Nuclear Power!

Word in the news is hat NASA will being to speed the process of using nuclear power. This has always been a controversial in the United States because of the concern for safety. However, nuclear power will be able to greatly advance our capability to explore space. Nuclear power could possibly be used in a manned mission to Mars. However, in our culture anything dubbed with the tag "nuclear" has also been met with uncertainty. Will NASA's use of nuclear power be a great advancement or will it seen as too much risk? Only YOU can answer that question !
Here's the link: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1237

Depiction of Mars in Fictional Works, Part IV

This is the fourth part of a nine part series. In this series, I will discuss how Mars is depicted in various fictional works such as movies, books, and games.

In Part IV, I will discuss about the depiction of Mars in the movie Red Planet. The movie depicts Mars as a habitable planet with a thin breathable atmosphere containing oxygen. The oxygen is the by-product of the native Martian insects who feed on the planet's algae. Mars is depicted as a planet capable of developing simple life and vegetation, which begs the question: could this happen on Mars a long time ago?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Planet_(film)

Some Scientists Question Merits of Manned Mars Mission

Despite the ability of humans to reach the Moon, some in the scientific community are openly questioning the usefulness of sending humans to places like Mars. The physical ailments that can occur from prolonged space travel, as well as the psychological issues that could become involved, are all causes for scientific concern. The article also discusses the financial issues of a manned mission to Mars as opposed to an unmanned mission. Doug Millard, space curator of the Science Museum in London, predicts the cost of a manned exploratory mission to be many times greater than that of an unmanned mission.

Source:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2007/September/theworld_September839.xml&section=theworld

India Ready for Mars Mission

At the meeting of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Hyderabad, India, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced that the nation possesses the technological capacity necessary to send a spacecraft to Mars. The next step, as far as what was mentioned, is to get a scientific proposal for the goals of such a mission. India will be able to send a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) to transport a 500-kg craft that would orbit Mars. The announcement was made on September 27 by the ISRO's chairman, G. Madhavan Nair.

Source:
http://www.hindu.com/2007/09/28/stories/2007092856001600.htm

Astronaut Predicts Mars Mission

Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, a former NASA astronaut, while speaking at Brigham Young University on September 25, said that a mission to Mars will take place, along with later missions to other locations. Chang-Diaz is currently working on an engine that should decrease travel time from Earth to other locations. Less travel time in space could mean fewer chances of physical problems for astronauts. Chang-Diaz also discussed how countries working together on space projects could minimize international conflicts.

Source:
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/238513/4/

Space Transforms Normal Germs into Super Germs!!!!

A recent experiment has shown that a germ that causes food poisoning can be three times more dangerous in space than on the ground. The experiment took place on NASA's STS 115 space shuttle mission that was launched in September of 2006. In this experiment a microbiologist from ASU put Salmonella Typhimurium bacteria into space and simultaneously started growing Salmonella Typhimurium back on earth at Kennedy Space Center. The experiment showed that the bacteria and space grew about three times faster. What does this mean for long 600 day humaned missions to mars? Lets just hope no one gets sick.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070924_space_germs.html

Seven Sisters....

As a follow up to my last blog and an addition to Brycens earlier blog...............Here is an image of “Annie” and the six other cave entrances that were discovered on the Arsia Mons volcano. They are being called the “Seven Sisters.”

The caves have such a high altitude that it makes it unlikely that they could be used for human shelter or that microbial life would have migrated that high.

New Television Series on Mars!!! Sweet

The Discovery Channel Canada is putting out a new mini-series on a humaned mission to Mars. The series titled Race to Mars is based around six astronauts on a 600 day mission to Mars to look for life, before the Chinese unmanned probes get there. The series is then followed by a documentary called Mars Rising narrated by William Shatner which explains some of the difficulties that we will face on a mission of this scale! I don't know about you guys but I wish I had Discovery Channel Canada so I could embark on this mission in my living room Oct. 7 at 8:00 pm.

http://www.space.com/entertainment/070923_racetomars_debut.html

Caves, water evidence found on Mars

A spacecraft called the Mars Odyssey has detected what looks like the openings of seven caves on a volcano named Arsia Mons near Mars’ tallest mountain. The spacecraft’s infrared cameras indicated temperature changes showing that the temperature around the potential openings vary much less than the temperature of the urrounding terrain.

If you look at the picture below, the two infrared images on the right are of the cave named “Annie” which is cooler than the surrounding area in the afternoon (middle image) and warmer than the surrounding area at night (right image). The lighter colors indicate a higher temperature. This opening is about the length of two football fields!!

The Debut of a New Mini-Series, "Race to Mars"

The Discovery Channel Canada debuted the first installment of a four-hour mini-series in Canada last night, Sunday Sept. 23.The mini-series, set in 2030, follows "the efforts of six spaceflyers on a 600-day mission to reach the red planet and hunt for life before China's unmanned probes." "Race to Mars" debuted just before the 50th anniversary of the Space Age, which started on Oct. 4, 1957 with the launch of the former Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 satellite. The mini-series will focus on the psychological and engineering challenges of long duration spaceflights.

http://www.space.com/entertainment/070923_racetomars_debut.html

Caves= Life?

NASA has discovered seven possible cave entrances on the surface of Mars. These possible caves are located near a Martian volcano. These caves are thought to be cooler during the day and warmer at night than the surface of Mars. Could these caves have once held forms of life? Maybe, maybe not, but discovering a cave structure on Mars is a miraculous find.
link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20 070924-10272800-bc-us-marscaves.xml

Man on Mars by 2037!

Today NASA officials announced that they planned on having man on Mars by the year 2037. This is just a goal for NASA but the fact that they have a goal to shoot for is exciting. Who knows, when we are fifty years old we could be celebrating the first humans to step foot on mars.
Here's a link to the story: http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14532458.

Planetary Parents.

I have a feeling we'll touch on it in class, but I just can't wait to get it out there. I'm just so excited.

Could the smallest particles of life life on Earth originated on Venus or Mars; maybe even somewhere else in our galaxy; our universe? It's a wonderful question that has been floating around since the 5th century. Below is a link to a very very informative wikipedia page loaded with sources if you find that you want to do further research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

Depiction of Mars in Fictional Works, Part III

This is the third part of a nine part series. In this series, I will discuss how Mars is depicted in various fictional works such as movies, books, and games.

In Part III, I will discuss about the animated television series Futurama. The series takes place in the year 3000, where Mars has been taken over by humans from the Native Martians. The "Where the Buggalo Roam" episode reveals that the Native Martians were forced to live under the "face" of Mars by human colonists. The appearance and culture of the Native Martians is a parody of the Native American Indians. "They even share a similar history of having their land taken from them by unfair methods. For example, when Mr. Wong says that his ancestor bought all of Mars' western Hemisphere for a bead, it is a reference to the time that New York was bought for a bunch of beads worth approximately $24." In the episode, the Martian landscape is depicted as desert-like with an orange to red sky, dust storms, and little vegetations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_the_Buggalo_Roam

Depiction of Mars in Fictional Works, Part II

This is the second part of a nine part series. In this series, I will discuss how Mars is depicted in various fictional works such as movies, books, and games.

In Part II, I will discuss about the game Doom 3. This game depicts Mars as an experiment gone wrong. The red planet was being invaded by demons and zombies depicting a hell on Mars. These creatures came from a hell portal opened by an ancient Martian race. Doom 3 depicts Martian as an advanced technological race, where some of them fled to Earth after the invasion started; therefore, hinting that humans are descendants of this Martian race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_3

Mars a Discussion Point at Hyderabad Conference

From September 24-28, Hyderabad, India, will be the host city of a global space summit, involving 2,000 delegates, or space-industry stakeholders. The conference will gather at this point to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Sputnik-1 satellite by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. The launch of the Sputnik-1 is generally accepted as the beginning of the Space Age. The possibility of a Mars mission will be discussed at the conference. Financial aspects of space endeavors will also be discussed, as well as the need for the sort of diplomacy that would make a successful interplanetary mission possible.

Source:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gPbf2UG56-AuE7IjRCMaR6jiKN4w

Depiction of Mars in Fictional Works, Part I

This is the first part of a nine part series. In this series, I will discuss how Mars is depicted in various fictional works such as movies, books, and games.

In Part I, I will discuss about a movie starring the Governator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). In the movie Total Recall, the protagonist (Schwarzenegger) had to travel to Mars to discover his past. Director Paul Verhoeven offers "a level of realism not often seen in other SciFi films." The movie gave "a believable depiction of what life on Mars look like," instead of showing Martian aliens carrying ray guns and wearing jet packs. In this depiction of Mars, Martian colonists lived in giant glass and steel domes that look like somewhere "between an urban slum and a seedy mill town--more like the Old West," which gave an impression that Mars is not a nice place to live. This Mars is "a low-tech, low-brow world."

Well, this is one depiction of Mars, more will come soon.

http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/movies/mars_total_recall_991203.html

Rhode Island Currently Home to 3D Mars Exhibit

Since September 12 of this year, Providence's Museum of Natural History has been displaying an exhibit entitled "A New Perspective on Mars." Using 3D glasses, visitors can gain a better understanding of Martian terrain through special photographic technology developed by the German Aerospace Center. With the photos taken during the first European mission to Mars, which was performed by the European Space Agency, the surface of Mars can be better understood due to the 3D images produced from the photographs. The particular mission that made the exhibit possible was launched in 2003, and the photos of Mars were taken from 2004 to 2006. The pictures were taken by a high resolution stereo camera.

Source:
http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2007/09/20/CampusNews/Mars-Comes.To.Providence.In.Three.Dimensions-2980760.shtml

Gully Formation

Here is a a link to a picture http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003583_1425 that shows gully formations on Mars. These gully formations are strong evidence that some sort of fluid flow created these gullies. As you can see from this picture, to the non-trained eye of someone like us, it looks like any real formation that could be found on earth. Is this convincing evidence there was once water on Mars? Look at the picture and see what you think

Discovery Channel Canada to air "Race to Mars" and "Mars Rising"

On September 23, Discovery Channel Canada will air "Race to Mars," a miniseries involving an imagined international mission to Mars. Following the premiere of "Race to Mars", Discovery Channel Canada will also air "Mars Rising," a documentary narrated by William Shatner, that will discuss the possibility of future human exploration of Mars. "Race to Mars" will air later this year in the United States, France, and Japan. Counting all installments together, "Race to Mars" is four hours long, and "Mars Rising" is six hours long.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/1998/206/

Buzz Aldrin and Mars

Buzz Aldrin, the man who has visited the moon, thinks mars is a better long term goal than trying to get back to the moon. He wants to set up an Aldrin Cycler, which will orbit between Mars and Earth. The astronaut will ride a rocket to the cycler then hop off and ride the cycler the rest of the way to Mars. This story is found at this website http://www.marssociety.org/portal/c/Conventions/2007/convention2007news/AldrinSpeech/

Phoenix Mars Lander Camera Sends First Image Back to Earth

The University of Arizona-led Phoenix Mars Lander took its first picture and sent it back to Earth on Sept. 6. The Phoenix lander’s has a camera Arm and has a protective biobarrier that make sure no Earth organisms are carried to Mars. The picture itself is a nice clear picture with good focus. These are the only pictures that will be taken until the lander reaches Mars on May 25, 2008. What does this mean for us? Hopefully it will have a successful mission so that we can better understand mars. Our culture could really learn some useful information from this lander.

http://www.marstoday.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=23489

Timeline of Martian science and lore

Mars has given off a lot of false impressions over the years. So here is a timeline to look at the way these fallacies have progressed over time.

1698: Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens publishes Cosmotheros, one of the first publications to speculate about intelligent extraterrestrials.

1784: Sir William Herschel writes that dark areas on Mars are oceans and the lighter areas are land. He speculates that Mars is inhabited by intelligent beings who "probably enjoy a situation similar to our own."

1854: William Whewell concludes Mars has seas of green and land of red, and wonders if there is extraterrestrial life.

1858: Angelo Secchi, a Jesuit monk, draws Mars and calls Syrtis Major the "Atlantic Canal." He later writes that he was persuaded by the example of Earth that the "universe is a wonderful organism filled with life."

1860: Emmanuel Liais suggests that dark regions are not seas, but rather are vegetation tracts.

1867: British astronomer Richard Anthony Proctor publishes a map of Mars with continents and oceans.

1873: French astronomer Camille Flammarion attributes Mars' reddish color to vegetation.

1877: Giovanni Schiaparelli uses the term "canali," meaning channels, to describe streakson the surface of Mars. The term is translated to "canal" in English.

1894: Percival Lowell begins observing Mars at his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The next year he publishes "Mars," with drawings of the canals and speculation about their artificial origin.

1898: Inspired by Lowell's ideas, English writer H.G. Wells publishes "The War of the Worlds," a novel about a deadly invasion of Earth by Martians.

1908: Lowell writes "Mars as the Abode of Life," presenting his full theory that canals were built by smart folks.

1921: Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless, claims to hear signals that might be Martian. The next year and again in 1924 -- at times when Mars is relatively close -- radio stations observe silence, at the request of the U.S. government, so Mars transmissions can be heard.

1938: Orson Welles' Halloween radio broadcast of the fictional War of the Worlds, based on the H.G. Wells book, fires fear among thousands of Americans that Martians had landed in New Jersey.
2003: Mars comes closer to Earth, by a smidgen, than ever in recorded history. Rumors float around the Internet that the event will cause doom and destruction on Earth.

2005: Discoveries of submerged icebergs and atmospheric methane refuel speculation of microbial life.

2005: A hoax circulates the Internet, stating that Mars will be as big as the full Moon, proving that some things never change

History of The Famous Martian Canals!

Here is a nice article that sumarizes the historical developments that lead to the rise and fall of the famous Martian Canal theory. It all began in 1877 with famed astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli's announcement that he has seen "canali" on Mars. Everyone interpereted Schiaparelli's language of "canali" to mean "canal" and thus gave rise to the belief that there must be or have been intelligent extraterrestrial life on mars at one point to build such canals. However as time went on further developments in the astronomical field with respect to Mars proved there not to be artificially constructed canals on Mars. This caused the reexamination of Schiaparelli's initial claims and everyone realized that there was a mistranslation of his use of the word "canali". If translated correctly, Shiaparelli's announcement would have meant "channels". Myth: Busted!

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mystique/history/1800.html

Planning a Vay-cay to mars?

Want to go to mars? Well, you better get a map. Don't call NASA, because they probably don't want to talk to you. You can though call the all knowing God, I mean, Google. G words confuse me.

mars.google.com

Play around with this colorful rendition of mars (by elevation), and with the click of a button, be directed to your favorite mountains, canyons, dunes, plains, ridges, and get this, even CRATERS!

Face of Mars

In 1976 NASA's viking 1 spacecraft was circling mars and took a picture of martian landmass that caused many to think that there was life on mars. This land mass is known as the face of mars because it resembles a human like face. Since the discovery of the face it has since become a cultural icon. It has starred in a Hollywood film, appeared in magazines, books, and has been showing up in the tabloids for 30+ years. Many people think that the face is proof that intelligent life lives on mars. Since the first photo was taken many more spacecraft have orbited over the face to photograh it. These newer, higher resolution pictures show the face in more detail. So did aliens build theface? Does intelligent life live on Mars? Look at these newer updated pictures and decide. http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/extended_may2001/face/index.html

Here is a pretty cool video I found on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0) that is a spoof that shows was Mars will look like in 2020. As you can see they do not show any sign of human presence besides robots. Obviously it is still believed that humans will not touch Mars by 2020 as shown in this movie, but we will litter Mars with our broken robots.

Super photon thrusters may shorten travel time to mars

The founder of the Bae Institute in Tustin, Calif, Young Bae has been attracting the attention of aerospace agencies and contractors with his "Amplified Photon Thruster." This photon thruster could potentially shorten the time it takes to travel to mars from six months to a week. In December Young Bae demonstrated his photonic laser thruster, "which he built with off-the-shelf components." The thruster could potentially move spacecraft at 100 km per second and limit the amount of time that humans would have to be in space in a mission to Mars. If Bae's thruster works it would be a monumental breakthrough for a manned mission to Mars, and limit the potential problems that prolonged space travel presents.

http://www.photonics.com/content/news/2007/September/7/88894.aspx

Mars in Popular Culture

http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/features/mars/popcult.html

This is a really interesting website that describes "Mars in Popular Culture" in categories from mythology to art. There is several links from the page if you want to go more in-depth.

Life on Mars: Popular Culture & Scientific Studies

http://intranet.dalton.org/departments/Science/Astro/planets/Mars/aliens.htm

"The idea of life on Mars isn't just supported by some good action packed martian movies, but is supported and explored by scientists and the government. An examination of a meteorite found in Antarctica and believed to be from Mars shows: 1) hydrocarbons which are the same as breakdown products of dead micro-organisms on Earth, 2) mineral phases consistent with by-products of bacterial activity, and 3) tiny carbonate globules which may be microfossils of the primitive bacteria, all within a few hundred-thousandths of an inch of each other."

NASA's Mars Rovers to Hit the Silver Screen

So it looks like Mars' rovers are big stars not only in the science world now but on the Silver screen!! On January 27, 2006, over two years ago the director of "Pumping Iron" the film that made Arnold Schwarzenegar famous put out another blockbuster called "ROVING MARS"!!!! The man the myth the legend George Butler cronicled the miracle extended missions roving adventures in a stunning IMAX movie. The movie includes commentary by the mission's leader steve squyres of Cornell University and follows the two rovers Spirit and Opportunity on their various treks across the martian deserts. The imagery used is of stunning quality thanks to the awesome cameras on the two rovers. The camera techs were finally vindicated in their claims that the camera quality was good enough for IMAX but had been made fun of by the rest of the team because on computer screens the footage looks bogus!! HAHA!!. Parts of the mission such as landings which could not be recorded live by the onboard cameras were digitally remastered and animated and all that good stuff to a extreme degree of accuracy. This was all thanks to the high precision data from gyroscopes and accelerometers embedded in the landing craft.