NASA announces "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life"

BY FRED TASKER
ftasker@MiamiHerald.com

The NASA announcement created an enormous Internet buzz: The space agency was going to reveal Thursday ``an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.''

Was the government about to say it had found liquid water on a moon of Jupiter? Microbes on Mars? Something even stranger -- say, ET?

Sci-fi bloggers speculated the announcement ``could prove the existence of aliens'' or ``the theory of shadow creatures that exist in tandem with our own.''

But then the announcement came and it was about . . . bacteria right here on Earth.

At a 2 p.m. news conference streamed live over the Web, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said they found microbes in the mud beneath a California lake that can use arsenic -- usually considered toxic -- rather than phosphorus as one of the building blocks of its DNA. Phosphorus is one of the elements that sustains all other life forms on earth.

After their great anticipation, sci-fi fans were told the discovery might help cut pollution of waterways like Lake Okeechobee by replacing the phosphorus in fertilizers that run off into the lake, creating fish-choking algae blooms.

One of the NASA researchers acknowledged the frustration after the build-up: ``I can see you're disappointed, that some of you were expecting walking, talking aliens,'' said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA astrobiology researcher and co-author of the study.

``It would be incredible to announce that we have found an alien. But from our understanding of biology, this is a phenomenal finding. You're taking the fundamental building blocks of life and replacing one of them with another compound.''

She even tried to put a sci-fi spin on it: ``This is the equivalent of the Star Trek episode in which they found life forms on a distant planet that substituted silica for carbon in their basic makeup.

``Maybe we can find ET now because we have a better idea of what we're looking for.''

After the news conference, a University of Miami scientist good-naturedly speculated on what Thursday's announcement might mean for the shape of life on other planets.

``This is a pretty big deal,'' said Athula Wikramanayake, a UM expert in evolutionary biology. ``We've always believed that the basic elements needed for life are carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus,'' he said.

On a planet whose atmosphere is rich in arsenic, ``we wouldn't expect anything resembling humanoids. It's very unlikely they would look like humans.

Wikramanayake agreed with famed physicist Stephen Hawking, who in a newspaper interview in May pointed out that any aliens who arrive on earth from billions of miles away logically will be far more advanced than planet-bound earthlings.

``If aliens ever visit us,'' Hawking warned, ``I think the outcome would be much as when Columbus first landed in America -- which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.''

``It's possible,'' said Wikramanayake.

``Some planets are billions of years older than earth. They've had a lot of time to evolve.''

Does he agree such aliens would be hostile?

He left a ray of hope: ``It's hard to say whether they would be as aggressive as humans. Humans evolved because of tribal fighting. Aliens might not have the same social history.''



Read more:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/02/1954921/nasa-new-find-a-big-deal-really.html#ixzz173uPcPyq

Science fiction lovers aren’t the only ones captivated by the possibility of colonizing another planet. Scientists are engaging in numerous research projects that focus on determining how habitable other planets are for life. Mars, for example, is revealing more and more evidence that it probably once had liquid water on its surface, and could one day become a home away from home for humans






Can we grow crops on other planets?

Science fiction lovers aren’t the only ones captivated by the possibility of colonizing another planet. Scientists are engaging in numerous research projects that focus on determining how habitable other planets are for life. Mars, for example, is revealing more and more evidence that it probably once had liquid water on its surface, and could one day become a home away from home for humans.


“The spur of colonizing new lands is intrinsic in man,” said Giacomo Certini, a researcher at the Department of Plant, Soil and Environmental Science (DiPSA) at the University of Florence, Italy. “Hence expanding our horizon to other worlds must not be judged strange at all. Moving people and producing food there could be necessary in the future.”

Humans traveling to Mars, to visit or to colonize, will likely have to make use of resources on the planet rather than take everything they need with them on a spaceship. This means farming their own food on a planet that has a very different ecosystem than Earth’s. Certini and his colleague Riccardo Scalenghe from the University of Palermo, Italy, recently published a study in Planetary and Space Science that makes some encouraging claims. They say the surfaces of Venus, Mars and the Moon appear suitable for agriculture.

Defining Soil

Before deciding how planetary soils could be used, the two scientists had to first explore whether the surfaces of the planetary bodies can be defined as true soil.

“Apart from any philosophical consideration about this matter, definitely assessing that the surface of other planets is soil implies that it ‘behaves’ as a soil,” said Certini. “The knowledge we accumulated during more than a century of soil science on Earth is available to better investigate the history and the potential of the skin of our planetary neighbors.”

One of the first obstacles in examining planetary surfaces and their usefulness in space exploration is to develop a definition of soil, which has been a topic of much debate.

“The lack of a unique definition of ‘soil,’ universally accepted, exhaustive, and (one) that clearly states what is the boundary between soil and non-soil makes it difficult to decide what variables must be taken into account for determining if extraterrestrial surfaces are actually soils,” Certini said.


At the proceedings of the 19th World Congress of Soil Sciences held in Brisbane, Australia, in August, Donald Johnson and Diana Johnson suggested a “universal definition of soil.” They defined soil as “substrate at or near the surface of Earth and similar bodies altered by biological, chemical, and/or physical agents and processes.”

On Earth, five factors work together in the formation of soil: the parent rock, climate, topography, time and biota (or the organisms in a region such as its flora and fauna). It is this last factor that is still a subject of debate among scientists. A common, summarized definition for soil is a medium that enables plant growth. However, that definition implies that soil can only exist in the presence of biota. Certini argues that soil is material that holds information about its environmental history, and that the presence of life is not a necessity.

“Most scientists think that biota is necessary to produce soil,” Certini said. “Other scientists, me included, stress the fact that important parts of our own planet, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica or the Atacama Desert of Chile, have virtually life-free soils. They demonstrate that soil formation does not require biota.”

The researchers of this study contend that classifying a material as soil depends primarily on weathering. According to them, a soil is any weathered veneer of a planetary surface that retains information about its climatic and geochemical history.

On Venus, Mars and the Moon, weathering occurs in different ways. Venus has a dense atmosphere at a pressure that is 91 times the pressure found at sea level on Earth and composed mainly of carbon dioxide and sulphuric acid droplets with some small amounts of water and oxygen. The researchers predict that weathering on Venus could be caused by thermal process or corrosion carried out by the atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, impacts of large meteorites and wind erosion.

Mars is currently dominated by physical weathering caused by meteorite impacts and thermal variations rather than chemical processes. According to Certini, there is no active volcanism that affects the martian surface but the temperature difference between the two hemispheres causes strong winds. Certini also said that the reddish hue of the planet’s landscape, which is a result of rusting iron minerals, is indicative of chemical weathering in the past.

On the Moon, a layer of solid rock is covered by a layer of loose debris. The weathering processes seen on the Moon include changes created by meteorite impacts, deposition and chemical interactions caused by solar wind, which interacts with the surface directly.

Some scientists, however, feel that weathering alone isn’t enough and that the presence of life is an intrinsic part of any soil.

“The living component of soil is part of its unalienable nature, as is its ability to sustain plant life due to a combination of two major components: soil organic matter and plant nutrients,” said Ellen Graber, researcher at the Institute of Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences at The Volcani Center of Israel’s Agricultural Research Organization.

One of the primary uses of soil on another planet would be to use it for agriculture—to grow food and sustain any populations that may one day live on that planet. Some scientists, however, are questioning whether soil is really a necessary condition for space farming.

Soilless Farming – Not Science Fiction

Growing plants without any soil may conjure up images from a Star Trek movie, but it’s hardly science fiction. Aeroponics, as one soilless cultivation process is called, grows plants in an air or mist environment with no soil and very little water. Scientists have been experimenting with the method since the early 1940s, and aeroponics systems have been in use on a commercial basis since 1983.

“Who says that soil is a precondition for agriculture?” asked Graber. “There are two major preconditions for agriculture, the first being water and the second being plant nutrients. Modern agriculture makes extensive use of ‘soilless growing media,’ which can include many varied solid substrates.”

In 1997, NASA teamed up with AgriHouse and BioServe Space Technologies to design an experiment to test a soilless plant-growth system on board the Mir Space Station. NASA was particularly interested in this technology because of its low water requirement. Using this method to grow plants in space would reduce the amount of water that needs to be carried during a flight, which in turn decreases the payload. Aeroponically-grown crops also can be a source of oxygen and drinking water for space crews.

“I would suspect that if and when humankind reaches the stage of settling another planet or the Moon, the techniques for establishing soilless culture there will be well advanced,” Graber predicted.

Soil: A Key to the Past and the Future


The surface and soil of a planetary body holds important clues about its habitability, both in its past and in its future. For example, examining soil features have helped scientists show that early Mars was probably wetter and warmer than it is currently.

“Studying soils on our celestial neighbors means to individuate the sequence of environmental conditions that imposed the present characteristics to soils, thus helping reconstruct the general history of those bodies,” Certini said.

In 2008, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander performed the first wet chemistry experiment using martian soil. Scientists who analyzed the data said the Red Planet appears to have environments more appropriate for sustaining life than was expected, environments that could one day allow human visitors to grow crops.

“This is more evidence for water because salts are there,” said Phoenix co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University in a press release issued after the experiment. “We also found a reasonable number of nutrients, or chemicals needed by life as we know it.”

Researchers found traces of magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride, and the data also revealed that the soil was alkaline, a finding that challenged a popular belief that the martian surface was acidic.

This type of information, obtained through soil analyses, becomes important in looking toward the future to determine which planet would be the best candidate for sustaining human colonies.


Source: Astrobio.net
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3689/can-we-grow-crops-on-other-planets

Exploration Rover Spirit got stuck in a pile of red planet mud... where there is mud there might be life...

Scientist believe that they have found new evidence of life on mars after the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit got stuck in a pile of red planet mud. Scientists believe that the discovery shows that water formed on the planet more recently than previously thought.

The Telegraph reports that scientists believed previously that water formed on mars more than a billion years ago. But the new Mars mud has changed that thought, and now it is believed that water may have formed as recently as a few thousand years ago.

The Nasa team, who are based at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said:

“On Earth … hydrothermal systems provide the environmental conditions, water, nutrients and energy sources


needed to sustain robust microbial communities. It seems likely the region (on Mars) … may have likewise supported a habitable environment.”

The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit got stuck last April. The rover broke through the surface crust of Mars, and got stuck in a soft sand below. The incident provided clues that Mars may still be wet.



Read The Full Story: Life on Mars? Rover Gets Stuck in Red Planet Mud

Researchers at the American space agency made the discovery after the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit became stuck in wet ground on the red planet earlier this year.

Astronomers have become excited by the latest discovery, which they say proves that water favourable for life formed on the red planet more recently than previously thought.

Nasa’s latest study, reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded the liquid likely formed from melting snow, which then trickled into the subsurface and dissolved.

It contained several minerals including hematite, silica and gypsum while ferric sulphates, which are more soluble, also were carried down by the water.

None of these minerals are exposed at the surface, which is covered by windblown sand and dust.

“On Earth … hydrothermal systems provide the environmental conditions, water, nutrients and energy sources needed to sustain robust microbial communities,” concluded the Nasa team, who are based at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

“It seems likely the region (on Mars) … may have likewise supported a habitable environment.”

According to Nasa, the Mars explorer became stuck in April last year when its left wheels broke through the surface’s crust called “Troy” and fell into soft sand below.

The soil exposed by Spirit’s spinning wheels carries clues that Mars may still be wet.

The seepage could have happened during cyclical climate changes in periods when Mars tilted farther on its axis.

"Liquid water and life kind of go together," said Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis, who was involved in the project.

Nasa abandoned plans to extract the rover earlier this year

First stop - moons of Mars

Planetary travel "within few years" Funded by DARPA, NASA

A SENIOR NASA official has promised to deliver a spaceship that will travel between alien worlds "within a few years".

Speaking at a conference in San Francisco on Saturday, NASA Ames director Simon Worden said his division had started a project with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency called the "Hundred Year Starship”.

The project was kicked off recently with $1 million funding from DARPA and $100K from NASA and hopes to utilise new propulsion ideas being explored by NASA.

Star Trek fans, prepare to get excited - electric propulsion is here, according to Mr Worden.

“Anybody that watches the (Star Trek) Enterprise, you know you don’t see huge plumes of fire," he said.

"Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds.”


“You heard it here,” he told the crowd at the “Long Conversation”.

“Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired.”

Mr Worden said he hoped to "inveigle some billionaires" such as Google founder Larry Page to help with further funding for the project.

Another possible source of propulsion being funded by NASA was by using microwave power from a planetary base to heat hydrogen propellants on board an orbiting spaceship.

"You don’t have to carry all the fuel," he said. "You use that energy from a laser or microwave power to heat a propellant; it gets you a pretty big factor of improvement. I think that’s one way of getting off the world.”

Mr Worden had an interesting take on how we would settle other worlds when we found them, suggesting it would be easier to adapt humans to an alien planet than changing the planet to suit humans.

“How do you live in another world? I don’t have the slightest idea,” he said.

“If you’re a conservative, you worry about it killing us; if you’re a liberal, you worry about us killing it."

Despite his ambitious vision to push further out into the galaxy, Mr Worden said there was still plenty of work to do in our own backyard first.

First stop, he said, was the moons of Mars, from where the planet itself can be explored using telerobotics.

“I think we’ll be on the moons of Mars by 2030 or so," he said.

"Larry (Page) asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, ‘Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?’

"So now we’re starting to get a little argument over the price.”



http://www.news.com.au/technology/nasa-preps-100-year-spaceship-programme-to-boldly-go-where-none-have-gone-before/story-e6frfro0-1225941547507#ixzz13D8IALAk

Not 'life,' but maybe 'organics' on Mars

By Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 4, 2010; A1

Thirty-four years after NASA's Viking missions to Mars sent back results interpreted to mean there was no organic material - and consequently no life - on the planet, new research has concluded that organic material was found after all.

The finding does not bring scientists closer to discovering life on Mars, researchers say, but it does open the door to a greater likelihood that life exists, or once existed, on the planet.

"We can now say there is organic material on Mars, and that the Viking organics experiment that didn't find any had most likely destroyed what was there during the testing," said Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"For decades NASA's mantra for Mars was 'follow the water' in the search for life, and we know today that water has been all over the planet," he said. "Now the motto is 'follow the organics' in the search for life."

The original 1976 finding of "no organics" was controversial from the start because organic matter - complex carbons with oxygen and hydrogen, which are the basis of life on Earth - is known to fall on Mars, as onto Earth and elsewhere, all the time. Certain kinds of meteorites are rich in organics, as is the interstellar dust that falls from deep space and blankets planets.

The new results, published in the -Journal of Geophysical Research of Planets and highlighted Friday in a NASA news release, flow directly from a discovery made by NASA's Phoenix lander in 2008.

Mary Voytek, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA, said the findings demonstrate the ever-present risk of reaching "false negatives" in space based on limitations of the equipment used and of the scientists' understanding of conditions beyond Earth.

She said the research does not fully knock down the original "no-organics" conclusion because the new experiment was done using desert soil from Earth, which might behave differently from seemingly similar Martian dirt. But she said the research does put another "significant chink" in the no-organics position.

The new research examined the effects on organics of a compound that Phoenix unexpectedly found at its landing site on northern Mars.

The discovery of the highly reactive chemical perchlorate led NASA's Christopher McKay, an astrobiologist at the Ames Research Center, and Navarro-Gonzalez to test whether the perchlorate had skewed the Viking results that showed no sign of organic material on Mars.

The two researchers combined magnesium perchlorate with soil from the most Mars-like environment on Earth - the Atacama Desert in Chile - and heated the sample in the same way that it was heated by Viking instruments on Mars.

The researchers found that the small amount of organic material known to be in the Atacama soil was detectable when mixed with the perchlorate at low temperatures but was broken up into water and carbon dioxide when heated alongside the perchlorate. The Viking experiment had heated the sample to a similarly high temperature.

Perchlorate, which consists of chlorine and oxygen, actively absorbs electrons from surrounding compounds when heated. "It could sit there in the Martian soil with organics around it for billions of years and not break them down," McKay said. "But when you heat the soil to check for organics, the perchlorate destroys them rapidly."

In addition, the researchers found evidence of the organic compound chloromethane after they heated the Atacama soil with perchlorate. That compound had been detected during the organics experiments at both Viking landing sites but had been written off as a contaminant from Earth because it is in cleaning fluids.

Navarro-Gonzalez said his team ran the experiment many times and always produced some form of chloromethane, leading to the conclusion that it was being formed by the combining of the perchlorate with some form of organic Mars material.

"The big lesson here, and the great importance of this finding, is that we have to know what we're looking for and how we can find it," Voytek said. "It shows that we could actually uncover life on Mars and not know it."

That is what some believe already happened on Mars. A life-detection experiment on both Viking landers gave a positive signal that something in the soil was metabolizing a food source introduced and a negative signal in the control experiment. The principle investigator of that experiment, Gilbert Levin, has argued for more than 30 years that Viking did, indeed, find life.

It was the no-organics conclusion of a subsequent Viking experiment that convinced scientists that Levin's test had detected a non-biological chemical reaction. Although many planetary scientists have remained convinced that Levin did not find life, the increasingly apparent problems with the no-organics experiment are leading some to reconsider.

The new paper will also be important for NASA's 2011 Mars Science Laboratory mission, which is designed specifically to find organic material on the planet. The mission's Curiosity rover has some of the same high-temperature equipment to detect organics that Viking had, although it also has a secondary experiment that involves solvents at low temperatures.

Navarro-Gonzalez is on the MSL science team and will bring his new interpretation of Martian chemistry to the effort. Confirming the presence of organic material on the Martian surface and learning about its properties, he said, would add enormous impetus to the search for possible Martian life.


Here is the update from the article below:

Recent experiments in Chile could provide hope that living microbes may yet exist on Mars, despite data collected by NASA’s Viking landers in 1976 that have generally been interpreted as showing no evidence of life.The new studies, conducted by Rafael Navarro-Gonzalez and a geophysical team from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), suggest that the Viking data have been misinterpreted and that carbon-rich organic molecules may be present on Mars after all.The renewed interest in reviewing the Viking data stems from the discovery of the chlorine-containing chemical perchlorate by the Phoenix Mars lander in 2008. The perchlorate ion, comprising chlorine and oxygen, was detected by the spacecraft’s wet chemistry laboratory during the first-ever analysis of this type of Martian soil. The analysis of three samples — two from the surface and one from 5 cm. depth — revealed the presence of perchlorate, as well as a slightly alkaline soil and low levels of salts.Dry LandIn response, researchers from UNAM visited Yungay in the heart of Chile’s Atacama Desert to conduct experiments on soils found in an environment similar to that on Mars. With an average rainfall of less than 0.004 in./0.01 cm. per year, the Atacama is the driest place on Earth and includes zones that are thought to have had no rain for approximately 400 years. “These soils have extremely low levels of culturable bacteria, low organic concentrations, and the presence of a non-chirally [identical] specific oxidant,” say the researchers, who add that the “search for organics in this soil sample has been thoroughly investigated using the Viking and Phoenix landers protocols.”In the experiment, the researchers mixed the soil with perchlorate and heated it to produce carbon dioxide as well as traces of chloromethane and dichloromethane. These same gases were also detected in the chemical reactions after the Viking landers heated the Martian soil, suggesting that not only perchlorate but also organics may have been present. Following the Viking landings, the same chlorine-containing organic compounds were thought to be contaminants carried on the spacecraft.Peter Smith, the principal investigator of the Phoenix Mars Mission at the University of Arizona, says the misinterpretation of the Viking results may have effectively put researchers on a different track for the past 30 years. “The perchlorate seen out of the results from 1976 was dismissed as contaminants from the cleaning agents used on Viking,” he says. As a result of the new evidence, he says that when NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission reaches the planet in 2012, “I predict we will fully measure organics on Mars at the 10 [parts per million] level.”Commenting at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif., Smith offers a note of caution. “I don’t think we’ll find out for sure until we go there for ourselves, and we get samples from the right places. I don’t think there’s anything more exciting than going to Mars and bringing back samples. That will be the capstone of the 21st century in my view.”The MSL Curiosity rover is being tested at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and is scheduled for launch in late 2011 and for a landing on Mars in August 2012. The largest rover ever sent to the planet, Curiosity will be configured with 10 instruments to search for environments where life might have existed and the capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news%2Fasd%2F2010%2F09%2F08%2F11.xml&headline=Fresh+Research+Rekindles+Life+On+Mars+Debate

This is vindication for Gilbert Levin, one of the chief scientists for those missions, who had said so then and was subsequently pilloried for it.

For all the triumph of NASA’s 1976 Viking mission, which put two unmanned spacecraft on Mars, there was one major disappointment: The landers failed to find carbon-based molecules that could serve as the building blocks of life.

The complete lack of these organic molecules was a surprise, and the notion of a desolate, lifeless Mars persisted for years.

Now, some scientists say that conclusion was premature and perhaps even incorrect. They suggest that such building blocks — known as organic molecules, although they need not come from living organisms — were indeed in the soil, but that they were inadvertently destroyed before they could be detected.

If true, that could cast the scientific conclusions of the Viking mission in a new light, especially since another Viking experiment claimed to have found living microbes in the soil. Most scientists discounted that possibility — how could there be life in soil devoid of the building blocks of life?

“That gospel of the Viking results has influenced our perspective on life of Mars for 35 years,” said Christopher McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California and an author of the new findings, to be published in The Journal of Geophysical Research — Planets. “What do they find? Nothing. But it turns out it was not really nothing.”

The Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers scooped Martian soil samples and heated them, looking for organic compounds in the released gases. It found only two — chloromethane and dichloromethane — and the scientists concluded that the chlorine compounds were contaminants from fluids used to clean the spacecraft.

Then in 2008, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander unexpectedly found a chlorine chemical, perchlorate, in the planet’s arctic soil.

In the new experiments, the scientists heated a mixture of perchlorate with soil from the Atacama Desert in Chile, often considered the closest thing on Earth to Mars. Chemical reactions destroyed organic compounds in the soil, producing mostly carbon dioxide and traces of chloromethane and dichloromethane, just like what the Viking landers had found.

“Now when we look back at the Viking results, it makes sense,” Dr. McKay said. “It was bizarre chemistry.”

For the veteran Mars researcher Gilbert V. Levin, the new paper offers a measure of vindication. His Viking experiment added nutrients to the soil and measured releases of radioactive gas, which would occur as microbes ate the food. Radioactive gas was released, but with the lack of organics in the soil, most concluded it had come from a nonbiological chemical reaction.

Rafael Navarro-González of the National Autonomous University of Mexico City and lead author of the new study, said the claim that Viking found life was still inconclusive. “It gives a big possibility,” he said, “but of course we don’t know.”

Dr. Levin acknowledged that nonbiological reactions could cause gas to be released, but said the Viking experiment showed that whatever was producing the gas did so at temperatures plausible for microbes but not for other explanations.

But the leader of the Viking organics experiment, Klaus Biemann, a retired professor at M.I.T., doubts the new interpretation. He noted that the experiment also detected freon, which was certainly a contaminant, and that the presence of perchlorate at the Viking sites, far from where the Phoenix landed, was speculation.

More definitive answers could come with the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled to be launched next year and to arrive in 2012. It will carry an experiment that will be able to separate perchlorates from organic molecules and thus allow it to identify the organics without destroying them.

Martian mud volcanoes may hold the secret to life on Mars

Mud volcanoes are unusual geological structures that blast up sediments from deep underground. Such volcanoes are doubly perfect places to look for life on Mars - they spew out secrets of ancient Mars while providing the perfect environment for life.

Mud volcanoes are structures in which gas, liquid and mud (or, more technically speaking, fine-grained rock) are shot up from miles underground in much the same way regular volcanoes force up magma. The sentiments revealed by these volcanoes come from buried layers that we wouldn't normally be able to see without drilling deep into the red planet's surface. According to NASA scientist Dorothy Oehler, that helps make the mud volcanoes of Mars's Acidalia Planitia the perfect place to look for life:

"If there was life on Mars, it probably developed in a fluid-rich environment. Mud volcanoes themselves are an indicator of a fluid-rich subsurface, and they bring up material from relatively deep parts of the subsurface that we might not have a chance to see otherwise."

Oehler and her research partner Carlton Allen have mapped 18,000 mud volcanoes in this region of Mars, and they estimate another 20,000 or so could be found if mapping continues. They used new images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter along with data from a state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer to first find the volcanoes and then to figure out their mineralogical makeup. These studies showed conclusively that they were indeed mud volcanoes, ruling out the possibilities that they were caused by other processes like meteorite impacts, ice, or evaporation.

We've known about the volcanoes since the Viking probe discovered them in the 1970s, but only recently have astronomers suggested they could be mud volcanoes. One of the first to suggest this possibility was Kenneth Tanaka of the U.S. Geological Survey:

"I also thought that these features, which also occur elsewhere in the northern plains of Mars, were good places to search for signs of life. If life were present in the subsurface, the water and slurries involved in forming the mud volcanoes would have brought it to the surface. While life may not have survived at the surface, it at least could have been brought there by this process."

The Martian surface is probably too tough an environment for life to survive up there, but it's possible microbes still survive deep down below. The sediments ejected by these volcanoes would give today's probes and robotic rovers - and, by extension, the scientists back on Earth - an opportunity to test the Martian underground for signs of organic life. It's our best chance to study deeply buried layers until we can build a drill on Mars, something that is probably decades away.

Still, there's still room for skepticism. As Tanaka points out, we may be getting to the mud volcanoes too late to learn the secrets they might have held:

"There has been a great amount of time [for UV radiation and other surface processes] to destroy possible microfossils in surface rocks and soils. For this reason, it is unclear if these features are the best places to search for preserved life. Better places might include recent crater impacts and deposits from younger flood discharges."

And yet, Oehler remains optimistic. It all comes down to that perfect combination of the right location for life to emerge and the right mechanism to bring the evidence up to the surface:

"We do believe that Acidalia is a place where life could have been abundant because of long-lived water sources. It is one of the better places to look for evidence of life - if life ever developed on Mars."

[Icarus via Astrobio]

Send an email to Alasdair Wilkins, the author of this post, at alasdair@io9.com.

The country that invented the Walkman may be back on track to burnish its image as a technological pioneer. Right now, more than 4.7 million miles from Earth, is a revolutionary spacecraft that could be the future of interstellar travel. Japan's space program, JAXA, confirmed on June 10 they had successfully unfurled the world's first solar sail — a spacecraft that uses the velocity of sunlight to propel it. Then, just three days later, Japan announced what could be an even more impressive accomplishment: a spacecraft that left Earth seven years ago had returned home. Before brilliantly burning up over Australia, the ship ejected a soccer-ball-sized pod — a modest container that may contain the first fragments of an asteroid ever brought to earth and provide clues about the origins of our planet. Not bad for a spacecraft running three years behind schedule and without three of its four engines.

These space exploits couldn't have come at a better time for Japan's space agency. With a stagnant economy and massive public debt, the new Prime Minister Naoto Kan has promised to make cuts to Japan's sprawling bureaucracy, and JAXA will surely come under scrutiny. During the previous administration, the Wall Street Journal reported that the government revitalization unit recommended in April the space agency start raising more money from the private sector. Before that, JAXA requested almost $19 million to develop a follow-up asteroid project, but the Hatoyama administration only allocated a meager $330,000. These were not encouraging signs for the future of the agency, and this from the Prime Minister whose wife once claimed aliens took her soul to Venus in a triangular spacecraft.

The solar sail may look low-tech, resembling a silver tarpaulin with a hole in the middle, but its successful mission could help future trips to the outer reaches of our solar system. JAXA's Interplanetary Kite-Craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun, better known as IKAROS, will be the first spaceship powered without any rocket fuel. Unlike its mythological namesake, in which the Greek god Icarus flew too close to the sun and melted his wings, Japan's IKAROS will use the force of the sun's photons against its sail to propel it closer and closer to the sun. IKAROS' first stop is Venus, and then hopefully the unmanned spacecraft will push past the planet to the far side of the sun. Ships like IKAROS powered by solar sails may not be the fastest spacecrafts, but they're much cheaper than rocket-fuelled ones. Makoto Miwada, a JAXA spokesman, says the IKAROS test will be half the price of a typical large satellite launch. "This satellite is rather cheap," he says.

If all this sounds like science fiction that's probably because until recently it was. Solar sails have been featured in science fiction since the early 1960s and even made an appearance in James Cameron's Avatar. The goal of the IKAROS project is to test the feasibility of using sunlight to maneuver a spaceship, and a lot could still go wrong. With the sail's membrane as thin as 0.0075 mm — less than one-sixth of the thickness of a newspaper page — it's extremely fragile, and nothing like this has been done before. Already though, the Japanese succeeded in unfurling the sail in space, something that American groups have failed at doing in two previous attempts, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. In this case, JAXA weighted the corners of the sail. The slow spin of the spacecraft caused centrifugal force to open the sail to full extension.

Japan's second space feat last week points more toward the past than the future, back some 4.6 billion years to the formation of our solar system. JAXA launched the Hayabusa in 2003. The space probe took more than two years to reach its target, the Itokawa asteroid, considered a "near-Earth" asteroid. It was only about 185 million miles away when the Hayabusa arrived. Since then things haven't exactly gone smoothly. There was a fuel leak, a tool for collecting rock samples that failed to deploy and a 50-day communications blackout, and by the end of the mission three of craft's four ion engines had broken. It even missed its initial window home and had to return to Earth three years late. With all the delays, the Hayabusa broke the record for the longest voyage in space.

Despite the glitches along the way, the Hayabusa project is already a landmark mission. The Hayabusa's journey was the first ever round-trip to a celestial body other than the moon. The craft has determined Itokawa's size, shape, density and approximate makeup. Still, the real boon was bringing the first asteroid samples home, where more detailed analysis could take place. The Hayabusa disintegrated as it re-entered the earth's atmosphere on June 13, creating a brilliant display over central Australia — "like fireworks" says JAXA's Miwada. But a few hours before burning up, it successfully ejected a small pod that likely contains the first asteroid fragments brought back to Earth. The capsule was located in the Australian outback and returned to Japan on June 17, still apparently sealed. Miwada says it could take months to know exactly what's in there; after seven years of waiting, no one wants to risk contamination. It will be disassembled in a special isolation system so it's not exposed to the atmosphere. Says Miwada: "We may find many particles, and we have to analyze every one and judge whether it's an earth particle or a space particle."

Scientists at both NASA and JAXA say it's likely the Hayabusa has returned at least some asteroid material, and scientists don't need much to determine its exact composition. Asteroids are among the least changed objects in the solar system, and understanding what they're made of can give scientists clues to the origins of our planet. "We'll be looking at leftover debris from the early solar-system formation process," says Donald Yeomans, a manager at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. "[Asteroids] offer an excellent window into the chemical mix and temperature environment at the time the planets formed."

Miwada says locating the capsule in the Australian bush was a "special moment" for the JAXA team. And it's not just the scientists who are proud. In Japan, the public has started to refer to the Hayabusa as Hayabusakun, adding an affectionate suffix to the spacecraft normally reserved for boys or young men. At a JAXA office in Tokyo, according to the daily Yomiuri Shimbun, one visitor wrote, "I'm very happy — I feel like my son has come back home." With a moribund economy and another new Prime Minister, the JAXA accomplishments over the past 10 days have given a country a reason to look away from its earthly problems and get satisfaction from the heavens. As another visitor to the JAXA office wrote, "Sick of gloomy days caused by the recession, Hayabusa's story has made me really happy. From tomorrow I'll be able to work more cheerfully." It's no wonder, then, that Prime Minister Kan said last week he's considering raising the budget for Hayabusa II.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1997768,00.html#ixzz0rWGbar4N

Titan: Nasa scientists discover evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon'
Evidence that life exists on Titan, one of Saturn’s biggest moons, appears to have been uncovered by Nasa scientists.

By Andrew Hough
Published: 8:30AM BST 05 Jun 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7805069/Titan-Nasa-scientists-discover-evidence-that-alien-life-exists-on-Saturns-moon.html

Artist's impression of a mirror-smooth lake on the surface of Saturn's smoggy moon Titan. Photo: NASA Researchers at the space agency believe they have discovered vital clues that appeared to indicate that primitive aliens could be living on the planet.

Data from Nasa's Cassini probe has analysed the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan, which experts say is the only moon around the planet to have a dense atmosphere.


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Building block of life found in comet trailThey have discovered that life forms have been breathing in the planet’s atmosphere and also feeding on its surface’s fuel.

Astronomers claim the moon is generally too cold to support even liquid water on its surface.

The research has been detailed in two separate studies.

The first paper, in the journal Icarus, shows that hydrogen gas flowing throughout the planet’s atmosphere disappeared at the surface. This suggested that alien forms could in fact breathe.

The second paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded that there was lack of the chemical on the surface.

Scientists were then led to believe it had been possibly consumed by life.

Researchers had expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene gas. But the Cassini probe did not detect any such gas.

Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at Nasa Ames Research Centre, at Moffett Field, California who led the research, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth.

"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”

Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, added: “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process.

“In four billion years’ time, when the Sun swells into a red giant, it could be paradise on Titan.”

They warned, however, that there could be other explanations for the findings.

But taken together, they two indicate two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10197470.stm

Six would-be cosmonauts have entered a sealed facility where they will spend 18 months with no windows and only e-mail contact with the outside world.

The men are taking part in the Mars500 project, which aims to simulate a mission to Mars.

They entered the craft, located at a medical institute in Moscow, just before 1100 BST on Thursday.

Scientists say the study will help them understand how humans would cope on a long journey to another world.

During a press conference on Thursday morning, the six men - three Russians, two Europeans and a Chinese man - all described what motivated them to take part in the experiment.

Twenty-six year old Wang Yue from China, the youngest of the volunteers, said he was excited to be involved in a project that he felt would be "excellent for science and for all of humankind".

French volunteer Romain Charles acknowledged that it would be a "difficult" mission and said that he would miss his family and "the Sun and fresh air".

Space on Earth
The project has been designed to be as realistic as possible even though some elements - such as the weightless conditions of spaceflight - cannot be recreated here on Earth.

"They will have to cope with limited consumables, for example," said Dr Martin Zell from the European Space Agency, a key partner in the project.

Continue reading the main story
When the very first human steps on Mars, I will be able to say, 'yeah, I helped do that'
Diego Urbina

European Mars500 participant
"That means everything will be onboard at the start. There will be no re-load, re-supply whatsoever. It will be like a real mission."

The craft is based at Moscow's Institute of Biomedical Problems and comprises a series of interconnected steel canisters. The total interior volume is about 550 cubic metres.

Four of the tubes provide the living and working environment on the "journey" to and from Mars. Their interior has been decorated with wood panelling to give the cylinders a more homely feel.

A fifth module is a mock-up of the Red Planet itself, an enclosed room with a floor covered in rocks and sand.

THE LAYOUT OF THE MARS500 'SPACESHIP'

MEDICAL MODULE: The 12m-long cylinder acts as the laboratory. Should a crewmember become ill, he can be isolated and treated here

HABITABLE MODULE: The main living quarters. The 20m-long module has beds, a galley, a social area. It also acts as the main control room

LANDING MODULE: This will only be used during the 30-day landing operation. There is room only for the three crewmembers who will visit the "surface"

STORAGE MODULE: The 24m-long module is divided into four compartments, to store food and other supplies, to house a greenhouse, a gym a refrigeration unit

SURFACE MODULE: To walk across the soil and rocks of Mars, crewmembers must put on Orlan spacesuits and pass through an airlock


About half-way through the mission, three of the crew will have to "land" on this "surface" and walk about on it while dressed in heavy space suits.

The "cosmonauts" will be commanded by 38-year-old marine engineer and astronaut trainer Alexey Sitev, who has only recently been married.

His compatriots - Sukhrob Kamolov (32) and Alexander Smoleevskiy (33) - have medical backgrounds. The two Europeans in the group - Diego Urbina (27) and Romain Charles (31) - are engineers by training. Wang Yue has a "day job" training Chinese astronauts.

Near a hundred experiments will be performed during the "journey" Colombian-Italian Diego Urbina said his motivation came from his desire to work in space research.

"I'm also very interested in being a part of the story of getting humans to Mars," he told BBC News. "When the very first human steps on Mars, I will be able to say, 'yeah, I helped do that'. That will make me feel very proud."

Scientific investigations during the experiment will assess the effect that isolation has on various psychological and physiological aspects such as stress, hormone levels, sleep quality, mood and the benefits of dietary supplements.

Dr Berna van Baarsen, from the Free University Medical Center, Amsterdam, Holland, is a principal investigator on Mars500.

"We expect Mars500 to have Earth applications, in understanding group dynamics connected to isolation and loneliness, for example," she said.

"I hope it will also help us understand better some groups, such as those elderly people who are isolated in their homes. It should tell us about coping behaviours."

The experiment even simulates surface operations at the Red Planet The spaceship itself will come under scrutiny, also, as the crew monitor their surroundings to see which types of bacteria take hold and thrive in the enclosed space.

All of the results of these investigations will have to be emailed to "mission control" as the organisers of the project intend to introduce a 20-minute, one-way time-delay in communications to mirror the real lag in sending messages over the vast distance between Mars and Earth.

"Everything will be done in a telemedicine environment, where the crew has to do the analysis and we receive the data by telemetry," said Dr Zell, who heads up Europe's space station utilisation programme.

This 520-day mock mission with its 30 days of "surface operations" is the final phase of the three-part Mars500 project.

Look around the spacecraft that will be the crew's home for almost 18 months
There have already been two smaller studies, one lasting 14 days and another taking 105 days to complete.

Space agencies describe Mars as the "ultimate destination" for human explorers. However, they do not possess the technology to complete such an endeavour and are unlikely have it for many years yet.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Could the Tumbleweed Rover Dominate Mars?
By Ian O'Neill Thu Mar 4, 2010 08:22 PM ET
http://news.discovery.com/space/could-the-tumbleweed-rover-dominate-mars.html?print=true
Tumbleweed probes exploring the Dao Vallis region of Mars. The inhospitable terrain is un-passable using conventional rovers, whereas a wind-blown Tumbleweed could traverse the gullies and debris to look for water and life (NASA LaRC/Case Western University/NASA Planetary Data System)

Before Mars can become the next great frontier for human exploration, we need to send more robotic missions to gather as much information as possible about our planetary neighbor. But what kind of robot has the right combination of weight, cost and range, while still being able to carry out groundbreaking science?

Cue the Tumbleweed Mars rover, an ingenious concept vying for attention in the hope of becoming an entirely different method to explore vast regions of the Martian surface, one that rolls across the surface instead of six-wheeling.

Orbiters, Landers, Rovers and... Tumbleweeds?

The robotic exploration of Mars has come in three shapes so far. First and foremost are the orbiters; satellites inserted in various Martian orbits, viewing the planetary surface with ever increasing resolution from hundreds of miles in altitude. Although they can't do science in situ, they can gain a global perspective on the Martian geography.

Then there are the landers; stationary probes carrying a suite of instruments to dig and analyze the local Martian dirt. They might be stuck on the spot, but they can do a lot of science.


A comparison of dust cover on NASA's Mars Expedition Rover Spirit's solar panels (NASA/JPL).And then there's the rover; a balance between mobility and scientific payload. Although there have only been three successful rover missions to date (two of which are still reporting for duty) and two more are planned for launch in the coming years, this is arguably the best way to trundle across the Martian surface. But even rovers have their limitations.

Complex moving parts (such as wheels and joints) get clogged or jammed, solar panels often get coated in dust and although their range can be impressive for an extraterrestrial robot, they can't really explore vast regions of Mars' surface. Opportunity is doing well, notching up kilometers on the odometer. Although Spirit is still soldiering on, the rover is firmly stuck in a sand trap in Gusev Crater.

(The upcoming Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity bypasses the solar array dust problem by using a radioisotope thermoelectric generator -- or RTG for short -- to power it. This car-sized rover will be able to dominate the Martian surface day, night and during the worst dust storms.)


A Short History of the Tumbleweed

So, before humans can explore where only robots have dared to tread, we need more reconnaissance missions with the ability to explore greater areas of the Martian landscape. This would be hugely beneficial for the continuing search for Martian life, as so far we've been restricted to only exploring tiny patches of Mars.

The robotic Tumbleweed could be the mission to fulfill these aims.

The idea of sending a spherical, wind-propelled vehicle (or "Mars Ball") to the Red Planet was originally conceived in 1977 by Jacques Blamont of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of Paris. This was shortly after the Mars Viking Landers discovered that the Martian atmosphere consisted mainly of carbon dioxide and had relatively strong winds. However, the modern incarnation of the Tumbleweed was inspired by accident.


The inflatable Mars Tumbleweed concept during tests in Antarctica in 2004 (Alberto Behar/NASA JPL)In 2000, another JPL team headed by Jack Jones was testing a three-wheeled inflatable rover in the Mojave Desert, Calif., when one of the "wheels" broke off and was blown over the sand dunes.

This inflatable ball bounced over boulders, sped up steep slopes and traveled over coarse vegetation with ease. As Jones' team chased after the oversized beach ball (measuring 1.5 meters in diameter), the idea was born: An independent ball that acts like a tumbleweed could have the potential to explore Mars, propelled only by the Martian winds.

HowStuffWorks: The Mars Tumbleweed gained its inspiration from its natural terrestrial counterpart, but how do tumbleweeds work?


To Rove or Roll?

But could this fascinating concept supersede the Mars rover as planetary exploration vehicle of choice? Let's face it, NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers have outlived their planned mission lifetimes by six years (they were designed to last five months). Why would we want to deviate from such a successful means of exploring this alien landscape?

"Spirit and Opportunity have been nothing short of spectacular. However, they have very limited mobility, which is often dictated by the terrain," Dr. Kim Kuhlman, Senior Research Scientist of the Planetary Science Institute, told Discovery News.

Kuhlman is one of the Tumbleweed scientists heading this effort to communicate the science behind this unique vehicle. She is scheduled to present the Mars Tumbleweed proposal at the Earth and Space 2010 conference in Hawaii on March 16.

"A fleet of Tumbleweeds could cover a much greater area using the wind for propulsion," she added. "Some of them may get stuck and become stationary platforms similar to Spirit's current situation, but the majority would perform a 'random-walk' survey of an area orders of magnitude greater than that of a rover."


The inflatable Tumbleweed concept being propelled by the Mars wind (NASA LaRC/Case Western University/NASA Planetary Data System) [Watch the video]But before this plan can advance beyond the concept phase, more funding is needed to develop the miniaturized instrumentation that would need to be carried aboard the Tumbleweeds. If researchers can get the funds, the physical size of scientific experiments could be shrunk, making them easier for the spherical probes to tote.

The Tumbleweeds are intended to track atmospheric conditions, geographical location, communicate with orbiters (to relay data back to Earth), and even probe the chemistry of Martian soil, so the smaller the better. They could even generate their own power by harnessing the kinetic energy their motion generates.

There's also the tantalizing possibility that a fleet of Tumbleweeds -- each with different instruments on board -- could "swarm" and act as one unit to carry out a sophisticated array of measurements.

"The instrumentation is constantly being miniaturized and some components could actually come off the shelf. The real constraining factor as to how many and which instruments are deployed is the amount of power that can be incorporated. Batteries add mass, which slows down the Tumbleweed. One can certainly envision a fleet of Tumbleweeds that have various configurations of instruments and the capability to swarm if one Tumbleweed finds something of great interest. This would, of course, require a means of controlling the direction of movement of the Tumbleweeds. This technology is not very mature because funding has not been available." -- Kim Kuhlman.

They Come in All Shapes and Sizes

If the project is given the go-ahead, NASA will need to decide what configuration of Tumbleweed would be most efficient and/or practical.

For example, the inflatable Tumbleweed concept is a tried and tested vehicle, having undergone extensive field tests in Greenland and Antarctica in 2003 and 2004. The inflatable Tumbleweed traversed hundreds of miles while continually relaying atmospheric measurements and location data.


Miniature sensor platforms could be dropped by the Tumbleweed to further investigate a location of special interest while the Tumbleweed continues on its way (NASA LaRC/Case Western University/NASA Planetary Data System)
[Watch the video]It is also hoped the inflatable design could be commanded to deflate at locations of interest, causing it to "sit down" and stop rolling. As the underside will be in greater contact with the ground, perhaps analysis tools can be lowered into the cavity beneath, sampling any gases vented from the ground. (Watch the video to see the inflatable Tumbleweed in action.)

Another prominent Tumbleweed design is a ridged "box kite" type. Although this technique is less mature than the inflatable design, the sail-like paddles have a better drag coefficient. This means they will use the available Mars winds more efficiently, perhaps traveling further and faster.

To aid control over the Tumbleweed, an offset weight housed in the center of the sphere could be commanded to alter position, shifting the Tumbleweed's center of mass and essentially steering it that way.

These concepts, along with others -- namely the Dandelion, Eggbeater, and Tumble-cup configurations -- have been tested and developed by a collaboration of research institutions including NASA Langley Research Center, North Carolina State University, Texas Tech University, the Biorobotics Laboratory at Case Western Reserve University and Planetary Science Institute.


Ready to Roll?

Although we probably won't see a fleet of Tumbleweeds bouncing across the Martian surface any time soon, it is certainly a novel approach to planetary exploration. However, Kuhlman will have her work cut out to convince the world that this paradigm shift in robotic exploration is a viable one.

"I've actually had a very influential scientist in astrobiology call the idea "loopy" to my face," she added.

But critics be warned, the Tumbleweed scientists have been working on this project for a decade and Kuhlman is lead author of a chapter titled "Tumbleweed: A New Paradigm for Surveying the Surface of Mars for In-situ Resources" of the book Mars: Prospective Energy and Material Resources.

FOX News:

At a press conference Wednesday, Silicon Valley startup Bloom Energy showed off its new, heavily hyped technology, which harnesses chemical reactions to create energy. The company’s mission: to revolutionize the world’s fuel sources.

Bloom’s main product is the Bloom Energy Server, a generator based around a smart new fuel cell technology. Fuel cells rely upon chemical reactions to generate energy rather than fossil fuels, and as such are considered cleaner, more affordable, and more reliable than the traditional energy sources.

Fuel cell technology has been under development for decades, primarily concentrating on chemical reactions using hydrogen — an element that can be volatile and difficult to store. Bloom’s fuel cell technology is fundamentally different, running on a wide range of renewable or traditional fuels.

The technology has roots in NASA’s Mars space program, where Dr. KR Sridhar, principal co-founder and CEO of Bloom Energy, was charged with building technology to help sustain life on Mars. His mandate: Use solar energy and water to produce air to breath and fuel for transportation.

Sridhar’s invention converts air and nearly any fuel source — ranging from natural gas to a wide range of biogases — into electricity via a clean electrochemical process, rather than dirty combustion.

Even running on a fossil fuel, the systems are approximately 67% cleaner than a typical coal-fired power plant, explains Bloom. When powered by a renewable fuel, the company’s Energy Server can be 100% cleaner. Each Energy Server consists of thousands of Bloom’s fuel cells, flat, solid ceramic squares made from a common sand-like “powder.”

Bloom Energy states that to date, Bloom Energy Servers, currently in deployment for several Fortune 500 companies, have produced more than 11 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, with CO2 reductions estimated at 14 million pounds.

The technology industry breathlessly watched and waited for Wednesday’s unveiling. John Doerr, a partner at investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Bloom Energy board member, shared in the hype.

“For years, there have been promises of new energy solutions that are clean, distributed, affordable, and reliable; today we learn that Bloom, formerly in stealth, has actually delivered,” he said. “Americans want clean, affordable, energy, 24×7 — and all the jobs that go with it. Bloom’s boxes are a breakthrough, serving energy, serving demanding customers, and serving our country.”

The company’s customers seem to echo Doerr’s enthusiasm, many of which are leading businesses. Coca-Cola, Cox, eBay, FedEx, Google, Staples, and more have been running the Energy Servers.

Coke’s 500kW installation at its Odwalla plant in Dinuba, CA, will run on re-directed biogas and is expected to provide 30% of the plant’s power needs while reducing its carbon footprint by an estimated 35%.

“This new fuel cell technology has great promise and represents an important step for Coca-Cola in continuing to grow our business without growing the carbon footprint,” said Brian Kelley, President and General Manager, Coca-Cola North America. He noted that the Bloom Servers can help the company reduce carbon emissions while improving efficiency and using cleaner forms of energy.”

In a video shown at the event, California Senator Dianne Feinstein, Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rogers, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others raved about the new innovation.

Mayor Bloomberg said he was excited from the first time he saw the technology in action: “My first reaction was this was a company guaranteed for greatness.”

“When we look at Bloom Energy,” he added, “we are looking at the future of business, at the future of the economy, at the future of America.”

Humans are no strangers to ravaging the land, but the stars have proven a good deal more elusive. So far, our ethical concerns have remained limited to the contamination of extraterrestrial environments, but what will the future bring?

Last night I attended a lecture by Jesuit Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, a U.S. research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory. He gave a very engaging talk about the ethics of exploration and planetary astronomy, touching on two particularly noteworthy items:

Asteroid Mining
Can you put a price tag on an asteroid? Sure you can. We know of roughly 750 S-class asteroids with a diameter of at least 1 kilometer. Many of these pass as near to the Earth as our own moon -- close enough to reach via spacecraft. As a typical asteroid is 10 percent metal, Brother Consolmango estimates that such an asteroid would contain 1 billion metric tons of iron. That's as much as we mine out of the globe every year, a supply worth trillions and trillions of dollars. Subtract the tens of billions it would cost to exploit such a rock, and you still have a serious profit on your hands.

But is this ethical? Brother Consolmango asked us to ponder whether such an asteroid harvest would drastically disrupt the economies of resource-exporting nations. What would happen to most of Africa? What would it do to the cost of iron ore? And what about refining and manufacturing? If we spend the money to harvest iron in space, why not outsource the other related processes as well? Imagine a future in which solar-powered robots toil in lunar or orbital factories.

"On the one hand, it's great," Brother Consolmango said. "You've now taken all of this dirty industry off the surface of the Earth. On the other hand, you've put a whole lot of people out of work. If you've got a robot doing the mining, why not another robot doing the manufacturing? And now you've just put all of China out of work. What are the ethical implications of this kind of major shift?"

Brother Consolmango also stressed that we have the technology to begin such a shift today; we'd just need the economic and political will to do it. Will our priorities change as Earth-bound resources become more and more scarce?

Terraforming
Most of our planetary colonization dreams revolve around changing the environments of other worlds to cater to our own astronomically particular needs. Seriously, imagine if the Smoking Gun posted humanity's tour rider for visiting other worlds. What utter divas we are! As the alternative of changing ourselves to inhabit other worlds is largely unexplored, we have to ponder the far-future ethics of terraforming another planet.

Specifically, Brother Consolmango mentioned the idea of taking material from a c-class asteroid or a Martian moon and spreading it over Mars' pole caps. In theory, this feat would create the sort of drastic global warming we're hoping to avoid on Earth. Coated with dust, the poles would then absorb even more solar radiation than before, causing them to heat up and release carbon dioxide. Atmospheric pressure would increase. The resulting greenhouse effect could possibly raise temperatures to facilitate stabilized liquid water. This could lead to lakes, oxygen and a successful seeding of plant life. Eventually, Arnold Schwarzenegger would be able to take his space helmet off without his eyeballs exploding.

But what are the ethics of this (the terraforming, not the eyeball thing)? What if Mars already contains hidden life? Might the origins of life on Earth trail back to the red planet as well? Thoroughly contaminate everything and we might erase all trace of what was. And the past isn't the only thing potentially at stake.

"Here's a deeper question," Brother Consolmango said. "What if there is no life on Mars or Titan or some other place we're going to go to, but all the ingredients are there, such that at some future time life could exist. The potentiality of life is there and, by terraforming it, we're aborting that possibility. Under what circumstances is that an ethical thing to do?"

What do you think?

In addition to covering these topics, Brother Consolmango also touched base on the issues of light pollution, meteorite collecting and the coexistence of science and religion. On the meteorite issue, I was pleased to hear him hit all the points I made in my recent post on the matter.

And you can read Robert Lamb's HowStuffWorks.com blog post
Can science and religion coexist?
for more on the religion/science issue.

Either way, feel free to spill your thoughts on the ethics of planetary exploration
and colonization.
Learn to exploit some space at HowStuffWorks.com:
How Asteroid Mining Will Work
How Iron and Steel Work
How Mars Works
How Terraforming Mars Will Work
How Light Pollution Works

Carl Sagan with a mock-up of a Viking Lander


A Short History of Life on Mars
February 15, 2010

The idea of “Men from Mars” has been with us for more than a century now, thanks to writers like H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And movies like “Mars Attacks” and “War of the Worlds” are good fun. But what’s the real story of the search for life on Mars? Today we tell the tale of the search for life on the Red Planet…

In the 17th and 18th centuries, early telescopic astronomers glimpsed polar caps– much like Earth’s– that grew and shrank with the Martian seasons. The Martian day turned out to be about the same length as Earth’s. The axial tilt was similar to Earth, too, which meant Mars has seasons much as we do. And those strange dark surface markings… were they water? Or vegetation?

Then in the mid-1800’s, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli claimed to see long, thin lines on the surface of Mars. He called them canals, and he mapped them meticulously.

American astronomer Percival Lowell saw the canals too and loudly claimed they were irrigation structures built by an advanced Martian civilization. Inspired by Lowell’s claim, H.G. Wells wrote “War of the Worlds”, which has been re-purposed into radio events and movies over the decades. The possibility of “Men from Mars” stoked the imagination of science fiction writers and readers through the first half of the 20th century.

But as telescopes improved, few other astronomers could see the canals which were– correctly– dismissed as an optical illusion. Some denounced Lowell as a crank. And the existence of life on Mars remained tantalizing, but unproven.

Then, in 1965, space probes were dispatched to Mars to get a better view.

In 1965, the Mariner 4 space probe flew past Mars and snapped 22 black-and-white images of a tiny part of the Martian surface. The images showed craters– big ones– which suggested Mars was more like our moon than the Earth. So no Martian forests, or canals, or cities. The New York Times wrote a feature article declaring Mars “a dead world”. Later, Mariners 6 and 7 showed more craters, and many planetary scientists gave up hope of finding life on Mars.

But one scientist thought this conclusion was premature. Carl Sagan, along with a few colleagues, suggested the coverage and resolution of the early Mariner images were too poor to confirm the absence of life.

Then NASA sent Mariner 9.

In 1971, this probe became the first to orbit Mars. At first, the images showed only the white polar caps and a featureless surface. That’s because the probe arrived during a planet-wide dust storm which lasted weeks. As the dust cleared, the images revealed a startling display of surface features including immense volcanoes, canyons, and river beds that suggested the one-time presence of liquid water. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is too low to sustain liquid water now. But where did the water go? Underground? Frozen in the polar caps? If so, maybe there was still hope to find life elsewhere on the planet. The chase for life on Mars was on again.

Five years later, NASA landed the two Viking probes on the surface of Mars. They sent back thousands of pictures of a dry, rusty, rocky surface. And they grabbed samples of the Martian soil and conducted on-site chemistry experiments to look for the telltale signs of life.

The results?

At first, they looked promising. But after a little thought, most scientists concluded there was no definitive evidence for life on the surface of Mars.

Sadly, other surface probes since Viking, right up to the current Phoenix Lander, have found no evidence for life. No palm trees or hubcaps, no bacteria or organic molecules. More missions are planned in the coming years, including the European ExoMars mission which will dig two meters into the surface to look for signatures of life.

One more strange thing…

In 1984, a meteorite was found in Antarctica. Scientists were certain the meteorite came from Mars. It was likely knocked of by a volcanic eruption or asteroid impact, and its chemical composition was the same as the surface of Mars. In 1996, a group of scientists suggested they found fossilized evidence of bacteria in this Martian meteorite. But these results have been in dispute on and off ever since; no strong conclusions one way or the other have been declared. Though late last year, the same scientists concluded once again that this meteorite contains evidence of life on Mars.

So no one’s found clear-cut evidence of life on Mars, but we’ve only examined a tiny part of the surface. Upcoming missions may yet lead to the most startling scientific conclusion ever made… that life exists somewhere other than Earth.

Stay tuned…

Space: The Final Frontier of Profit?
A debate on the pros and cons of commercializing the cosmos; valuing asteroids at $20 trillion each. Peter Diamandis makes a case for private space.

By PETER DIAMANDIS

Government agencies have dominated space exploration for three decades. But in a new plan unveiled in President Barack Obama's 2011 budget earlier this month, a new player has taken center stage: American capitalism and entrepreneurship. The plan lays the foundation for the future Google, Cisco and Apple of space to be born, drive job creation and open the cosmos for the rest of us.

Two fundamental realities now exist that will drive space exploration forward. First, private capital is seeing space as a good investment, willing to fund individuals who are passionate about exploring space, for adventure as well as profit. What was once affordable only by nations can now be lucrative, public-private partnerships.

Second, companies and investors are realizing that everything we hold of value—metals, minerals, energy and real estate—are in near-infinite quantities in space. As space transportation and operations become more affordable, what was once seen as a wasteland will become the next gold rush. Alaska serves as an excellent analogy. Once thought of as "Seward's Folly" (Secretary of State William Seward was criticized for overpaying the sum of $7.2 million to the Russians for the territory in 1867), Alaska has since become a billion-dollar economy.

The same will hold true for space. For example, there are millions of asteroids of different sizes and composition flying throughout space. One category, known as S-type, is composed of iron, magnesium silicates and a variety of other metals, including cobalt and platinum. An average half-kilometer S-type asteroid is worth more than $20 trillion.

Technology is reaching a critical point. Moore's Law has given us exponential growth in computing technology, which has led to exponential growth in nearly every other technological industry. Breakthroughs in rocket propulsion will allow us to go farther, faster and more safely into space.

View Interactive
See a timeline of American space exploration.
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Perhaps the most important factor is the empowerment of youth over the graybeards now running the show. The average age of the engineers who built Apollo was 28; the average age in the aerospace workforce is now over 50. Young doers have less to risk when proposing bold solutions.

This is not to say that the government will have no role in the next 50 years in space. Governments will retain the critical work of pure science, and of answering some of the biggest unknowns: Is there life on Mars, or around other stars? Governments will play the important role of big customer as they get out of the operations business. Private industry routinely takes technologies pioneered by the government—like air mail, computers and the Internet—and turns them into affordable, reliable and robust industries.

The challenge faced by all space-related ventures is the high cost of launching into orbit. When the U.S. space shuttle stands down later this year, NASA will need to send American astronauts to launch aboard the Russian Soyuz at a price of more than $50 million per person. The space shuttle, on the other hand, costs between $750 million to $2 billion per flight (for up to seven astronauts) depending on the number of launches each year. Most people don't realize that the major cost of a launch is labor. Fuel is less than 2%, while the standing army of people and infrastructure is well over 80%. The annual expense NASA bears for the shuttle is roughly $4 billion, whatever the number of launches.

The government's new vision will mean the development of multiple operators, providing the U.S. redundancy as well as a competitive market that will drive down the cost of getting you and me to orbit. One of the companies I co-founded, Space Adventures, has already brokered the flight of eight private citizens to orbit, at a cost of roughly $50 million per person. In the next five years we hope to drive the price below $20 million, and eventually below $5 million.

Within the next several decades, privately financed research outposts will be a common sight in the night sky. The first one-way missions to Mars will be launched. Mining operations will spring up on the moon. More opportunities we have yet to even comprehend will come out of the frontier. One thing is certain: The next 50 years will be the period when we establish ourselves as a space-faring civilization.

As the generation that has never known a world without "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" matures, it will not be content to watch only government astronauts walk and work on the moon. A "let's just go do it" mentality is emerging, and it is that attitude that will bring the human race off this planet and open the final frontier.

—Peter Diamandis is chief executive of the X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that conducts incentivized competitions. He is also CEO of Zero Gravity, which offers weightless flights; and chairman of the Rocket Racing League, an interactive entertainment company.

=== CON ===
The Other Argument
The Case Against Private Space
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.By TAYLOR DINERMAN
President Barack Obama's proposed plan for NASA bets that the private sector—small, entrepreneurial firms as well as traditional aerospace companies—can safely carry the burden of flying U.S. astronauts into space at a fraction of the former price. The main idea: to spend $6 billion over the next five years to help develop new commercial spacecraft capable of carrying humans.

The private sector simply is not up for the job. For one, NASA will have to establish a system to certify commercial orbital vehicles as safe for human transport, and with government bureaucracy, that will take years. Never mind the challenges of obtaining insurance.

Entrepreneurial companies have consistently overpromised and under-delivered. Over the past 30 years, over a dozen start-ups have tried to break into the launch business. The only one to make the transition into a respectably sized space company is Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va. Building vehicles capable of going into orbit is not for the fainthearted or the undercapitalized.

The companies that have survived have done so mostly by relying on U.S. government Small Business Innovation Research contracts, one or more angel investors, or both. Big aerospace firms tempted to join NASA's new projects will remember the public-private partnership fiasco when Lockheed Martin's X-33 design was chosen to replace the space shuttle in 1996. Before it was canceled in 2001 this program cost the government $912 million and Lockheed Martin $357 million.

Of the smaller failures, there was Rotary Rocket in California, which promised to revolutionize space travel with a combination helicopter and rocket and closed down in 2001. In 1997, Texas banker Andrew Beal announced that his firm, Beal Aerospace, was going to build a new large rocket. He shut it down in 2000.

In the 1990s, Kistler Aerospace designed a reusable launcher using reconditioned Russian engines. In 2006, reorganized as Rocketplane Kistler, it won a share in a NASA program designed to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. When the company did not meet a financial milestone the following year, NASA withdrew financing.

View Interactive

See a timeline of American space exploration.
.Blue Origin, a secretive spacecraft development firm owned by Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, is interesting because it uses concepts and technology for reusable vehicles originally developed by the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. In the early 1990s, the organization set up the DC-X program, and its suborbital test vehicle flew 12 times before it was destroyed in a landing accident.

The Clinton administration saw the DC-X as a Reagan/Bush legacy program, and was happy to cancel it after the accident. The sad lesson of the DC-X is that some politicians won't keep their predecessors' programs going, no matter how promising. To turn the DC-X into a space launch vehicle would have taken at least a couple of decades and a few billion in investments. Yet the total cost might not have been much more than the amount the government has spent on other failed launch vehicle development programs over the past 20 years.

Recent history shows that development programs take a long time to mature, but when they do they can produce excellent results. Since it was given the go-ahead in 1984, the space station has faced delays, cost overruns and an unceasing barrage of criticism. Yet NASA kept at it. With the full-time six-person crew now operational, the range of technological and scientific work being done has increased dramatically, from fluid physics experiments to tests on the effects of microgravity on human physiology.

George W. Bush's promising Constellation human spaceflight program—which would be killed under Mr. Obama's plan—has already cost $9 billion since 2004. It is hard to imagine how the private sector can build a replacement for the spacecraft and booster rockets of Constellation, let alone a program to get America back to the moon, with the relatively paltry sum of $6 billion and the scattershot funding approach that NASA's leaders are proposing.

The Augustine Commission's recent report to the White House was entitled "Seeking a Human Spaceflight Program Worthy of a Great Nation." The space entrepreneurs may claim that they can send people into space for a fraction of the previous cost, but they have not yet proved it. NASA's policy is neither bold nor new; it is yet another exercise in budget-driven program cancellation. Until the American government can bring itself to choose a path and stick to it for more than a single administration, its claim to be worthy of a great nation will be in doubt.

—Taylor Dinerman writes a regular column for thespacereview.com and is a member of the board of advisers of Space Energy, a company working on space-solar-power concepts

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W3

New Delhi, India (CNN) -- Indian researchers have announced plans to send their astronauts to space in 2016.The cost of the proposed mission is estimated at $4.8 billion, said S. Satish, spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Studies have begun on the design of the crew capsules that will be used to put a pair of astronauts 300 kilometers aloft for seven days, he said. The project budget has been sent for federal approval, he added.

A training facility for astronauts will also be built in southern India as part of the program, which Satish said would be solely Indian.

In 1984, Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to explore space in what was a joint mission with the then Soviet Union.

In 2008, India launched its first unmanned mission -- Chandrayaan-1 -- to the moon that dropped a probe onto the lunar surface.

In 312 days, Chandrayaan-1, meaning moon craft, completed more than 3,400 orbits and met most of its scientific objectives before vanishing off the radars abruptly last year, according to the space agency.

The craft carried payloads from the United States, the European Union and Bulgaria. One of its aims was to search for evidence of water or ice and identify the chemical composition of certain lunar rocks.
The Chandrayaan-1 mission came to be seen as the 21st century, Asian version of the space race between the United States and the USSR -- but this time involving India and China.

Satish said the agency was also planning to send a second version of Chandrayaan in 2012.

India held its first rocket launch from a fishing village in southern India in 1963.

Now, the South Asian nation lists more than 60 events as "milestones" in its space program, which includes the successful use of polar and geosynchronous satellite launch vehicles.

Indian scientists say their country has the world's largest constellation of remote-sensing satellites.

These satellites, according to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center, capture images of the Earth used in a range of applications -- agriculture, water resources, urban development, mineral prospecting, environment, forestry, drought and flood forecasting, ocean resources and disaster management.
Another major system, or INSAT, is used for communication, television and meteorology.

India, however, maintains competition does not drive its space ambitions.