Science News and Notes
Saturday, January 31, 2004
Opportunity Rolls Onto Martian Ground
src: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20040131a.html
This image [imagelink] captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's rear hazard-identification camera shows the now-empty lander that carried the rover 283 million miles to Meridiani Planum, Mars.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove down a reinforced fabric ramp at the front of its lander platform and onto the soil of Mars' Meridiani Planum this morning. Also, new science results from the rover indicate that the site does indeed have a type of mineral, crystalline hematite, that was the principal reason the site was selected for exploration.
Controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory received confirmation of the successful drive at 3:01 a.m. Pacific Standard Time via a relay from the Mars Odyssey orbiter and Earth reception by the Deep Space Network. Cheers erupted a minute later when Opportunity sent a picture looking back at the now-empty lander and showing wheel tracks in the martian soil.
For the first time in history, two mobile robots are exploring the surface of another planet at the same time. Opportunity's twin, Spirit, started making wheel tracks halfway around Mars from Meridiani on Jan. 15.
"We're two for two! One dozen wheels on the soil." JPL's Chris Lewicki, flight director, announced to the control room. Matt Wallace, mission manager at JPL, told a subsequent news briefing, "We knew it was going to be a good day. The rover woke up fit and healthy to Bruce Springsteen's 'Born to Run,' and it turned out to be a good choice." The flight team needed only seven days since Opportunity's landing to get the rover off its lander, compared with 12 days for Spirit earlier this month. "We're getting practice at it," said JPL’s Joel Krajewski, activity lead for the procedure. Also, the configuration of the deflated airbags and lander presented no trouble for Opportunity, while some of the extra time needed for Spirit was due to airbags at the front of the lander presenting a potential obstacle.
Looking at a photo from Opportunity showing wheel tracks between the empty lander and the rear of the rover about one meter or three feet away, JPL's Kevin Burke, lead mechanical engineer for getting the rover off the lander, said "We're glad to be seeing soil behind our rover." JPL's Chris Salvo, flight director, reported that Opportunity will be preparing over the next couple days to reach out with it robotic arm for a close inspection of the soil. Gray granules covering most of the crater floor surrounding Opportunity contain hematite, said Dr. Phil Christensen, lead scientist for both rovers' miniature thermal emission spectrometers, which are infrared-sensing instruments used for identifying rock types from a distance. Crystalline hematite is of special interest because, on Earth, it usually forms under wet environmental conditions. The main task for both Mars Exploration Rovers in coming weeks and months is to read clues in the rocks and soil to learn about past environmental conditions at their landing sites, particularly about whether the areas were ever watery and possibly suitable for sustaining life. The concentration of hematite appears strongest in a layer of dark material above a light-covered outcrop in the wall of the crater where Opportunity sits, Christensen said. "As we get out of the bowl we're in, I think we'll get onto a surface that is rich in hematite," he said.
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Startup of Science News and Notes - 31 January 2004
In honor of the Mars Exploration missions by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) and the landings on Mars of Beagle2, Spirit and Opportunity, and the continuing missions of the global survey missions by Odyssey and Mars Explorer and others as they seek to learn as much as possible about Mars, this blog is initiated.
May the sol days be many ..
Monday, January 26, 2004
It's 'a Mars we haven't seen before'
William Hermann, The Arizona Republic, Jan. 26, 2004 12:00 AM
PASADENA - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists were ecstatic Sunday viewing "a Mars we haven't seen before" from the rover Opportunity, which landed Saturday.
And they were encouraged by progress in restoring to health Opportunity's ailing twin rover, Spirit, which landed Jan. 3. Project Manager Pete Theisinger said Spirit's prognosis had gone from "critical" to "serious" and was approaching "guarded."
The photos and data from Opportunity have been spectacular.
"We have scored a 300 million-mile, interplanetary hole-in-one," said Steve Squyres, Cornell University scientist and principal investigator for the mission. Cornell won the NASA grant to supervise the $820 million mission.
"We are in a 20-meter-wide impact crater that shows us exactly the material we went to Mars to find," Squyres said. "What are the odds of us hitting a crater like this?"
Scientists had hoped that either Spirit or Opportunity would find the mineral hematite and rock outcroppings. Opportunity apparently landed about 10 meters from both Saturday night.
The equipment-laden golf-cart-sized rover returned photos and data almost immediately after it landed and on through Sunday. The transmissions left scientists like Squyres and Arizona State University Professors Phil Christensen and Ron Greeley agog.
Greeley described the terrain they are seeing as darker than that seen at any previous Mars landing site. He said it has the first accessible bedrock outcropping ever seen on Mars. The outcropping immediately became a candidate target for the rover to visit and examine up close.
Initial peek at bedrock
"We are seeing a Mars we haven't seen before," Greeley said. "We have not seen bedrock before and having the chance to look at it in detail is a first. Ask an Earth geologist where they would want to go to get the geologic history of a place and they would say, 'Give me an outcrop, give me bedrock.' With loose rocks you don't know where they came from. For the first time we've got rocks right where they were formed."
Greeley's colleague Christensen designed the thermal emission spectrometers on two Mars orbiters and both rovers. The devices analyze minerals by measuring the light spectrum they emit and comparing that spectrum with those of minerals on Earth.
Opportunity is in a region known as Meridiani Planum, a large plain in the middle regions of the planet. Meridiani was chosen because at this middle longitude the rover will get the necessary sunlight to charge its solar batteries and because the area appears to be rich in hematite.
Once aqueous area?
Christensen has theorized that the hematite he thinks is in the area was created when Meridiani may have been a watery environment. Hematite often forms in an aqueous environment, and where there was water, there may once have been life, Christensen has said.
But other scientists suggest that volcanic activity may have created the hematite, as has happened on Earth. Iron-rich water percolating through ground heated by underground volcanism can deposit veins of gray hematite. This type of "hydrothermal" environment also could offer microbes a favorable habitat and would likely leave behind other types of telltale minerals that Opportunity's instruments could identify, such as carbonates.
Gray hematite also can result from direct oxidation of hot iron-rich lava. This process requires no water and would not indicate an environment hospitable to life.
"We are in a place where this question almost certainly will be settled," Greeley said. "And soon."
Meanwhile, JPL scientists continue to try to solve problems with Spirit, which on Wednesday ceased reliably sending back data. It "has been responding to our commands and sending back information," Mission planning chief Jan Ludwinski said Sunday. But the information, he said, is scrambled and seems to reflect a software malfunction. He said JPL engineers hope to solve Spirit's problems during the next few weeks.
Favorable surroundings
Ludwinski said that early photographs from Opportunity show not only rich possibilities for mineral and rock examination but an amazingly promising landscape for exploration. There are few boulders scattered about the landscape to impede the rover's progress.
"We're going to be able to drive a long way," he said. "We're excited and just speechless with the prospect of analyzing the hematite and bedrock. The rover's cameras and spectrometer will test the different hypotheses. And since it's so clear, we'll be able to drive over and see what's on the other side of that rise."
But that drive won't come right away. Theisinger, the project manager, said the deployment of Opportunity's equipment and its departure from its landing platform to go exploring may take place over a period of about two weeks.
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Mars photos hailed as "Holy Grail"
Mon 26 January, 2004 19:32, By Ben Berkowitz, Reuters UK
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Photos from the surface of Mars taken by the newly-landed Opportunity rover offer a "Holy Grail" for geologists, leaders of NASA's mission to the Red Planet say.
In a briefing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on Monday, officials also said they were making progress in diagnosing and fixing the problems that have plagued the Spirit rover, though they said it was too soon to tell if Spirit would ever return to fully normal operations.
Opportunity, which landed on Mars early Sunday in a small and shallow crater in what scientists called an "interplanetary hole-in-one", has begun the process of shooting a 360-degree image of its landing area using a panoramic camera set-up called a "pancam".
In the meantime, scientists said, a "postcard" assembled from photos shot out of the back of the rover are showing significant rock formations.
"We're seeing outcrops ... this is like a Holy Grail for geologists to be able to see these incredible rocks," said Jim Bell, the team's leading camera specialist. "There's a lot more coming and we couldn't be happier, more thrilled, with what we're see at this incredible landing site."
Steve Squyres, the principal science investigator for the mission, said the team was already trying to figure out where to head next.
"There are a number of tempting targets, potential craters that we could go to after we crawl out of the one we are in," he said.
Much of Opportunity's landing zone appeared darker in colour and draped in fine-grain red and grey soils devoid of the rocks and boulders littering other areas on Mars, and Squyres said his team was still debating the composition.
He also said that, notwithstanding Spirit's troubles, the rovers looked to be outperforming design expectations.
"There is reason to believe we're going to get significantly more than the 90 sols (Martian days) that we originally planned for," he said.
SPIRIT IN REHAB
Spirit mission manager Jennifer Trosper said her group was hard at work trying to get Spirit back into shape after putting it into "cripple mode" over the weekend, allowing the rover to ignore the flash memory chips that appear to be at the root of its problems.
The rover, which landed on Mars on January 3, stopped communicating early last week after what managers called a "very serious anomaly" that interrupted the craft's exploration of the Gusev Crater -- an area that scientists believe may be the site of an ancient lake bed.
"Spirit is doing better, kind of like we have a patient in rehab here and we're nursing her back to health," she said. "We're making a lot of progress now that we've actually gotten telemetry from the vehicle."
She said the team may try to access that flash memory tomorrow, where scientific and photographic data is stored, to do a health check. The day after, she said, they may try to delete some files, believing an excess of data in memory may be part of the problem.
"Our current theory is one in which software would fix the problem," she said. "We don't know yet whether Spirit will be perfect again."
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One more chance for Beagle
Mon 26 January, 2004 17:17, By Jeremy Lovell, Reuters UK
LONDON (Reuters) - Deeply disappointed scientists have read the last rites for their missing Mars lander Beagle 2, and have called for a new space mission to replace the life-seeking probe.
"Under these circumstances we have to begin to accept that if Beagle 2 is on the Martian surface, it is not active," Colin Pillinger, the probe's lead scientist, told a news conference on Monday. "But now is not the time to grieve. We must look to the future."
After a series of attempts to contact the lander, which should have parachuted onto the surface of the Red Planet on Christmas day, one final attempt will be made to jolt it into life. In the next few days the American Mars Odyssey mother ship which has successfully landed two probes on the Martian surface this month sending back some startling pictures, will send a final signal telling Beagle 2 to shut down and reboot. But Pillinger said the operation was highly risky and did not have a serious chance of success. "It is a pretty drastic action. That is why we have left it to the last minute," he said. "It is pretty much a last resort. But we are not very hopeful it will work."
The failure is in stark contrast to the successful landing by the United States of the mobile probes Spirit and Opportunity and to the confirmation last week by Beagle 2's orbiting mother ship Mars Express that there is water on Mars. Pillinger congratulated both NASA and the European Space Agency but insisted the science on Beagle 2 was superior to the American probes and urged Europe to seriously consider mounting a new mission to Mars.
"We still believe that we were the only lander with experiments on board to find if there has been life...and to take it further to find if there is still life on Mars," he said. "We hope very much we will be back with Beagle 2 pups. We believe the next mission should be dedicated to landing. To capitalise on the expertise we should do it as soon as possible," Pillinger added.
He said the window of opportunity was closing. Next year would be far too early given that a full inquiry had to be held into the loss of Beagle 2 to find out just what went wrong. But in 2007 NASA was planning a mission carrying scientific equipment that would put it in direct competition with the Beagle 2 science. Pillinger said the trouble was that Europe did not even have anything in preparation. Its Aurora deep space project had barely even got seed money and was therefore out of the question. "We need to try something different -- a completely new mission," he said.
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Monday, January 19, 2004
**** Java Runs NASA Mars Rovers ****
January 19, 2004, Summary: When the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, successfully landed on Mars on January 3, 2004, Java was there too. The Mars Rovers devices, developed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) development team in conjunction with Wind River, use the Java as a low-cost, easy-to-use operating system.
When the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, successfully landed on Mars on January 3, 2004, Java was there too. The Mars Rovers devices, developed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in conjunction with Wind River, use Java as a low-cost, easy-to-use operating system.
Why Java? James Gosling, JPL advisory board member and "Father of Java," explains that it's due to Java's ability to transcend many platforms. "They can have scientists all over the world looking at the data but collaboratively deciding on the way the mission should proceed," said Gosling. "They are all speaking different languages when they talk to the rover but everybody in the control room is using Java."
Spirit is sending as much as 150 megabits of data daily to NASA scientists, and that datastream will increase when the sister rover, Opportunity, lands on January 24. To deal with this data, Sun Microsystems and NASA built four operational storage servers at the JPL that altogether can hold four terabytes of data.
The Java program used on the robotic rovers is nearly identical to the JPL's online program Maestro that allows site visitors to guide a simulated rover across a 3-D Martian terrain. (To try out the Java-based data browser Maestro and drive a simulated dune buggy on Mars, see http://mars.telascience.org/.)
Java's journey to Mars began nearly ten years ago, when JPL scientists began experimenting with Java as a language for the command and control system for the 1995 Mars Sojourner. When the JPL team brought their work to Sun Microsystems' attention, James Gosling, father of Java, became intrigued, and spent so much time at the Pasadena space lab that he became an advisory board member. "They (the JPL team) are doing things that people think are science fiction," said Gosling. "It's a place to have your mind blown." (See James Gosling's weblog for more of his comments on the Mars Rovers.)
The Spirit is one of two twin robot geologists running on Wind River's real-time operating system (RTOS), VxWorks. The second twin, Opportunity, is scheduled to land on Mars on January 24, 2004. On Mars, Spirit will perform complex tasks, such as trajectory, descent and ground operations control, data collection, and Mars-to-Earth communication relay.
In addition to powering the Mars Rovers, Wind River's technology also operates within NASA JPL's Stardust spacecraft. Stardust is the first United States space mission dedicated solely to the exploration of a comet, named Wild 2, and the first robotic mission designed to return extraterrestrial material from outside the orbit of the Moon. This month, Stardust will complete its four-year journey from Earth, arriving within 100 kilometers of the speeding nucleus of Wild 2 to collect dust samples from the comet's tail in order to help answer fundamental questions regarding the origins of the solar system. Wind River's VxWorks RTOS is responsible for Stardust's flight trajectory and path, the collection of interstellar dust and cometary material, the journey back to Earth, and the safe landing of the return capsule.
The Mars Exploration Rovers and the Stardust missions are part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's lead center for robotic exploration of the solar system, which is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA. To learn more about Mars Exploration Rovers, go to marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/. To learn more about Stardust, go to stardust.jpl.nasa.gov.
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Saturday, January 17, 2004
Scientists rocked by Mar Show
By Mike Toner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan 17 2004
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Spirit, the six-wheeled NASA robot making tracks across Mars' Gusev Crater, is enticing earthbound scientists with a new kind of rock 'n' roll.
Equipped with twin stereo cameras that make it look like a google-eyed Martian Waldo and a toolbox that would be at home in any geologist's knapsack, Spirit is seeking clues about where Mars' water went.
Dust devil tracks and drifts of fine red soil leave no doubt that this patch of Martian real estate is drier than any desert on Earth, and probably has been that way for billions of years.
But if water was once there, the record of its presence may well be preserved in the rocks that Spirit -- and a companion rover due to land on the other side of Mars a week from today -- will examine in the coming months.
"Rocks are time capsules that contain their own little history of where they've been and how they've formed," says rover science team member David Des Marais, an astrobiologist at NASA's Ames Research Center.
"Rocks are collections of minerals. If you find minerals that form in water, you know they were formed under conditions in which life might have lived," he says. "That's why we get excited about rocks."
*****
On Earth, much of the planet's earliest history has been erased -- weathered, eroded or covered by subsequent events. The cratered surface of Mars, however, shows that vast areas have changed little in the last 3.5 billion years.
Much of what scientists know about Mars today is based on what they can see from a distance. But even from high above Mars, orbiting satellites have revealed valleys, river deltas, and erosion patterns that look like they could only have been formed by surface water.
In 1997, the Mars Pathfinder landed in a region that looked remarkably like a boulder-filled arroyo -- a dry streambed subject to periodic flooding -- somewhere in the American Southwest.
But pictures have their limitations. Unlocking the secrets of Mars past requires getting up close and technical.
"The rovers'-eye images from Mars are dazzling, but the chemical analyses of rocks and soils will be the true gold mine to scientists because we hope they will tell us if there was water on Mars," says Darby Dyar, an astronomer at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts who is helping NASA interpret the chemical signatures of Mars minerals.
"Understanding the chemistry and mineralogy of the rocks will allow us to decode the geologic history of Mars and evaluate the possibility that life could have existed there" she says.
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In the coming months, Mars scientists will be looking with special interest at the pedigrees of two distinct kinds of minerals in Mars rocks: carbonates and gray hematite. Both have a long and intimate association with watery environments.
On earth, carbonates form naturally in the presence of carbon dioxide and water. Calcium carbonate, the dominant mineral in limestone and coral reefs, is one of the most abundant minerals in the earth's crust.
As rocks absorb heat from the sun, the heat re-radiated by each mineral has its own, unique infrared signature. Scientists got very excited last year when infrared measurements taken by the thermal emission spectrometer aboard the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor identified, for the first time, signs of magnesium-rich carbonates.
But those carbonates are widely scattered, with no signs of basins where they might have been deposited. That has led some scientists to contend suggests Mars never had standing bodies of water. Instead, they say, Martian carbonates may have been formed by a chemical reaction involving the planet's atmosphere, which is 98 percent carbon dioxide.
Even before it rolled onto Martian soil last week, Spirit, using its own thermal emission spectrometer -- dubbed mini-TES -- spotted similar signs of carbonates at the Gusev landing site.
"We came looking for carbonates. We have them. We're going to chase them," said Dr. Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, the leader of the Mini-TES team.
As the mission unfolds, scientists hope a closer examination of the rocks with all of the rover's tools will enable them to deduce the conditions under which they formed.
Because rocks on the surface have been weathered for millions of years, the rover must first grind away a two-inch wide portion of the outer rind with its rock abrasion tool -- RAT for short.
"Clearing away the dust and weathered layer gives the science instruments access to the part of the rock that hasn't changed since it was formed billions of years ago," says Paul Bartlett of Honeybee Robotics, the New York firm that developed the tool.
*****
Scientists are also looking forward to having the rover poke around in the nearby crater they call Sleepy Hollow. Because Mars has been dry so long, most of the original crust lies hidden beneath fine dust.
The crater, however, provides a window into the crust that the rover would otherwise be unable to reach. Rocks exposed by the ancient impact may date to the time when the crater floor was covered by water.
Like any good geologist, the rover carries a combination camera and microscope that will snap close-ups of the rocks' particles more than 1000 times larger than life size.
Scientists discount the notion that the rover might actually stumble across some recognizable sign of ancient life. Even assuming life once existed on Mars, they say the chance of finding some sort of fossil in any given two-inch section of rock is highly unlikely.
The rover has two additional spectrometers -- one sensitive to iron-rich minerals, which will provide clues about the rate and extent of oxidation that has altered Mars' iron-rich rocks and soils, and the other sensitive to X-ray radiation. It will precisely measure the ratio of elements in each sample.
The rover Opportunity, due to land on Mars' Meridiana Planum this week, will carry the same set of tools, but it will be exploring a very different landscape than Spirit's Gusev Crater.
Most of Mars is covered with another kind of hematite, a highly oxidzed iron-bearing mineral that on Earth is known as rust. The surface of Mars is literally rusting away, a process that gives the planet its distinctive hue.
The Meridiani site, however, lies in the heart of a 30,000-square-mile region covered with what readings taken from space identify as gray hematite. Although gray hematite has the same chemical formula as its rust-colored cousin, it has a grainier, crystalline structure
Meridiani is one of only three such outcrops on Mars, and scientists are drawn to it because, at least on Earth, gray hematite usually forms through deposition in lake or ocean basins, or under geothermal conditions, like the geysers of Yellowstone National Park.
"Hematite is like a beacon," says Brian Hynek, a University of Colorado physicist on the Mars science team. "On earth it is a beacon for water."
Under certain conditions, however, gray hematite can form as a result of volcanic processes, so its presence on Mars is hardly proof that the planet once was wet. Opportunity will ltry to resolve that ambiguity.
Both landing sites have been chosen for their tantalizing hints that Mars had a watery past. But scientists recognize that trying to understand Mars by looking at a few scattered sites is a little like trying to understand Earth by sampling the Amazon rain forest and the Atacama Desert.
"Gusev and Meridiani are very different places," says NASA's Des Marais. "We are starved for information about Mars. We will be happy with anything we get. But we have to remember that the surface area of Mars is equal to all of the continents on Earth."
"It's not just one big, boring desert," says Ed Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science. "This is an incredibly diverse planet."
And even if the rovers succeed in shedding light on the era when water once coursed across the surface, Weiler says it will only whet scientific curiosity about Mars in the future.
"It's not just about rocks, not about minerals, or about pretty pictures," he says. "It's about learning what we can about the possibility of life beyond the Earth and the big question: Are we alone?"
*****
Thursday, January 15, 2004
-- Life (and Death) on Mars --
By Paul Davies, New York Times, Jan. 15, 2004
SYDNEY, Australia — President Bush's announcement yesterday that the United States will soon be pointing its rockets toward Mars will doubtless be greeted with delight by space scientists.
After all, there are plenty of good reasons to mount such a trip. For a start, Mars is one of the few accessible places beyond Earth that could have sustained life. Though a freeze-dried desert today, it was once warm and wet, with lakes, rivers, active volcanoes and a thick atmosphere — all conditions conducive to life. Microbes might even remain alive there, lurking in liquid aquifers deep beneath the permafrost.
If life began from scratch on both Mars and Earth separately, then evidence for a second genesis would await us, providing a heaven-sent opportunity to compare two bio-systems and learn how life emerges from non-life. And if life were found to have started twice within the solar system, it would signal that the laws of nature are inherently bio-friendly, implying a universe teeming with life.
An alternative possibility is that life started on Mars and spread to Earth inside material blasted into space by the impact of comets crashing into the Martian surface. Mars and Earth trade rocks, and hardy bacteria could have hitched a ride to seed our planet with microbial Martians. Just possibly the journey was reversed, with life starting on Earth and hopping to Mars. Though such cross-contamination would compromise hopes of identifying a genuine second sample of life, it would still represent a biological bonanza, enabling scientists to study two versions of evolution. The economic and practical benefits would be incalculable.
Mars is alluring in another respect. Alone among our sister planets, it is able to support a permanent human presence. As Robert Zubrin of the Mars Society has remarked, it is the second safest place in the solar system. Its thin atmosphere provides a measure of protection against meteorites and radiation. Crucially, there is probably the water, carbon dioxide and minerals needed to sustain a colony.
And yet the scientific community's enthusiasm will surely be tempered by skepticism. Scientists, it's worth remembering, rejoiced when President George H. W. Bush unveiled a Mars project in 1989. The same scientists then despaired when the plan quickly evaporated amid spiraling projected costs and shifting priorities. Of course, the project's demise should not have surprised anyone. Back then, a manned expedition to Mars came with a price tag of of more than $400 billion, a sum that makes the cost of the Apollo Moon landings seem like small change.
Why is going to Mars so expensive? Mainly it's the distance from Earth. At its closest point in orbit, Mars lies 35 million miles away from us, necessitating a journey of many months, whereas reaching the Moon requires just a few days' flight. On top of this, Mars has a surface gravity that, though only 38 percent of Earth's, is much greater than the Moon's. It takes a lot of fuel to blast off Mars and get back home. If the propellant has to be transported there from Earth, costs of a launching soar.
Without some radical improvements in technology, the prospects for sending astronauts on a round-trip to Mars any time soon are slim, whatever the presidential rhetoric. What's more, the president's suggestion of using the Moon as a base — a place to assemble equipment and produce fuel for a Mars mission less expensively — has the potential to turn into a costly sideshow. There is, however, an obvious way to slash the costs and bring Mars within reach of early manned exploration. The answer lies with a one-way mission.
Most people react with instinctive horror at the suggestion. I recall my own sense of discomfort when I met an aging American scientist who claimed to have trained for a one-way mission to the Moon in the pre-Apollo days. And in the case of the barren Moon, that reaction is largely justified. There is little on the Moon to sustain human life. Mars, however, is a different story. Because of the planet's relatively benign environment, it is theoretically able to support a permanent human presence. If provided with the right equipment, astronauts would have a chance of living there for years. A one-way trip to Mars need not mean a quick demise.
Every two years the orbit of Mars creates a window of opportunity to send fresh supplies at a reasonable cost. An initial colony of four astronauts, equipped with a small nuclear reactor and a couple of rover vehicles, could make their own oxygen, grow some food and even initiate building projects using local raw materials. Supplemented by food shipments, medical supplies and replacement gadgets from home, the colony could be sustained indefinitely. To be sure, the living conditions would be uncomfortable, but the colonists would have the opportunity to do ground-breaking scientific work and blaze a trail that would ensure them a permanent place in the annals of discovery.
Obviously this strategy carries significant risks in addition to those faced by a conventional Mars mission. Major equipment failure could leave the colony without enough power, oxygen or food. An accident might kill or disable an astronaut who provided some vital expertise. A supply drop might fail, condemning the colonists to starve in a very public way.
Even if nothing went wrong, the astronauts' lives would certainly be shortened by the harsh conditions. The lower gravity would create long-term medical problems and the cosmic radiation that penetrates the thin atmosphere is bound to increase the risk of cancer. Add in the debilitating effects of general privation, and the lack of sophisticated medical equipment, and the prospects for longevity look slim.
Would it be right to ask people to accept such conditions for the sake of science, or even humanity? The answer has to be yes. We already expect certain people to take significant risks on our behalf, such as special forces operatives or test pilots. Some people gleefully dice with death in the name of sport or adventure. Dangerous occupations that reduce life expectancy through exposure to hazardous conditions or substances are commonplace.
A century ago, explorers set out to trek across Antarctica in the full knowledge that they could die in the process, and that even if they succeeded their health might be irreversibly harmed. Yet governments and scientific societies were willing sponsors of these enterprises. Why should it be different today?
Who would put their hand up for a one-way ticket to Mars? I work among people who study astrobiology and planetary science, and there is no lack of eager young scientists who would sign up right now, given half a chance. But it would make more sense to pick mature, older scientists with reduced life expectancy. Other considerations, like weight, emotional stability and scientific credentials, would of course have to be factored in.
The early outpost wouldn't be left to wither and die. Rather, it would form the basis for a much more ambitious colonization program. Over the years new equipment and additional astronauts would be sent to join the original crew. In time, the colony would grow to the point of being self-sustaining.
When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse-colonized from Mars.
Would NASA entertain a one-way policy for human Mars exploration? Probably not. But other, more adventurous space agencies in Europe or Asia might. The next giant leap for mankind won't come without risk.
*** Paul Davies, professor of natural philosophy at the Australian Center for Astrobiology, is author of "The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life."
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Mars Rover Sets Off to Explore
Spirit Looks Back - Jan 15, 2004 (NASA JPL Mars Rover HQ):
This image from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's rear hazard identification camera shows the rover's hind view of the lander platform, its nest for the past 12 sols, or martian days. The rover is approximately 1 meter (3 feet) in front of the airbag-cushioned lander, facing northwest. Note the tracks left in the martian soil by the rovers' wheels, all six of which have rolled off the lander. This is the first time the rover has touched martian soil.
Mars Virtual Exploration with Maestro
JAn 15, 2004
Maestro is released by "http://mars.telascience.org" it is a 27Mb 3D imaging application available for Mac OS X, Linux, and even Windows. It requires Java3D.
Description: "Maestro contains a simplified menu of commands that you can use to create your own driving and science activities, using all of the rover’s instruments to enact your own day of mission operations. You are in the driver’s seat...what will be next place we will explore on Mars? (Note: The Athena science payload (Pancam, MI, Mini-TES, APXS, MB, RAT) is arguably the most sophisticated instrument suite that has yet operated on the surface of Mars. Although Maestro provides activities for the instruments in the Athena science payload, these activities are highly simplified compared to the actual way these instruments are commanded during mission operations.)"
