The prospect of a moist Mars fostering primitive life forms has excited scientific interest in exploration of the Red Planet. But a new, rival theory has emerged that tries to undermine evidence of water and leave the idea of a wet planet literally in the dust.
March 11th, 2003
Clever Cloth
For the past few years, some clothing and textile makers have been experimenting with embedding fabrics with unique fragrances and scents. However, the issue with most early attempts is durability. Not many cologne-containing cloths could stand up to repeated washings and quickly wear out. Quest International, the Netherlands-based chemical research unit of the ICI Group in London, and the Woolmark Company, a global wool textile organization, thinks they have developed a unique solution.
January 29th, 2003
Shuttle Astronauts Experiment with Wee Bit of Art
Working with students for 15 years has taught awarding-winning high school teacher Ed Galindo that toilet humor is a sure-fire way of getting attention. Thus was born “Fun With Urine,” the wackiest of more than 80 experiments on the space shuttle Columbia’s 16-day science mission scheduled to end on Saturday. The experiment, sponsored by Native American students from the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation in rural Idaho, tackles a serious problem for the future of human space flight: how to combat depression in long-term space voyagers, Galindo said on Tuesday.
April 29th, 2002
Trees of Plenty
For urban dwellers who may as well think fruit grows in a supermarket, horticulturalists are developing trees that offer more fruit for your dollar
April 5th, 2002
Puny Points of Power
One day, clothing could provide electrical juice to energize a portable phone, hand-held computer, or portable music player. Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley say their latest research work in producing cheap, plastic solar cells may lead to such stunning possibilities. According to A. Paul Alivisatos, a chemistry professor and lead researcher on the project, the experimental solar cells use tiny rods of cadmium selenide, a material similar to those used in computer chips.
March 27th, 2002
Serious Pretending
It’s as close as she and her five-person crew may ever make it to the red planet, but for now, it’s close enough. Their Mars Society Desert Research Station, a squat two-story pod about 25 feet in diameter, is plunked down in the red craggy terrain of the Utah badlands; they’re trekking around in awkward, bulky spacesuits; and they’re pretending
March 27th, 2002
Growing a Meat Garden
Most people I know aren’t content with nothing but vegetables, said Morris Benjaminson, a researcher at Touro College Applied Bioscience Research Consortium in Bay Shore, N.Y. “They like meat and they like meat to taste good. So I came up with the idea of raising muscle in a growth chamber.” Benjaminson and his team managed to make slices of fish muscle grow bigger in a nutrient solution. Soon he hopes to try the technique to grow chicken and beef. One of the challenges in launching a possible manned mission to Mars will be in supplying the travelers with an adequate and diverse supply of food for the estimated two-year voyage. Packing all food supplies will be impractical since NASA estimates it now costs about $10,000 a pound to send material into low Earth orbit and many times that to send any kind of material to Mars. That means astronauts will need to grow much of their food
January 16th, 2002
Automatic Space Camp Builders
At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., researchers have developed an autonomous crew of robots that can work in synch with each other to grasp, lift, and move heavy loads across rough, varied terrain. NASA says the robots would be perfect for setting up a base camp on the red planet ahead of human settlement. The bots look like traditional Mars rovers, but they are equipped with a claw-like grip hand that opens and closes to pick up and carry a payload. Each is programmed with a set of behaviors that tells it how to approach loads, said Paul Schenker, supervisor of the Mechanical and Robotics Technologies Group and principal investigator of the project at JPL.
December 7th, 2001
Red Planet Warming
High-resolution images snapped by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor show that levels of frozen water and carbon dioxide at the Red Planet’s poles have dwindled dramatically
August 20th, 2001
Bouncing Across Mars
NASA engineers are designing a tough, oversized beach ball that could someday roll over broad, rocky expanses of Mars. After bouncing to a landing, the ball would skid and roll around the Red Planet, propelled by Martian winds. The ball could accelerate to about 22 mph in 45 mile-an-hour gusts. As envisioned, the craft, dubbed Tumbleweed, measures about two stories high or 20 feet in diameter and weighs a mere 44 pounds. Like the big wheels on jacked-up trucks, the ball is designed to keep on rolling.