A Mars-exploration advocacy group has embarked on a campaign to raise funds to sponsor a life-seeking microscope aboard the next spacecraft set to land on the Red Planet, although lander officials say they have agreed to no such deal. Either way, the instrument is to be toted to Mars on the British-built Beagle 2 lander. If on schedule, it will be the first microscope placed on Mars, said Peter Smith, senior research scientist at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson. He is building the unit with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
August 16th, 2000
Inflatable Craft to Launch from Submarine
A Russian military submarine could be the launch pad for an upcoming attempt to test an inflatable spacecraft initially conceived for missions to Mars. A Moscow-based company called Lavochkin is preparing a Russian Naval sub for the $700,000 experiment known as Inflatable Reentry and Descend Technology, or IRDT.
August 14th, 2000
The True Story of the Mars Simulation on Devon Island
Supported by six steel legs rammed into rocky ground, the Mars Society’s white fiberglass dome sits like some extraterrestrial fishbowl on the rim of Haughton Crater. It shimmers in the never-setting sun of the Arctic summer. Called the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, the futuristic dome-topped cylinder can be seen from more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) away. From the bottom of the broad dish of the meteorite-excavated crater, it appears as a bright white dot on the edge of gray-brown hills. From closer, it is an imposing sight. The habitation module, which is supposed simulate a base for astronauts on Mars, juts up sharply from the gently sloping terrain. It is easy to imagine that this space bubble is the first outpost of a growing colony on Mars, that soon the solitary structure will give way to a trailer-park-style settlement of prefabricated Mars modules.
August 13th, 2000
Devon Island: Testing a Better Spacesuit
Two years ago, NASA tasked spacesuit designers and manufacturers to come up with concept-demonstration spacesuits for future planetary missions. In time, both the David Clark Company, the contractor responsible for the orange suits space shuttle astronauts wear during launch, and ILC Dover, the makers of spacewalk suits, unveiled their respective versions. Durable and flexible, the prototypes for the new suits have recently undergone testing by NASA.But while these two suits, Dave Clark’s D Suit and ILC’s I Suit, have made it off the drawing boards, it is the suit created by Hamilton Sunstrand Systems, the maker of major components for the NASA spacewalk suits, that has gone one step further. Hamilton sent its concept suit and two engineers up to NASA
August 13th, 2000
Terraform or Not to Terraform? Question Poses Problem for Mars Researchers
Mars needs a planetary make over. A little ozone here, a touch of genetic engineering there, stir in some oxygen – you’ve got the makings of a planet you can write home about. The terraforming of Mars – making the planet hospitable to human life by manipulating its atmosphere and surface – could give humanity a new, comfortable home beyond the Earth.
August 12th, 2000
Mars On Earth: Fragile Life In the Arctic
Mars, 2012: A lean landing craft touches down on Mars, at a site judged to have the best chances for finding some trace of water. Guided by scientists on Earth, the robot works its way into a crevasse that looks like it might once have hosted an active hot spring. The landing craft begins to sample dirt and scratch rocks to collect anything that might hold signs of life. It dumps that material into a chamber and then begins to search the material for molecular DNA
August 12th, 2000
NASA Scientist: Space Agency Needs an Overhaul
America’s space program is stranded in Earth orbit, operating costly space-shuttle and space-station projects that go round and round, and nowhere fast, a panel of space experts said Friday, August 11. Dismayed by the lack of progress in human exploration of space is Chris McKay, a NASA space scientist at the Ames Research Center, near San Francisco, California. “It’s kind of puzzling that since 1969, we haven’t really gone beyond the moon, we being humans,” McKay told an audience of 800 on Friday at the Third International Mars Society Convention.
August 11th, 2000
Mars or Bust: Red Planet Proponents State Their Case In Toronto
Don’t wait for clanking robots on Mars to do what flesh-and-blood humans do better. The opportunity is now for a new branch of civilization to claim the fourth planet from the sun. That’s the opening call from a “Red Planet platoon” from more than 700 people gathered here for the Third International Mars Society Convention, running through Sunday at Ryerson Polytechnic University. “From a technological point of view,” said Mars Society President Robert Zubrin, “we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to send people to the moon in 1961 when John F. Kennedy started the program.”
August 11th, 2000
Mars On Earth: Arctic Crater Reveals Martian Secrets
For six weeks this summer, a rough uninhabited island in the Arctic Circle became the focus of preparations for a human journey to Mars and a search for life there. Devon Island is within a thousand miles (1,600 kilometers) of the North Pole, just 200 miles (320 kilometers) west of Greenland’s northwest coast and 1,700 miles (2,735 kilometers) north of the U.S.- Canada border. It lies 75 degrees north of the equator, further north than Alaska’s northernmost point.