I'm gonna be really sad when these magnificent machines finally have to quit.
Mars chip to test for life signs
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News
ExoMars will search for possible Martian life, past or present
It is set to become one of the key experiments on ExoMars, Europe's next mission to the Red Planet in 2011.
The Life Marker Chip (LMC) will test soil samples drilled from below Mars' surface for specific molecules that can be associated with life.
The results might not be a definitive proof of the existence of microbes, but they could still provide tantalising evidence for their possible presence.
A UK-led international consortium is developing the technology.
On Monday, it was awarded £0.5m (0.7m euros) to advance the system's design and demonstrate such an instrument can be made small enough and light enough to be flown half a billion kilometres to Mars.
The new PParc money allows us to do the early development work that will pre-position the UK to win the ExoMars contracts when they go out to competition
Dr Mike Healy, EADS-Astrium
"As ever on missions like ExoMars, the mass constraints are very tight - we're trying to get the whole package down to about 800g," said Dr Mark Sims, from Leicester University.
"Essentially, you're looking at something that's the weight of a mobile phone in a lunchbox," he told BBC News.
Prototype proof
The £0.5m is part of a £1.7m (2.5m euros) package of R&D investment announced by the UK's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PParc) to enable UK scientists and engineers to develop key instrumentation and technologies for the ExoMars mission.
It would also carry a range of instrumentation capable of investigating the planet's life potential - past and present.
The LMC would be a key component of ExoMars' "Pasteur Laboratory".
Dr Sims' team is now engaged in a 20-month study that expects to turn the chip instrument from an exciting concept into a working prototype.
The Life Marker Chip will look for the presence of molecules such as amino acids; DNA; and adenosine triphosphate, the critical molecule involved in energy transfer in cells.
Martian 'pregnancy'
To make a detection, the ExoMars rover would drill down into the Martian soil with a mole and pull a sample into the Pasteur housing. There, the sample would be ground up and treated with solvents to pull out any organic (carbon-rich) material.
The fluid would then be passed through a test channel in the LMC.
EUROPE'S EXOMARS MISSION
To leave Kourou, French Guiana, spaceport in 2011
Will launch on Russian-built Soyuz-Fregat vehicle
Planetary positions account for 2-year journey
2013 landing will avoid worst of duststorm season
US may be asked to provide orbital relay of data
Mission could yet be updated to include an orbiter
Study of past or present life is a prime mission goal
The technology exploits the fact that molecules will only bind with other molecules of a particular shape - essentially a "lock and key" approach. If one of the target molecules is present in the fluid, it will bind to a prepared receptor in the test channel.
It is a process that is very similar to pharmacy testing kits that detect the presence of a hormone associated with the early stages of pregnancy.
"The pregnancy testing kit is a good analogy," said Dr Sims. "The fluid flows across a molecular receptor array; but instead of getting a 'blue line', we see dots where the compounds are bound to the surface; and they will actually fluoresce."
He added: "If [Martian life] has a chemistry similar to life on Earth, we will see it."
'Winning' position
Britain has promised more than £70m (100m euros) to Esa's Aurora Solar System exploration programme, of which the ExoMars project is the major focus.
The UK is the biggest "subscriber" after Italy and can expect a sizeable number of contracts to come its way when Esa invites final tenders to build the mission's components.
The commitment already of UK industry to the mission can be seen in "Bridget", a testbest rover chassis developed by EADS-Astrium and featured by BBC News last month.
Bridget has been trialling the locomotive aspects of the ExoMars design on the slopes of the El Teide volcano in Tenerife.
So far, Bridget has been constructed with Astrium's own money. The PParc funds will now help develop an autonomous navigation system that would enable the rover to guide itself over a rocky landscape without the need for human intervention.
"The new PParc money allows us to do the early development work that will pre-position the UK to win the ExoMars contracts when they go out to competition," said Astrium's Dr Mike Healy.
Other R&D money from PParc is going to support development work on instruments such as microseismometers that would detect "Marsquakes" on the Red Planet; a panoramic camera that would make 3D maps of the surface; and a spectrometer to measure the ultraviolet environment on Mars.
Funny you should post this today, I just went to space.com yesterday to see what was going on in the solar system. I didn't see this info there....
<heehee>
There are new pix of saturn's moons and star-birtheries at nasa....
LKPD? Is this the evil lil K?
SPIRIT UPDATE: Spirit Clears Away Dust, Gets New Software Upgrade - sol 904-907, July 21, 2006:
Beginning July 22, 2006, in the early hours of the rover's 907th Martian day, Spirit is scheduled to begin knitting together and testing all 200 pieces of a new flight software package transmitted to the rover in recent weeks. Spirit remains healthy despite experiencing lower amounts of solar energy during the Martian winter.
The deepest part of the Martian winter - that is, the Martian winter solstice - will be on Aug. 8, 2006. The lowest amount of solar energy the rover is expected to receive is 275 watt-hours per sol (a hundred watt-hours is the amount of electricity needed to light one 100-watt bulb for one hour). The rover typically spends at least one sol recharging the batteries following each sol of heavy science activities.
During sols 904 through 907, Spirit continued work on the "McMurdo panorama," examined rock target "Halley Brunt" with the microscopic imager, and took atmospheric measurements with the miniature thermal emission spectrometer.
Spirit also completed a test of the rock abrasion tool. Rover handlers ran the grind motor on the rock abrasion tool backward three times to remove a clod of dust that was thought to be interfering with the operation of the device. After running the motor backward for three seconds at three different voltages -- 5 volts, 8 volts, and 10 volts -- engineers concluded that the tool was operating normally and that it either never had a problem or dislodged whatever was stuck beneath the bit.
Thanks for keeping up on this, edgar!
I hope you don't mind my posting this here..... Mars has geysers spewing sand from the CO2-ice cap.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5268892.stm
Thanks. I had missed that.
The more participation the better.
It's not exactly
on Mars but ...
Every summer for the last 10 years, geologists, astronomers, engineers and NASA researchers have been camping atop the Canada's high Arctic, along the rim of the giant 23 millionyear-old Haughton asteroid crater, to begin figuring out how astronauts can one day survive on Mars.
Quote:
Devon Island like no place on Earth
Research from Arctic territory paving the way for the 1st human mission to the Red Planet
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published August 21, 2006
DEVON ISLAND, Nunavut -- They call this place "Mars on Earth," and, for at least another generation, this barren, cratered island not far from the North Pole is as close to the Red Planet as any human being is going to get.
The climatic extremes here in the polar desert of Canada's high Arctic resemble what is found in the polar regions of Mars. The geology of the sterile, rocky terrain is similar to that of the Martian surface. Even the water here, most of it perpetually locked in ice beneath the permafrost, closely parallels what scientists believe exists on Mars.
Which is why, every summer for the last 10 years, a handful of geologists, astronomers, engineers and NASA researchers have been camping atop the frozen arctic ground here, along the rim of the giant 23 million-year-old Haughton asteroid crater, to begin figuring out how astronauts can one day survive on Mars.
Full report online
From the print version of today's Chicago Tribune (Section 1, page 15, MW-edition):
Im sre if we put our minds to it, we could come up with several other differences between Canada and Mars.
So far, ain't no Canadians up there.
A great imagination through the inference..
Quote:The martian polar caps are among the most dynamic regions on Mars, growing substantially in winter as a significant fraction of the atmosphere freezes out in the form of CO2 ice. Unusual dark spots, fans and blotches form as the south-polar seasonal CO2 ice cap retreats during spring and summer. Small radial channel networks are often associated with the location of spots once the ice disappears. The spots have been proposed to be simply bare, defrosted ground1,2,3; the formation of the channels has remained uncertain. Here we report infrared and visible observations that show that the spots and fans remain at CO2 ice temperatures well into summer, and must be granular materials that have been brought up to the surface of the ice, requiring a complex suite of processes to get them there. We propose that the seasonal ice cap forms an impermeable, translucent slab of CO2 ice that sublimates from the base, building up high-pressure gas beneath the slab. This gas levitates the ice, which eventually ruptures, producing high-velocity CO2 vents that erupt sand-sized grains in jets to form the spots and erode the channels. These processes are unlike any observed on Earth.
Nature -the first paragraph
Hmm, I don't think there's anything new there...
Oh, well that artists rendition is definitely new.
Seriously though I am pretty sure all that info about the caps was in my textbook published years ago.
