?" To this question, Arroway's father,

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Ted, replies, "I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space."

HD 28185 b is the first exoplanet discovered with a circular orbit within its star's habitable zone. Astrobiology: the study of how life begins and evolves—that is, where did we come from? Does life exist elsewhere in the universe; are we alone? And, what is life's future on Earth and beyond; where are we going in space? Image credit: STScI Digitized Sky Survey.

The Epicureans did not have a simple view of these other worlds. Plurality of worlds can mean many planets—or a succession of one planet over time. In Greek astronomy, the sky was a vault. A dome surrounded the farthest known planet in our solar system. The Epicurean worlds were plural, but these separate systems were unseen by humans. So stars, suns and planets could exist as conglomerates within the uncuttable atoms. As Metrodorus of Chios, a contemporary of Epicurus and his leading disciple, put it, "It would be strange if an ear of corn grew in a large plain or were there only one world in the infinite. And that worlds are infinite in number follows from the causes [i.e., atoms] being infinite."

Even more radical views from antiquity were expressed by the Pythagoreans, such as speculation that our moon is currently inhabited: "the moon is terraneous, is inhabited as our earth is, and contains animals of a larger size and plants of a rarer beauty than our globe affords. The animals in their virtue and energy are fifteen degrees superior to ours, emit nothing excrementitious and the days are fifteen times longer."

The Pythagorean speculators were notable not only for their quantitative flavor (the lunar animals as fifteen percent but not twenty percent superior?). More revolutionary even today, the Pythagoreans concluded that Earth might not offer the best place for humans to live. Not to be satisfied with only speculation and hypothesis, Lucian of Samosata (120-200 A.D.) composed two fictional moon voyages to do what today might be called, "the astrobiological hardwork" of looking and testing.

Competing and the "no fear" advantage

Underlying this debate may be implicit a fear of earthly neglect if other worlds are found. The Epicureans fundamentally rejected this notion with their theme, "freedom from fear". As science-fiction writer, Ben Bova, described, "Shock and awe, at first, among the general population [will greet an announcement of life elsewhere]. 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."

Western scholars would later reject the debater's points—whether the succession of worlds from the Stoics, the multi-world view of the Epicureans or the habitable moon theory of the Pythagoreans. The philosophers of the Middle Ages did however acknowledge a central place for the question itself: does life exist elsewhere?

Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) crafted one of the first statements that could easily be recognizable on an astrobiology roadmap today: "Since one of the many wondrous and noble questions in Nature is whether there is one world or many... it seems desirable for us to inquire about it."

While most of Aristotle's intellectual descendants cut short the debate, the famous Oxford-educated, Franciscan, William of Ockham (1280-1347), argued the same question: could the First Cause create multiple worlds? To answer, Ockham relativized Aristotle's antipluralism, since the notion of natural place between earth, air, fire and water could translate their elemental properties to a different natural place at different locales. In other words, just as trees and wood can rise in water (in violation of strict natural place), different planets might not provide the same relation between heavenly air and fire or terrestrial soil and water. Even if Aristotle might have described Terra Firma, he still could consistently be generalized to Extra-terra Firma. This logic trick satisfied Ockham's razor, the law of parsimony, because it was a simple explanation.

Just as a rich, two millennia tradition underpins the gathering of many nations under the Olympian five rings, today's view of the universe has aggregated a consensus around the many world view of our universe. The debate is governed more by statistics than philosophy, with echoes of Metrodorus' poetry ("it would be strange" to imagine just one world). But one cannot discount the debate itself, since the same competition is open today about whether multiple universes, or multi-verses, might or might not be possible. Just like the Greeks, such modern scientific forums debate the boundaries to, well, everything.

Statistics trumping philosophy?

Ockham's razor offers an ironic twist on this debate. Ockham's rule in science and philosophy is often cited in defense of multi-worlds. But the rule technically states that entities should not be multiplied needlessly. This definition sounds like Aristotle: the Prime Mover is not otherwise occupied by attention to other habitable planets. We as the one are alone. In the more modern parsimony, however, the philosophical razor is sought to cut between competing theories, where the simplest explanation wins. Simplest in this case means requiring the fewest presuppositions or assumptions. The race is won along the shortest foot path.

The statistical argument for life elsewhere may trump philosophical purity. Image credit:NASA/STScI/ESA.

As CUNY Professor, Michio Kaku, noted, for the first time in history, experiments may offer the shortest path to resolution. The scientific method can settle this two millennia-long debate: "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."

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If other worlds are the central laboratory for astrobiology—or the selected site for a new scientific Olympics among researchers—then its interlocking five rings represent the needed elements for life itself: one ring each for water, air, soil and temperate fire—all held together by enough time for biology to take hold. That combination would indeed be the Olympic moment.

Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1129.html.

WATER ON MARS ELUSIVE, SAYS TEXAS A&M RESEARCHERTexas A&M University release

10 August 2004

Suspected large lakebeds that once were scattered on the planet Mars have not yet been found, say the research team that operated the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Their work appears in the current issue of Science magazine. Members of the team have written several articles in the magazine, among them "The Spirit Rover's Athena Science Investigation at Gusev Crater" that deals with the search for water on the red planet, and "Pancam Multispectral Imaging Results from the Spirit Rover at Gusev Crater" that focuses on camera images taken by the rovers as they slowly traversed Mars' surface. Texas A&M University research Mark Lemmon, a member of the Mars rover team and professor in the College of Geosciences, is one of the co-authors of the two articles.

Two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on Mars in January on different areas of the planet to perform a variety of scientific work and experiments. One of the key goals of the $820 million NASA mission was to locate the presence of large quantities of water on Mars, which scientists believed were once there—mainly in the form of large lakes and perhaps even small seas. Only the results of the Spirit rover are detailed in the articles, with information about Opportunity to be published in a future issue. Although the rovers uncovered the presence of small amounts of water in rock samples, no large lakebeds have yet to be found, Lemmon says.

"We wanted to explore two specific sites on Mars that we thought were once large areas of water," Lemmon explains. "We selected Gusev Crater for Spirit to roam through because it appeared to have once contained a lake. But so far, we have uncovered no evidence of such a lake or any other large body of water. We did find fairly recent evidence of lava flows, and it appears many of the rocks on Mars are from volcanic eruptions. We have found non-volcanic rocks with Opportunity and may yet do so with Spirit," Lemmon notes. "If large bodies of water were on Mars, they may be buried very deep under the surface, too deep for the rovers to locate such possible water sites."

"NASA had a slogan, 'Follow the water,' meaning we should try to learn whatever we could about water on Mars," Lemmon adds. "If there were ever large amounts of water on Mars, that means there could be life there, and that's always been the big question."

Lemmon says the team did learn that martian dust is everywhere on the planet. "The dust is so thick it coats everything, including our equipment on the rovers, so thick it clogged up solar panels we used to power some of the machinery on the rovers," he added. Lemmon says the photographs taken by the rovers were spectacular, both in their clarity and the quality of the images.

"We got some wide panoramic shots that have never been taken before," he notes. "The rovers also got photos of martian landscape that were extremely useful to us. We got some shots of small hills that were very sharp." Some 3-D photos were also taken, which proved to be very informative, Lemmon added.

Lemmon says Spirit and Opportunity are still active on Mars, but they will soon be entering a hibernation stage because of limited sunlight. The rovers rely on solar energy for much of their power, and a sol—a martian day—now has less and less sunlight. "We'll slow things down from now through October," he explains. "After that, we'll have more sunlight to do some other things."

Contact: Mark Lemmon Phone: 979-458-8098Cell: 979-777-2831

Read the original news release at http://rev.tamu.edu/stories/04/081004-6.html.

An additional article on this subject is available at http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-04e-html.html.

LIFE HAS EVOLVED TO EVOLVERice University release

10 August 2004

Not only has life evolved, but life has evolved to evolve. That's the conclusion drawn by two Rice University scientists who have designed a computer simulation to test the idea that evolvability—the likelihood of genetic mutation—is a trait that can itself be favored or disfavored through the process of natural selection. The research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, and the results of the study appear in the August 10 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers Michael Deem, the John W. Cox Professor of Bioengineering and professor of physics and astronomy, and David Earl, Deem's post-doctoral research fellow, drew their conclusions from a sophisticated computer simulation that recorded how much and how rapidly proteins mutated based on external changes in their environment. As the researchers ramped up the frequency and severity of environmental changes—imagine rapid shifts between heat waves and cold snaps or heavy rains and droughts—they saw an increased likelihood of survival among proteins that mutated more frequently.

"Selection for evolvability would help explain a growing body of experimental results including the evolution of drug resistance in bacteria, the fact that some immune system cells mutate much more rapidly than other cells in our bodies, as well as why some bacteria and higher-order organisms have a tendency to transpose or swap relatively long sequences of DNA," said Deem.

Traditionally, a significant number of evolutionary biologists have discounted the idea that evolvability is subject to natural selection, in part because the idea that evolution acts upon the mechanism that causes evolution seems to violate the basic scientific principle that an event cannot precede its own cause. But Deem and Earl argue that causal violations need not occur. For one thing, there are several different ways that genetic mutations occur. Random changes along the DNA chain are now understood to be only one way that organisms evolve. Mutations also occur based on genetic recombination, genetic transposition and horizontal gene transfer. With these mechanisms, relatively large chunks of genetic code are shuffled or substituted for one another along the DNA chain. Deem and Earl's argument centers on the idea that the ability to reorder genes or to cause large-scale genetic change are themselves genetic traits, traits that are subject to selection like any others.

The upshot of this is that many observations within evolutionary biology that were heretofore considered evolutionary happenstance or accidents, may in fact be explained by selection for evolvability. Two primary examples of this can be found in the escalating "arms race" that has been documented between pathogens and the immune systems in people and other higher-order vertebrates. Deem and Earl argue that wide variation among bacteria and other antigens has put selective pressure on our immune systems to rapidly adapt methods of identifying and attacking invaders. Similar observations on the rapid mutability among flu viruses and other invading pathogens provide additional evidence, they said.

"The implication is that the drugs we have developed to fight invading pathogens also confer selective pressure on the evolvability of the pathogens themselves," Earl said. "In drug design, it is important to consider this and to look for ways to minimize or counteract this driving force for drug resistance."

Contact:Jade BoydPhone: 713-348-6778E-mail: jadeboyd@rice.edu

Read the original news release at http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=4870&SnID=388101158.

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

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SATURN'S MOON TITAN: PREBIOTIC LABORATORY (INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN LUNINE)By Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine

11 August 2004

Titan is the only moon in our solar system with an atmosphere, and it is the organic chemistry that has been detected in that atmosphere that has sparked the imagination of planetary scientists like Lunine. In January 2005, the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Huygens Probe will descend through Titan's atmosphere, sending back a detailed picture of the chemical interactions taking place there and, hopefully, giving scientists a glimpse into the chemistry that took place on Earth before life took hold. Huygens is part of the Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its rings and moons. Lunine is the only U.S. scientist selected by the ESA to participate in the three-member Huygens probe interdisciplinary science team.

Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Titan's been described as a potential pre-biology laboratory, if you will, a place to study what chemistry on Earth might have been like before life took hold. There's no way on Earth now, even by looking at ancient rocks, to see that prebiotic history. What makes us think that what we'll see on Titan is going to tell us anything about early Earth, given that the two worlds are so far apart in the solar system?

Jonathan Lunine (JL): It's kind of the best of the worst, I suppose. Suppose you want to go see a particular rock concert, but the tickets are sold out, so you just can't. You could go home and do nothing, or you could try to find the next best thing, which might not be a very good reproduction of the rock concert you wanted to see, but it's better than staying at home. And I think that's the case with Titan.

On the positive side, Titan has a nitrogen atmosphere, which the Earth does, and probably did before life. Titan has organics that are almost certainly supplied in the absence of life, and that's an important ingredient. And it's not terribly hydrogen-rich. And to some extent, people are thinking that that's kind of what the early Earth was like. Not with the same ingredients, because the Earth probably had a lot of CO2 and Titan does not, but the same kind of chemical balance. And so in that way, it's an analog.

It's much better than Mars, because Mars has such a thin CO2 atmosphere that there are no organics. It's much better than Venus: lots of CO 2 there, but temperatures are so high that you can't do organic chemistry. And much better than the Earth, in the sense that the organic chemistry going on the Earth is completely dominated by life today, so there's no opportunity to see a planet-wide, long-term, geologic-time experiment in organic chemistry, which we can see on Titan.

Near Christmas 2004, the Huygens probe will descend into Titan's atmosphere, and possibly land on its surface. Image credit: JPL/Space Science Institute.

So by process of elimination, that's the place in our solar system where we're going to see those interesting reactions—if we can see them at all. And so we'll find out from Cassini and Huygens whether those conditions really have produced a lot of organic deposits on the surface, some of which might be doing that kind of interesting prebiotic chemistry that we'd like to see. The chance of studying that chemistry in detail with Huygens is very small: we'd have to land in the right place. But with Cassini, we can at least map the surface, see if there are lots of organics, identify those places where those organics might look different spectroscopically and plan to go back. That's a really long-term goal.

AM: You mentioned organics on the surface. Would there be any evidence of that in the atmosphere as well?

JL: Well, the atmosphere is supplying the organics that are on the surface. Hydrocarbons and nitriles are generated in the atmosphere by photochemistry. The question is: what happens to that stuff on the surface? The atmosphere is so oxygen-poor that there's not the opportunity to make amino acids in the atmosphere to any significant extent. But what's exciting is that if you dump the stuff on the surface and then, from time to time, an impact or some kind of ice volcanism event provides liquid water, which then comes in contact with these organics, for thousands of years, perhaps, until the water freezes. And those are places where further organic chemistry might have taken these deposits toward amino acids, toward purines and pyrimidines maybe, towards sugars—we're just not sure.

So the first question we ask of Cassini is: are there organic deposits on the surface, manufactured from the atmosphere? Question two is: are they different in some way, correlated in some way with their position on the surface; different in craters versus in areas that have apparently had geologic activity? And if the answer to that question is, yeah, there are some differences, then those become attractive targets for follow-on missions.

AM: What if there was some kind of life on Titan, though? What if, somehow, in this intensely cold environment, some series of chemical reactions that led to self-replicating molecules had occurred, and let's say that that process had left a carbon-isotopic signature indicative of life, the way biology does on Earth. Could Huygens detect that?

JL: Huygens is not really good at determining isotopes. It can do some carbon isotopes. And so, if there's a process that has led to a very exotic isotopic distribution in carbon and nitrogen (which Huygens can also do), that might raise a question mark. In fact, Dirk Shulze-Makuch has actually argued that you can interpret the isotopic data that we see on Titan from the Earth as being the result of a biological process. There's no independent test you can do to verify whether that's true. So I think it's going to be hard to tell with Huygens.

On the other hand, if we see big differences in organic composition, which might be revealed spectroscopically, between here and there, then something interesting is going on and we'd like to go back and look at that. If Huygens is lucky enough to land in a hydrocarbon pool and there's some interesting structure of some kind, then that might raise a question mark. Some organic chemists have argued that it might be possible to do a form of life in hydrocarbon liquids without water. Steve Benner has talked about that. No one has quite shown how that would all work, but you can't show that it wouldn't work, either. I certainly would not rule that out, although I find it unlikely. But that would sure be a nice thing to be wrong about, because that would be a tremendous discovery.

AM: What is the most exciting result from this mission, with respect to Titan, that you can imagine?

JL: If either the imaging or VIMS system on the orbiter, or the Huygens probe while descending, takes images of liquid-filled crater basins. That, to me, would be very, very exciting, because that would sort of bring together all of the aspects of the chemistry. It would demonstrate that there's a source and a sink on the surface, that chemistry's been going on for a long time, and so it would really tie the story together. Finding life somewhere is the most interesting thing you can do anywhere, but in terms of the most immediate likely result that Cassini-Huygens could get, that would be the most exciting.

Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1130.html.

UNDERSEA HABITAT BECOMES EXPERIMENTAL HOSPITAL FOR NEEMO 7NASA release 2004-264

11 August 2004

The days of doctors making house calls may seem like ancient history for most patients in North America, but in October, three astronauts and a Canadian doctor will test the latest concepts in long-distance house calls using a unique underwater laboratory. The ability to conduct long-distance health care such as telemonitoring and telerobotic surgery could be key to maintaining the wellness of future spacefarers and responding to medical emergencies on the International Space Station, the moon or Mars. Techniques will be tested on a simulated patient during the upcoming seventh mission of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) project. Canadian Astronaut Dave Williams will lead a crew on the 10-day

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undersea mission October 11-20 aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Aquarius Underwater Laboratory, located off the coast of Key Largo, FL.

"Astronauts navigating between planets won't be able to turn around and come home when someone gets sick, and this undersea mission will help chart a course for long-distance healing," said NEEMO Project Manager Bill Todd. "Aquarius, with its physical and psychological isolation on the floor of the Atlantic, will provide the real stresses needed to validate telemedicine in an extreme environment," he added

NASA Astronauts Mike Barratt and Cady Coleman, as well as Dr. Craig McKinley of the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, Ontario, will join Williams in the experiment. Williams, Barratt, and McKinley are physicians. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Coleman holds a Ph.D. in engineering. Two other engineers, James Talacek and Ross Hein of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, will work side-by-side with the crew in Aquarius.

According to Dr. Mehran Anvari, director of the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery at St. Joseph's Healthcare, NEEMO 7 will demonstrate and evaluate innovative technologies and procedures for remote surgery. Anvari, who will be based in Hamilton during the mission, will use two-way telecommunication links to guide the aquanauts through diagnosis and surgery on a mock patient inside Aquarius. Another simulation will involve virtual reality control technology to guide telerobotic surgery on the mock patient.

Similar in size to the International Space Station's living quarters, Aquarius is the world's only permanent underwater habitat and research laboratory. The 45-foot long, 13-foot diameter complex is three miles off Key Largo in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. It rests about 62 feet beneath the surface. A buoy on the surface provides power, life support and communications capabilities for Aquarius. A shore-based mission control for the Aquarius laboratory in Florida and a control room at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), Houston, known as the Exploration Planning Operations Center, will monitor the crew's activities.

Aquarius is owned by NOAA, operated by University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and funded by NOAA's Undersea Research Program. The NEEMO missions are a cooperative project between NASA, NOAA and the University.

Reporters interested in interviewing the NEEMO 7 crewmembers during their mission should contact the JSC newsroom at 281-483-5111. For additional information about the NEEMO project on the Internet, visit http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/support/training/neemo/neemo7/. For additional information about Aquarius on the Internet, visit http://www.uncw.edu/aquarius/.

Contacts: Melissa Mathews NASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-1272

Kelly HumphriesNASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TXPhone: 281-483-5111

Nicole Gignac Canadian Space Agency, Montreal, QuebecPhone: 450-926-4423

Fred GorellNOAASilver Spring, MDPhone: 301-713-9444 x181

TECHNOLOGY ALREADY EXISTS TO STABILIZE GLOBAL WARMING: ANALYSIS SHOWS HOW TO CONTROL CARBON EMISSIONS FOR 50 YEARS Princeton University release

12 August 2004

Existing technologies could stop the escalation of global warming for 50 years and work on implementing them can begin immediately, according to an analysis by Princeton University scientists. The scientists identified 15 technologies—from wind, solar and nuclear energy to conservation techniques—that are ripe for large-scale use and showed that each could solve a significant portion of the problem. Their analysis, published in the August 13 issue of Science, indicates that many combinations of these 15 technologies could prevent global emissions of greenhouse gasses from rising for the next five decades. The finding counters the common argument that a major new technology needs to be developed before greenhouse gasses can be controlled, said professors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, who conducted the study.

"It certainly explodes the idea that we need to do research for a long time before getting started," said Pacala, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and co-director with Socolow of Princeton's Carbon Mitigation Initiative.

"If we decide to act, we will need to reduce carbon emissions across the whole global economy," said Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. "Fortunately, we have the tools to do this, especially if we think in terms of 50-year campaigns, not instant solutions."

Although the current study did not examine the costs of scaling up each of the 15 possible technologies, the authors point out that implementing the measures would likely generate economic benefits, including creating new industries, reducing the U.S. dependence on foreign oil and lessening the need for other pollution-control expenses associated with burning coal and other fossil fuels.

Carbon the culprit

The study focuses on the main contributor to greenhouse warming, carbon dioxide, which comes from burning carbon-based fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. Throughout Earth's history, changes in carbon dioxide levels have been linked to changes in climate. Current global emissions of carbon dioxide contain 7 billion tons of carbon per year. That amount is projected to double to 14 billion tons per year over the next 50 years as the world population increases and people consume more energy. To keep emissions stable, technologies and conservation efforts would have to prevent 7 billion tons worth of emissions per year by 2054.

Pacala and Socolow show how each of the 15 options they identified could prevent 1 billion tons a year worth of carbon emissions by 2054. To illustrate their idea, the researchers created a graph that divides the problem into seven 1 billion-ton-per-year "wedges" (see figures). In their paper and 51 pages of supplementary online material, they identify opportunities and difficulties associated with each option and compare alternative combinations of seven "wedges."

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Several of the options, for example, involve capturing carbon dioxide at power plants or other locations and storing it deep underground (carbon dioxide gas already is commonly injected into the Earth as part of some oil drilling operations). Others involve improving energy conservation faster than the modest improvements that are continually occurring. The researchers identify various renewable energy sources, including solar and wind, that could be scaled up faster than current projections. Changes in forestry and farming techniques also could lead to substantial reductions in carbon emissions.

Pacala and Socolow caution that scientists must continue researching alternative sources of energy because new measures will be required after 50 years. By that time, some of the 15 technologies will have reached their full potential and may not be able to keep up with increasing demand.

Case for action

Pacala and Socolow said that limiting carbon emissions to present-day levels for 50 years would put the world on a track to stabilize the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at about 500 parts per million. That would be roughly a doubling of the carbon dioxide content compared to the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million. If emissions are left unchecked, it would be difficult to stabilize below a tripling. The current concentration is about 375 parts per million.

The authors acknowledged that their analysis does not address the question of why it is necessary to act in the first place. "Ideally, scientists and economists would produce a rigorous analysis showing that the benefits of controlling greenhouse gases outweigh the risks of not doing so," said Pacala. "But the rigorous analysis is not going to be possible until the warming is upon us—or not, as the case may be," Pacala continued. "The alternative to acting now is to watch the experiment happen and then find out how accurate we were."

A strong case for action comes from three lines of evidence, said Pacala. First, investigations of the Earth's climate over the last million years show that various factors, such as changing carbon dioxide levels, tend to reinforce each other and cause the temperature "to switch all at once" as it has during previous ice ages, Pacala said. "We understand those feedback mechanisms somewhat, but not completely, and that is scary."

A second reason for concern comes from current observations of change, including warming temperatures and the melting of ancient ice in glaciers, said Pacala. Lastly, the computer models that explain past climate behavior and predict future changes indicate that increasing the level of carbon dioxide will cause long-term warming. "The models are not perfect but they are based on sound principles," Pacala said.

"You put it all together and you say, 'This looks dangerous.' And then when you find that we already have the technology to deal with it, we say, 'Why not?'" Pacala said.

"We'll have to spend real money," Socolow said, "but addressing the global carbon problem now will provide a tremendous stimulus to the economy and will promote the development of needed international institutions, while averting the most serious environmental consequences."

Pacala and Socolow's research is part of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, a project in the Princeton Environmental Institute funded by $20 million in grants from BP and Ford Motor Co. The researchers are continuing their work with more detailed analysis of the challenges and opportunities

associated with the technologies they identified and with further studies of the magnitude and urgency of the carbon and climate problem.

Contacts:Steven SchultzPhone: 609-258-5729E-mail: sschultz@princeton.edu

Roberta HotinskiPhone: 609-258-7523E-mail: hotinski@princeton.edu

Read the original news release at http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/04/q3/0812-carbon.htm.

SHARPEST IMAGE EVER OBTAINED OF A CIRCUMSTELLAR DISK REVEALS SIGNS OF YOUNG PLANETSUniversity of Hawaii release

12 August 2004

The sharpest image ever taken of a dust disk around another star has revealed structures in the disk which are signs of unseen planets. Dr. Michael Liu, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, has acquired high resolution images of the nearby star AU Microscopii (AU Mic) using the Keck Telescope, the world's largest infrared telescope. At a distance of only 33 light years, AU Mic is the nearest star possessing a visible disk of dust. Such disks are believed to be the birthplaces of planets. The results will be published in the August 12th online Science Express and in the September print edition of Science.

"We cannot yet directly image young planets around AU Mic, but they cannot completely hide from us either. They reveal themselves through their gravitational influence, forming patterns in the sea of dust grains orbiting the star," said Dr. Liu.

A dust disk ordinarily would appear relatively featureless and symmetric, because any disturbances would be smoothed out as the material orbits the star. However, this is not observed in the case of AU Mic. Instead, Dr. Liu has found its disk is uneven and possesses clumps. These structures arise and are maintained due to the gravitational influence of unseen planetary companions. The clumps in AU Mic's disk lie at separations of 25 to 40 Astronomical Units away from the central star (where one Astronomical Unit is the distance from the Earth to the Sun), or about 2 to 4 billion miles. In our own solar system, this corresponds to the regions where Neptune and Pluto reside.

AU Mic is a dim red star, with only half the mass and one-tenth the energy output as the Sun. Previous studies have shown that AU Mic is about 12 million years old, an epoch believed to be an active phase of planet formation. In comparison, our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old, or about 400 times older, and planet formation has long since ended.

"By studying very young stars like AU Mic, we gain insight into the planet formation process as it is occurring. As a result, we learn about the birth of our own solar system and its planets," said Liu.

The images alone cannot yet tell us what kinds of planets are present, only that the planets are massive enough to gravitationally alter the distribution of the dust. However, many structures in the AU Mic disk are observed to be elliptical (non-circular), indicating that the planetary orbits are elliptical. This is different than in our own solar system, where most planets follow circular orbits.

Images of disks around nearby stars are very rare. Earlier this year, Dr. Liu and his colleagues announced the discovery of the large dusty disk around AU Mic. The light from AU Mic's disk arises from small dust particles which reflect the light of the central star. The new images are 30 times sharper than the earlier ones, enabling discovery of the clumps in the inner disk of AU Mic.

Dr. Liu used the Keck II Telescope located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii for this research. The two Keck Telescopes are the largest infrared telescopes in the world, each with a primary mirror of 10-meter (33 feet) in diameter. The telescopes are equipped with adaptive optics, a powerful technology which corrects astronomical images for the blurring caused by the Earth's turbulent atmosphere.

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Infrared image of the edge-on dust disk around the star AU Microscopii obtained with the Keck II Telescope. The disk is visible because its orbiting dust particles scatter the light of the star. The image is 100 Astronomical Units wide, about the size of our solar system. (One Astronomical Unit is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles.) The black mask blocks out the inner 15 AU in radius and the optical artifacts from the bright central star. This is the sharpest image ever obtained of a circumstellar disk. Such disks are the birthplaces of planets. Image credit: M. Liu, IfA-Hawaii/Keck Observatory.

The resulting infrared images are the sharpest ever obtained of a circumstellar disk, with an angular resolution of 1/25 of an arcsecond, about 1/500,000 the diameter of the full moon. If a person's vision were as sharp as the Keck adaptive optics system, he would be able to read a magazine that was one mile away. In the case of AU Mic, the Keck images can see features as small as 0.4 Astronomical Units, less than half the distance from the Earth to the Sun.

"It is remarkable how quickly Adaptive Optics at Keck has come from being an exotic demonstration technology to producing scientific results of unprecedented quality," said Dr. Frederic H. Chaffee, the director of the W. M. Keck Observatory. "We are entering a new age of high resolution imaging in astronomy. Dr. Liu's breathtaking images of possible planets in formation around AU Mic would have been unimaginable from any telescope—space-based or on Earth—a few short years ago. This is an exciting time for us all."

A preprint of the paper may be found at the astro-ph web site, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408164. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

Read the original news release at http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/Liu0804.html.

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planet_formation_040812.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0408/15disk/

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/evidence_planets_around_young_star.html

RUSSIAN ALIEN SPACESHIP CLAIMS RAISE EYEBROWS, SKEPTICISM By Robert Roy BrittFrom Space.com

12 August 2004

An expedition of Russian researchers claims to have found evidence that an alien spaceship had something to do with a huge explosion over Siberia in 1908. Experts in asteroids and comets have long said the massive blast was caused by a space rock.

The new ET claim is "a rather stupid hoax," one scientist said today. And it's one with a rich history.

The latest claim was written up by news wires and was making the Internet rounds Thursday morning. According to Agence France-Presse, the scientists say they've found "an extra-terrestrial device" that explains "one of the 20th

Century's biggest scientific mysteries," a catastrophe that flattened some 800 square miles of Siberian forest in a region called Tunguska.

Various other news reports told of a "technical device" and "a large block made with metal." The researchers were said to chip a piece off for laboratory study.

Most scientists think the Siberian devastation was caused by a large meteorite which, instead of hitting the ground, exploded above the surface.

..."It's a rather sad comment on the current state of the anything-goes attitudes among some 'science' correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported—without the slightest hint of skepticism," [Benny] Peiser told SPACE.com.

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/tunguska_event_040812.html.

E-MAILS ILLUSTRATE FINE LINE BETWEEN THE BRILLIANT AND THE BIZARREBy Seth ShostakFrom Space.com

12 August 2004

There may only be a few dozen full-time SETI researchers, but millions more want to offer some part-time help. Their interest is understandable. What, after all, could be more enticing to a person of the 21st century than the thought that, despite the ingenuity of the tens of billions of humans that have strolled and lolled across this planet, he or she might be the first to discover aliens on some far-off world?

This widespread interest in aiding the search undoubtedly accounts for the popularity of the SETI@home screen saver. It also accounts for a lot of my e-mail.

Every day I get screenfulls of suggestions, questions, and commentary. Most are straightforward: the writer has a query about a specific aspect of SETI technology. For example, how can we recognize an extraterrestrial signal? Occasionally a correspondent will have a laundry list of questions that could more quickly be answered if they would only take a two-semester college course in physics, astronomy, or radio engineering. My responses to such non-specific inquiries are probably unsatisfying, but I usually write something out of sympathy for those impeded by high tuition or low SAT scores.

Now and again, independent thinkers will send their own research papers—the distilled essence of years of effort in the attic or den—which purportedly show in a handful of pages, and with third-grade mathematics, that Einstein was wrong, and that SETI is therefore, somehow, barking up the wrong tree. I store these with tender care, and always offer to send back originals. But then again, I'm probably too soft.

...Clearly, much of the free advice we get is worth the price paid. But sometimes there are real solid ideas in this unsolicited input, and I honestly try

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to give each incoming bit of correspondence the benefit of consideration. The best ideas in science often arrive on unexpected trajectories, and that's certainly been true for SETI.

Read the full article at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_shostak_email_040812.html.

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER GANYMEDE HAS A LUMPY INTERIORNASA/JPL release 2004-200

13 August 2004

Scientists have discovered irregular lumps beneath the icy surface of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede. These irregular masses may be rock formations, supported by Ganymede's icy shell for billions of years. This discovery comes nearly a year after the orchestrated demise of NASA's Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter's atmosphere and more than seven years after the data were collected. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, and the University of California, Los Angeles, report their findings in a paper that will appear in the August 13 issue of the journal Science.

Scientists have discovered irregular lumps beneath the icy surface of Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede. These irregular masses may be rock formations, supported by Ganymede’s icy shell for billions of years. This mosaic of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede consists of more than 100 images acquired with NASA’s Voyager and Galileo spacecrafts. The gravity anomalies or lumps inferred from the Galileo radio Doppler data are shown in red. The mosaic shows the surface of Ganymede with its geographic coordinate system and the Galileo gravity results superimposed. The trajectory path of Galileo’s second Ganymede flyby on September 6, 1996, is shown in green. There are no obvious geologic features associated with the anomalies. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

The findings have caused scientists to rethink what the interior of Ganymede might contain. The reported bulges reside in the interior, and there are no visible surface features associated with them. This tells scientists that the ice is probably strong enough, at least near the surface, to support these possible rock masses from sinking to the bottom of the ice for billions of years. But this anomaly could also be caused by piles of rock at the bottom of the ice.

"The anomalies could be large concentrations of rock at or underneath the ice surface. They could also be in a layer of mixed ice and rock below the surface with variations in the amount of rock," said Dr. John Anderson, a scientist and the paper's lead author at JPL. "If there is a liquid water ocean inside Ganymede's outer ice layer there might be variations in its depth with piles of rock at the ocean bottom. There could be topographic variations in a hidden rocky surface underlying a deep outer icy shell. There are many possibilities, and we need to do more studies."

Dr. Gerald Schubert, co-author at UCLA, said "Although we don't yet have anything definitive about the depth at this point, we did not expect Ganymede's ice shell to be strong enough to support these lumpy mass concentrations. Thus, we expect that the irregularities would be close to the surface where the ice is coldest and strongest, or at the bottom of the thick ice

shell resting on the underlying rock. It would really be a surprise if these masses were deep and in the middle of the ice shell."

Ganymede has three main layers. A sphere of metallic iron at the center (the core), a spherical shell of rock (mantle) surrounding the core, and a spherical shell of mostly ice surrounding the rock shell and the core. The ice shell on the outside is very thick, maybe 800 kilometers (497 miles) thick. The surface is the very top of the ice shell. Though it is mostly ice, the ice shell might contain some rock mixed in. Scientists believe there must be a fair amount of rock in the ice near the surface.

Scientists stumbled on the results by studying Doppler measurements of Ganymede's gravity field during Galileo's second flyby of the moon in 1996. Scientists were measuring the effect of the moon's gravity on the spacecraft as it flew by. They found unexpected variations.

"Believe it or not, it took us this long to straighten out the anomaly question, mostly because we were analyzing all 31 close flybys for all four of Jupiter's large moons," said Anderson. "In the end, we concluded that there is only one flyby, the second flyby of Ganymede, where mass anomalies are evident."

Scientists have seen mass concentration anomalies on one other moon before, Earth's, during the first lunar orbiter missions in the 1960s. The lunar mass concentrations during the Apollo moon mission era were due to lava in flat basins. However, scientists cannot draw any similarities between these mass concentrations and what they see at Ganymede.

"The fact that these mass anomalies can be detected with just flybys is significant for future missions," said Dr. Torrence Johnson, former Galileo project scientist. "With this type of information you could make detailed gravity and altitude maps that allow us to actually map structures within the ice crust or on the rocky surface. Knowing more about the interior of Ganymede raises the level of importance of looking for gravity anomalies around Jupiter's moons and gives us something to look for. This might be something NASA's proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter Mission could probe into deeper."

The paper was co-authored by Dr. Robert A. Jacobson and Eunice L. Lau of JPL, with Dr. William B. Moore and Jennifer L. Palguta of UCLA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. JPL designed and built the Galileo orbiter, and operated the mission.

For images and information about the Galileo mission, visit http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/.

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

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

An additional article on this subject is available at http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0408/14ganymede/.

VENUS: HOTHOUSE PLANET (INTERVIEW WITH DAVID GRINSPOON)By Henry Bortman From Astrobiology Magazine

16 August 2004

The planet Venus is like Earth in many ways. It has a similar size and mass, it is closer to us than any other planet, and it probably formed from the same sort of materials that formed Earth. For years scientists and science fiction writers dreamed of the exotic jungles and life forms that must inhabit Earth's twin sister.

David Grinspoon, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, writes in his book, Venus Revealed, that, through the Mariner 2 and other Venus missions, "we found our 'sister planet' to be chemically alien, as well as hot and dry to quite unearthly extremes. With these revelations, the twin-sister imagery quickly disappeared, and the notion that 'Venus is hell' took hold."

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Only 20 percent of the sunlight that hits Venus makes it through the cloud cover, while the other 80 percent is reflected back into space. This reduced sunlight doesn't make Venus a cold world, however, because the thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps the planet's heat. This greenhouse effect on Venus is often cited as a nightmare example of what could happen to Earth if we don't get our pollution under control.

In part 1 of this interview with Astrobiology Magazine managing editor Henry Bortman, Grinspoon explains how Venus evolved from a wet planet similar to Earth to the scorching hot, dried-out furnace of today. In part 2, Grinspoon will discuss the possibility that Venus was once an inhabited world.

Astrobiology Magazine (AM): Just how hot is Venus today?

David Grinspoon (DG): It's 735 Kelvin on the surface. So that's pushing 900 Fahrenheit. It's not exactly temperate.

AM: You've said there were two separate major geologic transitions on Venus that led to its present-day state.

DG: Well, the conventional view has been that there were two separate transitions, but we're suggesting it's one overall sequence. The first great transition in the history of Venus was the loss of the oceans. We don't know that Venus had oceans, but there's every reason to believe it did. All the mechanisms that supplied Earth with its initial water supply also should have worked on Venus, whether it came in with the original rocks that formed the planet, or whether it came later with comets. Venus should not have escaped whatever it was that gave Earth its water.

AM: Even though it was hotter? Wouldn't it all have just evaporated?

DG: It probably did start losing water immediately. But still, it's generally believed that Venus was supplied with an amount of water that, while it may not have been exactly the same as Earth's, should have been a substantial amount. Venus probably had liquid water for some period of time.

AM: How long would the water have lasted?

DG: That's highly uncertain. There's no liquid water on the surface today, but there is a trace amount in the atmosphere. There are no signs of any land forms that would make us believe that water was on the observed surface in the last billion years.

Venus models have usually assumed a runaway greenhouse. That's been modified recently to the moist greenhouse, largely by the work of Jim Kasting and his colleagues. In the moist greenhouse, the water does not last very long. How long the water lasted is the question we're trying to answer. A number that's often used is 600 million years.

As a young planet, Venus was losing hydrogen rapidly to space. The oceans boiled off, and after some period of time, perhaps 600 million years, there was no surface water. Then the surface and the climate were very much in the state that we see today.

AM: So, the water was lost around 4 billion years ago, at the end of the heavy bombardment period?

DG: Yeah, perhaps around that time. Now, fast forward to more recent times on Venus. We've begun to understand the story of its surface evolution largely due to the Magellan mission in the 1990s. The biggest surprise of Magellan was that the surface seems like it's all the same age. That's what I'm calling the second great transition. Something changed on Venus 600 or 700 million years ago to make the surface all the same age.

If you use the word catastrophic it rubs some people the wrong way, but something dramatic happened on Venus, which wiped out almost all signs of an older surface. The planet got re-paved, basically, 600 or 700 million years ago.

AM: Did some huge impact melt the surface? Or was it the last gasp of volcanic activity?

DG: Clearly, whatever this second great transition was, it involved massive amounts of volcanism. You can see these flows that appear to be flood basalts all over, covering 80 percent of the planet. The remarkable thing is that they

seem to be all the same age. The crater density is relatively uniform and random around the planet. So the planet seems to have been flooded with basaltic lavas in a geologically short period of time, simultaneously around the planet.

Now, you talk to some geologists and they argue with that and they say, well, it wasn't simultaneous. But looking at the map of craters on Venus, all of them seem relatively pristine, and there are no older ones. You can't escape the conclusion that something dramatic changed on Venus at that time that had the effect of re-paving the surface.

AM: So either something occurred at that time, or something that had been going on stopped.

DG: Right, exactly. Either there was an episode of resurfacing that started and stopped rather quickly, or there was an ongoing process resurfacing the planet that suddenly ground to a halt for some reason. There may be something episodic that happens on Venus, in contrast to Earth's steady plate tectonic recycling. Earth's tectonics are lubricated by water in a lot of subtle ways, but Venus is much drier and instead you could have this "stop and start" action.

Earth's tectonic activity acts as a cooling mechanism for the interior. If Venus has episodic plate tectonics, where nothing happens for a while, the heat builds up in the interior. Eventually it can't stand it any more, and you have this rapid overturning. Then it's quiescent for a while, and the heat builds up again. If you believe that episodic model, then the visible surface we see on Venus is the record of the last time that happened, which is maybe 600 million years ago. Alternatively, there is the idea that Venus was continuously active and had something more like Earth-style plate tectonics, and then finally the interior cooled off enough so that it shut down 600 or 700 million years ago.

Left: much of the surface of Venus is covered by lava flows Imgae credit: BNSC. Right: Venus up-close, as photographed by the Soviet Venera 13 lander, which parachuted to the Venusian surface on March 1, 1982. Image credit: Venera project.

AM: And are both of those part of the conventional view? Or is one part of the new view and one part of the conventional view?

DG: No, both of those are in play. In that sense they're both conventional. Each has its advocates, and there's isn't any kind of surefire evidence that nails down one or the other. One of the reasons we're advocating for a new Venus mission is to try to get the isotopic data and the surface mineralogical and other data that might help us decide between competing scenarios.

We've been taking a look at the models that have been done of the runaway greenhouse and the moist greenhouse to try to understand the time scale for the loss of the oceans. The first thing you realize when you look at these models is that it has not been done in a very sophisticated way. Not because the people that have done it are unsophisticated—Jim Kasting is the best in the business, and his models are state of the art. But the state of the art is not that good.

If you read Kasting's paper, there are these huge uncertainties in the time scale. He's had to make many simplifying assumptions to try and solve the problem of the loss of oceans on a planet like Venus. When you include all these assumptions, the real range of uncertainty in his model is longer than the age of the solar system. In other words, Venus could have lost its oceans in 10 million years, or retained them for longer than the age of the solar system. The time constraints are not that good.

So, how can one do a better job at modeling the longevity of oceans on a Venus-like planet? I say "Venus-like planet" because the problem is applicable not just to Venus, but to terrestrial planets on the inner edge of the habitable zone anywhere in the galaxy, or other galaxies. People tend to think of the habitable zone as this range with clear boundaries, and outside that line

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you don't have liquid water, and inside that line you do. But in reality, it's not going to be a clear line. As you move further away from the sun within that habitable zone, you can have oceans for longer. And the longer you have them, presumably the greater chance you have for the evolution of complex life.

We decided, and Jim Kasting agrees, that the major uncertainty in the models is the role of clouds. Kasting's models did not include clouds, not because he didn't think of them, but because clouds are hard to model. We don't understand how they work on a planetary scale. But it's tempting to try to include them because of the idea of cloud feedback.

There are global-scale climate feedbacks involving clouds that could stabilize oceans and cause them to last longer on a Venus-like planet. The more water you have, the cloudier a planet is. The cloudier a planet is, the more radiation it reflects to space, and that cools things. So that tends to work opposite to a runaway greenhouse, which makes things hotter if you have more water.

In the greenhouse-era Venus, Venus still has surface water, and the atmosphere is largely water vapor. The oceans are evaporating, hydrogen is being lost to space. When we put in clouds in our model, we found that the clouds act to cool the planet significantly during that greenhouse phase. Temperatures are significantly lower.

Let me stress that this is very preliminary; it's a work in progress. But I think our results suggest some intriguing possibilities that we now want to pursue with more rigorous models. If these results pan out, it might lead to the conclusion that liquid water on the surface of Venus lasted significantly longer. I can't put a precise number on it yet, but it may go from hundreds of millions of years to billions of years. If the liquid water on Venus lasted not for 600 million years, but for a couple of billion years, then I think we can start to see a scenario where the two great transitions are really one sequence.

When Venus had surface water, let's say you also had plate tectonics. Once you lose surface water, then subduction is no longer returning hydrated silicates to the mantle, as it does on Earth, so the mantle of Venus starts to dry out. You're no longer getting recharged with water through global tectonic cycling. It takes a while, because interior convective cycles typically have time scales of hundreds of millions of years. But after a few of those cycles, the mantle of Venus starts to become desiccated.

So as the mantle becomes desiccated, at some point that shuts off plate tectonics. Plate tectonics on Earth depends on a wet interior in several ways, largely because you have this zone of low viscosity at the base of the lithosphere on which the plates are sliding around. Water lubricates plate tectonics. You remove the hydrated minerals from the interior, and that's going to stop. Things block up and you can no longer have plate tectonics. So if the water on Venus really went away a couple of billion years ago or less, then the drying of the interior that results from that eventually shuts down plate tectonics. The last gasp of this shutting down may have been this global resurfacing that we see evidence for in the Magellan images.

AM: So after Venus lost its water, tectonics shut down and the surface of the planet was resurfaced by lava one last time. Did this resurfacing occur because there was all this interior heat, and the normal way of releasing it was no longer there, so it all just spewed out?

DG: To me, the Magellan images don't suggest that plate tectonics just stopped. It may be that Venus used to have something like terrestrial-style plate tectonics which was lubricated by water, and that once the water went away, it switched to a more episodic kind of behavior. And then what we're seeing on Venus is the evidence of the last of those great episodes of global resurfacing.

AM: What are you planning to do to continue this work?

DG: Our cloud model was just a quick and dirty model. The way we handled the radiative transfer, which is the way infrared and visible radiation pass through different layers of the atmosphere, was very crude. We used what is called a gray model, which doesn't break the spectrum into lots of separate bands, but tries to average it over the entire infrared spectrum. So one of the next steps would be to do a more sophisticated radiative transfer model, where you analyze the radiation in each separate wavelength band to get a better understanding of the temperature structure of the atmosphere in these cloudy conditions.

The cloud model is very simple, because once you get to an altitude in the atmosphere where the vapor pressure reaches saturation, we just assume a cloud forms. We also assume the particle sizes in the clouds are all the same. In reality, clouds are complex. They have multiple particle sizes, and you have things like super saturation.

Particle size distribution may sound very arcane, but it affects the way clouds impact the radiation, both coming in from the sun and going back out. We have to know what's happening to the radiation if we're trying to understand the ancient climate. So there are all kinds of ways that we can make the model more sophisticated.

The results of our quick and dirty model seem to be pointing in a certain direction: that if you do let clouds stabilize the climate, you keep it cooler. Then the oceans could have lasted a lot longer. Although the model is very simple, the results are sufficiently interesting to motivate us to go back and spend time to do a more sophisticated model. We need to try to get a handle on what the physical conditions were like during this interesting time when Venus was still holding on to its oceans.

Read the original article at http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1137.html.

SUN-LIKE SOLAR SYSTEMS UNDETECTEDBy Brad AmburnFrom United Press International and SpaceDaily

16 August 2004

The planets orbiting the sun may have formed differently than those in other solar systems, which is why astronomers have not yet discovered systems that resemble Earth's planetary neighborhood. Scientists have known for some time the local planets follow more circular orbits around the sun, while all the other planets detected around stars seem to have more elliptical orbits, said Mario Livio, senior astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Those other systems also feature gas-giant planets that are located much closer to their parent star compared to the distance of Jupiter—the largest planet—from the sun. New research—by Livio and others, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society—theorizes that Earth and its neighbors were formed via a different mechanism than planets in other discovered systems, while systems similar to this one remain difficult to detect with conventional observation methods.

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

VETERAN ASTRONAUT TO ADDRESS MARS SOCIETY CONVENTIONMars Society release

15 August 2004

Veteran astronaut Colonel Scott "Doc" Horowitz will address the Mars Society Convention Sunday August 22. In his plenary talk, Colonel Horowitz, who was the pilot of three Shuttle missions including the second Hubble Space Telescope repair mission, the commander of the STS 105 mission to the International Space Station, and who has led many advanced mission studies at NASA Johnson Space Center, will give an astronaut's viewpoint on the human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

The 7th International Mars Society Convention will run August 19-22 at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, and will include over 120 talks from leading scientists, engineers, government officials, entrepreneurs, members of the artistic community, and others involved in the robotic and human exploration of Mars. Registration is now open at www.marssociety.org.

CASSINI-HUYGENS UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

Cassini Significant Events for 5-11 August 2004NASA/JPL release, 13 August 2004

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, August 11. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the present

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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.

Science activities this week included continuation of the Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) campaign to study the influence of the solar wind on Saturn's aurora, and Optical Remote Sensing (ORS) observations of Saturn's south pole and aurora. Specific instrument activities included Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) and Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) observations of Saturn's magnetosphere, and the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) obtained global mosaics as well as mosaics and movies of the rings and Saturn's south pole. The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) searched for new stratospheric hydrocarbons, measured oxygen compounds in the stratosphere as a function of latitude to determine if the rings are the source, and performed long integrations to determine the composition of Saturn's atmosphere at different altitudes. Additional activities included spin rate adjustments for the reaction wheels and the loading of Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer instrument expanded block files to the SSR.

The subject of this week's science talk for the flight team was VIMS and ISS science results for Phoebe. Preparations are underway for support of orbit trim maneuver (OTM) #2, the periapsis raise maneuver. A maneuver preparation meeting was held, and commands were prepared for the opening of latch valves and to update the main engine thrust value.

The Science Operations Plan (SOP) update process is now complete for S05. A handoff package was presented to the Uplink Operations leads, and a kickoff meeting was held for the Science and Sequence Update Process (SSUP). The S06 SOP Update Science Adaptation Panel (SAP) meeting scheduled for last week was canceled, as there were no significant DSN changes from the plan.

Preliminary Port #2 for SOP Implementation of S33/S34 and preliminary port #1 for S35/S36 occurred this week. The files were merged and reports delivered identifying the required fixes. Official port #2—the final port—for S33/S34 also occurred this past week. The final files are in the process of being merged prior to delivery to ACS for end-to-end pointing analysis.

Sequence development activities continued this week for both S04 and S05. The Preliminary Waiver Disposition Meeting for S04 was cancelled as there were no new waivers to disposition, and the S05 sub-sequences were placed in the program file repository for instrument teams to populate and return to the sequence lead in two weeks.

In the last week, 677 ISS images and 38 VIMS cubes arrived and were distributed. So far since Approach Science began, 16573 ISS images and 4652 VIMS cubes have been returned. The Multi Mission Image Processing Laboratory (MIPL) completed certification testing of the Solaris 9 upgrades authorized by the Project as a part of the MIPL D32 delivery. No issues were uncovered.

The Mission Sequence Subsystem (MSS) team completed implementation of CIMS 3.2. Testing is on-going with a delivery coordination meeting planned

for mid August. MSS also released prototypes of the new maneuver contingency blocks for testing by SCO. The blocks are planned for release in the MSS D10.3.2 patch delivery in early October. Finally, implementation and unit testing of the SSR Management Tool for D11 was completed. The software was released for user acceptance testing by Science Planning.

A Software Review/Certification Requirements delivery meeting was held forINMS flight software version 9.1 This delivery is in response to a co-add issue identified shortly after the delivery of V9.0 The change between V9.1 and V9.0 is ~5 commands which reset the co-add counter after each trigger. The software was accepted for operational use with one follow-up action assigned. Uplink is planned for September 1.

A picture of Titan's "double haze" was Astronomy Picture of the Day on August 10. The Discovery Channel took an in-depth look at NASA's mission to Saturn with "Cassini: Rendezvous with the Ringed Planet," a one hour special which aired several times this week.

Out from the Shadows: Two New Saturnian MoonsNASA release 2004-268, 16 August 2004

With eyes sharper than any that have peered at Saturn before, the Cassini spacecraft has uncovered two moons, which may be the smallest bodies so far seen around the ringed planet. The moons are approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) and 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across—smaller than Boulder, CO. The moons, located 194,000 kilometers (120,000 miles) and 211,000 kilometers (131,000 miles) from the planet's center, are between the orbits of Mimas and Enceladus. They are provisionally named S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2. One of them, S/2004 S1, may be an object that had been spied in a single image taken by NASA's Voyager spacecraft 23 years ago, S/1981 S14, but was unconfirmed until now.

"One of our major objectives in returning to Saturn was to survey the entire system for new bodies," said Dr. Carolyn Porco, imaging team leader, Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO. "It's really gratifying to know that among all the other fantastic discoveries we will make over the next four years, we can now add the confirmation of two new moons, unnoticed around Saturn for billions of years until now," she added.

The moons were first seen by Dr. Sebastien Charnoz, a planetary dynamicist working with Dr. Andre Brahic, imaging team member at the University of Paris. "Discovering these faint satellites was an exciting experience, especially the feeling of being the first person to see a new body of our solar system," said Charnoz. "I had looked for such objects for weeks while at my office in Paris, but it was only once on holiday, using my laptop, that my code eventually detected them. This tells me I should take more holidays," Charnoz said.

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The smallest previously known moons around Saturn are about 20 kilometers (12 miles) across. Scientists expected that moons as small as S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2 might be found within gaps in the rings and perhaps near the F ring, but they are surprised these small bodies are between two major moons. Small comets careening around the outer solar system would be expected to collide with small moons and break them to bits. The fact that these moons exist where they do might provide limits on the number of small comets in the outer solar system, a quantity essential for understanding the Kuiper Belt of comets beyond Neptune and the cratering histories of the moons of the giant planets.

"A comet striking an inner moon of Saturn moves many times faster than a speeding bullet," said Dr. Luke Dones, an imaging team member from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO. "If small, house-sized comets are common, these moons should have been blown apart many times by cometary impacts during the history of the solar system. The disrupted moon would form a ring, and then most of the material would eventually gather back together into a moon. However, if small comets are rare, as they seem to be in the Jupiter system, the new moons might have survived since the early days of the solar system," he added.

Moons surrounding the giant planets generally are not found where they originally formed because tidal forces from the planet can cause them to drift from their original locations. In drifting, they may sweep through locations where other moons disturb them, making their orbits eccentric or inclined relative to the planet's equator. One of the new moons might have undergone such an evolution.

Upcoming imaging sequences will scour the gaps in Saturn's rings in search of moons that are believed to be there. Meanwhile, Cassini scientists are eager to get a closer look, if at all possible, at their new finds. Porco said, "We are at this very moment looking to see what the best times are for retargeting. Hopefully, we haven't seen the last of them," she added.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. 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.

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

Contacts:Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-1547

Carolina MartinezJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CAPhone: 818-354-9382

Heidi Finn Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations, Boulder, COPhone: 720-974-5859

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1127.htmlhttp://www.astrobio.net/news/article1128.htmlhttp://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/08/06/saturn.cassini.ap/index.htmlhttp://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/cassini_lightning_040805.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04zzh.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/detailed_picture_stormy_saturn.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/cassini_view_rhea.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/cassini_view_hyperion.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/saturn_active_atmosphere.html

MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS UPDATESNASA/JPL releases

From a high point on the landscape of the "Columbia Hills," atop NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, sit two antennas that send information to Earth. Those antennas can be seen in this image taken by Spirit on martian day, or sol, 210 (August 4, 2004). The tall antenna on the left sends UHF signals (like some, but not all, signals used for television broadcasts) to orbiting spacecraft. Orbiters such as the Mars Odyssey spacecraft relay the signals to Earth. The round, high-gain antenna on the right sends and receives X-band microwave signals (like the ones used in alarm system motion detectors and police radar guns) directly to Earth. Mission planners at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory send commands directly to the rover via the high-gain antenna. In front of the rover, at the top of the ridge on the "West Spur" region of the Columbia Hills, is a rock outcrop dubbed "Longhorn." On the horizon is the rim of the 165-mile-wide (103-mile-wide) Gusev Crater, inside of which Spirit landed January 4, 2004. This image was taken with Spirit's navigation camera. Image credit: NASA/JPL.

This mosaic, featuring the rock target dubbed "Bylot," was acquired by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on sol 194 (August 9, 2004). It consists of four images taken by the rover's microscopic imager. The spherules shown here are less round than the "blueberries" seen previously in "Endurance Crater," perhaps because the minerals coating them are more resistant to erosion. Dark sand is partially covering the rock. The target was in complete shadow when the images were acquired, except for a small area at the upper right, where direct sunlight caused the camera to saturate and excess charge to "bloom" downward into adjacent pixels. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS.

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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.astrobio.net/news/article1136.htmlhttp://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00091094-6720-1111-9EED83414B7F0000http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-04e-html.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzzo.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-mers-04zzzzzzq.html

MARS EXPRESS UPDATESESA releases

Relays from Mars Demonstrate International Interplanetary NetworkingESA release 47-2004, 10 August 2004

ESA's Mars Express has relayed pictures from one of NASA's Mars rovers for the first time, as part of a set of interplanetary networking demonstrations. The demonstrations pave the way for future Mars missions to draw on joint interplanetary networking capabilities. ESA and NASA planned these demonstrations as part of continuing efforts to co-operate in space exploration. On 4 August at 14:24 CEST, as Mars Express flew over one of NASA's Mars exploration rovers, Opportunity, it successfully received data previously collected and stored by the rover. The data, including 15 science images from the rover's nine cameras, were then downlinked to ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt (Germany) and immediately relayed to the Mars Exploration Rovers team based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, USA.

NASA orbiters Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor have so far relayed most of the data produced by the rovers since they landed in January. Communication compatibility between Mars Express and the rovers had already been demonstrated in February, although at a low rate that did not convey much data. The 4 August session, at a transmit rate of 42.6 megabits in about six minutes, set a new mark for international networking around another planet.

The success of this demonstration is the result of years of groundwork and was made possible because both Mars Express and the Mars rovers use the same communication protocol. This protocol, called Proximity-1, was developed by the international Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, an international partnership for standardizing techniques for handling space data. Mars Express was 1400 kilometers above the martian surface during the 4 August session with Opportunity, with the goal of a reliable transfer of lots of data. Engineers for both agencies plan to repeat this display of international cooperation today, 10 August, with another set of Opportunity images.

"We're delighted how well this has been working, and thankful to have Mars Express in orbit," said Richard Horttor of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, project manager for NASA's role in Mars Express. JPL engineer Gary Noreen of the Mars Network Office said, "the capabilities that our international teamwork is advancing this month could be important in future exploration of Mars."

In addition, Mars Express is verifying two other operating modes with Opportunity and the twin rover, Spirit, from a greater distance. On 3 and 6 August, when Mars Express listened to Spirit, it was about 6000 kilometers above the surface. At this range it successfully tracked a beacon from Spirit, demonstrating a capability that can be used to locate another craft during critical events, such as the descent to a planet's surface, or for orbital rendezvous maneuvers.

"Establishing a reliable communication network around Mars or other planets is crucial for future exploration missions, as it will allow improved coverage and also an increase in the amount of data that can be brought back to Earth," said Con McCarthy, from ESA's Mars Express project, "the tracking mode will enable ESA and NASA to pinpoint a spacecraft's position more accurately during critical mission phases."

The final session of the series, scheduled for 13 August with Opportunity, will demonstrate a mode for gaining navigational information from the Doppler shift in the radio signal.

Mars Express is Europe's first mission to Mars. It is the first fully European mission to any planet. It consists of an orbiter housing seven instruments for remote sensing observation of the planet. For more information: http://mars.esa.int

Selected images from Opportunity relayed to earth by Mars Express can be found at http://mars.esa.int.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington DC. More information about NASA's Mars exploration rovers can be found at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.

Olympus Mons Caldera in PerspectiveESA release, 11 August 2004

This perspective view, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, shows the complex caldera of Olympus Mons on Mars, the highest volcano in our Solar System. Olympus Mons has an average elevation of 22 kilometers and the caldera, or summit crater, has a depth of about 3 kilometers. The data were retrieved during orbit 143 of Mars Express on 24 February 2004. The view is looking north.

The curved striations on the left and foreground, in the southern part of the caldera, are tectonic faults. After lava production has ceased the caldera collapsed over the emptied magma chamber. Through the collapse the surface suffers from extension and so extensional fractures are formed. The level plain inside the crater on which these fractures can be observed represents the oldest caldera collapse. Later lava production caused new caldera collapses at different locations (the other circular depressions). They have partly destroyed the circular fracture pattern of the oldest one.

This perspective view of the caldera was calculated from the digital elevation model derived from the stereo channels and combined with the nadir and color channels of the HRSC.

The Eroded Valleys of Dao and Niger VallesESA release, 16 August 2004

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles, a system of outflow channels on Mars. The images were taken during orbit 528 in June 2004, and show the Dao Valles and Niger Valles areas at a point where the north-eastern Hellas impact crater basin and the Hesperia Planum volcanic region meet. The images are centred at Mars longitude 93° East and latitude 32° South. The image resolution is 40 metres per pixel.

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Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 32, 17 August 2004

Color image of Dao and Niger Valles.

The color image has been created from the HRSC's nadir (vertical view) and three color channels. The 3D and the perspective views have been created using the nadir and stereo channels.

3D image of Dao and Niger Valles.

Perspective view of Dao and Niger Valles, looking north.

The outflow channel system is, in some areas, 40 kilometers wide. The north-eastern ends of the two valleys are almost 200 meters deeper than the south-western regions which are also shown here. The northern Dao Valles, 2400 meters deep, is about 1000 meters deeper than the more southern Niger Valles. The structure of the valley floor of the Niger Valles is characterized by terraced basins and chaotic fractures. The floor of the Dao Valles is much

smoother, but covered with strongly eroded remnants. These eroded valleys are in a region which is part of the southern flank of the Hadriaca Patera volcano. The surrounding surface is formed by lava streams, probably in a runoff process.

Perspective view of Dao and Niger Valles, looking south.

Contact:Franco BonacinaESA Media Relations Division, Paris, FrancePhone: +33 1 5369 7155Fax: +33 1 5369 7690

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1131.htmlhttp://www.astrobio.net/news/article1133.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-04u.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-04v.htmlhttp://www.spacedaily.com/news/marsexpress-04w.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/mars_express_relays_photos.htmlhttp://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/olympus_mons_perspective_view.html

MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR IMAGESNASA/JPL/MSSS release

5-11 August 2004

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

Dune Avalanche Scars (Released 5 August 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/05/index.html

Springtime for Dunes (Released 6 August 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/06/index.html

Sirenum Fossae Trough (Released 7 August 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/07/index.html

Martian Scribbles (Released 8 August 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/08/index.html

Wind Erosion in Aeolis (Released 9 August 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/09/index.html

Mid-latitude Gully Features (Released 10 August 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/10/index.html

Frosty Polar Slope (Released 11 August 2004)http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/11/index.html

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

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Marsbugs: The Electronic Astrobiology Newsletter, Volume 11, Number 32, 17 August 2004

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 release

9-13 August 2004

Ice Clouds in Color IR (Released 9 August 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040809A.html

Melas Chasma in IR Color (Released 11 August 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040811A.html

The Naming of Things: Tartarus Montes (Released 12 August 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040812a.html

Promethei Terra (Released 13 August 2004)http://themis.la.asu.edu/zoom-20040813A.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.

MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER MISSION STATUSNASA/JPL release 2004-196

9 August 2004

With one very busy year remaining before launch, the team preparing NASA's next mission to Mars has begun integrating and testing the spacecraft's versatile payload. Possible launch dates from Cape Canaveral, Fla., for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter begin August 10, 2005. The spacecraft will reach Mars seven months later to study the surface, subsurface and atmosphere with the most powerful instrument suite ever flown to the red planet.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a quantum leap in our spacecraft and instrument capabilities at Mars," said James Graf, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. "Weighing 2,180 kilograms [4,806 pounds] at launch, the spacecraft will be the largest ever to orbit Mars. The data rate from the orbiter at Mars back to Earth will be three times faster than a high-speed residential telephone line. This rate will enable us to return a tremendous amount of data and dramatically increase our understanding of this mysterious planet."

JPL's Dr. Richard Zurek, project scientist for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, said, "This capability is needed to achieve the higher-resolution imaging, spectral mapping, atmospheric profiling and subsurface probing that will allow us to follow up on the exciting discoveries of the current Mars missions."

Workers at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, have been building the orbiter for more than a year and have reached the final assembly stage. Flight software is 96 percent complete. Assembly of the launch vehicle, an Atlas V, has begun at the same facility where the orbiter is being completed and tested. This will be the first interplanetary mission hitched to an Atlas since 1973.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team now numbers about 175 people at Lockheed Martin and 110 at JPL.

Kevin McNeill, Lockheed Martin's program manager for the orbiter, said, "Our team has completed integration and testing of a majority of the spacecraft's subsystems. In the next few months, we'll integrate and test the science instruments on the orbiter, followed by environmental testing through early next year. We look forward to getting to the Cape next spring and integrating with the Atlas V launch vehicle. We're all very excited about getting to Mars and returning data for the science teams to evaluate."

The spacecraft's six science instruments are in the final stages of assembly, testing and calibration at several locations for delivery in coming weeks. The payload also includes a relay telecommunications package called Electra and two technology demonstrations to support planning of future Mars missions. "Electra was integrated with the spacecraft and tested in July," Graf said. "The next payload elements to be integrated will be the Mars climate sounder and the compact reconnaissance imaging spectrometer for Mars." The climate sounder, from JPL, will quantify the martian atmosphere's vertical variations in water vapor, dust and temperature; the imaging spectrometer, from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory of Laurel, Md., will scan the surface to look for water-related minerals at unprecedented scales, extending discoveries made by NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers.

The largest telescopic camera ever sent into orbit around another planet, called the high resolution imaging science experiment, will reveal Mars surface features as small as a kitchen table. Ball Aerospace, Boulder, CO, is building it for the University of Arizona, Tucson. The orbiter will also carry three other cameras. Two come from Malin Space Sciences, San Diego: the context camera for wide-swath, high-resolution pictures, and the Mars multi-color imager with its fish-eye lens for tracking changes in weather and variations in atmospheric ozone. An optical navigation camera from JPL will use positions of Mars' two moons to demonstrate precision navigation for future missions. The Italian Space Agency is providing the orbiter's shallow radar sounding instrument, designed to probe below the surface to discover evidence of underground layers of ice, rock and, perhaps, melted water.

Another technology demonstration from JPL will allow comparison of a higher-frequency, more-efficient radio band with the band commonly used for interplanetary communications. This may allow future missions to return more data with the same expended power.

NASA's chief scientist for Mars, Dr. Jim Garvin, added, "We build our science strategy for Mars around the next-generation reconnaissance this spacecraft is to provide, with its revolutionary remote sensing payload, and we are proud of the impressive progress to date by our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will tell us where we must send our next wave of robotic explorers, including the Mars Science Laboratory, as well as paving the way for human exploration."

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. Lockheed Martin Space Systems is the prime contractor for the project.

Contacts:Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CAPhone: 818-354-6278

Donald Savage NASA Headquarters, Washington, DCPhone: 202-358-1727

Joan Underwood Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, COPhone: 303-971-7398

Additional articles on this subject are available at:http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-general-04u.htmlhttp://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0408/09mro/http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/one_year_mars_reconnaissance.html

End Marsbugs, Volume 11, Number 32.

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