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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: January 7, 2015 at 3:44:17 PM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Wednesday – Jan. 7, 2015
If you missed it, Gene Kranz's talk was outstanding. He had a full audience and it was neat to see how young the crowd was! But a few of us old Geezers were there….not counting me of course. Hope to see you at our tomorrow's Monthly Retirees Luncheon at Hibachi Grill at 11:30 remember most of us get the Senior rate on lunch :>)Couple of new additions to the potential losses list and it will continue to grow! I recall already sending out Bob Spanns AMF flyer….
RETIREMENT JSC SF211 FTP RYTLEWSKI, PATRICIA 01/30/15 RETIREMENT JSC AH811 FTP HUMPHREY, NIESJE 02/01/15 RETIREMENT JSC SF211 FTP SPANN, ROBERT 01/08/15 NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsWednesday – Jan. 7, 2015HEADLINES AND LEADSCosmic Renaissance: Why Space Is Popular Again (Op-Ed)Nicholas Thurkettle - Space.comNicholas Thurkettle is a lifelong outer-space enthusiast and co-author, with M.F. Thomas, of the acclaimed sci-fi thriller "Seeing by Moonlight" (BookBaby, 2013). He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.The first British group to top the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States was not The Beatles but a group that went by the name The Tornados. In 1962, they recorded a pop instrumental tune with a catchy melody played on a prototype Vox Continental organ. The song was called "Telstar," and it was recorded in a single day and was released just five weeks later, to capitalize on the British public's fascination with the Telstar 1 communications satellite that had just launched.1,000 Alien Planets! NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Hits Big MilestoneMike Wall - Space.comNASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered its 1,000th alien planet, further cementing the prolific exoplanet-hunting mission's status as a space-science legend.Kepler finds two planets with a striking resemblance to EarthAmina Khan - Los Angeles TimesWelcome to the family! Scientists using NASA's Kepler spacecraft have confirmed at least eight new roughly Earth-sized planets sitting in the habitable zones of their host stars – two of which rival the most "Earth-like" planets found to date.So Many Earth-Like Planets, So Few TelescopesDennis Overbye – New York TimesIt's a big universe, but it's full of small planets.Has Curiosity Found Fossilized Life on Mars?Ian O'Neill - Discovery.comTime and time again, as we carefully scrutinize the amazing high-resolution imagery flowing to Earth from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, we see weird things etched in Martian rocks. Most of the time our brains are playing tricks on us. At other times, however, those familiar rocky features can be interpreted as processes that also occur on Earth.Mars Rover Curiosity Mission Gets New Science ChiefMike Wall - Space.comThe science team on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity mission has a new leader.SpaceX CRS-5 Launch Scrubbed for Today - UPDATEMarcia S. Smith - Spacepolicyonline.comSpaceX scrubbed its launch of its fifth operational cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) this morning 81 seconds before launch. The countdown had been proceeding smoothly, but, according to NASA, was scrubbed when a thrust vector control actuator on the second stage did not perform as expected.Tiny Greenhouse Could Fly Plants to Mars in 2018Mike Wall - Space.comLifeforms from Earth may touch down on Mars just a few years from now — but those interplanetary travelers would be plants, not people.COMPLETE STORIESCosmic Renaissance: Why Space Is Popular Again (Op-Ed)Nicholas Thurkettle - Space.comNicholas Thurkettle is a lifelong outer-space enthusiast and co-author, with M.F. Thomas, of the acclaimed sci-fi thriller "Seeing by Moonlight" (BookBaby, 2013). He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.The first British group to top the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States was not The Beatles but a group that went by the name The Tornados. In 1962, they recorded a pop instrumental tune with a catchy melody played on a prototype Vox Continental organ. The song was called "Telstar," and it was recorded in a single day and was released just five weeks later, to capitalize on the British public's fascination with the Telstar 1 communications satellite that had just launched.Telstar 1 lasted for only a few months, as it was damaged by radiation from high-altitude nuclear bomb tests. But among other great advances, it facilitated the first satellite phone call in history, while being powered by solar cells generating a maximum of about 14 watts of power.Most of the public doesn't remember the humble little Telstar 1 , or the song that honored it — though the name is still proudly in use, with Telstar 18 operating over our heads since 2004.History has a way of reducing eras to moments. They're like Pavlovian memories, images activated by their labels to stand in for something far more complex. When you say "Space Race," the majority of people will picture Neil Armstrong taking one giant leap for mankind. The discovery, the bravery, the setbacks, the "Right Stuff" — all the cultural noise, both positive and negative, of those decades post-World War II — get organized into a file, its cover image Neil Armstrong in his spacesuit. Distance reduces the complexity and uncertainty of the time, and unifies it under one image of absolute triumph.When you say "NASA," though — or "outer space" in general — the picture seems to be in flux these days, doesn't it? Images, both glorious and horrible, compete to represent our impressions. The Curiosity rover lands on Mars and begins to explore, and optimism and delight surge in the community of outer-space enthusiasts. Virgin Galactic's suborbital tour plane SpaceShipTwo catastrophically disintegrates over the Mojave Desert, costing a heroic life and triggering grief and sober review of the dangers of being on the exploratory forefront.Television sensations like "Cosmos" and hit films like "Gravity" and "Interstellar" inspire imaginations and put the wonders of space back into popular culture. U.S. congressional funding for NASA triggers annual debates about the public versus private sectors that play out with tribal ferocity. Far, far out in the solar system, NASA's New Horizons probe successfully comes online, teasing the world for our first close-ups of strange Pluto in 2015.These days, the perception of space in our collective dialogue seems to resemble a roller-coaster Wall Street stock, racing up and down from every new development. For those of us who love outer space and what it represents for both the scientific and spiritual progress of humanity, it can test us to endure the whipsawing twists. It's like watching someone we love being grabbed onto a bandwagon one day, and then dragged toward the gallows the next.I was not alive during the heyday of the Cold War space race, but reading about the bold inventiveness of that era, dreaming of the way one astronaut could unite people on Earth in wonder, it can make one envious of the moment, desirous to find some way to inspire that level of love again.I personally find relief from the anxiety by remembering that all of these debates take place in a modern framework wherein space travel is real, accepted and normal. In the 19th century, it was only happening in the wild imaginings of authors like Jules Verne and Richard Adams Locke (the speculated, but not confirmed, creator of the Great Moon Hoax stories that appeared in New York's newspaper The Sun in 1835). In the first years of the 20th century, world-changing physicist and engineer Hermann Oberth was just a teenager building model rockets inspired by Verne's writing. The World Wars turned all of mankind's greatest technological advances, including Oberth's, into murderous nightmares, and for many years rockets were only as good as the number of people you could kill with them.Here we are now, though, with a space program that is much more benign — one of the stickiest complaints these days is that Richard Branson is financing his Virgin Galactic ventures by selling suborbital tour packages to rich celebrities. I'll take that critique on elitism over a Cold War terror of ICBMs.The space program is no longer one national entity like NASA but a gloriously webby international public-private endeavor that sometimes competes, sometimes collaborates and produces regular quiet successes, all of which would have been impossible in Armstrong's heyday. For more than 14 years, there have been human beings in space every single day, aboard the International Space Station, carrying out a mission that keeps the United States and Russia communicating even amid Earth-shaking political tensions. Even the hardiest privatization advocate isn't arguing that we abandon space; they simply disagree on whom should pay for it, and in what proportion.These ups and downs in short- and medium-term perception might be viewed as similar to the crew and cargo modules regularly rising and returning to Earth. No single event is unifying or galvanizing, but they happen, and happen and happen, fantastically ordinarily, all the while building the road to that next moment that will reaffirm the idea of outer space in the human consciousness with all the optimism space lovers like ourselves already feel.We don't know what that event will be. Maybe it will be when (not if) we set foot on Mars. Maybe it will be when (not if) we discover recognizable life above the microorganism stage thriving on another world. It is impossible to predict what the reaction will be, other than that it will be revolutionary. The 21st century is the century where humankind simply exists beyond Earth — not in people's imaginations or in military scenarios or future experimental plans, but today. Zoom out and take a look at the world the way that the space program first allowed us to do in that iconic photo of one Earth. You will see triumph.1,000 Alien Planets! NASA's Kepler Space Telescope Hits Big MilestoneMike Wall - Space.comNASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered its 1,000th alien planet, further cementing the prolific exoplanet-hunting mission's status as a space-science legend.Kepler reached the milestone today (Jan. 6) with the announcement of eight newly confirmed exoplanets, bringing the mission's current alien world tally to 1,004. Kepler has found more than half of all known exoplanets to date, and the numbers will keep rolling in: The telescope has also spotted 3,200 additional planet candidates, and about 90 percent of them should end up being confirmed, mission scientists say.Furthermore, a number of these future finds are likely to be small, rocky worlds with temperate, relatively hospitable surface conditions — in other worlds, planets a lot like Earth. (In fact, at least two of the newly confirmed eight Kepler planets — which were announced in Seattle today during the annual winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society — appear to meet that description, mission team members said.) [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]"Kepler was designed to find these Earth analogues, and we always knew that the most interesting results would come at the end," Kepler mission scientist Natalie Batalha, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told Space.com last month."So we're just kind of ramping up toward those most interesting results," she added. "There's still a lot of good science to come out of Kepler."Changing the gameExoplanet science is a young field. The first world beyond our solar system wasn't confirmed until 1992, and astronomers first found alien planets around a sunlike star in 1995. [7 Ways to Discover Alien Planets]The Kepler spacecraft has therefore been a revelation, and has helped lead a revolution. The $600 million mission launched in March 2009, with the aim of determining how frequently Earth-like planets occur around the Milky Way galaxy.The telescope spots alien planets using the "transit method," watching for the telltale brightness dips caused when an orbiting planet crosses the face of its host star from Kepler's perspective.The instrument generally needs to observe multiple transits to flag a planet candidate, which is part of the reason why the most intriguing finds are expected to come relatively late in the mission. (Several transits of a huge, close-orbiting "hot Jupiter," which has no potential to host life, can be observed relatively quickly, while it may take years to gather the required data for a more distantly orbiting, possibly Earth-like world.)"Before, we were just kind of plucking the low-hanging fruit, and now we're getting down into the weeds, and things are getting a little harder," Batalha said. "But that's a challenge we knew we would have."Kepler candidates must then be confirmed —by follow-up observations using other instruments, for example, or by rigorous analysis of the Kepler dataset.That enormous dataset has allowed researchers to study alien planets in new systematic and statistical ways. In 2013, for example, two different studies used Kepler data to estimate the percentage of red dwarfs — stars smaller and dimmer than the sun — that host Earth-size planets in their "habitable zone" (the range of distances from a star that could support the existence of liquid water).One study put the number at 15 percent, while the other calculated 40 percent. Even the lower estimate should cheer astrobiologists, for red dwarfs are the most common stars in the Milky Way, making up about 70 percent of the galaxy's 100 billion or so stars.Kepler has not yet discovered a true Earth twin — an Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a sunlike star — but the mission is on track to figure out just how commonly these worlds occur throughout the galaxy, Batalha said."I don't yet have a good sense of the completeness of the habitable zone; it could be that we will be sensitive toward the inner half of the habitable zone, maybe not the complete habitable zone," she said. "But I am confident now that we are going to get a number based on actual discoveries, and that we are not going to have to rely on extrapolation."A new missionKepler's original planet-hunting campaign, which was designed to last for 3.5 years, called for the spacecraft to continuously monitor about 150,000 distant stars in the constellations Lyra and Cygnus.The data-gathering part of that mission came to an end in May 2013, when the second of Kepler's four orientation-maintaining reaction wheels failed, robbing the spacecraft of its super-precise pointing ability. A repair mission is not going to happen; Kepler orbits the sun, not the Earth.But Kepler is still observing the heavens. In May 2014, NASA approved a new two-year mission extension called K2 for the space observatory, during which a compromised Kepler continues to hunt for exoplanets but also observes other cosmic objects and phenomena, including supernova explosions and star clusters.K2 should spot a number of relatively nearby exoplanets that can be observed in detail by NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is scheduled to launch in late 2018, Batalha said."So we will be well-poised when JWST launches to begin studying the diversity of the atmospheres of planets, thanks to discoveries made by K2," she said. (NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, scheduled to launch in 2017, should also find a number of promising targets for follow-up work by JWST, researchers say.)While K2 observations continue, Batalha and other Kepler scientists are still busy analyzing data from the prime mission. NASA wants this work done by September 2017, and the team should meet that deadline, Batalha said."Sometime around September of 2016, we'll probably have our final catalog," she said. "And then between September and January [of 2017], we'll be producing the products that will allow people to do the statistics with the catalog. And then we'll kind of write up all of our documentation and final papers, and turn off the lights and go home sometime around the end of summer 2017."But that moment won't mark the end of Kepler's contributions; NASA could extend K2 for another two years, for example. And even if the spacecraft shuts its sensitive eyes in 2016, its observations will keep researchers busy for a long time to come."I fully expect that scientists will be working through Kepler data — and characterizing those planets and inferring various properties of exoplanets based on that data — literally for decades," Batalha said.Kepler finds two planets with a striking resemblance to EarthAmina Khan - Los Angeles TimesWelcome to the family! Scientists using NASA's Kepler spacecraft have confirmed at least eight new roughly Earth-sized planets sitting in the habitable zones of their host stars – two of which rival the most "Earth-like" planets found to date.The discoveries, described at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, come as astronomers announce a fresh influx of 554 candidate planets, bringing the total to 4,175 possible planets – at least 1,000 of which have now been confirmed."Despite the fact that there are over 4,000 candidates from Kepler, there are still very few small, less-than-two-Earth-radius, habitable-zone planets," said coauthor Doug Caldwell, SETI Institute Kepler scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center. "They really make up a special population that is of interest for understanding the prevalence of life in the universe."These two planets, described in research led by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, are named Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b. Both orbit red dwarf stars, which are much cooler and dimmer than our sun. That means that their habitable zone – the area around the star that's the right temperature for liquid water to exist without getting boiled or frozen – is much closer to the star.That's good news for these two planets, since Kepler-438b orbits its star every 35.2 days, and Kepler-442b circles its star once every 112 days – compare that with Earth, whose orbit takes 365 days. Kepler-438b gets about 40% more light than Earth (giving it a 70% chance of being in its star's habitable zone), and Kepler-442b receives roughly two-thirds as much light as Earth (giving it a 97% chance of being in its star's habitable zone).Before Tuesday's announcement, the two most Earth-like planets were Kepler-186f (1.1 times Earth's size, with 32% a much light) and Kepler-62f (1.4 times Earth's size, with 41% as much light).The scientists think the two new planets are around the right size to be rocky like Earth, rather than gassy like a mini-Neptune. But they can't say for sure nor can they say whether there is water present. Aside from size and estimated temperature, there aren't a whole lot of other qualities the astronomers can home in on. Still, it's a start, the researchers said."We're not only closing in on an Earth twin, but we're better understanding the diversity in this special neighborhood of planets," Caldwell said.So Many Earth-Like Planets, So Few TelescopesDennis Overbye – New York TimesIt's a big universe, but it's full of small planets.Astronomers announced on Tuesday that they had found eight new planets orbiting their stars at distances compatible with liquid water, bringing the total number of potentially habitable planets in the just-right "Goldilocks" zone to a dozen or two, depending on how the habitable zone of a star is defined.NASA's Kepler spacecraft, now in its fifth year of seeking out the shadows of planets circling other stars, has spotted hundreds, and more and more of these other worlds look a lot like Earth — rocky balls only slightly larger than our own home, that with the right doses of starlight and water could turn out to be veritable gardens of microbial Eden.As the ranks of these planets grow, astronomers are planning the next step in the quest to end cosmic loneliness: gauging which hold the greatest promise for life and what tools will be needed to learn about them.The planets unveiled on Tuesday were detected by a group led by Guillermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.On Monday, another group of astronomers said they had managed to weigh precisely a set of small planets and found that their densities and compositions almost exactly matched those of Earth.Courtney Dressing, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said at a news conference, "I'm going to give you the recipe for a rocky planet."She began, "Take one cup of magnesium ..."Both groups announced their findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.Reviewing the history of exoplanets, Debra Fischer, a Yale astronomer, recalled that the first discovery of a planet orbiting another normal star, a Jupiter-like giant, was 20 years ago. Before that, she said, astronomers worried that "maybe the 'Star Trek' picture of the universe was not right, and there is no life anywhere else."Dr. Fischer called the progress in the last two decades "incredibly moving."And yet we still do not have a clue that we are not alone.So far, Kepler has discovered 4,175 potential planets, and 1,004 of them have been confirmed as real, according to Michele Johnson, a spokeswoman for NASA's Ames Research Center, which operates Kepler.Most of them, however, including those announced Tuesday, are hundreds of light-years away, too far for detailed study. We will probably never know any more about these particular planets than we do now."We can count as many as we like," said Sara Seager, a planet theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the new work, "but until we can observe the atmospheres and assess their greenhouse gas power, we don't really know what the surface temperatures are like."Still, she added, "it's heartening to have such a growing list."Finding Goldilocks planets closer to home will be the job of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, to be launched in 2017. But if we want to know what the weather is like on these worlds, whether there is water or even life, more powerful instruments will be needed.Dr. Seager is heading a NASA study investigating the concept of a starshade, which would float in front of a space telescope and block light from a star so that its much fainter planets would be visible.Another group, led by Karl Stapelfeldt of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, is studying a method known as a coronagraph, in which the occulting disk is inside the telescope.Both studies are expected to be completed in the next few months, and could affect plans for a former spy telescope bequeathed to NASA three years ago. Astronomers hope to launch it in the early 2020s to study dark energy, and they plan to include a coronagraph to search for exoplanets, according to Paul Schechter of M.I.T., chairman of a design team. Depending on the probe's orbit, Dr. Seager said, it could also be made "starshade ready."NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, due for a 2018 launch, will have a coronagraph capable of seeing Jupiter-size planets, but it is too late to adapt it to a starshade.Meanwhile, Dr. Seager and Julianne Dalcanton of the University of Washington are writing a separate report for a consortium of universities that runs observatories. The goal is to have a pool of dozens of "exo-Earths" to study in order to have any chance of seeing signs of life or understanding terrestrial planets, Dr. Seager said. Amassing them will require a space telescope 10 or 12 meters in diameter (the Webb will be 6.5 meters, and the largest currently on Earth is 10).All of this will be grist for the mill at the end of the decade when a panel of the National Academy of Sciences produces its wish list for astronomy in the 2020s.For all of Kepler's bounty, a planet like Earth, of the same size orbiting the same type of star, has not yet been confirmed. The most terrestrial of the new worlds announced Tuesday are a pair known as Kepler 438b and Kepler 442b, both orbiting stars slightly smaller, cooler and redder than our sun. Kepler 438b is only 12 percent larger than Earth in diameter and has a 35-day year; Kepler 442 is a third larger than Earth and has a 112-day year."All these are small, all are potentially habitable," said Doug Caldwell of the SETI Institute and NASA Ames at a news conference in Seattle.In a news release, Dr. Torres said, "Most of these planets have a good chance of being rocky, like Earth." That thought was reinforced by his colleagues, led by Ms. Dressing, a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Her group combined data from Kepler, which measures the sizes of planets, with spectrographic observations from an Italian telescope in the Canary Islands. That instrument measures planets' masses to determine their densities, and by combining the information Ms. Dressing's group was able to infer the densities and compositions of a set of small planets.All five of the planets smaller than 1.6 times the size of Earth fell on a line consistent with Earth and Venus. Planets larger than that, Ms. Dressing and her colleagues found, were fluffier, perhaps because as planets get bigger their mass and gravity increase, and they are better able to hang on to gas and lighter components.The work complements and tightens studies done last year by Geoffrey Marcy and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley; that group looks into the nature of so-called super Earths, planets bigger than ours and smaller than Neptune.There are no planets in this range in our solar system, but according to Kepler they are common in the galaxy. Are they rocks like Earth or blobs like Neptune? The break point now seems to be 1.6 times the size of Earth, according to Ms. Dressing, and it is on those planets, perhaps, that we should concentrate our search for cosmic company.As she said in her presentation, "Doubling the recipe doesn't work."Has Curiosity Found Fossilized Life on Mars?Ian O'Neill - Discovery.comTime and time again, as we carefully scrutinize the amazing high-resolution imagery flowing to Earth from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, we see weird things etched in Martian rocks. Most of the time our brains are playing tricks on us. At other times, however, those familiar rocky features can be interpreted as processes that also occur on Earth.Now, in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, a geobiologist has related structures photographed by Curiosity of Martian sedimentary rock with structures on Earth that are known to be created by microbial lifeforms. But just because the structures look like they've been formed by microbes on Mars, does it mean that they were?Microbially Induced Sedimentary Structures on Mars?The image in question was snapped by Curiosity of the Gillespie Lake outcrop situated in the Yellowknife Bay area of Gale Crater that the rover arrived at on Dec. 17, 2012, on sol 125 of its mission. It was soon realized that the Gillespie Lake rock is sedimentary sandstone, formed when Mars possessed surface water. As such, there are many likenesses between the rocks found in Yellowknife and sedimentary rocks on Earth. For example, the layering of sedimentary rock and conglomerations contained within these layers led NASA scientists to realize that Curiosity is exploring an ancient lake bed.After 20 years of studying microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS) on Earth, Nora Noffke of Old Dominion University in Virginia turned her attentions to Curiosity's observations of Gillespie Lake.During Noffke's analysis of the Mars rock, striking similarities in morphological structures in Gillespie Lake and terrestrial rocks were found. Gillespie Lake, which has been dated to around 3.7 billion years old, seems to possess its own structures that could be attributed to ancient Martian microbes.In her analysis, Noffke is keen to emphasize that she hasn't found proof of ancient Mars life, only that her hypothesis provides a compelling explanation for the formation processes behind the shapes in the surface of Mars sedimentary rock."All I can say is, here's my hypothesis and here's all the evidence that I have," said Noffke in an Astrobiology Magazine article, "although I do think that this evidence is a lot."There have been countless claims pointing to evidence of ancient life on Mars, many of which have since been proven to be, at most, wishful thinking, but this new study has garnered some cautious praise from planetary scientist Chris McKay, of NASA's Ames Research Center and an associate editor of Astrobiology."I've seen many papers that say 'Look, here's a pile of dirt on Mars, and here's a pile of dirt on Earth. And because they look the same, the same mechanism must have made each pile on the two planets,'" said McKay."That's an easy argument to make, and it's typically not very convincing. However, Noffke's paper is the most carefully done analysis of the sort that I've seen, which is why it's the first of its kind published in Astrobiology.""In one image, I saw something that looked very familiar," said Noffke. "So I took a closer look, meaning I spent several weeks investigating certain images centimeter by centimeter, drawing sketches, and comparing them to data from terrestrial structures."On Earth, ancient microbial mats — basically sheets of microbes that formed usually in wet environments — can be found fossilized in the surfaces of rock that used to be submerged in water. Noffke studied these fossils on Earth, from a variety of locations around the world, and matched their shape and expected morphology with the shapes on the surface of Gillespie Lake and sure enough, the similarities were there."At this point, all I'd like to do is point out these similarities," she added. "Further evidence must be provided to verify this hypothesis."Unfortunately, this is a problem that continues to dog any effort to find definitive proof of life, ancient or otherwise, on Mars.Curiosity Isn't Looking For LifeMars rover Curiosity is the most advanced machine ever sent to the surface of another world. Its mission on the Red Planet has been unprecedented, providing firm evidence that Mars was once a very wet planet. Also, the mission has detected organic chemistry in rock samples, proving that the building blocks for life do indeed exist on Mars' rusted terrain. And now, the detection of methane has added fuel to the fire, boosting speculation about methanogens (methane-producing microorganisms) that could be eking out an existence beneath the surface.Albeit compelling, all these lines of evidence for past and present life on Mars are just that, evidence. Curiosity's mission has never been to find life on Mars — it is there to seek out habitable environments on Mars, past and present. And this is the problem: until we send a robotic sample return mission or, preferably, land humans on Mars, we probably won't be able to definitively prove that rocky features, such as the ones that cover Gillespie Lake, were produced by microbial life.So what can we do with the assets we currently have on Mars? Noffke suggests, that if Curiosity encounters other features that resemble fossilized microbial mats, perhaps the rover could drill into the rock and sample the dust with its on board chemical laboratory, the Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM) instrument. Alas, any biological traces will likely be long-gone, says McKay.To find out whether these structures are indeed biological in nature, samples of rock would need to be thinly sliced and then microscopically analyzed for "specific microbial textures" — a feat well beyond Curiosity's abilities.So although this new research will likely grab the headlines, and rightly so, we shouldn't lose sight about what this means. It is not proof of life, it is another line of evidence for the presence of ancient microbial life on Mars. And although this research is compelling, it could still just be Mars rocks tricking us into thinking the shapes are biological in origin.Source: Astrobiology MagazineMars Rover Curiosity Mission Gets New Science ChiefMike Wall - Space.comThe science team on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity mission has a new leader.Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has succeeded John Grotzinger as Curiosity project scientist, agency officials announced Monday (Jan. 5)."John Grotzinger put his heart and soul into Curiosity for seven years, leaving a legacy of success and scientific achievement," Vasavada said in a statement. "Now I look forward to continuing our expedition to Mars' ancient past, with a healthy rover and a dedicated and passionate international team. And yes, this is all just incredibly cool."Curiosity's science team numbers nearly 500 people all over the world, who plan out how best to use the rover's 10 instruments and analyze its data. The project scientist oversees this effort and also coordinates with Curiosity's engineering team to make sure the science work doesn't put any undue strain on the rover or endanger its safety.Curiosity landed inside Mars' Gale Crater in August 2012 on a mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life. The rover has already found strong evidence that a potentially habitable lake-and-stream system once covered much of the crater billions of years ago, and it's now exploring the foothills of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) Mount Sharp in search of more clues about the planet's past.Vasavada had served as deputy project scientist on the mission since 2004. Grotzinger, who is based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, recently became chair of the university's Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. He is still a member of the Curiosity science team, NASA officials said.SpaceX CRS-5 Launch Scrubbed for Today - UPDATEMarcia S. Smith - Spacepolicyonline.comSpaceX scrubbed its launch of its fifth operational cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) this morning 81 seconds before launch. The countdown had been proceeding smoothly, but, according to NASA, was scrubbed when a thrust vector control actuator on the second stage did not perform as expected.The mission, Space-X CRS-5 or SpX-5, is carrying 5,108 pounds of food, water, clothing, research experiments, and equipment for the ISS crew.The next launch opportunity is on Friday, January 9, at 5:09 am Eastern Standard Time (EST) and NASA TV coverage will begin at 4:00 am EST if SpaceX determines it is ready for launch that day.A planned post-launch briefing was cancelled. NASA said to check www.nasa.gov/spacex for updates.Interest in this launch is especially high because SpaceX plans to land the Falcon 9 first stage on an autonomous drone ship as the next step in its plans to make the first stage reusable.Tiny Greenhouse Could Fly Plants to Mars in 2018Mike Wall - Space.comLifeforms from Earth may touch down on Mars just a few years from now — but those interplanetary travelers would be plants, not people.A tiny, self-contained greenhouse has been selected to fly on the robotic lander that Red Planet colonization effort Mars One intends to launch in 2018, group representatives announced Monday (Jan. 5).The greenhouse experiment, known as Seed, was one of 35 proposed lander science payloads submitted by university groups around the world. Mars One whittled this original pool down to 10 finalists, and Seed was chosen by a monthlong public vote that closed on Dec. 31. [Mars One's Red Planet Colony Project (Gallery)]"We are really pleased to be the selected project among so many excellent ideas," Seed team member Teresa Araújo said in a statement. "We are thrilled to be the first to send life to Mars. This will be a great journey that we hope to share with you all."The payload will send seeds of the small flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, an organism commonly used in space-science experiments, to Mars inside two containers. (The outer one will serve a protective function.) Upon landing, the seeds will be exposed to heat and a growth medium, giving them the chance to germinate and grow. Images relayed to Earth will let team members — who are based at several universities in Portugal and Spain — know how the experiment is going.Seed is designed to advance researchers' understanding of the potential for plant growth on Mars, which could aid the development of life-support systems on the Red Planet, experiment leaders said.Although Seed won the competition, it has not yet locked down its spot on the 2018 mission. Mars One will first examine the proposal, to make sure it is feasible and can be integrated on the lander, group representatives said. If this analysis reveals any serious issues, Mars One may end up going with one of the contest runners-up. (You can read more about all 10 finalists here; the second- and third-place finishers are Cyano Knights and Lettuce on Mars.)Mars One aims to land four astronauts on the Red Planet in 2025, kickstarting a permanent colony that will be augmented with new arrivals every two years thereafter. There are no plans at the moment to bring any of the settlers back to Earth.To help prepare for colonization, Mars One — a nonprofit based in the Netherlands — plans to launch a number of robotic precursor missions, including the 2018 effort, which would send a communications orbiter and lander to Mars.Mars One intends to pay for its ambitious activities primarily by staging a global media event around the colonization process, from astronaut selection through the pioneers' time on the Red Planet.ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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