NASA: The Phoenix Has Landed!
(Image Credit: NASA)
The Phoenix Mars Lander has touched down upon the surface of the red planet, according to NASA.
Unlike its rover siblings, the Phoenix’s priority is to discover whether or not life exists on Mars.
NASA has been promoting the mission aggressively, as it has the potential to reshape our viewpoint of the Universe (not to mention life itself).
While the prospects of finding current life are probably dim, the Martian lander can help us discover whether or not Martian soil “is safe” for not only humans, but future creatures (like pigs) as well.
Note: NASA is going to be posting images from Phoenix within about 90 minuets, although you can watch the live broadcast from NASA HQ over here.
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Video: Mars Science Laboratory (NASA's Ultimate Rover)
It’s mission is to determine whether or not life can exist exist upon the Martian surface. Unlike its previous “brothers,” this rover is equipped with a vast array of scientific tools, not to mention a very powerful laser.
(Video: An animation demonstrating how the new rover will enter, descend and land upon the Martian surface. Credit: JPL / NASA)
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England To Seek Out Life On Mars Via Rover
(Image Credit: ESA via Skymania News)
It looks as if the British are about to invade the red planet but unleashing a smart rover to roam across the surface of Mars.
(Skymania News) A UK-built robot is set dramatically to speed up the search for life on Mars, European space scientists were being told today. The roving explorer, nicknamed Bridget, will be intelligent enough to decide for itself which martian rocks are best to investigate.
It will work three times faster than previous robots such as Nasa’s rovers Spirit and Opportunity which are currently weathering the tail end of a huge dust storm on Mars.
Despite the fact that this rovers purpose is to locate microbes upon the crimson worlds surface, hopefully it will be able to analyze whether or not the Martian soil is actually hostile or fertile for future Earth life.
Hopefully this rover mission will inspire England to consider sending humans to the final frontier, lest they end up in receiving the “cosmic scraps” of what the universe has to offer them.
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Phoenix Mission Seeks Out Life On Mars
(Image: Phoenix lifting off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Credit: NASA)
With the successful launch of NASA’s Phoenix “rover,” scientists will finally be able to discover just how fertile Martian soil is for life (both future and current).
(The Planetary Society) “Today’s launch is the first step in the long journey to the surface of Mars. We certainly are excited about launching, but we still are concerned about our actual landing, the most difficult step of this mission,” said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Tucson. [...]
Phoenix will be the first mission to touch water-ice on Mars. Its robotic arm will dig to an icy layer believed to lie just beneath the surface. The spacecraft instruments will study the history of the water in the ice, monitor weather of the polar region, and investigate whether the subsurface environment in the far-northern plains of Mars has ever been favorable for sustaining microbial life.
Although both Spirit and Opportunity have provided our species with glorious images of the red planet, Phoenix will indicate whether or not Martian soil is toxic towards terrestrial life (particularly humans).
Even if Phoenix is unable to discover any microbes upon the red soil, its analysis could determine whether or not humans will be able to raise crop (and hopefully cattle) upon Mars, or whether we have to simply skip the crimson planet for other worlds.
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Video: Phoenix To See If Martian Soil Is Fertile
(Video: NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander will visit the north polar region of Mars in search of “habitable soil.” Credit: NASA)
Of all the rovers that have or will grace the surface of Mars, Phoenix may prove to be the most important.
While the purpose of the other three rovers is to satisfy geologists by observing Martian rocks, the Phoenix rover’s main duty is to find out whether Martian soil is fertile for life–and perhaps agriculture itself.
(NASA) “Our ‘follow the water’ strategy for exploring Mars has yielded a string of dramatic discoveries in recent years about the history of water on a planet where similarities with Earth were much greater in the past than they are today,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington. “Phoenix will complement our strategic exploration of Mars by being our first attempt to actually touch and analyze Martian water — water in the form of buried ice.” [...]
“In addition, our instruments can assess whether this polar environment is a habitable zone for primitive microbes. To complete the scientific characterization of the site, Phoenix will monitor polar weather and the interaction of the atmosphere with the surface.”
While the overall purpose of Phoenix is to see if any life can survive in the barren soil, the space craft could ultimately inform us whether or not Martian soil is toxic towards life.
If proven to be safe for humans as well as plants, NASA could begin to draw out plans of harvesting crop on the red planet for future generations. Although humans may have to (create their own fertilizer (as importing it would be very expensive), growing our own food on the crimson planet could enable us to establish Mars as a second home for humanity.
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Another Earth Spotted?
Note: Nothing to do with our own solar system, but it is interesting nonetheless.
It looks like scientists may have spotted the first planet outside of our solar system that is potentially habitable for life.
(Space.com) An Earth-like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced today.
Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The new found planet is located at the “Goldilocks” distance—not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away. [...]
The new planet is about 50 percent bigger than Earth and about five times more massive. The new “super-Earth” is called Gliese 581 C, after its star, Gliese 581, a diminutive red dwarf star located 20.5 light-years away that is about one-third as massive as the Sun.
This is the first terrestrial world discovered outside of our solar system that orbits within the habitable zone of a star. Although the planet orbits a short distance around its star (about 13 Earth days), life forms could easily survive on this world due to the dimness (or rather lack of heat) from the red dwarf sun.
Scientists are probably going to take a second look at this, and it will be interesting to see whether or not we will be able to locate features upon this world in the future.
Note: I’ve just alerted Paul over at Centauri Dreams, who should have an interesting analysis regarding this discovery.
Update (4/25): Paul has posted his analysis here with a video over here. Exciting stuff!
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Colony Worlds Round Up
Note: I have not been as faithful as I desired to in posting here (as life has been fairly busy) but these are some of the stories that may catch your eye regarding our future among the stars.
Astroprof discusses the dangers of bone loss due to the lack of gravity in space.
Despite NASA’s attempts at reducing the loss, the percentage rate exceeds that of a woman with osteoporosis, leading I. Tenor (a commenter) to conclude that exile from Earth may be the price we pay for colonizing the stars.
Jack Kennedy from Spaceports discusses Matsen Space System’s attempts at winning the Lunar Landing Analog Challenge later on this year.
There main competitors are Armadillo Aerospace and Blue Origin, who may put up some fierce competition.
The Space Review has an article about finding life in the solar system. My views of this are fairly dim (as finding microbes does not help us reach the stars).
However, since scientists are looking for life near water ice, this research should prove quite useful in helping us locate future settlements as water is the main ingredient for life (at least carbon based life forms).
Centauri Dreams has an excellent article discussing how the sun’s rays spin asteroids. Although this alone may not amaze anyone who is not a hard core space geek, this revelation does help put some weight behind the solar sail.
Ted Semon from the Space Elevator Blog informs everyone that Germany is forming their very own space elevator competition scheduled for February of 2008.
This competition is not as ambitious as the Spaceward’s Space Elevator competition, however the fact that they are organizing it may help inspire other nations to follow suit.
Hopefully I will have some time tonight to discuss some other issues on the back burner, including NASA’s paradox, Jupiter’s Ganymede, and the missing ingredient to call the Moon, Mars and Europa home.
Stay tuned. 
Update: Corrected spelling of Ted’s last name (Semon it is! Curse the spell checkers!) Also, I should have some free time later on today (at last). 
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Life Imitates Star Trek: NASA Pursues Life Scanner
With scientists attempting to build technology to locate life on other worlds, they may be constructing a useful device to locate lost future travelers hiking on foreign soils.
(Red Orbit) NASA-funded researchers are refining a tool that could not only check for the faintest traces of life’s molecular building blocks on Mars, but could also determine whether they have been produced by anything alive. [...]
“Urey will be able to detect key molecules associated with life at a sensitivity roughly a million times greater than previous instrumentation,” said Dr. Jeffrey Bada of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Bada is the principal investigator for an international team of scientists and engineers working on various components of the device.
Despite the fact it may be a century before we find any signs of life on Mars (although we may have settled the planet by then), this life scanner could prove to be quite useful not only on planets, but for detecting life aboard dying space craft as well (an advanced version for rescuers that is).
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Searching For Martian Life In All The Right Places
Despite the fact that the red planet’s soil may be toxic towards life, scientists intend upon sending a robot towards the northern pole of Mars.
(MSNBC) Scientists are scrambling to find an alternative landing site for a long-armed robot set to launch this summer on a mission to dig into Mars’ icy north pole to search for signs of primitive life. [...]
Scientists scouring images of the Martian arctic have narrowed options down to three possible candidates for where the spacecraft can safely touch down. They have until March to choose a destination.
The three sites are clustered around the north pole, which is believed to have a huge amount of ice just below the surface. A site dubbed Green Valley is located within a shallow valley and looks the most secure, Smith said.
It is doubtful that this robot will discover anything within a few yards beneath the surface as the soil has taken a serious beating from cosmic radiation (enough to kill life as we know it).
However this robot’s little adventure in the north should provide a useful map of icy ponds, which will be quite useful when pondering where to set up shop on this distant world.
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India Seeking Life On Mars
India is considering launching an unmanned probe on the Martian surface to see whether or not life really does exist on the red planet.
(Mars Daily) Indian space scientists plan to send an unmanned mission to Mars by 2013 to look for evidence of life, a news report said on Sunday. The six-to-eight-month mission, likely to be launched in the next seven years, would cost three billion rupees (67 million dollars), the Hindustan Times reported.
“Mars is emerging on our horizon. The geo-stationary launch vehicle can take a payload to Mars and our Deep Space Network can track it all the way,” G. Madhavan Nair, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told the newspaper.
India is already becoming very active within the space field, as they are already preparing to visit the Moon (although they only intend to do this via robots). Searching for life on Mars will probably raise India’s global status as a major space player, although such a search may be futile as Martian soil is not friendly towards life.
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Life On Mars, Is It Possible?
Scientists seem to be excited about discovering bacteria living two miles beneath the Earth’s crust, able to adapt to not only extreme cold but also an oxygen-less environment.
(Mars Today) “The low temperature limit for life is particularly important since, in both the solar system and the Milky Way Galaxy, cold environments are much more common than hot environments,” said Neill Reid, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and leader of the research team. “Our results show that the lowest temperatures at which these organisms can thrive fall within the temperature range experienced on present-day Mars, and could permit survival and growth, particularly beneath Mars’s surface. This could expand the realm of the habitable zone, the area in which life could exist, to colder Mars-like planets.”
Although it would be interesting to find life on Mars, the planet is not known to be friendly to life as its surface may be toxic, not to mention the lack of a magnetic field.
These organisms may provide another use however, as scientists may be able to insert their DNA into grains and plants, allowing colonists to grow food on the red planet. Of all the worlds that orbit the solar system, Mars provides the greatest opportunity for terraforming. Perhaps these microbes could provide a little assistance along the way.
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Finding Life On Europa…Via Earth?
A team has set out to the cold regions of the Arctic in order to discover the source of sulfur that has been appearing there for some time. They hope that these discoveries could help us locate life on a distant frozen world orbiting Jupiter.
(Astrobiology Magazine) “It’s out of the norm,” Pappalardo says. “Biology is expected to play a part in this. The fact that all [these forms of sulfur] were present in close proximity suggests that life is involved.”
While Pappalardo acknowledges that Europa’s outer surface contains too much radiation to ever support life, these findings could help answer the question as to whether life could exist below the surface of Europa.
I am not too sure how successful they will be, as Enceladus looks more promising, but a discovery of life on a foreign lunar body would help motivate humanity towards the stars.
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Using Earthshine To Discover Alien Life
Although this technique is controversial (as in whether it works or not) some scientists think that they can use “Earthshine,” or sunlight reflecting off of our homeworld to detect life on other planets.
(New Scientist Space) Earthshine–the dim glow from sunlight bouncing off the Earth, and reflected back from the Moon’s surface–may aid in the search for life on other planets, say scientists. [...][Wesley Traub of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] and other researchers detailed how the spectrum of Earthshine reveals the presence of ozone and chlorophyll, both sure signs of biological activity on Earth. In the future, it is expected that planet hunting space telescopes will be able to resolve Earth-like planets as tiny pinpricks of light circling around their parent stars.
And though such a “pale blue dot” would not likely reveal any visual details, its spectrum might be enough to distinguish between a sterile and a living world.
This idea is probably worth exploring. Although worlds such as Mercury and Mars (if it has resources) may prove themselves to be worthwhile over time, colonizing more habitable planets would be in our long term best interests. Not only would it cost less money, but would require less energy to colonize as well.
Update: Added photo and corrected html.
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Could Life Exist On Enceladus?
(Hat Tip: Space Blog Alpha)
While Earth is the only world known to harbor life in our solar system, several others may have some of the basic conditions for life–even tiny Enceladus.
(Science @ Nasa) NASA’s Cassini spacecraft may have found evidence of liquid water reservoirs that erupt in Yellowstone-like geysers on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface raises many new questions about this mysterious moon.
“We realize that this is a radical conclusion — that we may have evidence for liquid water within a body so small and so cold,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. “However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms.”
Enceladus is one of the icy moons of Saturn, lying within the E-ring system. Unlike Jupiter’s moons of Europa and Ganymede, Enceladus may harbor liquid water tens of meters below its surface (as opposed to several kilometers). But what surprised scientists was not the fact that this tiny world contained geyers, but rather the temperature readings from the surface.
(Science @ NASA) High-resolution Cassini images show icy jets and towering plumes ejecting huge quantities of particles at high speed. Scientists examined several models to explain the process. They ruled out the idea the particles are produced or blown off the moon’s surface by vapor created when warm water ice converts to a gas. Instead, scientists have found evidence for a much more exciting possibility. The jets might be erupting from near-surface pockets of liquid water above 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), like cold versions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone.
If this is true then that means that bacteria (and other organisms) could survive beneath the icy crust of Enceladus, protected from the vacuum of space. Even if life is not discovered on this small world, it would mean that future colonists could exploit Enceladus’s underground oceans and perhaps develop oceanic colonies instead of building on the surface.
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Possible Life Conditions On Enceladus
Ice geysers have been discovered on a tiny ice moon orbiting Saturn. Enceladus southern pole is not only warmer than expected, but the geysers are revealing hints of organice material beneath its icy surface.
(MSNBC) The readings from Enceladus’ geyser plumes indicate that all the prerequisites for life as we know it could exist beneath Enceladus’ surface, Porco said.
“Living organisms require liquid water and organic materials, and we know we have both on Enceladus now,” she said. “The plumes through which Cassini flew last July contain methane, contain CO2, propane — they contain several organic materials.”
An explanation is still needed to explain why Enceladus’s southern hemisphere is warmer than expected. Some scientists suspect a molten core off center could be a factor, as the moon is too small to be thawed by tidal friction or sunlight.
(MSNBC) Although the surface temperatures were far below freezing, the readings showed relatively warm spots in the south polar region, centering on the tiger stripes. Scientists traced the internal heating patterns that could create such warm spots, and concluded that temperatures could be above freezing mere yards beneath the surface.“It can be warm enough 10 meters or so beneath the surface,” Porco explained, “and there’s enough pressure to keep liquid water stable at that depth.”
Scientists are adding Enceladus as one of the possible worlds that harbor life within our solar system along with Europa. Both worlds are similiar in nature, and exploring the make-up of one of these worlds may help us understand the design of the other.
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