MoonTwins mission paves way to Mars

Aerospace company Astrium is working at the request of the European Space Agency on a two probe mission to the Moon, and is being promoted as a proving flight for technologies required for a Mars sample return mission. The MoonTwins mission (Moon Technological Walk-through and In-situ Network Science) would be launched together on the same rocket, but split up in Earth orbit for independent travel to the Moon. Once in lunar orbit, the probes would first practice linking up (a crucial part of any mission to retrieve material from Mars) and then descend seperately to the surface. One of the probes would likely be targeted for the so called Peak of Eternal Light, close to the rim of Shackleton crater. This is thought of as an excellent potential target for human settlement due to its near continuous exposure to sunlight, important for power generation. More detail on this story can be found at the bbc.

Fond farewell to Mars Global Surveyor

It operated for 4 times longer than expected and returned a stunning array of data, but on November 2nd 2006, the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft made its last call home to Earth. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has now released the preliminary conclusions of a report by an internal review board, and it appears the reason for the failure may have its origins in a computer mistake made 5 months previously. A routine update in September 2005 sent to onboard computers caused inconsistencies in the spacecraft's memory. When engineers tried to fix the problem they compounded the error by sending further incorrect software commands, and then did not catch these new mistakes because the existing procedures to do so were inadequate. The spacecraft continued to function, but on November 2nd, the spacecraft was ordered to perform a routine adjustment of its solar panels which triggered a series of alarms. Though it then reported that the situation had stabilised, the spacecraft re-orientated to an angle that exposed one of two batteries carried on the spacecraft to direct sunlight. This caused the battery to overheat and in turn caused the 2nd battery to degrade. By now the spacecrafts antenna were unaligned with Earth and so the spacecraft could not report its plight to ground controllers, which sealed its fate.

The report points no specific finger of blame as the team followed procedures correctly, (which were themselves flawed), and JPL rightly emphasises the successes of Mars Global Surveyor. The mission was undoubtedly a spectacular success, with the highlight been a series of before and after images of gullies on Mars which appeared to show strong evidence that water had run on the surface in just the last few years. Other discoveries include the identification of the remnants of a magnetic field which would have shielded Mars from deadly cosmic rays and Laser altimeter measurements that produced an incredibly detailed topographic map of the planet.

Aliens smell the coffee

The Grover's Mill Coffee co is looking to purchase 163 Cranbury Road in Grover's Mill in order to turn it into a War Of The Worlds themed Coffeehouse. West Windsor Councilman Franc Gambatese and his wife and business partner Mickey DeFranco were in attendance at Thursday's Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting to seek use variances for the 163 Cranbury Road site. The Grover's Mill Coffee co has cleverly associated itself with the hamlet famous as the landing site for the Martians in the Orson Welles panic radio broadcast of 1938, and even arranged on one occasion for Ann Robinson (star of the 1953 movie) to visit. The Princeton Packet has more information on the meeting (which ended inconclusively) and you can check out the Grover's Mill Coffee co website here. For more on Grover's Mill itself, click here. Best of luck to the Grover's Mill Coffee co on this great idea.

Go to Mars without leaving home

I particularly like that on the list of qualities required of candidates volunteering to spend 500 days on a simulated trip to Mars, under the heading "Requirements for investigators-volunteers" you are requested to list your "bad habits". Is this a call for candour, or are the organisers actually hoping to find some intolerable person to relieve the boredom? It would be fun to think that telling them you snore or seldom wash might actually be as good a qualification as a degree in astrophysics. After all, if astronauts really are to go to Mars and spend 500 days away from Earth in a tiny tin can of a space ship, they are going to have to learn the patience of saints, unless of course this is really a secret reality TV show. In fact, this is a very serious attempt to figure out how people will cope on such an arduous trip. Six candidates will spend at least 520 days (perhaps 700) cooped up on the Mars-500 mission. Communications with the outside world will even be time delayed to simulate the increasing lag as the "ship" travels away from the Earth. So far, over 120 people from 21 countries including Argentina, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Ukraine have applied for the jobs. If you fancy signing up, you can visit the official site here.

Red Star for Red Planet

China is confirmed to supply a micro-satellite for a planned Russian mission to Mars in 2009. The strange sounding Phobos-Grunt mission (the Grunt means soil as the mission is also intended to return a sample from the Martian moon Phobos) is the first Russian mission to Mars since they lost a probe in 1996 to a booster failure. The China-Russia deal was actually first reported last year, but the deal was only formally inked during Chinese President Hu Jintao's current visit to Moscow. If all goes according to plan, after entering Mars' orbit, the Chinese micro-satellite will be detached from the Russian spacecraft, and probe the Martian space environment. The "Phobos Explorer" spacecraft, will also carry some equipment developed by the Hong Kong Polytechnic.

Caves on Mars

Potential openings to large caves have been spotted on the Martian surface. Glen Cushing, from the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Flagstaff, Arizona has reported on the findings, which he spotted in THEMIS (Mars Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System) images of the Arsia Mons region near the equator of Mars. The caves (if caves they are) were given away by what look to be collapsed roofs, with the holes ranging in size from 100 to 252 metres. Several of the dark spots have been probed using thermal infrared imaging which reveals their temperature to be suspiciously consistent at any time of day or night. This suggests the dark spots are not simply pits, which would have sunlit sides and nor do they have the expected telltale rays of ejected dust that would indicate an impact origin. If they are indeed caves, then they may contain water in stable conditions, in which case their existence would be very beneficial to any future long term manned missions to Mars. The caves would make ideal ready-made dwellings for the astronauts, unless of course … they’re already occupied. More at nature.com.

Ice boosts terraforming dream

One of the abiding dreams of science fiction writers and space scientists is the idea of turning Mars into a planet capable of supporting life on an Earth-like scale. This dream now looks a step closer to reality (though we probably couldn’t do it anytime in the next few hundred years) with the confirmation that huge new deposits of ice water have been discovered on Mars. In fact, Mars's southern polar ice cap contains enough water to flood the entire planet approximately 36 feet deep if melted. Radar measurements from the Mars Express orbiter have found ice fields that are up to 2.2 miles (3,500 meters) thick in places. Equally intriguingly, the ice is very pure, with only about 10 percent dust contamination. Yet this still only accounts for a small percentage of the original water volumes thought to once exist on Mars. Either it is still there, locked up beneath the surface in as yet undiscovered places, or it has leaked slowly away into space through the thin Martian atmosphere. But the more water is discovered, the more plausible becomes the idea that we might one day be able to melt it and start the stupendous job of creating a second Earth in the solar system.

Martian Civilisation: Proof at last

Mars is warming up says NASA, and the climate change denial lobby is having a field day, claiming that this proves that a warmer Earth is simply part of a solar system wide process caused by increased radiation levels from the sun. Well I think they are dangerously, disastrously wrong, and we should all be really very worried indeed. We all know of course that the Martian civilisation retreated underground centuries ago, and clearly their War Machine is now cranking up production. Secret underground factories are even now at full capacity, cranking out thousands of Cylinders and Tripods. All that waste heat has to go somewhere, so I would implore NASA to turn their resources to seeking out the thermal vents used by the Martians to dissipate the waste heat. Then we can launch a pre-emptive strike on these hidden factories, before they can deploy their Weapons Of Mass Destruction against us.

Well, if you’ll believe that, you’ll believe anything, but climate change deniers are asking people to swallow an equally outrageous whopper. It is absolutely true that NASA have said “"for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress” but this does not imply that Earth and Mars are suffering the same shared effect.

There are far more differences than similarities between Earth and Mars to start making grand comparisons like this. To begin with, the changes have been observed around the South Polar Cap, and not the entire planet, so this is hardly conclusive evidence of a planet wide effect. We must also consider the impact of the eccentricity of the Martian orbit combined with its obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane), which means that it not only periodically swings closer to the Sun (perihelion), but also wobbles in its orbit. As a result the climate is prone too much greater seasonal swings than we experience on Earth. This effect is also exacerbated by the lack of a large moon to dampen down the wobble. Then there are also things like seasonal dust storms to consider, which are large and long lasting enough to swing temperatures through several degrees of variation.

So there are plenty of alternative reasons for the observed warming on Mars, but please do what I did to write this posting. Go out and research the facts and make up your own mind. The information is out there and pretty easy to find. Here’s a good start at RealClimate.org which does a much better job of summarising the flaws in the Mars climate change argument than I can.

Rosetta Mars flyby

The Rosetta comet rendezvous mission has made a gravity assist manoeuvre around Mars, using a close pass of the planet to boost it toward its destination, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The probe switched on the camera aboard Rosetta's Philae lander (which will be attempting the first landing on a comet in May 2014) just four minutes before the spacecraft reached closest approach to the Red Planet. It returned some stunning images, including one showing elements of the Rosetta probe itself with the planet 1000 kilometres below, plus some nice images showing traces of the Martian atmosphere taken by the OSIRIS wide-angle camera. In addition, the ROMAP instrument was also switched on, collecting data about the magnetic environment of Mars. The approach gave mission scientists the first chance to switch the Philae lander into fully autonomous mode, completely relying on the power of its own batteries. Full story at the Rosetta site.

Candor Chasma had a watery past

Yet more persuasive evidence has arrived from Mars supporting the theory that the planet had a very wet past indeed. Newly analysed images from Europe's Mars Express orbiter show an area known as Candor Chasma, a small part of the great Martian rift valley Valles Marineris. The Valles Marineris is as long as the United States and in places plunges miles down, but in the Candor Chasma region, scientists have spotted some intriguing geological features. Seen in the images is a hilly landscape composed of alternating bands of light and dark coloured rock. It could have been wind or volcanic forces which forged these features, but water (and water in vast quantities) seems the most likely agent. Further supporting this contention, the striped landscape also boasts a network of cracks, known as joints. These are surrounded by prominent haloes of bleached rock. The same features have been identified here on Earth and what this seems to indicate, say a team from the University of Arizona, is "a clear indication of chemical interactions between fluids circulating within the fracture and the host rock". Most promisingly, these features are millions of years old and have been exposed slowly by the elements. Locked underground at the time the water was present in liquid form, this would have provided a very hospitable place for primitive life to take hold. The BBC has the full story.

Lost And Found On Mars

NASA is evaluating the use of RFID Chips for a trip to Mars. Radio Frequency ID chips are increasingly being used as a way to monitor stock levels in warehousing, but the technology may find a new and vitally important home in space. Losing things in space is a notorious problem that has long plagued astronauts. Put down a screwdriver and the odds are it will float away, so if you can tag it so that it radiates a signal all the time, it could be a real time saver, perhaps even a life saver. For instance, according to Spaceref.com, in 2003, the International Space crew were missing "over 100 items listed in the IMS (inventory management system.) " This included critical equipment such as filter cartridges, and spares designed to support station systems operation. On a trip to Mars, losing things becomes even more critical, as there will simply be no way of getting replacements to the astronauts. The first stage in testing the durability of RFID chips will be to store a selection in a box on the outer skin of the Space Station. Further tests will then be conducted on a long range mission to the moon.

Fascists On Mars

This looks totally insane, but a film that has been made in Italy is actually called Fascists On Mars, and no, its not allegorical, this film really is about fascists who travel to Mars. Called Fascisti su Marte in Italian, it's an extraordinary story set in 1939, telling of a group of fascists who decide to transplant their warped political philosophy to Mars. The mastermind (if that's the right word) behind this cinematic marvel is 42 year old Corrado Guzzanti, a comedian of enormous stature in Italy, famous for his biting satires and attacks on prominent politicians and institutions. The film is apparently narrated by an off camera voice, as in the news reels of the time, and you can see from the trailer that this method is extended to the visuals, which look like something out of an old Flash Gordon serial, with silver tail finned rockets and flaming meteors. It's very hard to judge exactly what is going on in this film from a trailer (especially as I don't speak the lingo) but it looks utterly out of this world, full of larger than life situations and broad slapstick comedy. The trailer can be found here leonardo.it and there are a good many clips (don't ask about the legality, I'm just pointing them out) at Youtube.

Boston shocker

A lot of news sites are drawing comparisons this week with the Orson Welles War Of The Worlds radio broadcast and an advertising stunt that went badly wrong in Boston. Bizarrely, the culprit was The Cartoon Network, or to be more precise, an ad agency working on their behalf. It appears that The Cartoon Network hired a company called New York-based Interference Inc to run a gorilla ad campaign for the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. This involved pasting up flashing electronic signs across the city. These were spotted and the alarm was raised, with the police called out and a massive anti-terrorism response triggered. Part of the problem was that the signs bore a slight resemblance to circuit boards, but probably the biggest single reason for the panic that resulted was the choice of location. Sticking them on bridges and underpasses was really asking for trouble in the present climate, but equally you have to wonder how people were so concerned at something that clearly looked so innocuous; it hardly seems likely that Al Qaeda would build bombs to look like cartoon characters (or am I giving them ideas?) Why indeed did the same campaign pass off without comment in other cities? I guess this really does show how easy it would be to trigger one hell of a panic with the right triggers, though I think the really interesting part of this story is that just about every news item I have read in the past few days concerning this event references Orson Welles. It’s actually a bit of a weak connection to make, but it proves there's life in the old dog yet.

BBC wants you

Continuing on from their recent excellent season of programs looking at the history of British science fiction, the BBC is inviting you can contribute to the My Science Fiction Life website, where fans can record and share their recollections and experiences on the part science fiction has played in their lives. It's not limited to British science fiction and there is a great timeline that you can browse and add to. Naturally there is a place on the site for The War Of The Worlds, so if there is something you would like to say about the novel (and if you're reading this, you must have something to say) then get over to the BBC and make your mark.

Digging deeper

Researchers from the University College London have suggested in a new paper published January 30th (in the journal Geophysical Research Letters) that finding life on Mars will require deep drilling in choice locations. Because the planet lacks sufficient atmosphere to ward off harmful radiation, there is no chance that microbes could have survived on the surface or even relatively deep within the ground. The researchers estimate that only microbes that have been buried several meters below the surface could survive, but finding such deeply hidden evidence is a task beyond the scope of any hardware presently on Mars. There is a chance that the European Space Agency's ExoMars mission (due to land 2013) could get deep enough, but what we really need are human hands. The new research looked at a number of different soil configurations, to estimate the best likely place to look: dry soil, frozen soil containing layered permafrost, and ice. Ice turns out to be the best medium, with a particularly good target identified as the frozen sea at Elysium, which is thought to have surfaced in the last five million years. Such a geologically young feature will not have received as much radiation as other older areas of the planet, thus increasing the likelihood of some microbes surviving.

Checking the air and water

Conventional wisdom has it that one of two things might explain the lack of air and water on Mars. First is the idea that it simply leaked away over the eons, dribbling away into space as the solar wind stripped molecules from the top of the planet's atmosphere. Another more colourful theory has it that some catastrophic impact blasted the atmosphere away in one titanic event. Either way, the planet now shows little sign of either water or air, though a recent set of photographs snapped from orbit did offer the tantalising possibility that water may still occasionally flow over the surface. Measurements taken previously have suggested the ongoing loss was quite rapid, but new observations from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter are throwing those measurements out, though not necessarily with the bathwater, because that still seems to be there in potentially vast quantities. New figures from Mars Express put the rate of leakage at 20 grams per second of oxygen and CO2, which is 1% of the measured rate by the 1989 Phobos 2 mission. If correct, and extrapolating backwards into its history, it means that Mars has lost a lot less water than air than previously calculated, perhaps only in the region of a few centimetres of water. This is very exciting news, because based on observations of geological formations on the surface, it has been estimated there was once enough water on Mars to fill oceans half a mile deep! So if Mars hasn't lost its water and air, where is it? The only real possibility is underground, which returns us to the fascinating discovery of what looked like a very recent (in the region of years) outpour of water on Mars. Was this little dribble the tip of a huge iceberg buried beneath the Martian sands? Could be, but don't forget the other possibility that a giant asteroid blew away the atmosphere sometime in the distant past. But it certainly is a food for thought (or should that be water to glug and air to breath) because if it is there, locked away beneath the surface, we have even more reason to get a human presence on Mars as soon as possible.

Mars photo winners announced

NASA has just announced the winners of a survey conducted amongst the public to find the best pictures sent back from Mars by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers. At deserved first place is the hugely evocative moment that Spirit caught the sun sinking beneath the rim of Gusev Crater on May 19, 2005. It's a stunningly beautiful image, simple but haunting. Let's hope that one day in the not too distant future, human eyes get to experience this in person. The site hosting the winners is well worth a visit just to remind yourself of what an amazing achievement the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have been. The relatively small expense of these missions makes the amazing return in terms of science more than worthwhile, but these photographs represent more than just facts and figures. They reveal a world that is both alien and yet strangely familiar. They are the best argument possible for placing a human presence on this most earth like of worlds. See all the pictures from mars here.

John Carter bound for Disney?

The idea of a John Carter of Mars movie is almost as old as the books themselves, but it has never managed to escape from development hell. The first attempt came in 1931 when animation pioneer Bob Clampett interested the Burroughs family in the idea of a feature length cartoon. There was considerable interest from Burroughs and his son, and much preparation took place, including the creation of a test reel, but interference from Studio Execs destroyed the project. Several other attempts have been made since, most recently with Paramount pictures. The project even got as far as working through a number of potential directors. Word now comes that since Paramount have dropped the property, there is interest coming from Disney, who see great franchise potential in the project. This is very much breaking news (rumour might be a better word) so take it with a pinch of salt. See tmz for the breaking story.

New probes go head to head, one crashes and burns

NASA announced on Monday that initial funding had been granted to run feasibility studies on two new Mars missions (as part of the Scout programme) with a tentative launch date for the winning proposal of 2011. Both missions to be considered are concerned with learning more about the upper atmosphere of Mars. MAVEN stands for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, and will focus on upper atmosphere dynamics. The "Great Escape mission" (a much nicer name) would perform a similar mission, but might also be able to measure atmospheric constituents such as methane. Both probes are at the very earliest stage of development and some $2 million will be spent over the next nine-months before NASA picks one of the two missions for full development. The total mission cost is expected to be in the region of $475 million. Also announced at the same time was further funding to develop greater ties with the European effort to explore Mars. The full NASA press release can be read here.

Unmentioned in the above press release is the sad news that a great proposal to send an aircraft to Mars was not selected in this round of approvals. Scientists at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton were understandably disappointed that their trail-blazing idea did not get the go-ahead, but the possibility exists to resubmit the proposal at a later date. The site for the Ares craft is here.

Safe landing for Phoenix proves a rocky road

With a launch due in August 2007, the mission planners for the Phoenix probe to Mars are still struggling to identify a safe landing site near to the northern polar region. The already orbiting Mars Odyssey has been using a thermal camera to look down at night and identify hot spots from cooling rocks on the surface. Unfortunately, the prime landing area proved to harbour a minefields worth of rocks that would make a landing there extremely perilous. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is also getting into the act, using its High Resolution Science Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera to take daytime shots. The primary mission of Phoenix is the search for water, hence the importance (and restrictions) of finding a polar landing site. Once down, the probe will use a robotic tool to dig up to 3 feet down into the Martian surface. Space.com has the full story of the ongoing effort to find a safe landing spot.