Mars or Bust

"We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system," renowned professor Stephen Hawking said in a lecture this week, but in the short term he thinks Mars or the moon might make viable bolt-holes for the human race in the event of some disaster befalling the home world. I've long held the same view (not wanting to put myself on the same footing as Hawking), as it seems obvious that we are in a very precarious position on this little spinning rock of ours. Global warming, war or a meteor strike are all likely events that might trigger a mass extinction, so it's about time we started thinking seriously about spreading ourselves out a bit. If only a few thousand could survive in space, then their descendents might one-day reclaim a recovered Earth.

Euro Rover Science Package Revealed

A UK led team is developing a key science instrument for the 2011 ExoMars mission. The European built and financed probe will deliver a highly complex rover to the surface, equipped with a drill to delve deep beneath the Martian surface. Samples will then be transferred to the "Pasteur Laboratory" aboard the rover. One of the key devices in the lab will be the Life Marker Chip (LMC) which will test soil samples for specific molecules that can be associated with life. Essentially, the test is a "lock and key" procedure, in that certain molecules associated with life will only bind with other molecules of a particular shape. If one of the target molecules is present, it will bind to a prepared receptor in the experiment. The BBC has a detailed piece on the science of the mission.

War Of The Weird

It may be old news, but this must rate as one of the strangest interviews ever. Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, bemused but pretty game, endure a bizarre interview in Japan. A truly compelling experience you can share here.

Top 30 landing sites decided

After a 3 day meeting at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, 120 scientists ranked the top 30 contenders for possible landing sites for the 2009 Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The rover and landing technology has advanced recently, meaning that it is hoped to be able to land the rover within 20km of any targeted landing site. Some of the areas shortlisted are the Nili Fossae (interpreted as a complex of grabens and fractures related to the formation of the Isidis impact basin) which might have water deposited clays. Another potential site for the new rover is Candor Chasma, which rises three kilometers above surface levels.

Atlas V to carry Mars mission

NASA has announced that an Atlas V rocket will carry The Mars Science Laboratory when it lifts off in 2009. The contract requires that principal work for the Atlas V Centaur propellant tank will be performed at Lockheed Martin's facility in San Diego, while the primary work location for the Atlas V booster propellant tank's production will be done at Lockheed's facility in Waterton, Colorado.

Edgar Rice Burroughs comic

A new five issue comic book version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess Of Mars is due to launch in August of 2006. Published by IDW, who also created an excellent comic book adapation of The War Of The Worlds last year, the new series will be written by Dan Taylor with art by War Of The Worlds artist Ted McKeever.

Ready, steady, aim.

The next probe being readied for a flight to Mars is the Mars Science Laboratory, due for a launch in 2009. The probe should be a considerable improvement on the two rovers presently at work on Mars, but a landing site has yet to be decided. This weekend, engineers in Pasadena will be meeting for the first of many discussions to shortlist a selection of landing sites. Of course if there is life still clinging to Mars and assuming it is not widespread (as previous missions would seem to indicate), then hitting it is going to be a tall order. A number of areas are likely to fall under the microscope, including the vast Valles Marineris, though there is a balance to be made between interesting sites and the practicality of getting the lander down in one piece.

9-11 Mars

In one of the strangest stories to emerge from Mars, The Sun newspaper in the UK (a tabloid with a less than impeccable record for accuracy) is reporting that components of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers used salvaged materials from the 9-11 World Trade Centre wreckage in their construction. The engineer responsible is reported to be one Stephen Gorevan, an engineer at Honeybee Robotics. That certainly cements the Mars connection, as he and his team worked on the RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool) devices carried by the rovers. According to The Sun, "Engineers used metal left after the 9/11 attacks in building credit card-sized shields for the craft." Gorevan described it as a "quiet tribute."

European Mars rover lands on Tenerife

No, not a wrong turn, but the first tests of the rover destined to land on Mars in 2011. Tenerife serves as a reasonable facsimile of the Martian surface and for the last week, a prototype of the rover has been put through its paces. If all goes well, the £400m ExoMars project will land a six wheeled 40 kg rover which includes in its paylod a lightweight drilling system, a sampling and handling device, and a set of scientific instruments to search for signs of past or present life. In the first weeks of testing, the rover has proven it is generally sound, and despite some technical glitches, has sucessfully negotiated the rocks of the El Teide volcano. The BBC has a full report and video of the rover in action.

Birds eye view of Mars

NASA have an excellent website set up to promote the incredibly innovative ARES mission to Mars. Standing for "Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey", the ARES is an unmanned aircraft capable of travelling upward of 800 km once delivered to the planet. It's a beautiful looking aircraft, and while it is still only on the drawing board, one can only hope that the mission gets a chance to fly. The site has a wealth of material and some fantastic animations and mockups of the craft. Check it out at the ARES homepage.

Nanedi Valles valley raises questions

A new set of images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express spacecraft, show the 800-kilometre valley long Nanedi Valles valley system. This steep-sided feature may have been formed in part by free-flowing water, but this is open to debate. Some researchers suggest the impressive feature may have been caused by sapping (erosion caused by ground-water outflow), while others suggest that flow of liquid beneath an ice cover or collapse of the surface in association with liquid flow is responsible for the valley's formation.

Cartoon Mars

Colin Pillinger, the leader of the ill-fated Beagle II mission to Mars has helped to compile a collection of several hundred cartoons that feature the planet Mars. The cartoons cover a wide spectrum of subject, many of them political. "It's just amazing how many people have been sent to Mars by cartoonists, particularly political figures" says Pillinger on the BBC news site. Lots of the cartoons feature wry comments on the loss of Beagle II, but Pillinger is unfazed by the attention. ""If there's a picture of Beagle in a crater, it gives me the chance to tell people why that might have happened so it's just a vehicle to me" he says. The exhibition is running now at the London Cartoon Museum.

Russia eyes Mars

At a press conference last Tuesday, Energia Aerospace Corporation head Nikolai Sevastyanov announced that his company is planning a Martian expedition spacecraft, which may be launched in 2020-2030. The project will include a test mission to the Moon followed by a launch to Mars as soon as 2020. Soyuz FG AND proton rockets will deliver spacecraft elements to orbit and a modernized Soyuz 2 and new Angara rockets will be then take over. Soyuz manned spaceships and Progress freighters will be servicing the project until 2015, and then the new Klipper spacecraft (still on the drawing board) will be used afterwards. The full story can be found on the TASS website. Alas we get these stories quite frequently from Russia, and the best laid plans never seem to come to fruition. One suspects there is a constant battle in the Russian space program for funds and prestige amongst the various space design companies, and part of that requires a lot of blue sky thinking.

A new face on Mars

The European Mars Express orbiter has returned a great image that does a lot to dispel the nonsensical notions that ancient Martian inhabitants have been carving bizarre figures into the surface. The famous face on mars has been proposed for many years as proof of an extraterrestrial presence in the solar system. No way say the believers could the features first imaged by Viking be natural. So what do they make of this new image I wonder? It just shows you that on a planet with a surface area as big as Mars, just about any odd convergence of natural features is possible.

Williams nominated for 'Soundtrack Composer of the Year'

John Williams is going up against Harry Gregson-Williams for "Kingdom of Heaven" and Dario Marianelli for "Pride and Prejudice" for Soundtrack Composer of The Year
at The Classical Brit Awards. The ceremony will be held on Thursday, May 4 in London at the Royal Albert Hall.

Mars Orbiter returns first colour image

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter continues to sucessfully bed itself into orbit with the receipt at mission control of several new test images, including the first to be received in colour. The image is not natural colour as seen by human eyes, but infrared colour. It can be seen at the Mars Reconnaissance site.

Lockheed turns up the heat

Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County have won a NASA contract to develop and build a heat-resistant space capsule for transporting the next-generation of robotic rover to the surface of Mars. The Mars science laboratory rover is planned to arrive on Mars in 2009 and will build on the success of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. Both Spirit and Opportunity were provided with head shields built at the Lockheed Jefferson County facility. According to Lockheed, the heat shield for the new rover would be the largest ever built, spanning 15 feet in diameter. The heat shields for the two existing rovers measured just 8.5 feet and an Apollo capsule heat shields measured 12.8 feet.

Harvard Prof says life once on Mars

Andrew Knoll, professor of natural history and earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University delivered a lecture at Lehigh University last Monday in which he made very positive statements in favour of past life on Mars. Knoll and his team at Harvard were actively involved in the 2004 missions, which landed the Spirit and Opportunity rovers (now in their second year of exploration) on Mars. One attendee was less than overwhelmed by Knoll's conclusions, (see more at the Lehigh student newspaper) but I was personally struck by his evocative use of the word "canals". Obviously Knoll is not proposing anything like the canals made fashionable a hundred years ago by Percival Lowell, but it is kind of touching to see the word appear in a scientific discourse. Lowell would be delighted.

First postcard from Mars

The high-resolution camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned its first test image. The first test image is a 50km swathe of land in the planet's mid-latitude southern highlands. The resolution is about 7.6 metres, but this will get even better in months to come as the probe refines its orbit, with the result that we will be able to see unprecedented 1 metre resolution images.

Canada eyes Mars

The Canadian Space Agency has sent out a call to the countries scientists to start thinking about an all Canadian mission to Mars. Former space shuttle astronaut Marc Garneau broached the idea five years ago as president of the Canadian Space Agency but federal money was not forthcoming. With NASA scaling back on Mars mission as money is redirected toward a return to the Moon, other nations might well fill the gap. More on this story at canada.com