New spacecraft and satellites must be fitted with lasers to transmit digital signals back to optical telescopes on Earth, argue astronomers in a new analysis. The alternative is that the ever-increasing amount of data collected by their improved sensors will get jammed in a serious communications bottleneck, cramping the exploration of the Earth and Solar System Space missions currently being planned will collect several billion bits (gigabits) of data per second. Since the data can only be transmitted back to Earth for a short time every day or two, the satellites will need to transmit about 100 gigabits per second.
July 12th, 2002
Book Review: Mapping Mars: Science, imagination and the birth of a world New Scientist
This is a splendid book and a major achievement in the study of Mars. It’s also much more than a book about mapping, as the subtitle suggests. Although Oliver Morton pays due homage to generations of patient sky watchers, the real story of mapping Mars began in July 1965, when the Mariner 4 fly-by gave us a score of grainy black- and-white images. The missions that followed, with orbiters, landers and more fly-bys, provided more coverage at ever higher resolution. As scientists gradually stitched the images together to generate a pole-to-pole mosaic, the complex cratered surface of this world emerged.
May 27th, 2002
Frozen ocean under Mars surface New Scientist
Vast reserves of hydrogen lurk under the dusty Martian surface, scientists will confirm on Thursday, when scientific details of observations made by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft are revealed. That hydrogen is almost certainly locked up in crystals of water ice.
May 2nd, 2002
Mars mission dangers set out New Scientist
Planners of the first human mission to Mars will have to worry more about hexavalent chromium – the toxic waste in the movie Erin Brockovitch – than about hostile Martians. To assess that danger, NASA should measure levels of hexavalent chromium in Martian dust, says a new report from the US National Research Council. Other measurements the report recommends to assure astronaut safety include the stickiness of the dust, radiation levels on the Martian surface and the strength of Martian soil. Human expeditions to Mars are currently only a hope in the hearts of space enthusiasts. NASA has no plans at present, but asked the National Research Council to identify what data it would need to collect before it could begin planning a human mission.
March 20th, 2002
Fish fillets grow in tank New Scientist
To make space meals more appetising, scientists have been looking at ways of producing fresh food for astronauts in flight. In 2001, German researchers designed an artificial ecosystem to provide a continuous supply of fresh fish in a spacecraft. But breeding live animals for food has drawbacks – they produce excrement, and killing them generates a lot of waste too. So NASA is paying for Benjaminson to go one step further and grow just the animals’ edible muscle. The idea has received a cautious welcome. “Fish mass grown in a nutrient broth sounds as unappealing as some of the other food astronauts take up with them, but these things have got to be explored,” says Colin Pillinger, head of the Planetary Space Sciences Research Institute at the Open University in Milton Keynes.
January 11th, 2002
Bugs could travel in comfort aboard meteorites New Scientist
For the first time, millions of bacterial spores have been purposely exposed to outer space, to see how they are affected by solar radiation. The results support the idea that life could have arrived on Earth in the form of bacteria carried from Mars on meteorites. The idea that life started elsewhere and spread through space is called panspermia. It was first proposed in 1903 by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, who suggested that solar radiation might propel single spores across solar systems. Recent discoveries of Martian meteorites that have reached Earth have raised the possibility that bacterial spores could have hitched a ride on these rocks. Most meteorites spend millions of years in space, but meteorites taking a direct route would make it from Mars to Earth in just a few years – too short a time to experience much damage from deadly cosmic rays.
December 7th, 2001
Mars could be undergoing major global warming New Scientist
Mars is undergoing global warming that could profoundly change the planet’s climate in a few thousand years, new data suggests. High-resolution images taken by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor show that the permanent south polar “ice” cap shrank significantly between two successive Martian summers – a period roughly corresponding to two Earth years. If the trend continues at the same rate and the polar cap is entirely frozen carbon dioxide, “the whole cap would be evaporated in a few thousand years,” Mike Caplinger of Malin Space Science Systems told New Scientist. This would release enough carbon dioxide to give Mars an atmosphere one-tenth the density of the Earth’s. “That takes us from a situation of working in a near vacuum with a space suit to being able to run around on the surface with an oxygen mask and a heavy coat. It’s what the terraforming people were always talking about,” says Caplinger.
August 22nd, 2001
Mini nuclear reactor could power apartment blocks New Scientist
A nuclear reactor designed to generate power in the basement of an apartment block is being developed in Japan. In the past few months government-backed researchers have been testing a fail-safe mechanism for the reactor, which will close down automatically if it overheats. The Rapid-L reactor was conceived as a powerhouse for colonies on the Moon. But at six metres high and only two metres wide this 200-kilowatt reactor could relatively easily fit into the basement of an office building or apartment block, where it would have to be housed in a solid containment building.
July 30th, 2001
Did Viking missions see life on Mars? New Scientist
A claim that NASA overlooked evidence of life on Mars in data collected by the Viking missions 25 years ago has been met with interest and scepticism. Joseph Miller, a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, re-analysed data collected by probes sent to the Martian surface by the Viking 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1976. He believes tests performed on soil samples reveal a cycle of chemical activity similar to the daily rhythms seen in living organisms on Earth.
May 9th, 2001
Out of this world New Scientist
Astronauts will visit Mars within 20 years, said NASA chief Dan Goldin on Tuesday. Such a statement from the head of the world’s premier space agency moves a manned mission to the Red Planet from the realm of fantasy to possibility. However, some experts believe his announcements are highly optimistic.