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Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Bacterial Bloom In World's Driest Desert Raises Hope For Life On Mars

Bacterial bloom in world's driest desert raises hopes for life on Mars

The discovery of bacterial colonies in the Atacama Desert suggests similar life could have survived on...
The discovery of bacterial colonies in the Atacama Desert suggests similar life could have survived on Mars
If the prospects of life on Mars were a pendulum, it's just swung back toward "favorable." An international team of researchers led by Washington State University planetary scientist Dirk Schulze-Makuch has found that the most Mars-like, apparently lifeless spot on the face of the Earth isn't so lifeless after all. Areas of the hyperarid Atacama Desert once thought lacking even microbes is showing blooms of specialized bacteria after rainfall, providing hope that similar dormant colonies may exist on the Red Planet.
The Atacama Desert is about as close to Mars as you can get on Earth. The Chilean desert has areas that are so inhospitable to life that not even bacteria can survive under normal circumstances. The nitrates falling from the sky that bacteria would normally gobble up remain uneaten and rainfall is measured in millimeters per decade. Though the 10 million-year-old desert is surprisingly cool with a Mediterranean climate, there isn't enough water to sustain life. Worse, the cooler temperatures means there's less energy available for growth and reproduction.
According to Schulze-Makuch, when the Washington study began in 2015, this reputation for utter lifelessness seemed intact. Though some microbes and traces of DNA have been found in the Atacama, these were always dying remnants that were unlucky enough to be blown in from the outside world.
That changed when the desert was subjected to its first rainfall in decades, activating long-dormant colonies buried under the surface that reproduced in that typically frantic manner of desert life making the most of the brief opportunity. When the team returned in 2016 and 2017, they found that the colonies had gradually gone dormant again as the soil dried out. However, by using sterilized spoons and special instruments, they were able to take uncontaminated samples and could identify several indigenous species of microbial life by genomic analysis.
"In the past researchers have found dying organisms near the surface and remnants of DNA but this is really the first time that anyone has been able to identify a persistent form of life living in the soil of the Atacama Desert," says Schulze-Makuch. "We believe these microbial communities can lay dormant for hundreds or even thousands of years in conditions very similar to what you would find on a planet like Mars and then come back to life when it rains."
Schulze-Makuch says that the implications for Mars are considerable. Though the Martian environment of today is so inhospitable that it makes the Atacama Desert look like Kew Garden on a spring afternoon, it was a very different place billions of years ago, with shallow seas, rivers, and lakes where very simple life could have evolved. It's possible that as the planet grew colder and drier, some lifeforms could have adapted by developing long-term dormancy.
"We know there is water frozen in the Martian soil and recent research strongly suggests nightly snowfalls and other increased moisture events near the surface," says Schulze-Makuch. "If life ever evolved on Mars, our research suggests it could have found a subsurface niche beneath today's severely hyper-arid surface."
The Washington team is scheduled to return to the Atacama Desert on March 15 for another fortnight's investigation, which will involve hunting for more microbes. In addition, the hope is to later study the Don Juan Pond in Antarctica, which is a very shallow lake so salty that it is liquid even at temperatures of -58° F (- 50° C).
"There are only a few places left on Earth to go looking for new lifeforms that survive in the kind of environments you would find on Mars," says Schulze-Makuch. "Our goal is to understand how they are able to do it so we will know what to look for on the Martian surface."

Monday, February 26, 2018

European Mars Orbiter Completes 11 Month Aerobraking Maneuver

European Mars orbiter completes 11-month aerobraking maneuver

The TGO releasing the Schiaparelli lander prior to arriving in Mars orbit
The TGO releasing the Schiaparelli lander prior to arriving in Mars orbit (Credit: ESA)
It has to be one of the slowest parking attempts ever made, but ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) has completed a daring maneuver that saw it surfing the outer layers of the Martian atmosphere for 11 months. The purpose of the exercise was to gradually lower the unmanned probe's trajectory to place it in a planet-hugging, near-circular orbit at an altitude of about 400 km (250 mi), allowing the spacecraft to begin its mission to study trace gases on Mars as well as act as a communications relay between Mars surface rovers and Earth.
Launched on March 14, 2016 atop a Proton-M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the ExoMars Trace gas Orbiter arrived at Mars on October 19 of that year. However, the spacecraft was in a highly elliptical four-day orbit at an altitude ranging from 200 to 98,000 km (125 to 61,000 mi), which was completely unsuitable for its mission.
To alter this orbit in the most economical manner possible, in March 2017 mission control ordered the TGO to carry out a maneuver called aerobraking, which involves repeatedly hitting the very top layer of the Martian atmosphere to reduce its velocity and was first tried with ESA's Venus Express orbiter in 2014. Though to a human observer the atmosphere at about 103 km (64 mi) above Mars may seem like hard vacuum, there is enough air present to allow the solar panels on the TGO to act like the air brakes on an aircraft and slow it down.
According to ESA, this braking isn't much – only decelerating the spacecraft by 17 mm per second per second, which would bring a car traveling at 50 km/h (31 mph) to a stop over a distance of 6 km (3.7 mi). It's also a very tricky maneuver because with Mars at an average distance of 225 million km (140 million mi), it as to be carried out by the TGO under autonomous control. Worse, the Martian atmosphere expands greatly during the day and the summer months, so a single miscalculation could result in a probe burning up in an uncontrolled entry.
The braking took over 950 orbits of the TGO and was completed on February 20 at 17:20 GMT when the spacecraft fired its thrusters for 16 minutes, placing it an orbit ranging between 1,050 and 200 km (650 and 125 650 mi). This orbit will be fine tuned over the next month in a series of 10 thruster maneuvers to bring it into its final mission orbit in mid-April.
Once on station, the TGO will have completed a month of instrument tests and calibrations, after which it will begin its primary mission of making a detailed inventory of atmospheric trace gases that could provide key insights into geological activity and possible biological signatures. In addition, it will look for signs of subsurface ice as well as acting as a data-relay for surface lander missions beginning later this year.

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The Space Review: Review: Building Habitats on the Moon

The Space Review: Review: Building Habitats on the Moon

The Space Review: Why technological innovation and increased cooperation regarding space debris are vital

The Space Review: Why technological innovation and increased cooperation regarding space debris are vital

The Space Review: Launch failures: payload separation

The Space Review: Launch failures: payload separation

The Space Review: Shadow dancing: the Satellite Data System

The Space Review: Shadow dancing: the Satellite Data System

The Space Review: Making space regulations great again

The Space Review: Making space regulations great again

Friday, February 23, 2018

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Lost In Space To Return To Television

https://www.space.com/39775-lost-in-space-netflix-reboot-teaser-video.html?utm_source=notification

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

When We Finally Go To Mars, We Might End Up Living In Giant Meal Cans

When we finally go to Mars, we might end up living in giant metal cans

Lockheed Martin will build a deep space habitat inside a space shuttle cargo container.

   
deep space habitat
An artist's rendering of Lockheed's Deep Space Gateway docking with NASA's Orion spacecraft in orbit around the moon.

If humans are ever really going to make it to Mars, we’re going to need a bigger boat.
Today’s spaceships are built for short hauls to and from the International Space Station, a mere six or so hours away. These ships, like the Russian Soyuz, SpaceX’s Dragon, NASA’s upcoming Orion capsule, are small, cramped, and they don’t have bathrooms or sleeping quarters. These space canoes simple won’t do for nine-month ride to Mars. That’s why NASA has commissioned six companies to research designs larger deep space habitats that will put the ship into spaceship.
Lockheed Martin is one of the companies that’s developing a concept for NASA, and on Thursday it announced plans to build a life-size prototype of its Deep Space Gateway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This prototype won’t fly into space, but it will help the company to refine its design. “Form, fit and function are key,” Bill Pratt, Lockheed’s habitat program manager told PopSci via email, “so we will be exploring the critical elements needed in this section of a larger deep space gateway to ensure functionality for the astronauts.”
To build it, the company will refurbish an old cargo container named Donatello, which was used to carry supplies to the ISS in the shuttle era. (The container’s siblings, made by the Italian Space Agency, are LeonardoRaffaello.) It will take about 18 months to refurbish the roughly 22-foot-long, 15-foot-diameter metal can.
cargo container
Left: A cargo container like the one Lockheed will use to build it's prototype. Right: Cosmonaut Yuri Gidzenko floats inside one of these containers, showing off how surprisingly spacious it is inside.
NASA
“The main objective is to ensure astronauts can utilize the space efficiently in combination with other elements of a full architecture,” says Pratt, although he admits there will be some limitations, since the astronauts won’t be floating, like in space.
Lockheed says it will experiment with virtual and augmented reality (AR) to help speed up design and construction, and reduce costs, by identifying problem areas before they happen in real life.
“For example,” says Pratt, “we are exploring how we can use AR to integrate exercise equipment for the astronauts—before allocating physical space for it in the habitat. We are also looking at modeling docking ports for other elements of the Deep Space Gateway, rather than cutting holes in the actual Donatello cargo container.”
They’re trying out a variety of platforms for the “mixed reality” portion of the project, including Microsoft’s Hololens and Meta.
There aren't many other details about what the Gateway might look like, but it will of course need life support equipment, protection from deep space radiation, and, for long-term missions, private spaces and exercise areas for astronauts—similar to the International Space Station.
"Because the Deep Space Gateway would be uninhabited for several months at a time, it has to be rugged, reliable and have the robotic capabilities to operate autonomously,” Pratt said in a statement. “Essentially it is a robotic spacecraft that is well-suited for humans when Orion is present."
After Lockheed runs its tests, the company plans to hand over its prototype so that NASA can do its own analyses.
In addition to the habitat prototype, the company is planning to build an avionics laboratory to demonstrate Deep Space Gateway’s ability to interface with NASA’s Orion capsule. The module may also help astronauts train for scenarios that might arise in space, should NASA decide to send Lockheed’s design into space.
Whichever habitat design NASA funds will first set up camp in orbit around the moon in the 2020s, as a testing ground for long-duration missions to Mars in the 2030s.

Nearly a Decade After Mars Phoenix Landed, Another Look

Nearly a Decade After Mars Phoenix Landed, Another Look: This animation blinks between two images taken nearly a decade apart of the 2008 landing site of NASA's Mars Phoenix mission, showing that dust has obscured landing marks.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

The Space Review: Review: Open Space

The Space Review: Review: Open Space

The Space Review: Falcon Heavy will change spaceflight less than you think

The Space Review: Falcon Heavy will change spaceflight less than you think

The Space Review: Maritime tradition can inform policy and law for commercial active debris removal

The Space Review: Maritime tradition can inform policy and law for commercial active debris removal

The Space Review: Will WFIRST last?

The Space Review: Will WFIRST last?

The Space Review: And all my dreams, torn asunder: The (quiet) collapse of circumlunar tourism

The Space Review: And all my dreams, torn asunder: The (quiet) collapse of circumlunar tourism

Reusable Rockets And The Dawn of The New Space Age

https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/reusable-rockets-and-dawn-next-space-age?id=743c2bc617&e=1bd154cf7d&uuid=893d03f6-4e4c-4832-90d0-1b2e4ed6210c&utm_source=Topics%2C+Themes+and+Regions&utm_campaign=d7cbd911eb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_743c2bc617-d7cbd911eb-53655957&mc_cid=d7cbd911eb&mc_eid=[UNIQID]

Saturday, February 17, 2018

What The Space-X Success Means For Moon, Mars, and More

MARS SOCIETY ANNOUNCEMENT
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What the SpaceX Success Means for the Moon, Mars & More
By Dr. Robert Zubrin, The Weekly Standard, 02.16.18
On February 6, 2018, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy took flight, demonstrating a capacity to lift 60 tons to low Earth orbit while playfully sending a Tesla Roadster on a trajectory that will take it beyond the orbit of Mars. To add to the coup, two of the Falcon’s three booster stages flew back to land gracefully together at the Cape, while the third barely missed pulling off a recovery landing on a drone ship stationed downrange.
To understand how extraordinary this accomplishment was, let us recall that in 2009, the Obama administration’s blue-ribbon review committee headed former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine declared that NASA's Moon program had to be cancelled, because the development of the necessary heavy lift booster would take 12 years and 36 billion dollars.
SpaceX has now done that, in half the time and at a thirtieth of the cost. And, to cap it all, the launch vehicle is three quarters reusable.
This is a revolution. The naysayers have been completely refuted.
The Moon is now within reach. Mars is now within reach.
Some may object that the Falcon Heavy, while delivering double to triple the payload to orbit of the competing Delta and Atlas launch systems at one-sixth the per-kilogram price, is still inadequate to support human missions to the Moon or Mars. They are mistaken. While the Falcon’s 60-ton lift capability is only half that of the Saturn V we used to send astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s, it is enough. A rocket that can lift 60 tons to orbit can deliver payloads of 12 tons to the lunar surface, which is sufficient to build a Moon base in modular fashion. If it were up to me, I would send a habitat module and a large solar power system to a highland near the Moon’s South Pole where they would always be in sunlight. From there, the station could beam power for over 100 kilometers, allowing astronauts to access deposits of ice captured in nearby permanently-shadowed craters. The water obtained could be electrolyzed to make rocket propellant, providing astronauts with the means to visit most of the Moon using hydrogen/oxygen rocket-propelled flight vehicles for transportation.
Small human Mars exploration missions with two-person crews could be mounted using three Falcon Heavy launches per mission. Two of these would be used to send an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) to Mars orbit and an ascent vehicle to the surface. The ascent vehicle would make its methane/oxygen propellant out of Mars atmospheric CO2 and permafrost using well-understood chemistry. Once this is done, the third Falcon would be used to send the crew to Mars in their hab module. The crew would land near the ascent vehicle, using their flight hab as their base for a year and a half, after which they would ascend to rendezvous with the ERV that would take them home.
This is just the beginning. SpaceX is developing the means to allow them to refuel the booster second stage after it reaches orbit. Once this technology is in hand, the Falcon’s payload to the Moon or Mars will triple, giving it a capability one and a half times greater than the Saturn V. With such a system, the entire inner solar system will be wide open to exploration and development.

To read the full article, please click here.
Falcon Heavy Launch from Florida
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Thursday, February 15, 2018

Long-Lived Mars Rover Opportunity Keeps Finding Surprises

Long-Lived Mars Rover Opportunity Keeps Finding Surprises: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity keeps providing surprises about the Red Planet, most recently with observations of possible 'rock stripes.'

Nuclear Rockets Return?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-15/nasa-is-bringing-back-cold-war-era-atomic-rockets-to-get-to-mars

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

A Piece of Mars is Going Home

A Piece of Mars is Going Home: When it launches in 2020, NASA's next Mars rover will carry a chunk of Martian meteorite on board.

MDRS Crew 187: Final Mission REport

MDRS Crew 187 – Final Mission Report
 

The following is the final summary report of Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) Crew 187 (Team LATAM II). A full review of this field season's activities at MDRS will be presented at the 21st Annual International Mars Society Convention, scheduled forAugust 23-26, 2018 at the Pasadena Convention Center (Pasadena, California). 

MDRS End of Mission Summary
Crew 187 - Team LATAM II
January 2018
Commander/Astronomer: Cynthia Yacel Fuertes Panizo (Peru)
Executive Officer: Atila Kahlil Meszaros Henostroza (Peru)
Crew Engineer: Luis José Antonio Díaz López (Peru)
GreenHab Officer: Hernán David Mateus Jiménez (Colombia)
Crew Scientist/EVA Officer: Oscar Ivan Ojeda Ramirez (Colombia)
Health and Safety Officer: Danton Iván Bazaldua Morquecho (Mexico)
Journalist: Tania Maria Robles Hernandez (Mexico)

Commander's Statement
I had the honor of working with a highly talented crew, not only professionally, but also personally. Our roots come from Peru, Colombia, and Mexico; but in our hearts, we carry the responsibility of representing all of Latin America, which we will always do with our best effort. Each member of the crew was a key to success the mission; their experiences, knowledge in science and engineering, their high commitment to make the simulation as real as possible, his teamwork and constant support were valuable; always following the philosophy of “All for one and one for all!”.
Every day on Mars was a great adventure; we celebrated a Martian birthday, we recharged a diesel tank, we saw the sun, the moon, the constellations, among other wonders of the universe, we were the first explorers of a canyon, and we had the honor that all the crew wishes to have, to give the name to a canyon and a road; in this way El Dorado Canyon and Despacito Road – because you have to go slowly along this road for the safety of each crew member – are now part of the MDRS map. El Dorado was an ancient legend about a city full of gold that challenged every explorer who dared to look for it. For us to call it that reflects the curiosity that awoke in us as new explorers of Mars and the desire to leave in there a Latin American mark.
I feel proud of each member of this crew since at their young age they have achieved great things with that courage and strength that characterizes every Latino. No matter how big the challenge and the obstacles that each one has to overcome, I am sure that with effort, courage, and dedication they will be able to do it; as well as we all defeated together the adversities that they had in our stay in the MDRS. In these fabulous 15 days, each one gained experience, acquired new knowledge, expanded his way of seeing the universe and learned from others. More than being part of a crew, we are part of a family … a Martian family!
Crew 187 is eternally grateful for the support and trust gave by the Mars Society, Dr. Robert Zubrin, Dr. Shannon Rupert,  MDRS Mission Support and all the people and institutions that believed in each one of us.
Ad Astra,
Cynthia Fuertes Panizo, Commander, Crew 187, MDRS

To read the full crew report, please click here.
Crew members preparing for an EVA mission at the MDRS facility
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