Tag: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

What Is Life?

The two NASA robots continue to poke around on the surface of Mars. We are explorers – even robotically. The difference between these explorers and a Columbus type explorer is what they’re looking for.

Back in the 15th Century, man was looking for a shortcut to goods he could use. If the trips were successful, spices, gold and other treasures would come back on a triumphant return. At the moment, nothing’s coming back from Mars.

Today’s explorers have a somewhat more ethereal goal. We’re looking for signs of life, the origins of life, the origins of our universe. It’s heady stuff. It’s exploration in the abstract. Unlike the 15th Century, there may be no practical payoff.

Today the AP reported; “Mars rover Opportunity has found evidence that the Red Planet was once wet enough for life to exist there, but the robot has not found any direct traces of living organisms, NASA scientists announced Tuesday.

Of course, the next step will be to look for signs of life. But (with apologies to George Harrison) what is life? It’s not a stupid question. If you’re thinking people, insects, plants, you’re way up the ladder from where scientists will look. In fact they will be looking for incredibly simple forms of life – forms so simple, that to me, it’s difficult to separate life from simple chemistry.

A few years ago I went to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to look at ALH84001, the Allen Hills meteorite. Some scientists believe this chunk of Mars, which through an unbelievable confluence of events ended up on Earth, holds fossilized evidence of Martian life. But the fossils are so simple, the life so rudimentary, that most lay people would yawn and turn away. That’s how I feel about its fossils – though the story of how it got to Earth and how why scientists know to go to Antarctica to find meteorites is more than a little fascinating.

Over the next few months, NASA will probably use the results of this incredible engineering triumph to try and fund more missions, and people will start talking about searching for life. Just remember, it might not mean what you first thought.

Sending People Into Space

Today is the 1st anniversary of the Columbia disaster. No one knew, as the Shuttle was climbing from the pad, the die had been cast. Even scarier – if we would have known at that point, nothing could have been done.

There is no doubt the astronauts who fly the Shuttle and International Space Station, and before them the earlier crews, know the dangers they face. Do we?

It should have come as no surprise that astronauts died a year ago. Leaving our atmosphere is inherently dangerous. There are thousands of critical components and systems, any one of which could shape the same outcome. NASA has had plenty of close calls before.

It has been my opinion, and it seems to be born out by what I’ve read, that NASA has taken a less than rigorous attitude toward full safety. The conditions they allowed the astronauts to fly to aboard the Soviet MIR were shocking, to say the least. Of course we’ve all read that NASA experts played down fears about the very foam collision that was the Shuttle’s undoing.

We will fix the foam, and the wings and anything else that’s been made obvious by the events of February 1, 2003, but the changes will only marginally improve the safety of the crew. There are still those thousands of parts and systems. As long as men fly in space, there will be danger and there will be death.

This is a profession so dangerous that you can get killed just practicing – as we found out with Apollo One.

It’s time we, as a nation, took a look at the facts, and made a decision. Is what we’re doing in space worth jeopardizing human lives? I say no.

Look back at Columbia. It was a ‘junk science’ mission. There was little of any scientific import on board. Our other major manned program, the International Space Station, isn’t much better. Even if it weren’t crippled by a caretaker crew, it would be accomplishing few things worth writing home about.

Why are we doing this? Is it a matter of pride? In this day and age there’s a better way to explore – robotically. We are proving, on Mars, with Stardust and other missions , that robots can accomplish the same, or more, than man. And, it’s being done at a significant savings, with little human danger.

Don’t underestimate the cost. My producer at SciFi used to say that if, somehow, the Shuttle’s payload bay was mysteriously filled with gold while in orbit, the mission would still lose money!

The time to change our attitude is now. If the goal is to explore space, let’s do it the right way – so there can be worthwhile science and exploration. As it stands now, the space program is crippled by the fear of further disaster… and there will be further disaster. It’s only a matter of time.

Big Weekend For NASA

There are big headlines coming from NASA this weekend. Two missions reaching milestones.

The Spirit rover will be touching down on the surface of Mars (how cool to even be able to type those words – and they’re true!) inside Gusev Crater at 04:35 Jan. 4, 2004, Universal Time (11:35 p.m. Jan. 3, EST.) Spirit’s twin, Opportunity, will reach Mars three weeks later.

Compared to earlier Mars explorers, these two rovers are more sophisticated and should bring back better and more complete scientific data. Scientists are constantly intrigued by the twin possibilities of water and life on Mars – though we would be talking about life much simpler than found on Earth… more like complex chemistry than what you’d consider living things.

As sexy as that is, I think the really exciting mission is the one that will get less publicity.

A few hours ago, the Stardust mission flew by the Comet Wild 2 (pronounced ‘vilt’) and, in an aerogel container, captured some bits of the comet’s tail. Aerogel is such a low density material that the cometary particles should be stopped without being destroyed… even with the spacecraft doing 17,000+ mph

In a few years, Stardust will return to Earth with its samples and parachute down to the Utah desert. It will be the first time ever that science has traveled to a comet and brought back samples.

A comet is a great place to visit because it is suspected that they were formed at about the same time as the Solar System. And, since the cometary particles have been protected inside the comet’s icy crust, they should be much the same as they were 4.5 billion years ago!

To me, this is much more exciting than men travelling to space. Because manned space travel is a government project, we’ve become very timid in what we do there. Much of manned spaceflight is a worthless excercise with little scientific purpose. Intelligent machines can do a lot more with a lot less risk.

California Fires

This week the news has been filled with stories of the California wildfires. Spread from San Diego to just north of Santa Barbara and inland to desert areas, these fires are awesome in their ferocity and size.

The ground and helicopter based pictures are sobering to watch, but I think the full version of the image to the right is even more amazing. Taken by one of NASA’s low Earth orbiting satellites, it provides more detail than I’ve ever seen in a similar satellite image.

As of tonight the Santa Ana winds have subsided. Hopefully, over the next few days, these fires will be controlled by firefighters.

Blown Out of Proportion

I got an email this morning from a mailing list at Sky and Telescope Magazine run by Cary Oler:

It is remarkable how often the news media take scattered facts, throw

them together incorrectly and then claim authenticity. Such was the case in

abundance for the space weather storm of 24 October. Media reports that this

storm would be a “perfect storm” or the “once in a 100 year event” were

shamefully inaccurate.

I guess I was one of those taken in. But why? I’m usually pretty cynical of these things, even when the Drudge headline said ‘Perfect space storm’ coming to Earth… ” I still did loads of research on-line trying to understand what was going on.

If this wasn’t big, then NASA’s website wasn’t helping:

This week researchers have been observing an enormous sunspot the size of Jupiter. As a result of associated flares, NOAA predicts strong geomagnetic storms to hit Earth on Friday with the potential to affect electrical grids and satellite communications. Aurora may be visible as far south as Oregon and Illinois. Meanwhile, scientists are watching another large sunspot rotate toward us with potential for even more powerful and prevalent explosions.

And, from another NASA site:

Earlier this week, a large sunspot region caught the attention of many sungazers around the world. Sunspot region 10484 was associated with several powerful solar flares, including one X-class event (the most powerful category). The sunspots in the region covers more than 1700 millionths of the visible solar surface, or 10 times the surface of the entire Earth!

But hold on! Another region, number 10486, has rotated onto the solar disk, showing even more signs of activity. And this particular region caught the attention of solar physicists while it was still on the far side of the Sun! In the MDI instrument’s far side imaging pictures, it showed considerable development over a short period of time. The rapid growth was noted by KehCheng Chu of Stanford University, but the fact was not widely publicized. “The data were a bit scarce, and there was a chance that the images were influenced by this,” says Phil Scherrer, Principal Investigator for MDI.

The speculations have been vindicated by a lot of activity (including an even stronger X flare) coming from this new region. Although not quite as large in sunspot area (1160 millionths of the visible surface), it is still considered somewhat more likely to produce the most powerful flares.

I’m not upset that I got to talk about the flares and sunspots. There’s great supporting video and hopefully people got a little more understanding of what’s going on in space. I’m more worried that people in the scientific community are willing to exaggerate.

Science is the last place that should happen.

Autumn Colors – How Fast?

I came across two really cool satellite images today, comparing the natural colors of Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan over the span of a few days.

You can see how much color change has taken place, seemingly at the drop of a hat.

Granted, this shot spotlights an area that gets to winter a little quicker than most of the rest of the country. Still, it’s astounding that the transition happens this quickly.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on NASA