Recently in Mars Category

"In April, the world will celebrate the quinquagenary of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, so it seems a good time to take stock of the silence. Three new books tackle the issue in three different ways. One, an immensely readable investigation of the SETI enterprise (with a surprising conclusion); the second, a technical guide to what we should be looking for and how; and the third, a left-field argument that the alien question has already been answered."

In New Scientist, Michael Hanlon surveys three new books about the continuing search for alien life, and attempts to grapple with the Fermi paradox."Today it is rare to meet an astronomer who doesn't believe that the universe is teeming with life. There is a feeling in the air that light will soon be shed on some of science's most fundamental questions: is Earth's biosphere unique? Do other minds ponder the universe?"

"The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon. There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all." As expected (and feared) earlier this year, the Obama administration's proposed NASA budget for the next five years cancels any and all plans to go to the moon anytime soon. "'We certainly don't need to go back to the moon,' said one administration official."

Sigh.

Ok, first off, the administration official who uttered the last sentence should be filed away next to Mr. Left of the Left and Ms. Pajamas as people who should no longer speak for the White House in any capacity whatsoever. Full stop, end of story. Putting my speechwriter cap on for a second: In most any political situation, ridiculing the dreams of an entire generation does not make for particularly good messaging.

Anyway, anonymous WH official aside, NASA administrator Charles Bolden sounded a better note about all this: "We're not abandoning anything. We're probably on a new course but human space flight is in our DNA. We are not abandoning human space flight by any stretch of the imagination. We have companies telling us they're excited to get humans off this planet and into orbit. I think we're going to get there and perhaps quicker than we would have done before."

And, to be clear, the administration's NASA budget increases the agency's funding by $6 billion over the next five years. The new budget ups research and development spending into cheaper heavy launch mechanisms, emphasizes more robotic exploration missions and observational experiments into climate change, extends the life of the ISS (although, with only five more shuttle missions remaining, other nations will have to help service it), and works to promote the various commercial space enterprises moving along right now.

All of this is well and good, but it would be nice to see some recognition of the civic importance of manned space flight by this administration. In their words, NASA is scrapping Constellation on account of it being "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies." And, given that we still had a lot of the expenditures before us, I suppose now was as good a time as any to kill the program if it's not the right direction to go in.

That being said, how many more times are we going to do this? We keep stopping and starting and stopping and starting our post-Shuttle plans for space, so that now, after five final shuttle missions this coming year, we will longer have the capability anymore as a nation to send men and women into orbit. "If implemented, the NASA a few years from now would be fundamentally different from NASA today. The space agency would no longer operate its own spacecraft, but essentially buy tickets for its astronauts." Forty-one years after we first reached the moon, that's just plain sad.

Ultimately, the central finding of the Augustine commission's final report, released this past October after extensive study of NASA's current situation, is a sound one: "The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources." In other words, we've been trying to talk the talk without walking the walk. If we're going to get serious about manned space flight, we need to stop piecemealing NASA and start making manned exploration a funding priority.

In total, the agency is slated to get $100 billion over the next five years. To put that number in perspective, that's less than a fifth of our defense budget for 2011 alone, and that's going by the most conservative numbers around -- NASA's five-year budget could be closer to a tenth of next year's defense spending. (For its part, the Augustine commission set a price tag of $3 billion a year to get serious about manned exploration.)

If we had put anywhere near that kind of money into exploration and R&D over the years, would we now be in this position, where we face the Hobson's choice of replicating expensive 50-year-old launch tech or being completely grounded as a nation? The lack of thinking about our long-term priorities sometimes is staggering to me. I've said this before, but I still believe it holds true: Short of possibly genomic research and advances in AI, nothing we do right now will matter more centuries or millennia hence than establishing a presence off-world...if we even have that long. Not to get all Jor-El up in here, but we really have to start getting serious about this.

"Although that panel suggested a $3 billion boost to NASA's $18.7-billion-a-year budget in order to take a firm next step in human space flight, Obama's support for a $1 billion bump next year represents a major coup for the agency given the ballooning deficit and the continuing recession. And NASA just won a $1 billion boost from Congress for 2010 in a bill signed by the president." By way of another friend, President Obama backs increased funding for NASA's new heavy launcher. "The president's decision to go with the second option is a major departure from his 2010 budget plan, which called for a 5% increase in 2010--the boost just approved by Congress--but then remaining flat through 2014."

Good, although I do wish he'd gone the full $3 billion. In the great scheme of things, not much we do is of larger importance than manned space flight. And 10,000 years from now, people aren't going to remember or much care how many Joint Strike Fighters we built in the Twenty-Tens. But they will know whether or not we took significant steps to leave the cradle and move off-world.

"'The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon,' the space agency said in a written statement." It's official: Data from NASA's LCROSS impact of a few weeks ago confirms the recent findings of Chandraayan-1: It ain't Hoth or Rura Penthe, but there is a "significant amount" of water on the moon, like, ice-field size.

"The amount of water they found in the plume was a couple of hundred kilograms in total, but that indicates there is a lot more still lying on the surface. They don't know how much exactly just yet." (As we found out recently, the same might also hold true of Mars.)

"'The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich,' said Colaprete. 'Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.'" I'm very reminded of James Hogan's Inherit the Stars right now. Also, it's probably about time to start taking lunar exploration a bit more seriously again, eh?

"The European Space Agency is seeking volunteers for a 520 day mission to Mars. The trip will begin in early 2010 and include 30 days on the surface of the red planet. The only requirements are that candidates must be 20-50 years old, in good health and no taller than six feet. You must be able to speak English or Russian and have experience in medicine, biology or engineering. You also must be a resident of one of the ESA Member States, which rules out Americans, but not our Canadian brothers & sisters."

Down and Out in Paris or London (or Toronto)? Well, if you're short of cash and heavy on free time, it seems the ESA is running a 520-day Mission-to-Mars simulation. Please don't be alarmed just because this is how Capricorn One starts. "If you're interested in volunteering, more information can be found here." (RT @Joe Hill.)

"'This film integrates my life's achievements,' he told me. 'It's the most complicated stuff anyone's ever done." Another time, he said, "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.'" On the eve of Avatar, the New Yorker's Dana Goodyear delivers a long and interesting profile of take-no-guff, autocratic auteur James Cameron. ("A small, loyal band of cast and crew works with him repeatedly; they call the dark side of his personality Mij--Jim backward.")

The whole thing is definitely worth a read, but this caught me eye further down the piece: "'We should ultimately have colonies on Mars, for purposes of expanding the footprint of the human race,' Cameron says. He shares with the Mars Society the opinion that NASA -- on whose advisory council he sat for three years -- has become too risk-averse. 'We've become cowards, basically,' he says. 'As a society, we're just fat and happy and comfortable and we've lost the edge.'" Listen to the King of the World -- he's dead on.

"'The space program began the day humans chose to walk out of their caves,' says Chang Díaz. 'By exploring space we are doing nothing less than insuring our own survival.' Chang Díaz believes that humans will either become extinct on Earth or expand into space. If we pull off the latter, he says, our notion of Earth will change forever."

With that red meat for the space cadets among us, the Smithsonian's Air & Space Magazine surveys current theoretical endeavors in propulsion mechanics, including nuclear-based rocketry and fusion. "I grew up watching Apollo, and the systematic and well-thought-out march to that. And they did it. When you look into pioneering topics, there are those people who don't want to touch it because it's too far out there. But if it's mature enough for you to at least start asking the right questions, and you do an honest job, then you can be a pioneer."

"'If you're willing to wait until 2028, you've got a heavy lift vehicle, but you've got nothing to lift,' she said. 'You cannot do this program on this budget.'" President Obama's Human Space Flight Plans Committee is set to announce that getting back to the moon by 2020 is not feasible given current budgetary constraints, and Mars is definitely out of the question. "The final list of options...will include some variation of a lunar base down the road. But the committee is most animated by what it calls the 'Deep Space' option, a strategy that emphasizes getting astronauts far beyond Low Earth Orbit but not necessarily plunking them down on alien worlds.'" Which basically sounds like unnecessarily strapping astronauts to normally-unmanned fly-by missions -- Not sure I see much point in that.

Honestly, this is pathetic. As I said here, it's time to raise our expectations of what we can achieve in space, and fund manned exploration of the solar system accordingly. Particularly given how much we're blowing on the Pentagon's space toys at the moment, we could stand to spend a bit more on one of the most important collective human endeavors still before us.

"So why do tech geeks love space? Though they may have the resources -- a trip to space will now set you back some $45 million -- this can't be the full answer: You don't see Donald Trump or P. Diddy signing up for an astro-mission. What makes it worth it for the tech geeks?" The Big Money's Julia Ioffe tries to ascertain why dot.com miliionaires pay out the nose for space travel. Uh, because it's there?

"'There's a documentary called Orphans of Apollo that's stated this well,' he explained. 'There's a generation of us, who are the tech leaders of today, who were universally inspired to go into science and technology because of the NASA Lunar Space Program. And the reason the movie is called Orphans of Apollo is because, in many ways, we feel orphaned by the fact that the space industry has not done a good job of capitalizing on that momentum of what many of us believed were the first steps into space, carrying the mission of human space flight farther and farther into deep space.'"

"Said John Logsdon, a George Washington University professor who co-wrote the book honored at the NASA party, 'There is a natural tension built into this situation... Mike is dead-on convinced that the current approach to the program is the right one. And Lori’s job is to question that for Mr. Obama. The Obama team is not going to walk in and take Mike’s word for it.'" The Orlando Sentinel suggests that NASA head Michael Griffin isn't being particularly helpful to the transition team at the agency: "NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, is obstructing its efforts to get information and has told its leader that she is 'not qualified' to judge his rocket program, the Orlando Sentinel has learned."

I've been quite complimentary of Mike Griffin here in the past. He seems like a smart, take-no-guff fellow, and I'm in general agreement with his views on space exploration. But this sort of tantrum reflects poorly on him. Knowing nothing other than what's written in this article, it sounds like Griffin, a holder of six advanced degrees, is indulging his engineer's exasperation with the laypersons who seem to be meddling with his current experiment. But if Griffin wants to see the vision he's outlined for NASA make it into the next administration, I suspect honey would garner more flies than vinegar at this moment.

"The last Twitter post said it all: "01010100 01110010 01101001 01110101 01101101 01110000 01101000."" Or, in other words, Ground Control to Phoenix Lander: You've really made the grade. Having seemingly succumbed to the Martian winter at last, the Mars Phoenix Lander is pronounced deceased by NASA. "NASA official Doug McCuistion counseled people to view Phoenix’s end as 'an Irish wake rather than a funeral. It’s certainly been a grand adventure.'...While some followers said farewell to Phoenix in computer language today, others kept it simple. 'Good bye Phoenix, I love you :(,' said user patach."

ESA's Mars Express sends back some impressive postcards from Mars. "Over the last five years its stereo, high resolution camera has taken thousands of images of the surface, revealing the planet's awe inspiring beauty in unprecedented detail."

"'There's nothing about it that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly,' said mission scientist Samuel P. Kounaves of Tufts University. 'We were flabbergasted.'" Hope y'all like asparagus: Early tests by the Mars Phoenix seem to indicate that the Martian soil is more nutrient-rich than anyone expected. "Carbon-based organic material, however, has not been found and may be impossible to detect with the equipment now on Mars."

"It's with great pride and a lot of joy I announce today we have found proof that this hard material really is water ice and not some other substance." Signs have pointed in that direction for awhile now, and particularly since the Phoenix landed. But now, it seems we have really, truly, definitively found ice on Mars. "The next questions to answer are what chemicals, minerals and organic compounds might be mixed in with the water. 'Just the fact that there's ice there doesn't tell you if it's habitable,' Smith said. 'With ice and no food it's not a habitable zone. We don't eat rocks — we have to have carbon chain materials that we ingest into our bodies to create new cells and give us energy. That's what we eat and that's what has to be there if you're going to have a habitable zone on Mars.'"

"'We were expecting to find ice within two to six inches of the surface,' said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in a statement. 'The thrusters have excavated two to six inches and, sure enough, we see something that looks like ice. It's not impossible that it's something else, but our leading interpretation is ice.'" Well, it sure looks like ice. The Phoenix Mars Lander seems to have found its quarry almost immediately after landing. And where there's water...

"In my dreams it couldn't go as perfectly as it went tonight, we went right down the middle." Touchdown: NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, soon to look for water in the Martian Arctic, lands without incident in the Vastitas Borealis plains. Congrats!

"Fact:...The density of Saturn is so low that if you were to put it in a giant glass of water it would float." And another pilfered link, which I meant to post last week: Megg of Quiddity points the way to 10 Cool Facts about Space (although, to paraphrase The Smiths, some facts are cooler than others.)

"If the current proposals to restart human exploration fail politically, indeed, the human space flight endeavor conducted under government auspices might well lose its momentum. I obviously hope that doesn’t happen. But it’s far from a slam dunk that we’re going back to the Moon and on to Mars." Two companion pieces to today's reflection on 50 years of Sputnik which I missed earlier: The Grey Lady hypothesizes about the next fifty years of space travel (suggesting its future as a public enterprise might be dubious) and takes a moment to consider the pop culture ramifications of the space age. "'At the level of government, I think we’re still struggling as to why we’re sending people to space,' Dr. Logsdon said. 'It’s a decent question, and I think it’s an unanswered question.'" (My answer to this question, for what it's worth, is here.)

NASA prepares a probe, named Phoenix, to dig for water on Mars. "Upon reaching Mars in May 2008, the spacecraft is to land just as the winter ice begins to recede around the polar cap."

New photos released by NASA from the Mars Global Surveyor seem to suggest the possibility of surface water on Mars, which would make any attempt to visit -- or colonize -- the red planet considerably easier (although, obviously, it's still no walk in the park.)

"'We certainly have not convinced the community, and that's been a little bit disappointing,' said David McKay, a NASA biochemist and leader of the team that started the scientific episode." Ten years later, CNN summarizes the simmering scientific dispute over a Martian meteorite, and the possible (albeit now seemingly quite unlikely) signs of life within.

"'The idea is to look at Mars and not think of it as a mysterious alien place,' Christensen said." Along the lines of Google Moon, one can now journey to Google Mars.

"I think that this mission will re-write the science books on Mars." More happy space news following the discovery of water on Enceladus: NASA successfully pilots the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter into Martian orbit. "It was picture perfect. We could not have planned it any better." (Phew...looks like everyone successfully converted to metric this time.)

More James Cameron news: Harry of AICN has a wide-ranging conversation with the director which, if you can get past the usual Knowlesisms, reveals that Project 880 is in fact Avatar, and that Cameron has been working with NASA on a "Live Video Stereo Motion Image" (3-D) camera for the next Mars Rover.