Humans, off Mars with you!

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Giving Mars Back its Heartbeat. Great Terraforming Debate: Part I
Moffet Field CA (SPX) Jun 16, 2004

At the Astrobiology Science Conference on March 30, scientists and science fiction writers faced off in front of a packed audience to debate the promise and pitfalls of terraforming Mars. In part 1 of this 7-part series, Christopher McKay advocates making Mars habitable for Martians.

Donna Shirley: The Red Planet is again making headlines. Rovers are now exploring the surface of Mars, making exciting discoveries about the planet's environmental history. Today's exploration will help researchers of the future design habitable environments on Mars.
The Mars Terraforming Debate is co-sponsored by NASA's Astrobiology Magazine, the SciFi Museum (Seattle), and Breakpoint Media.
Terraforming was once solely the province of science fiction. In the 1930s, Olaf Stapledon wrote of electrolyzing a global sea on Venus in order to prepare it for human habitation in "Last and First Men." Jack Williamson coined the term "terraforming" in the 1940s in a series of short stories. And in 1951, Arthur C. Clarke gave the concept wide exposure with his novel, "The Sands of Mars." Kim Stanley Robinson picked up the terraforming torch in the 1990s with his epic trilogy - "Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars."
...
Chris McKay: I just want to add one more point about martian life. I think that we should make a biosphere on Mars, as I said earlier. I think the ingredients of the biosphere - the genome of that biosphere - if at all possible, should be martian. That would be the most interesting situation.
We have evidence that Mars had life - we have evidence it had water, from there we deduce that it had life. I think an objective assessment of the situation leads us to be very pessimistic that that life survived intact today.
But for a variety of reasons I think we could find the relics of it - frozen and dead maybe - and reconstruct it if we had to, or find it living in some subsurface refuge, and let it once again control the biogeochemical cycles of that planet the way that life on Earth controls the biogeochemical cycles of our planet. In other words, give Mars back its heartbeat.
I'm not proposing to send life from Earth there. That's only the last resort. If Mars has no genome, then we could share ours with it. But I personally think that a Mars full of Martians is much more interesting than Mars full of Earthlings.

Полный текст:
http://www.spacer.com/news/mars-terraform-04a.html

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Эта статья опубликована на www.spacer.com.
Там же продолжается публикация частей Great Terraforming Debate


Planetary Uncertainty Principle
by Leslie Mullen
for Astrobiology Magazine
Moffet Field (SPX) Jun 22, 2004

To terraform a planet is to change its environment, making it livable for humans and other Earth-based life forms. Most life on Earth could not survive on Mars today. Even the hardiest bacteria would soon shrivel and die from the high radiation exposure, extreme cold, or other martian hazard. If humans want to maintain a long-term presence on Mars, building cities and establishing civilizations, terraforming would be one way to make that possible.

"We want to find out about Mars life before we take Earth life to a place where it can be modifying the environment in a way that we can't control," said NASA's Planetary Protection Officer, John Rummel.

Mars currently has a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere. The average air pressure on Earth is one hundred times greater than the air pressure on Mars. To introduce adequate oxygen and increase the atmospheric pressure enough to suit humans would take at least 40,000 Earth years, and perhaps as long as 4 million years.

When author Kim Stanley Robinson was writing hwis novel, "Red Mars," he was surprised to find that many people favored leaving Mars alone, in its current, pristine state, unsullied by the works of man. "I had some sympathy for (that position), because I like rocky places myself," said Robinson. "If somebody proposed irrigating and putting forests in Death Valley, I would think of this as a travesty."

Astrobiology Magazine had the opportunity to listen in on a conversation between science-fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson and NASA's John Rummel about planetary contamination.

Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR): Now tell me, what's your field of expertise? What do you study?
John Rummel (JR): I don't have any expertise - I work at NASA Headquarters.
KSR: Oh, you're the...
JR: I'm the Planetary Protection Officer.

Donna Shirley: John, your job is to protect planets, and Stan has envisioned a future where there are people running all over the planet Mars. Do you think that's incompatible?
JR: Not at all. In fact, the reason that there's a job to protect the planets is so we have the options of running all over the place later on. If there's life on Mars, we want to know about it before we blunder into a situation that we can't control, and that might in fact be dangerous to Earth.
KSR: What about the several or many thousands of bacteria that are already on Mars, because of our Landers?

JR: I hope that there's more than that. The fact is that the surface of Mars appears to be inimical to life as we know it - on the surface, and as long as you stay in the highly ultraviolet radiated places. And in the long term, galactic cosmic radiation takes care of a certain amount of things. But now we're just getting a good inkling for those deep down, really wonderful spots on Mars that might still exist.
KSR: But what about the crash sites, where essentially a Lander has augered in, and perhaps gone in some meters?

JR: Actually when you auger in on Mars, depending on what the soil is like at the place, you'll probably will only go down about a meter or so. And basic crash sites where you have an integrated vehicle, all that probably stays exposed to the UV anyway.
KSR: Right.

JR: What we worry about, of course, are penetraters and other things that might go down farther than a meter and a half or more. The (Deep Space-2) DS-2 probes worry me much more than the Mars Polar Lander, because they did go down in a way that may have been unconstrained.
KSR: Aren't we kind of caught in a catch-22, like with Lake Vostak, where, in order to try to find out if there is deep level indigenous life on Mars, our instruments of examination - the drills - will themselves be sources of contamination? Is there any way out of this catch-22?

JR: Sure. The biological Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle is, "can we actually do the experiment?"
I think it's possible to do the experiment to a level of probability that is less than one. I think we can actually envision examining Mars for signs of life without contaminating it, but we have to realize that if we examine it at all - if we launch anything to Mars - we have the chance of contaminating it. But not more so than probably the chance that Mars would get contaminated naturally by a large impact event that would take material from Earth to Mars today.

KSR: Which has happened many times.
JR: It's happened many times, and it may happen in the future. It's one of the reasons we (should) talk about terraforming. One of the things that we want to think about is having another home for the human species off of this planet, in a way that will give us an opportunity to survive as a civilization that kind of an impact.

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Earthly link is sought to life on Mars
Scientists see clues in microorganisms
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | July 10, 2004

As NASA's two robotic rovers wind down their mission on Mars, scientists searching for possible signs of Martian life are now training their attention on a landscape much closer to home: the remote regions of planet Earth.
A wave of findings in recent years has shown that some tiny organisms can survive further below the Earth's surface than scientists had long thought, as well as in sulfur pools, boiling water, and other harsh environments. Many scientists now believe that if life exists in the unforgiving conditions on Mars, the most likely candidates would be these kinds of microorganisms, known as extremophiles.
...
Designing a Mars mission that can locate such exotic forms of life will not be easy. Though some scientists believe that liquid water, and therefore microbes, could exist between the planet's frozen crust and its hot core, it will probably be decades or longer before scientists are able to dig deeply enough to look for them. The current rovers can dig into the Martian surface no deeper than about 6 inches.
...
Despite the strange microscopic lives scientists are discovering on Earth and the possibility they exist elsewhere in the universe, they are sticking to one rule in their methodical search for life: Keep to the water trail.

Полный текст: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/07/10/earthly_link_is_sought_tolife_on_mars?pg=2

Насчет следов воды все верно. Но в начале этого три группы ученых независимо друг от друга нашли следы метана в атмосфере Марса! Исходя из земной практики, его источниками могут быть живые организмы или вулканическая деятельность в том или ином виде. В любом случае обнаружить источники марсианского метана очень интересно.

При планировании нашего зонда Фобос-Грунт предусмотрено часть ПН отдать иностранному участнику. Отмечалось, что это могут быть 4 маленьких зонда, сбрасываемых на поверхность Марса.
Американцы при отборе миссии 2007 года на финальной стадии рассматривали 4 варианта, описания которых приведены в статье И. Лисова "Марсианские
планы-5" из НК (статья есть на этом сайте).
Один из этих вариантов и был посвящен поиску метана:

- MARVEL (Mars Volcanic Emission and Life - Вулканическая эмиссия и жизнь на Марсе; буквально - "чудо"). Задачей проекта является глобальный обзор фотохимии марсианской атмосферы с поиском линий излучения, которые могут быть связаны либо с активным вулканизмом, либо с микробиологической активностью (метан). Кроме того, можно будет проследить поведение воды в атмосфере в течение марсианского года. Для этого предлагается использовать орбитальный аппарат, оснащенный инфракрасным спектрометром проходящего через атмосферу солнечного излучения, субмиллиметровым спектрометром для поиска местных концентраций водяного пара или пыли и камерой MICA для съемки облачного фона, разрабатываемой в Университете Торонто (Канада). Коллектив разработчиков возглавляет д-р Марк Аллен (Mark Allen) из Лаборатории реактивного движения (JPL).

Это вариант не прошел, но разработчикам Фобос-Грунта имело бы смысл связаться с разработчиками Marvel на предмет установки их аппаратуры на наш зонд.

Речь шла о химической стерилизации. Я не специалист в этой области, конечно, но что-то мне не доводилось слышать о химических методах "немикробной" стерилизации. А вот для уничтожения микробов химия применяется (антибиотики).

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AMMONIA DETECTED ON MARS    

Ammonia may have been found in Mars' atmosphere which some scientists say could indicate life on the Red Planet.

Researchers say its spectral signature has been tentatively detected by sensors onboard the European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express craft.

Ammonia survives for only a short time in the Martian atmosphere so it must be getting constantly replenished.
There are two possible sources: either active volcanoes, none of which have been found yet on Mars, or microbes.

Excitement

"Ammonia could be the key to finding life on Mars," one US Space Agency (Nasa) scientist told BBC News Online.

Spectral evidence of the gas was seen by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) on Mars Express.

Professor Vittorio Formisano, principal investgator for the instrument, is expected to release details of new findings from the PFS at an international conference being held next week in Paris.

The PFS is sensitive to radiation in the spectral region of 1.2 - 5 microns and 5 - 50 microns - a region rich with important molecules such as water and carbon dioxide. Ammonia has a spectral line at 10 microns.

Although Mars Express has been in orbit around Mars since December 2003, scientists have so far only analysed a fraction of the data the PFS has produced.

Researchers say this is because they are still coming to terms with the complexities of the PFS as well as coping with some nagging power problems on Mars Express.

So far the PFS has observed a depletion of carbon dioxide and an enrichment of water vapour over some of the large extinct volcanoes on Mars.

But it is the detection of minor compounds, possible in the sensors high-resolution mode, that is causing excitement.

The detection of ammonia comes just a few months after methane was found in the Martian atmosphere. Methane is another gas with a possible biological origin.

Ammonia is not a stable molecule in the Martian atmosphere. If it was not replenished in some way, it would only last a few hours before it vanished.

One possibility the scientists had to rule out was that the ammonia came from the air bags of the failed Beagle 2 mission. Analysis revealed that the ammonia's distribution was not consistent with this explanation.

Life on Mars?

The importance of ammonia is that it is a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen.

Nitrogen is rare in the Martian environment but because no form of terrestrial life can exist without it the presence of ammonia may indicate that Martian microbial life is hoarding it.

"There are no known ways for ammonia to be present in the Martian atmosphere that do not involve life," a US Space Agency (Nasa) scientist told BBC News Online.

The twin US rovers that landed on the Red Planet in January will be unable to answer the question of the ammonia's origin as they are designed for geological work.

But future missions could include sensors to analyse the ammonia to determine if it has a biological or volcanic origin. Lava deposited on to the surface, or released underground, could produce the gas.

But, so far, no active volcanic hotspots have been detected on the planet by the many spacecraft currently in orbit.


На воскресшем форуме uplink.space.com началось обсуждение этого сообщения:

http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=missions&Number=3562&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=all

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После "воскресения" форума uplink.space.com была воссоздана тема
Life on Mars
http://uplink.space.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=sciastro&Number=4860&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=all

Alex R. Blackwell, University of Hawaii, и другие пополняют ее ссылками на последние публикации, ведутся их обсуждения.

Успешная работа марсоходов, сообщения от возможных следах метана, аммиака, о районах, которые воможно являются источниками водяного пара для атмосферы Марса, заставляет подумать о корректировке/дополнении программы исследования Марса.
 
Во-первых, нужно ли запускать неподвижные посадочные аппараты, как предполагается в 2007 году?
Если бы Opportunity был таким аппаратом, он не смог бы обнаружить камень в нескольких метрах от себя, исследования которого показали, что он сформировался в воде!    
Во-вторых, если бы во время отбора аппарата для 2007 года, были бы известны нынешние результаты по метану, аммиаку и водяному пару, то, возможно, победил бы проект Marvel.

Но изменить уже запущенные проекты или заменить их практически невозможно.

Быстрота разработки любого проекта существенно определяется количеством стандартных компонент, чем их больше, тем лучше – быстрее, проще и дешевле разработка проекта.

Европейцы разработали Rosetta на базе стандартной спутниковой платформы для ГСО, что значительно упростило ее разработку.

Интересно, а можно ли использовать платформу Ямал, запускаемую РН Союз/Фрегат (или Протон/ДМ?), для разработки спутника Марса, который искал бы метан, аммиак (MARVEL), источники водяного пара – в целом делал бы то, что уже запланированные спутники Марса не будут делать?

Если да, имело бы смысл предложить проект WMO (World Martian Observatory) по аналогии с WSO (http://www.astronomer.ru/news.php?action=1&nid=166).
Программу WMO можно было бы сформировать окончательно в конце 2006 года, когда поступят данные с MRO, который американцы запустят в 2005 году, и запустить WMO в 2009 или 2011 году.


Если бы это зависело от меня J)), то отменил бы Фобос-Грунт в пользу WMO!