Mud Volcanoes On Mars

If life does - or did - exist on Mars, signs of such life might well be found in a region in the northern plains called Acidalia Planitia, according to a new study. The region appears to be dotted with what scientists believe are geological structures known as mud volcanoes, spewing out muddy sediments from underground. These sediments might contain organic materials that could be biosignatures of possible past and present life.

"If there was life on Mars , it probably developed in a fluid-rich environment," said lead author Dorothy Oehler, a research scientist at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"Mud volcanoes themselves are an indicator of a fluid-rich subsurface, and they bring up material from relatively deep parts of the subsurface that we might not have a chance to see otherwise." In a study published in the August issue of Icarus, Oehler and her co-author Carlton Allen mapped, for the first time, more than 18,000 of these circular mounds. Their estimate is that more than 40,000 mud volcanoes could be found in that region if the mapping continued.

"The Oehler paper adds to [previous studies] by documenting in much greater detail [the] number and distribution [of the mud volcanoes] and analyzes more deeply their origin and possible implications as paleo-habitats," said Kenneth Tanaka, a scientist at the Astrogeology Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey. Oehler and Allen analyzed images obtained from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which allowed them to take a closer look at the structure of some of the mounds and their flow-like features. More data from the imaging spectrometer known as CRISM provided new information on the mineralogy of the mud volcano-like mounds.

Through these assessments, the two scientists were able to rule out the possibility that the mounds were caused by other processes. The paper provides a detailed explanation of why the mounds cannot be impact structures, ice-cored mounds, evaporation deposits or structures caused by lava flow. Scientists first observed the mounds in Acidalia using imagery obtained from the Viking mission in the late 1970s. However, it was more recently that these mounds were thought to represent mud volcanoes. Tanaka was one of the first to make that suggestion.

"I also thought that these features, which also occur elsewhere in the northern plains of Mars, were good places to search for signs of life," Tanaka said. Mud volcanoes are geological structures in which a mixture of gas, liquid and fine-grained rock (or mud) is forced to the surface from several meters or kilometers underground. On Earth, mud volcanoes have specific significance to the oil industry. Those found on land have been found to play a significant role in predicting petroleum reservoirs.

Offshore, they can also be a "huge drilling hazard," according to Oehler, because the earth around a mud volcano is unstable and the activity inside is somewhat unpredictable. It is difficult to predetermine how much mud will surface and whether the process will be a quiet one or an explosive one. The size of mud volcanoes can range up to about ten of kilometers in diameter and several hundred meters in height. The mud flows in an upward direction because the muddy mixture is more buoyant than the surrounding rocks.

One of the major goals of the Mars exploration program is to try to understand if life ever evolved on the planet. In that hunt, astrobiologists are searching for biosignatures that would indicate the presence of extraterrestrial life. While the surface of Mars is thought to be inhospitable to life, microbial life possibly could exist underground. Mud volcanoes bring materials from great depths to the surface, providing samples from deep inside the planetary body that, on a place like Mars, would otherwise be completely inaccessible to scientists. "If life were present in the subsurface, the water and slurries involved in forming the mud volcanoes would have brought it to the surface," Tanaka explained. "While life may not have survived at the surface, it at least could have been brought there by this process."

Studies such as this could help identify regions on the Red Planet that may have been the most suitable places for life to take hold. Missions could use this information to target sites that would be the most likely to have organic biosignatures. "None of the previous landers or rovers on Mars has tested any structure interpreted as a possible mud volcano," Oehler said. "So the mounds in Acidalia represent an entirely new, and untested, class of exploration target for Mars."

However, Tanaka said the age of the mud volcanoes, which could be two to three billion years old, might make them less suitable locations for finding signs of life. "There has been a great amount of time [for UV radiation and other surface processes] to destroy possible microfossils in surface rocks and soils," Tanaka said. "For this reason, it is unclear if these features are the best places to search for preserved life. Better places might include recent crater impacts and deposits from younger flood discharges."

Tanaka points to a Martian valley called Athabasca Valles as a good alternative location for astrobiologists to search for biosignatures. Scientists estimate its age to be in the range of two to 30 million years, making it the youngest channel on the planet. The younger the geological structure, the greater likelihood of finding better-preserved biosignatures. Meanwhile, Oehler and her colleagues are hoping to continue analyzing the MRO imagery to provide further evidence that the circular structures in Acidalia are in fact mud volcanoes. They plan on analyzing their distribution on the surface, and how the shapes of the different structures vary. This analysis could provide more information about the subsurface conditions in the Acidalia region.

"We do believe that Acidalia is a place where life could have been abundant because of long-lived water sources," Oehler said. "It is one of the better places to look for evidence of life - if life ever developed on Mars."

Yes, Life Can Survive on Mars !

Researchers at McGill's department of natural resources, the National Research Council of Canada, the University of Toronto and the SETI Institute have discovered that methane-eating bacteria survive in a highly unique spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada's extreme North. Dr. Lyle Whyte, McGill University microbiologist explains that the Lost Hammer spring supports microbial life, that the spring is similar to possible past or present springs on Mars, and that therefore they too could support life.
The subzero water is so salty that it doesn't freeze despite the cold, and it has no consumable oxygen in it. There are, however, big bubbles of methane that come to the surface, which had provoked the researchers' curiosity as to whether the gas was being produced geologically or biologically and whether anything could survive in this extreme hypersaline subzero environment. "We were surprised that we did not find methanogenic bacteria that produce methane at Lost Hammer," Whyte said, "but we did find other very unique anaerobic organisms -- organisms that survive by essentially eating methane and probably breathing sulfate instead of oxygen."
It has been very recently discovered that there is methane and frozen water on Mars. Photos taken by the Mars Orbiter show the formation of new gullies, but no one knows what is forming them. One answer is that there could be that there are springs like Lost Hammer on Mars.
"The point of the research is that it doesn't matter where the methane is coming from," Whyte explained. "If you have a situation where you have very cold salty water, it could potentially support a microbial community, even in that extreme harsh environment." While Axel Heiberg is already an inhospitable place, the Lost Hammer spring is even more so. "There are places on Mars where the temperature reaches relatively warm -10 to 0 degrees and perhaps even above 0ºC," Whyte said, "and on Axel Heiberg it gets down to -50, easy. The Lost Hammer spring is the most extreme subzero and salty environment we've found. This site also provides a model of how a methane seep could form in a frozen world like Mars, providing a potential mechanism for the recently discovered Martian methane plumes."
The research was published in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal and received logistical support from McGill University's Arctic Research Station and the Canadian Polar Continental Shelf Project. Funding was received from NASA, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Space Agency. Additional funding for student research was provided by the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, and the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies.

Mars simulation to start in Moscow

The unusual isolation experiment, called Mars 500, is designed to probe humankind's ability to undertake long-distance space travel even though a manned mission to the Red Planet remains years away. Participants will not experience weightlessness or the higher radiation levels associated with such travel but organisers say the experience will nonetheless be authentic.
The crew, made up of three Russians, a Chinese man, a Frenchman and an Italian, will spend 520 days locked up in a "spaceship" forged from metal tubing in Russia's Moscow-based Institute for Biomedical Problems.Their task is to conduct dozens of experiments and simulate a flight to and from Mars, as well as a landing and a series of 'spacewalks' on the Red Planet.Participants are not professional astronauts but volunteers who were chosen because they had specific medical and technical skills.They will earn the equivalent of about £70,000 each.
The biggest challenge will be loneliness. They will only be able to contact loved ones over the internet which will often only function with a forty minute delay. They will also, of course, be deprived of the company of the opposite sex.The mission commander, Alexei Sitev, said he only got married a few weeks ago and admitted it was going to be "difficult."Organisers say they chose an all male crew to avoid conflict. A similar but shorter experiment in 1999 was marred when a Russian participant tried to forcibly kiss a Canadian female crew member.

View of Earth and Moon from Mars

This stunning picture is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that shows our home as a planetary disc, with the Moon in the distance.Captured by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the spacecraft orbited the Red Planet, both the Earth and the Moon appear as crescents, engulfed in the vast darkness of space. Our planet is captured in a 'half-Earth' phase, while the image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon.Because the Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth.
When the image was captured in 2007, Earth was 88million miles from Mars, giving the HiRISE image a scale of 88 miles per pixel.Nasa could only picture the Earth and moon at full disk illumination when they are on the opposite side of the Sun from Mars. However, then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail. On the Earth image you can make out the west coast outline of South America at lower right, although the clouds are the dominant features.This image required a processing, with the Moon image brightened so it would show up next to Earth

Clues About Mars Evolution Revealed

Thomas Lapen, assistant professor of geosciences at UH, describes his team's findings in a paper titled "A Younger Age for ALH84001 and its Geochemical Link to Shergottite Sources in Mars," appearing April 16 in Science, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news and commentary.
ALH84001 is a thoroughly studied, well-known Martian meteorite. This stone is unique among Mars rocks available for study on Earth, since its formation age is more than 2.5 billion years older than any other recognized Martian meteorite, giving scientists the only sample of material formed early in Mars' history. Data from this rock may help geologists better understand, through analogy, the processes of early Earth evolution.
Lapen and his colleagues' data showed that the true age of this meteorite is 4.091 billion years old, about 400 million years younger than earlier age estimates. They concluded that this stone formed during an important time when Mars was wet and had a magnetic field, conditions that are favorable for the development of simple life. This finding precludes ALH84001 from being a remnant of primordial Martian crust, as well as confirming that volcanic activity was ongoing in Mars over much of its history.
"This research helps us better refine the history of Mars," Lapen said. "This has huge ramifications for our understanding of volcanic processes active in Mars and for the nature of deeper portions of the planet that are sources of magmas that produced the largest volcanoes in the solar system. These data also are used to refine models of initial planetary formation and early evolution."
With the crystallization age and formation of this rock being debated since its discovery in 1984, Lapen and his team seized an opportunity to better refine the early history of Mars. With samples provided by the NASA Antarctic meteorite curator and the meteorite working group, the researchers used a relatively new method that has never been applied to this stone -- lutetium-hafnium isotope analysis.
"We studied variations in isotopic compositions of minerals to determine the age and sources of magmas that produced these rocks," Lapen said. "We uncovered evidence that the volcanic systems in Mars were likely active more than four billion years. This connection allows the possibility that regions with the largest volcanoes in the solar system perhaps host some of the longest-lived volcanic systems in the solar system."
In addition to Lapen, the team includes Alan Brandon, an associate professor in UH's department of earth and atmospheric sciences, and their two post-doctoral researchers Minako Righter and John Shafer. Other collaborators were Brian Beard from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and NASA Astrobiology Institute, Vinciane Debaille from the University of Bruxelles and Anne Peslier, a research scientist at Jacobs Technology working at NASA Johnson Space Center.
The project was supported by NASA Cosmochemistry grants to Lapen and Brandon, a NASA Astrobiology grant to Beard and a grant from UH's own Institute for Space Systems Operations to Lapen. The Belgian Fund for Scientific Research provides current financial support to Debaille. The research took about 15 months.

Honey, finally we are going to Mars

President Barack Obama Thursday set a bold new course for the future of US space travel, planning to send American astronauts into Mars orbit within the next three decades.
And he sought to quell a storm of outrage which met earlier plans unveiled by his administration, vowing before NASA staff that he was "100 percent committed" to their mission and the US space agency's future.
"As president, I believe that space exploration is not a luxury, it's not an afterthought in America's quest for a brighter future. It is an essential part of that quest," he said at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The US president was making a whirlwind trip to the heart of the US space industry after stinging criticism of his decision to drop the costly Constellation project which had aimed to put Americans back on the moon.
Obama, who was accompanied by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, said his administration would pump six billion more dollars into the NASA budget over the next five years. But he had specific ideas how it should be spent.
"We should attempt a return to the surface of the moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say, pretty bluntly here, we've been there before. Buzz has been there," Obama said.
"There's a lot more of space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do," he said, to loud applause.
"By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crew missions beyond the moon into deep space. "So, we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow."
In a nod to critics who say the new approach will costs jobs and undermine American leadership in space exploration, Obama said he was retaining part of the Constellation project, the Orion capsule. Obama said he had instructed NASA administrator Charles Bolden to immediately begin the design of a rescue vehicle using technology already developed for the Orion capsule.
And the United States would also invest some three billion dollars in research on a heavy-lift rocket to send crew capsules and supplies into deep space, with the design to be finalized by 2015.
His plan includes ramping up "robotic exploration of the solar system, including a probe of the sun's atmosphere, new scouting missions to Mars and other destinations, and an advanced telescope to follow Hubble," he said. Obama also pledged the new plan would create some 2,500 jobs along the so-called space coast in the next two years -- aiming to bring new hope to a region blighted by high unemployment.
Critics, including the first man on the moon Neil Armstrong, were angered by Obama's decision earlier this year to scrap the bloated and behind-schedule Constellation program.
The aging US space shuttle fleet, which carries astronauts to the International Space Station, is due to be grounded at the end of the year, leaving the United States to hitch rides on Russian spacecraft to the International Space Station until a replacement is developed.
"Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity," Armstrong wrote in a letter, co-signed by two other astronauts.
Another powerful critic was Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the subcommittee that has oversight of NASA spending. "This new plan does not represent an advancement in policy or an improvement upon the Constellation program, but a continued abdication of America's leadership in space," Shelby said in a statement Wednesday.
But Obama hit back Thursday saying: "We will actually reach space faster and more often under this new plan in ways that will help us improve our technological capacity and lower our costs.
"The bottom line is, nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space, than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way. "And we can't just keep on doing the same old things we've been doing and thinking that somehow it's going to get us to where we want to go."

Spirit Has Uncertain Future

NASA's Mars rover Spirit will mark six years of unprecedented science exploration and inspiration for the American public on Sunday। However, the upcoming Martian winter could end the roving career of the beloved, scrappy robot.

Spirit successfully landed on the Red Planet at 8:35 p.m. PST on Jan. 3, 2004, and its twin Opportunity arrived at 9:05 p.m. Jan. 24, 2004. The rovers began missions intended to last for three months but which have lasted six Earth years, or 3.2 Mars years. During this time, Spirit has found evidence of a steamy and violent environment on ancient Mars that was quite different from the wet and acidic past documented by Opportunity, which has been operating successfully as it explores halfway around the planet.
A sand trap and balky wheels are challenges to Spirit's mobility that could prevent NASA's rover team from using a key survival strategy for the rover. The team may not be able to position the robot's solar panels to tilt toward the sun to collect power for heat to survive the severe Martian winter.
Nine months ago, Spirit's wheels broke through a crusty surface layer into loose sand hidden underneath. Efforts to escape this sand trap barely have budged the rover. The rover's inability to use all six wheels for driving has worsened the predicament. Spirit's right-front wheel quit working in 2006, and its right-rear wheel stalled a month ago. Surprisingly, the right-front wheel resumed working, though intermittently. Drives with four or five operating wheels have produced little progress toward escaping the sand trap. The latest attempts resulted in the rover sinking deeper in the soil.
"The highest priority for this mission right now is to stay mobile, if that's possible," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He is principal investigator for the rovers.
If mobility is not possible, the next priority is to improve the rover's tilt, while Spirit is able to generate enough electricity to turn its wheels. Spirit is in the southern hemisphere of Mars, where it is autumn, and the amount of daily sunshine available for the solar-powered rover is declining. This could result in ceasing extraction activities as early as January, depending on the amount of remaining power. Spirit's tilt, nearly five degrees toward the south, is unfavorable because the winter sun crosses low in the northern sky.
Unless the tilt can be improved or luck with winds affects the gradual buildup of dust on the solar panels, the amount of sunshine available will continue to decline until May 2010. During May, or perhaps earlier, Spirit may not have enough power to remain in operation.
"At the current rate of dust accumulation, solar arrays at zero tilt would provide barely enough energy to run the survival heaters through the Mars winter solstice," said Jennifer Herman, a rover power engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The team is evaluating strategies for improving the tilt even if Spirit cannot escape the sand trap, such as trying to dig in deeper with the wheels on the north side. In February, NASA will assess Mars missions, including Spirit, for their potential science versus costs to determine how to distribute limited resources. Meanwhile, the team is planning additional research about what a stationary Spirit could accomplish as power wanes.
"Spirit could continue significant research right where it is," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the rovers. "We can study the interior of Mars, monitor the weather and continue examining the interesting deposits uncovered by Spirit's wheels."
A study of the planet's interior would use radio transmissions to measure wobble of the planet's axis of rotation, which is not feasible with a mobile rover. That experiment and others might provide more and different findings from a mission that has already far exceeded expectations.
"Long-term change in the spin direction could tell us about the diameter and density of the planet's core," said William Folkner of JPL. He has been developing plans for conducting this experiment with a future, stationary Mars lander. "Short-period changes could tell us whether the core is liquid or solid," he said.
In 2004, Opportunity discovered the first mineralogical evidence that Mars had liquid water। The rover recently finished a two-year investigation of a half-mile wide crater called Victoria and now is headed toward Endeavor crater, which is approximately seven miles from Victoria and nearly 14 miles across. Since landing, Opportunity has driven more than 11 miles and returned more than 132,000 images.

Opportunity finds Meteorite at Mars

Opportunity must be driving down Meteorite Alley on Mars. The rover has come across still another meteorite, the third space rock it has found the past few months, and fourth overall since 2005. This one is called Mackinac, which continues the "island" theme by which the science team has dubbed the meteorites. Block Island was found in July 2009, and Opportunity came upon Shelter Island the end of September (around sol 2020 for the rover). Mackinac was found on sol 2034 (Oct 13), and it looks very similar in composition to the two earlier meteorites. Opportunity analyzed the Block Island and found it was made of iron and nickel.

Body Art of Mars

see the Bad Astronomer has beat me to the punch by posting this image before I could. But what an amazing and gorgeous image of dunes on Mars! However, my initial thought when I saw this on the HiRISE webpage was perhaps this was the first long-awaited look at Phil's tattoo. Seriously, doesn't this look like it could be body art? The dunes even have a Phil-like flesh color. But this wonderful image was taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. There is a great database of dune images gathered for the US Geological Survey on the HiRISE website,

2000 Sols on Mars

Another milestone for the Mars Exploration Rovers: Spirit has been operating on Mars for 2000 sols, or Martian days. Who would have ever thought the rovers would last this long? But here they are, still going, um, pretty strong. Even though she's got plenty of electrical power, Spirit is currently stuck in loose soil at her location, called Troy. But engineers are working hard to figure out how to set her free. Check out the latest on the efforts at the Free Spirit website. To celebrate Spirit's milestone, Unmanned Spaceflight's Astro0 has put together a Sol 2000 poster over at his website, Astro0 in Space. It's gorgeous, and includes a new poem by my pal Stuart Atkinson, so check it out!

Return of the Mars Hoax

For the sixth year in a row, a message about the Red Planet is popping up in email boxes around the world. It instructs readers to go outside after dark on August 27th and behold the sky. "Mars will look as large as the full moon," it says. "No one alive today will ever see this again."
Don't believe it.Here's what will really happen if you go outside after dark on August 27th. Nothing. Mars won't be there. On that date, the red planet will be nearly 250 million km away from Earth and completely absent from the evening sky.
The Mars Hoax got its start in 2003 when Earth and Mars really did have a close encounter. On Aug. 27th of that year, Mars was only 56 million km away, a 60,000-year record for martian close approaches to Earth. Someone sent an email alerting friends to the event. The message contained some misunderstandings and omissions—but what email doesn't? A piece of advanced technology called the "forward button" did the rest.Tolerant readers may say that the Mars Hoax is not really a hoax, because it is not an intentional trick. The composer probably believed everything he or she wrote in the message. If that's true, a better name might be the "Mars Misunderstanding" or maybe the "Confusing-Email-About-Mars-You-Should-Delete-and-Not-Forward-to-Anyone-Except-Your-In-Laws."Another aspect of the Mars Hoax: It says Mars will look as large as the full Moon if you magnify it 75x using a backyard telescope. The italicized text is usually omitted from verbal and written summaries of the Hoax. (For example, see the beginning of this story.) Does this fine print make the Mars Hoax true? After all, if you magnify the tiny disk of Mars 75x, it does subtend an angle about the same as the Moon.
A good reference is the Moon Illusion. Moons on the horizon look huge; Moons directly overhead look smaller. In both cases, it is the same Moon, but the human mind perceives the size of the Moon differently depending on its surroundings. Likewise, your perception of Mars is affected by the planet's surroundings. Locate the planet at the end of a little dark tunnel, and it is going to look tiny regardless of magnification.

Alien invasion on Phobos !

the Russian space agency and the US-based Planetary Society will soon be sending terrestrial life to the Martian moon Phobos. The mini-interplanetary travelers will consist of bacteria, spores, seeds, crustaceans, insects and fungi. Why? To see how biological life, in various forms, deals with space travel spanning three years. So if you thought that a human (or Monkey) would be the first of Earth's ambassadors to land on Mars or one of its moons, you'd be very mistaken. Here you can watch a video clip of very special experiment with the insects, especially with roaches in orbit.
According to results from a Russian biology experiment on the International Space Station (ISS), a mosquito has survived the rigors of space for 18 months. However, this little winged insect didn’t do it inside the comfort of the ISS, he did it outside, in a small can. The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medical and Biological Problems are currently assessing the impact of cosmic radiation on living organisms as part of the Biorisk program. It would appear that this hardy mosquito coped just fine with no life support and no climate control. The mosquito experienced varying temperatures from a chilly -150°C in the shade to a rather toasty +60°C in direct sunlight. One would expect that after 18 months of this torture treatment there wouldn’t be much left of the freeze dried mozzie, but in fact, he was still “alive” after returning to Earth.