British scientists started building tiny ‘Marsquake’ sensors on Thursday that will be able to detect underground water supplies and could help in the search for life on the red planet. The 2007 NetLander mission will land four sets of instruments near the Martian equator to examine the planet’s weather and geological structure. The quake sensors will be the first to look deep inside the planet, the team responsible for their construction said. “We will look at how the vibrations from Marsquakes travel through the planet and work out what is going on deep inside,” said Imperial College London researcher Dr. Tom Pike. “If these vibrations hit liquid water under the landing sites, we should see a distinctive signature,” he added. “That is when the search for life on Mars will move underground.”
Water everywhere on Mars
huge sea of ice lies just under the surface of Mars, ready to be tapped by future explorers as a source of fuel and maybe even drinking water, scientists report. It might also harbour life, and certainly explains where some of the water went when Mars went from being a warm and wet place to the cold, dry desert it is now, the researchers report in this week’s issue of the journal Science. “It turns out it is really quite a bit more ice than I think most people ever really expected,” William Boynton of the University of Arizona, who led one of the studies being published this week, said. Spacecraft sent to Mars in the 1970s probably missed the ice by just a few inches (cm), Boyton said. “The interesting thing is, it looks like the Viking 2 lander actually landed in a region that we think probably had the same ice beneath it,” he said. “If they could have dug down a meter (three feet) deep instead of 10 to 20 cm (four to eight inches) they could have found this ice. Isn’t that interesting? They were probably right on top of it all the time and never had the slightest idea it was there.”
Underground Ice Reportedly Detected on Mars
NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft has reportedly detected water ice under the surface of the red planet, according to scientific papers to be published this week, a finding that could be a giant step in exploration of Mars. Many astronomers believe Mars used to have quantities of liquid water on its surface, but they have never agreed on where the water went. Research to be published in this week’s edition of the journal Science may help answer that question.
Water on Mars Good News for Exploration -Scientist
Water under the surface of Mars could speed up the search for life on the red planet and lighten the load of manned missions in the next two decades, a British space scientist said Monday.
Money, Talent Key to Ensuring U.S. Future in Space
The United States will lose its leading role in space unless it spends more money for research and development and for recruiting young engineers, government, military and industry officials said on Tuesday. NASA and the U.S. military also needed to work more closely to make the best use of scarce resources, the officials told the 12-member Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry. The congressionally mandated panel, which is due to make policy recommendations to Congress and President Bush by Nov. 27, is holding a series of meetings aimed at assessing the overall health of the aerospace industry. Tidal McCoy, chairman of the Space Transportation Association, told the panel that NASA’s $15.1 billion proposed budget for fiscal year 2003 was “a going-out-of-business budget for any hope of advanced space goals.”
Paramount options ‘John Carter of Mars’
Paramount Pictures sees green in the red planet, inking a deal to acquire rights to an 11-volume science fiction adventure series written decades ago by Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the original “Tarzan” legend, Variety reports. Under the deal, Paramount has agreed to option the “John Carter of Mars” serial for a $300,000 upfront fee and to pay a $2 million sum if the studio brings the work to production. Paramount-based producers Jim Jacks and Sean Daniels’ Alphaville Prods. plans to turn the first book into a movie. Although Burroughs is best known for having penned the iconic “Tarzan of the Apes,” the English writer’s first book was “A Princess of Mars.” Written in 1912, it was serialized in All-Story magazine under his nom de plume, Normal Bean.
Mars ‘Recent’ Water Gushers Found
Huge amounts of water — enough to cause catastrophic floods — gushed out of fissures onto the surface of Mars relatively recently, scientists who analyzed photographs of the red planet said on Wednesday. The deluge washed the equivalent of one and a quarter times the water found in Lake Erie onto the surface of the planet near its equator, carving out a series of tear-shaped mesas, the team at the University of Arizona reported. And it was an unusual torrent, spurting from underground much like lava, the scientists report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
British Pop Band Blur to Take Music to Mars
Fans of British pop band Blur always thought their music was out of this world. Now it really will be. A musical sequence recorded by the mega-selling foursome will herald the arrival of a British space probe on Mars. The track will be beamed back to Earth when the probe, Beagle 2, lands on the Red Planet in December 2003. It is part of the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission to find proof of life on Mars.
NASA’s Odyssey Spacecraft Enters Orbit Around Mars
NASA’s Odyssey spacecraft slipped into orbit around Mars on Tuesday, 200 days after it left Earth at a speed of more than 13,000 mph to search for signs of water on the red planet.
Viagra Could Help Men Reach New Heights
Viagra, the blockbuster anti-impotence drug, could help men scale ever greater heights. Scientists at Hammersmith Hospital in London have shown that the drug that gives a lift to flagging sex lives can also help people breathe more easily at high altitudes and on mountaineering expeditions where oxygen levels are low. When Professor Martin Wilkins and scientists at the National Center for Cardiology in Kyrgyzstan tested Viagra on people breathing low levels of oxygen, they found that the same enzyme that constricts blood flow to the penis and prevents erections also produced breathlessness at high altitudes by constricting arteries in the lungs. Viagra blocks the action of this enzyme.