MARSBUGS:  
The Electronic Exobiology Newsletter
Volume 5, Number 1, 21 January, 1998.

Editors:

David Thomas, Department of Biological Sciences, University of 
Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-3051, USA, thoma457@uidaho.edu or 
Marsbugs@aol.com.

Julian Hiscox, Division of Molecular Biology, IAH Compton 
Laboratory, Berkshire, RG20 7NN, UK.  Julian.Hiscox@bbsrc.ac.uk or 
Marsbug@msn.com

MARSBUGS is published on a weekly to quarterly basis as warranted 
by the number of articles and announcements.  Copyright of this 
compilation exists with the editors, except for specific articles, 
in which instance copyright exists with the author/authors.  E-
mail subscriptions are free, and may be obtained by contacting 
either of the editors.  Contributions are welcome, and should be 
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include a short biographical statement about the author(s) along 
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advised to make appropriate inquiries before joining societies, 
ordering goods etc.  Back issues may be obtained via anonymous FTP 
at:  ftp.uidaho.edu/pub/mmbb/marsbugs.

The purpose of this newsletter is to provide a channel of 
information for scientists, educators and other persons interested 
in exobiology and related fields.  This newsletter is not intended 
to replace peer-reviewed journals, but to supplement them.  We, 
the editors, envision MARSBUGS as a medium in which people can 
informally present ideas for investigation, questions about 
exobiology, and announcements of upcoming events.

Exobiology is still a relatively young field, and new ideas may 
come out of the most unexpected places.  Subjects may include, but 
are not limited to:  exobiology proper (life on other planets), 
the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), ecopoeisis/ 
terraformation, Earth from space, planetary biology, primordial 
evolution, space physiology, biological life support systems, and 
human habitation of space and other planets.
------------------------------------------------------------------

INDEX

1)	MARTIAN METEORITE CONTAINS NO BIOLOGICAL LIFE, RESEARCH TEAM 
SAYS
From Case Western Reserve University

2)	MARTIAN METEORITE BEARS SIGNS OF LIFE FROM EARTH, NOT MARS  
From The Planetary Society Home Page

3)	ORGANIC MATERIAL IN MARTIAN METEORITE FOUND TO BE FROM EARTH
From Scripps Institution of Oceanography

4)	ORGANIC MATERIAL IN MARS METEORITE IS FROM EARTH
From University of Arizona News Services

5)	PATHFINDER RESULTS FEATURED IN THIS WEEK'S SCIENCE MAGAZINE
JPL release

6)	1997 - THE YEAR OF MARS PATHFINDER
By Diane Ainsworth

7)	RECONFIGURED MGS READY FOR MISSION BASED ON NEW ORBIT 
By Diane Ainsworth

8)	MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS REPORTS
JPL releases

9)	NEXT GENERATION:  MARS '98
From The "JPL Universe"

10)	GALILEO STARTS TWO-YEAR EXTENDED EUROPA MISSION 
By Jane Platt

11)	EUROPA:  THE 'GEM' OF JUPITER 
Voice of America Transcript

12)	ORIGINS ADVANCES ITS STUDY OF STAR, GALAXY AND LIFE FORMATION 
By Jane Platt

13)	LOS ALAMOS INSTRUMENTS TO PROSPECT FOR WATER ON THE MOON
From Los Alamos National Laboratory

14)	ANNOUNCEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY FOR 10 STARDUST EDUCATOR 
FELLOWSHIPS
NASA release

15)	NASA SOFTWARE CLEARLY DISPLAYS BREAST TUMOR SCANS IN 3-D
NASA release N97-088

16)	SENATOR GLENN GETS A "GO" FOR SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION
NASA release 98-8

17)	FIRST STATION ELEMENT TO BE SHIPPED TO RUSSIAN LAUNCH SITE
NASA release 98-7

18)	EXTRATERRESTRIAL CUISINE IS COOKING IN CORNELL LAB
From Cornell University News Service
------------------------------------------------------------------

MARTIAN METEORITE CONTAINS NO BIOLOGICAL LIFE, RESEARCH TEAM SAYS
From Case Western Reserve University

4 December, 1997

The famous Martian meteorite, ALH84001, contains no biological 
life forms, according to a Case Western Reserve University 
researcher and colleagues.  The team issues this report in the 
December 4 issue of Nature, duplicating the methods of a team of 
scientists from the Johnson Space Center and Stanford University.  
In rare counterpoint writings in the "Scientific Correspondence" 
section, Nature allowed the Johnson Space Center team to respond 
to the group's findings.  This paper also appears in the December 
4 issue.

CWRU's Ralph Harvey, senior research associate in the Department 
of Geological Sciences, was on the research team.  The lead 
researcher on the paper was John Bradley from MVA Inc.  and the 
School of Material Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of 
Technology.  The third researcher is Hap McSween from the 
University of Tennessee.

The trio reports that most of the purported nanofossils or "worm-
like images" are nothing more than lamellae, or fractured surfaces 
of pyroxene and carbonate crystals.  Last year, the Johnson-
Stanford team announced it found evidence of nanofossils in the 
meteorite.  Reports of life on Mars spurred the July 4 mission to 
Mars to look for further evidence of life.

Allan Hills 84001--a meteorite the size of a potato--remains in 
the center of a spirited controversy about the possibility of life 
on Mars.  The meteorite was found in the 1980s in Antarctica by 
the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Search for Meteorite 
Program (ANSMET), headed by Harvey with headquarters at CWRU.  A 
Web page offers details on ANSMET, including a link to more 
information on the meteorite.  To view these resources, visit 
http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/geol/ansmet/index.html.

Harvey, who is currently on his annual expedition to Antarctica to 
collect meteorites, commented before leaving November 21 that the 
Johnson-Stanford team has always argued that they had used 
different techniques to study the meteorite.

Bradley, Harvey, and McSween published a paper last year in 
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (GCA), announcing that what the 
other researchers observed was formed geologically, not 
biologically.  The Johnson-Stanford group also announced that 
these nanofossils were lying on the surface of the meteorite.  In 
the first GCA study, which used transmission electron microscope 
imagining (TEM), the researchers found non-biological magnetite 
whiskers on or near the surfaces of the carbonates.  Superficially 
the whiskers look like worms, but in fact they have nothing to do 
with biological processes, according to Harvey and colleagues.

The latest study took place over the past six months as the 
researchers re-examined the meteorite using the new techniques.  
This time they found yet another population of worm-like forms 
that are actually mineral lamellae formed by non-biological, 
geological processes.  The lamellae look like worms or 
nanofossils, but when the specimen is tilted and viewed from 
another angle, it clearly shows that the lamellae are attached and 
part of the mineral surfaces.

"The surface topography is highly irregular on a nanometer scale, 
with emergent lamellae following the major cleavage direction of 
the substrate," Bradley writes in the paper.  The researchers have 
published pictures of the TEM images to support their findings.

"Peculiar surface structures or segmentation on the worm-like 
forms are artifacts from conductive metal coatings applied to the 
samples for imaging in the electron microscope.  This is not the 
first time metal coating artifacts have lead to misidentification 
of nanofossils in rocks," Bradley said.

"We have now found two different types of mineral forms in 
ALH84001 that look just like nanofossils, but they are strictly 
non-biological origins.  Sometimes even nature has a perverse 
sense of humor," he added.

Harvey stressed that during this latest study, the team was 
careful to use exactly the same methods as the Johnson-Stanford 
group to lay to rest any arguments that the research methods had 
affected the findings.

The worm-like mineral lamellae are commonly found at the fractured 
surfaces of planar crystals.  Harvey noted that lunar rocks--in 
which there has been no evidence of life found--contain these same 
formations.

Does this put an end to the life on Mars debate? "We haven't 
driven the final nail in the coffin yet about organisms in this 
Martian rock, but our latest article offers a lot of insight that 
shows these fractures zones in the rock are incredibly complex," 
Harvey said, "and that it is very dangerous to try to draw any 
hypothesis from a few pictures from here or there."
------------------------------------------------------------------

MARTIAN METEORITE BEARS SIGNS OF LIFE FROM EARTH, NOT MARS  
From The Planetary Society Home Page

Scientists report that the Martian rock is contaminated with 
organic material from earth.  The case for life on Mars seems to 
be becoming more difficult to prove.

The meteorite that scientists thought contained microscopic 
fossils of Martian life may just be contaminated with organic 
material from Earth.  In tomorrow's issue of Science, two teams of 
researchers report that the organic carbon in the Martian 
meteorite Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001) comes from Earth and not 
from Mars.

In two separate papers, scientists from the Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and the 
University of Arizona in Tucson conclude the potato-size Martian 
rock was contaminated by the surrounding Antarctic ice in which it 
was found.  The scientists are the first to publish results of 
tests of organic material contained in the meteorite since 
research teams at NASA's Johnson Space Center and Stanford 
University announced their results in August 1996.

"This is bad news with respect to using these meteorites to assess 
whether there ever was or is life on Mars," said Jeff Bada, a 
professor of marine chemistry who headed the Scripps team.  "It 
shows that the meteorites aren't going to give us a definitive 
answer."

The Finding:

Possible Martian Microfossils

To understand this continuing scientific debate, we should review 
the findings of scientists at Johnson Space Center and Stanford 
University.  In August 1996, they reported that they had found in 
meteorite ALH84001 the first organic molecules thought to be 
Martian in origin.  Called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons 
(PAH's), these organic molecules were found in easily detectable 
amounts in tiny globs of carbonate within the meteorite.  They 
also noted finding several mineral features characteristic of 
biological activity and possible microscopic fossils of primitive, 
bacteria-like organisms inside the meteorite.  Their findings were 
published in the August 16, 1996, issue of Science.

The scientists proposed that very primitive microorganisms may 
have assisted in the formation of the carbonate, and some of the 
microscopic organisms may have become fossilized, in a fashion 
similar to the formation of fossils in limestone on Earth.

Questioning the Finding:

Amino Acids in the Martian Rock

Bada's team at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography analyzed 
amino acids contained within a sample from the meteorite, while 
Timothy Jull's team at the University of Arizona examined the 
radiocarbon activity of the bulk organics.

"What we found," Bada said, "was that, yes, there are amino acids 
in the meteorite at very low levels, but they are clearly 
terrestrial and they look similar to amino acids we see in the 
surrounding Antarctic ice.  How they got in there is still an open 
issue."

Bada said he chose to focus his analysis on amino acids within the 
meteorite because, unlike PAH's, they play an essential role in 
biochemistry.

An expert in the analysis of amino acids, Bada used high-
performance liquid chromatography to analyze amino acids in the 
meteorite to determine their "handedness."  He found that the bulk 
of the amino acids consisted of the left-handed forms similar to 
that seen in the Allan Hills ice in Antarctica where the meteorite 
was found.  Bada said he could not rule out the possibility that 
minute amounts of some extraterrestrial amino acids such as right-
handed forms of alanine were preserved in the meteorite.

"What we and Tim Jull's team have shown is that there is no 
evidence in our hands that the meteorite contains any compounds 
that we could definitely trace to Mars except maybe some tiny 
mysterious component that we don't understand at this point," he 
said.

Questioning the Finding:

Radiocarbon Dating the Martian Rock

A.J. Timothy Jull's group at Arizona used 14C and 13C tracers to 
determine the origin of the carbonate minerals and organic carbon 
in the meteorite.  Their results indicated that the bulk of 
organic material in ALH84001 is contaminated material it acquired 
after falling to Earth.

"It looks like regular terrestrial organic material," Jull said.  
"The 14C content of it suggests that there were several episodes 
of contamination."

Jull's team burned samples of the meteorite at different 
temperatures to separate organic carbon and carbonate minerals in 
the meteorite.  In four separate such "stepped-combustion" 
experiments, they collected the carbon dioxide gas produced and 
prepared the carbon for isotopic analysis by standard radiocarbon 
procedure.  At the university's Accelerator Mass Spectrometer 
Laboratory, the scientists then measured how much of the heavy 
stable carbon isotope, carbon-13, and the radioactive carbon 
isotope, carbon-14, were present in both the organic carbon and 
the carbonate minerals.

Jull's group is the first to report on the bulk, or main part, of 
the organic material in a sample of the ALH84001 meteorite.  For 
the past three years, Jull, a research geoscientist, has been 
studying the isotopic composition of the Allan Hills meteorite to 
get more information about the isotopic composition of the early 
Martian atmosphere.  Before Johnson Space Center and Stanford 
University scientists announced in August 1996 the possible 
existence of bacterial fossils in the meteorite, several 
scientists, including Jull, had discovered that the carbonate 
minerals of the meteorite were far richer in carbon-13 than are 
any carbonates on Earth.

"This unusual signal (carbon-13 enrichment) tags the carbonate 
minerals in the Allan Hills meteorite as likely formed from a 
reservoir such as the Mars atmosphere," Jull said.

He and his team now also have discovered that the abundance of 
carbon-13 in the organic carbon in the meteorite is an exact match 
to the abundance of carbon-13 in Earth's organic carbon.  "It 
looks like regular terrestrial organic material, with the 
exception of one small component in ALH84001."  The researchers 
say they suspect that this component is some carbon indigenous to 
the rock, possibly associated with a mineral phase that burns at 
higher temperatures.

The carbon-13 data alone are convincing evidence that the organic 
carbon in the meteorite is "regular terrestrial organic material," 
Jull said.  "Combining this with the carbon-14 evidence is the 
clincher," he added.

Radioactive carbon is produced when cosmic rays from space strike 
Earth's atmosphere and react with nitrogen.  Carbon-14 also can be 
produced in minerals irradiated in space and on Mars, by high-
energy nuclear reactions.  However, Jull and his co-researchers 
show there is no mechanism to produce carbon-14 in the organic 
material, as this requires low-energy neutrons to interact with 
nitrogen atoms. Thus, organic material, which originated on Mars 
would contain a negligible amount of radioactive carbon before it 
fell to Earth.

Jull and his team discovered that the organic carbon in the Allan 
Hills meteorite contains enough carbon-14 to yield radiocarbon 
ages of between 11,000 and 5,200 years.  Jull previously had 
determined by radiocarbon analysis of silicate minerals in the 
meteorite that the rock fell to earth about 13,000 years ago.

"The carbon-14 shows conclusively that the carbonates and the 
organics in the meteorite do not come from the same source," Jull 
said.  "It also shows the organic carbon has a terrestrial source, 
likely through several episodes of contamination.

"The organic material contains 14C and the carbonate doesn't 
because the carbonate came from somewhere in space, presumably 
Mars, and the organic material is a recent addition which took 
place while the meteorite was sitting on the ice," Jull said.  
"So, there is no connection between the two things."

The Questions Continue

Jull said that although the scientific community can be expected 
to make many more discoveries about the Allan Hills meteorite, he 
would be surprised if scientists got a definite answer on the 
question of possible ancient life on Mars from this or any other 
meteorite.

J.  Warren Beck, an associate research scientist in physics at the 
University of Arizona, agreed.  "Even if we ultimately find that 
all the organic matter in this meteorite came from Earth, that 
doesn't rule out the possibility that life may have evolved on 
Mars.  A meteorite represents only a tiny fragment of an entire 
planet," Beck said.

Bada said scientists will have to wait until a Mars mission 
scheduled for 2005 to bring back samples from the Martian surface 
to determine whether life ever graced the planet.

"In the meantime, we can throw any kind of analyses that we want 
to at these meteorites and we are not going to provide an answer 
one way or another about whether life existed on Mars," he said.

Credits and More Information

Co-authors of the Scripps paper with Bada are Daniel Glavin, a 
Scripps graduate student; Gene McDonald, of NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory; and Luann Becker, of the University of Hawaii.  Co-
authors of the University of Arizona paper with Jull and Beck are 
Christopher J.  Courtney and Daniel Jeffrey of the University of 
Arizona.

http://www.planetary.org/articlearchive/headlines/1998/headln-
011598.html
------------------------------------------------------------------

ORGANIC MATERIAL IN MARTIAN METEORITE FOUND TO BE FROM EARTH
From Scripps Institution of Oceanography

15 January, 1998

Organic material contained in a meteorite heralded as bearing 
signs of previous life on Mars is actually from Earth.  Scientists 
at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University 
of Arizona in Tucson report in two separate papers in the Jan.  16 
issue of Science that the potato- sized rock was contaminated by 
the surrounding Antarctic ice in which it was found.  The 
scientists are the first to publish results of tests of organic 
material contained in the meteorite, named Allan Hills 84001 
(ALH84001), since research teams at NASA's Johnson Space Center 
and Stanford University announced their results in August, 1996.

"This is bad news with respect to using these meteorites to assess 
whether there ever was or is life on Mars," said Jeff Bada, a 
professor of marine chemistry who headed the Scripps team.  "It 
shows that the meteorites aren't going to give us a definitive 
answer."

Bada's team analyzed amino acids contained within a sample from 
the meteorite while Timothy Jull's team at the University of 
Arizona examined the radiocarbon activity of the bulk organics.

"What we found was that, yes, there are amino acids in the 
meteorite at very low levels, but they are clearly terrestrial and 
they look similar to amino acids we see in the surrounding 
Antarctic ice," Bada said.  "How they got in there is still an 
open issue."

Likewise, Jull's team used 14C and 13C tracers to determine the 
origin of the carbonate minerals and organic carbon in the 
meteorite.  Their results indicated that the bulk of organic 
material in ALH84001 is contaminated material it acquired after 
falling to Earth.

"It looks like regular terrestrial organic material," Jull said.  
"The 14C content of it suggests that there were several episodes 
of contamination."

Scientists at Johnson Space Center and Stanford reported in Aug.  
1996 that they had found the first organic molecules thought to be 
Martian in origin.  Called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons 
(PAH's), these organic molecules were found in easily detectable 
amounts in tiny globs of carbonate within the meteorite.  They 
also noted finding several mineral features characteristic of 
biological activity and possible microscopic fossils of primitive, 
bacteria-like organisms inside the meteorite.  Their findings were 
published in the Aug.  16, 1996, issue of Science.

The scientists proposed that very primitive microorganisms may 
have assisted in the formation of the carbonate, and some of the 
microscopic organisms may have become fossilized, in a fashion 
similar to the formation of fossils in limestone on Earth.

Jull's analysis of isotopes contained in organic material and 
carbonate from the meteorite, however, indicates the two are of a 
completely different origin, making a relationship between the two 
impossible.

"The organic material contains 14C and the carbonate doesn't 
because the carbonate came from somewhere in space, presumably 
Mars, and the organic material is a recent addition which took 
place while the meteorite was sitting on the ice," Jull said.  
"So, there is no connection between the two things."

Bada said he chose to focus his analysis on amino acids within the 
meteorite because, unlike PAH's, they play an essential role in 
biochemistry.

An expert in the analysis of amino acids, Bada used high-
performance liquid chromatography to analyze amino acids in the 
meteorite to determine their "handedness."  He found that the bulk 
of the amino acids consisted of the left-handed forms similar to 
that seen in the Allan Hills ice in Antarctica where the meteorite 
was found.  Bada said he could not rule out the possibility that 
minute amounts of some extra-terrestrial amino acids such as 
right-handed forms of alanine were preserved in the meteorite.

"What we and Tim Jull's team have shown is that there is no 
evidence in our hands that the meteorite contains any compounds 
that we could definitely trace to Mars except maybe some tiny 
mysterious component that we don't understand at this point," he 
said.

Bada said scientists will have to wait until a Mars mission 
scheduled for 2005 to bring back samples from the Martian surface 
to determine whether life ever graced the planet.

"In the meantime, we can throw any kind of analyses that we want 
to at these meteorites and we are not going to provide an answer 
one way or another about whether life existed on Mars," he said.

Co-authors of the Scripps paper are Daniel Glavin, a Scripps 
graduate student; Gene McDonald, of NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory; and Luann Becker, of the University of Hawaii.  Co-
authors of the University of Arizona paper are Christopher 
Courtney, Daniel Jeffrey and Warren Beck, all of the University of 
Arizona.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the World Wide Web:  
http://sio.ucsd.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------

ORGANIC MATERIAL IN MARS METEORITE IS FROM EARTH
From University of Arizona News Services

15 January, 1998

Organic material contained in a meteorite heralded as bearing 
signs of previous life on Mars is actually from Earth.  Organic 
carbon in the potato-size rock comes from the Antarctic ice in 
which it was found and not from Mars, scientists from The 
University of Arizona in Tucson and the Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego conclude in 
two separate papers in the Jan.  16 issue of Science.  They are 
the first to publish results of tests of organic material 
contained in the Martian meteorite Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001).

A.  J.  Timothy Jull's group at Arizona burned samples of the 
meteorite at different temperatures to separate organic carbon and 
carbonate minerals in the meteorite.  In four separate such 
"stepped-combustion" experiments, they collected the carbon 
dioxide gas produced and prepared the carbon for isotopic analysis 
by standard radiocarbon procedure.  At the University's world-
class Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Laboratory, the UA scientists 
then measured how much of the heavy stable carbon isotope, carbon-
13, and the radioactive carbon isotope, carbon-14, were present in 
both the organic carbon and the carbonate minerals.

Jull's group is the first to report on the bulk, or main part, of 
the organic material in a sample of the ALH84001 meteorite.  The 
scientific team includes J.  Warren Beck, an associate research 
scientist in physics; Christopher J.  Courtney, a research 
technician in physics; and Daniel Jeffrey, an undergraduate 
student who worked on the project with partial funding from the 
NASA/Arizona Space Grant Program.

For the past three years, Jull, a research geoscientist, has been 
studying the isotopic composition of the Allan Hills meteorite to 
get more information about the isotopic composition of the early 
Martian atmosphere.  Before Johnson Space Center and Stanford 
University scientists announced in August 1996 the possible 
existence of bacterial fossils in the meteorite, several 
scientists, including Jull, had discovered that the carbonate 
minerals of the meteorite were far richer in carbon-13 than are 
any carbonates on Earth.

"This unusual signal (carbon-13 enrichment) tags the carbonate 
minerals in the Allan Hills meteorite as likely formed from a 
reservoir such as the Mars atmosphere," Jull said.

He and his team now also have discovered that the abundance of 
carbon-13 in the organic carbon in the meteorite is an exact match 
to the abundance of carbon-13 in Earth's organic carbon.  "It 
looks like regular terrestrial organic material, with the 
exception of one small component in ALH 84001."  The researchers 
say they suspect that this component is some carbon indigenous to 
the rock, carbon possibly associated with a mineral phase, that 
burns at higher temperatures.

The carbon-13 data alone are convincing evidence that the organic 
carbon in the meteorite is "regular terrestrial organic material," 
Jull said.  "Combining this with the carbon-14 evidence is the 
clincher," he added.

Radioactive carbon is produced when cosmic rays from space strike 
Earth's atmosphere and react with nitrogen.  Carbon-14 also can be 
produced in minerals irradiated in space and on Mars, by high-
energy nuclear reactions.  However, Jull and his co-researchers 
show there is no mechanism to produce carbon-14 in the organic 
material, as this requires low-energy neutrons to interact with 
nitrogen atoms. Thus, organic material, which originated on Mars 
would contain a negligible amount of radioactive carbon before it 
fell to Earth.

Jull and his team discovered that the organic carbon in the Allan 
Hills meteorite contains enough carbon-14 to yield radiocarbon 
ages of between 11,000 and 5,200 years.  Jull previously had 
determined by radiocarbon analysis of silicate minerals in the 
meteorite that the rock fell to earth about 13,000 years ago.

"The carbon-14 shows conclusively that the carbonates and the 
organics in the meteorite do not come from the same source," Jull 
said.  "It also shows the organic carbon has a terrestrial source, 
likely through several episodes of contamination."

Jull said that although the scientific community can be expected 
to make many more discoveries about the Allan Hills meteorite, he 
would be surprised if scientists got a definite answer on the 
question of possible ancient life on Mars from this or any other 
meteorite.

Beck agreed.  "Even if we ultimately find that all the organic 
matter in this meteorite came from Earth, that doesn't rule out 
the possibility that life may have evolved on Mars.  A meteorite 
represents only a tiny fragment of an entire planet," Beck said.

Jeff Bada, a professor of marine chemistry who headed the Scripps 
team, and his group analyzed amino acids from a sample of the 
Allan Hills meteorite.  Their research appears in a companion 
paper in the Jan.  16 issue of Science.  Co-authors on this paper 
include Daniel Glavin, a Scripps graduate student; Gene McDonald 
of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Luann Becker of the 
University of Hawaii.

"What we found was that, yes, there are amino acids in the 
meteorite at very low levels, but they are clearly terrestrial and 
they look similar to amino acids we see in the surrounding 
Antarctic ice," Bada said.  "How they got in there is still an 
open issue."

Life on Mars? Read "Planetary Sciences Research Discoveries" on 
line at:  http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PSRdiscoveries
------------------------------------------------------------------

PATHFINDER RESULTS FEATURED IN THIS WEEK'S SCIENCE MAGAZINE
JPL release

1 December, 1997

Based on the first direct measurements ever obtained of Martian 
rocks and terrain, scientists on NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission 
report in this week's Science magazine that the red planet may 
have once been much more like Earth, with liquid water streaming 
through channels and nourishing a much thicker atmosphere.

Among the more significant discoveries of the Mars Pathfinder 
mission was the identification of possible conglomerate rocks, 
which suggests the presence of running water to smooth and round 
the pebbles and cobbles, and deposit them in a sand or clay 
matrix, says Dr. Matthew Golombek, Mars Pathfinder project 
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.  This 
scenario supports the theory that Mars was once warmer and wetter.

"If you consider all of the evidence we have at Ares Vallis--the 
rounded pebbles and cobbles and the possible conglomerate, the 
abundant sand- and dust-sized particles and models for their 
origins, in addition to the high silica rocks," Golombek says, "it 
suggests a water-rich planet that may have been more Earth- like 
than previously recognized, with a warmer and wetter past in which 
liquid water was stable and the atmosphere was thicker."

A panoramic view of Pathfinder's Ares Vallis landing site, 
featured on the cover of the Dec.  5 issue of Science, reveals 
traces of this warmer, wetter past, showing a flood plain covered 
with a variety of rock types, boulders, rounded and semi-rounded 
cobbles and pebbles.  These rocks and pebbles are thought to have 
been swept down and deposited by floods which occurred early in 
Mars' evolution in the Ares and Tiu regions near the Pathfinder 
landing site.

The cover image, which is a 75-frame, color-enhanced mosaic taken 
by the Imager for Mars Pathfinder, looks to the southwest toward 
the Rock Garden, a cluster of large, angular rocks tilted in a 
downstream direction from the floods.  The image shows the 
Pathfinder rover, Sojourner, snuggled against a rock nicknamed 
Moe.  The south peak of two hills, known as Twin Peaks, can be 
seen on the horizon, about 1 kilometer (6/10ths of a mile) from 
the lander.  The rocky surface is comprised of materials washed 
down from the highlands and deposited in this ancient outflow 
channel by a catastrophic flood.

"Before the Pathfinder mission, knowledge of the kinds of rocks 
present on Mars was based mostly on the Martian meteorites found 
on Earth, which are all igneous rocks rich in magnesium and iron 
and relatively low in silica," Golombek and a team of Pathfinder 
scientists report in a paper entitled, "Overview of the Mars 
Pathfinder Mission and Assessment of Landing Site Predictions."  
The paper summarizes the scientific results of the mission, which 
are also detailed in six other papers in this issue.  The 
scientists report that chemical analyses of more than 16 rocks and 
studies of different regions of soil--along with spectral imaging 
of rock colors, textures and structures--have confirmed that these 
rocks have compositions distinct from those of the Martian 
meteorites found on Earth.

"The rocks that were analyzed by the rover's alpha proton X-ray 
spectrometer were basaltic or volcanic rocks, with granite- like 
origins, known as andesitic rocks," Golombek reports.  "The high 
silica or quartz content of some rocks suggests that they were 
formed as the crust of Mars was being recycled, or cooled and 
heated up, by the underlying mantle.  Analyses of rocks with lower 
silica content appear to be rich in sulfur, implying that they are 
covered with dust or weathered.  Rover images show that some rocks 
appear to have small air sacks or cavities, which would indicate 
that they may be volcanic.  In addition, the soils are chemically 
distinct from the rocks measured at the landing site."

The remarkably successful Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, part of 
NASA's Discovery program of fast track, low-cost missions with 
highly focused science objectives, was the first spacecraft to 
explore Mars in more than 20 years.  In all, during its three 
months of operations, the mission returned about 2.6 gigabits of 
data, which included more than 16,000 images of the Martian 
landscape from the lander camera, 550 images from the rover and 
about 8.5 million temperature, pressure and wind measurements.

The rover traveled a total of about 100 meters (328 feet) in 230 
commanded maneuvers, performed more than 16 chemical analyses of 
rocks and soil, carried out soil mechanics and technology 
experiments, and explored about 250 square meters (820 square 
feet) of the Martian surface.  The flight team lost communication 
with the lander on Sept.  27, after 83 days of daily commanding 
and data return.  In all, the lander operated nearly three times 
its design lifetime of 30 days, and the small, 10.5 kilogram (23- 
pound) rover operated 12 times its design lifetime of seven days.

Now known as the Sagan Memorial Station, the Mars Pathfinder 
mission was designed primarily to demonstrate a low-cost way of 
delivering a set of science instruments and a free-ranging rover 
to the surface of the red planet.  Landers and rovers of the 
future will share the heritage of spacecraft designs and 
technologies first tested in this "pathfinding" mission.

Golombek points out that the rocky surface and rock types found in 
Ares Vallis match the characteristics of a flood plain on Earth, 
created when a catastrophic flood washed rocks and surface 
materials from another region into the basin.  Ares Vallis was 
formed in the same way that the 40-kilometer-long (25- mile) 
Ephrata Fan of the Channeled Scabland in Washington State was 
formed, says Golombek, adding that the Ephrata Fan was deposited 
when channels of water flowing down the Grand Coulees filled the 
Quincy Basin.

Additional data from the Pathfinder landing site revealed that 
magnetic dust in the Martian atmosphere has been gradually 
blanketing most of the magnetic targets on the lander over time.  
"The dust is bright red, with magnetic properties that are similar 
to that of composite particles," Golombek states.  "A small amount 
of the mineral maghemite has been deposited almost like a stain or 
cement.  These results could be interpreted to mean that the iron 
was dissolved out of crustal materials in water, suggesting an 
active hydrologic cycle on Mars.  The maghemite stain could be a 
freeze-dried precipitate."

Another team of scientists used daily radio Doppler tracking and 
less frequent two-way radio ranging techniques during 
communications sessions with the spacecraft to pinpoint the 
location of the Pathfinder lander in inertial space and the 
direction of Mars' rotational axis.

In his published paper, Dr. William Folkner, an interdisciplinary 
scientist at JPL, and co-authors present estimates of the Martian 
polar moment of inertia, which show that Mars has a dense core 
surrounded by a lighter mantle.  The results imply that the radius 
of Mars' core is larger than about 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) 
and less than about 2,400 kilometers (1,490 miles).  Mars' core 
and mantle are probably warmer than Earth's at comparable depths.  
Eventually, scientists may be able to determine whether Mars' core 
is presently molten or fluid.

"Variations in Mars' rotation around its own spin axis are thought 
to be dominated by mass exchange between the polar caps and the 
atmosphere," Folkner reports.  "During winter, part of the 
atmosphere condenses at the poles.  If the southern cap increased 
symmetrically as the northern cap decreased, then there would not 
be any change in moment of inertia or rotation rate.  However, 
because of Mars' orbital eccentricity, difference in elevation and 
difference in albedo, the polar caps are not formed symmetrically.

"The unbalanced waxing and waning of the Martian polar ice caps 
results in seasonal changes in air pressure at the Pathfinder and 
Viking landing sites, " he says.  "These changes in air pressure 
are correlated with changes in Mars' rotation rate, which have 
been observed in our radio tracking measurements."

The season and time of arrival of Mars Pathfinder in the late 
northern summer resulted in some variations in the temperature of 
the upper atmosphere compared to Viking data, reports Dr. Tim 
Schofield, JPL team leader of the atmospheric structure and 
meteorology instrument, and colleagues in their published report.

High in the atmosphere, at altitudes of 80 kilometers (50 miles) 
above the surface, temperatures were cold enough to make carbon 
dioxide condense and form carbon dioxide clouds.  At altitudes of 
between 60 kilometers and 120 kilometers (37 miles and 75 miles), 
the Martian atmosphere was an average of 20 degrees colder than 
Viking measurements, Schofield reports.  Seasonal variations and 
Pathfinder's entry at 3 AM local solar time, compared with 
Viking's entry at 4 PM local solar time, may account for these 
variations.  On the surface, however, daytime temperatures were 
typically 10 to 12 degrees warmer than Viking surface 
temperatures.

Mars Pathfinder measured regular pressure fluctuations twice a 
day, which suggested that a moderate amount of dust is being 
uniformly mixed in a warm lower atmosphere, as was the case with 
Viking data.  The daily average pressure reached a minimum on the 
20th day of the mission (Sol 20), indicating the winter south 
polar cap had reached its maximum size.

Schofield reports that surface temperatures follow a regular daily 
cycle, with a maximum of 15 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 
a minimum of minus 105 degrees Fahrenheit at night.  The science 
team also observed rapid daytime temperature fluctuations of up to 
30 degrees Fahrenheit in as little as 25 to 30 seconds.  These 
observations suggest that cold air was warmed by the surface and 
convected upward in small eddies.

Pathfinder encountered winds that were light and variable compared 
to the Viking landers, Schofield reports.  The winds blew steadily 
from the south during the Martian nights, but during the day they 
rotated in a clockwise direction from south to west to north to 
east.  Whirlwinds or dust devils were detected repeatedly from 
mid-morning through the late afternoons.

Other scientific findings of the Mars Pathfinder mission, 
presented in this week's issue of Science, are:

* Chemical analyses returned by Mars Pathfinder indicate some 
rocks appear to be high in silica, suggesting differentiated 
parent materials.  These rocks are distinct from the meteorites 
found on Earth that are thought to be of Martian origin.

* The identification of rounded pebbles and cobbles on the ground, 
and sockets and pebbles in some rocks, suggests conglomerates that 
formed in running water, during a warmer past in which liquid 
water was stable.

* The measurement of the moment of inertia of Mars by tracking 
Pathfinder radio data indicates the radius of the central metallic 
core is greater than 1300 km but less than roughly 2000 km.

* Airborne dust is magnetic with a mean size of about 1 micron.  
Interpretations suggest the magnetic mineral is maghemite, which 
may have been freeze- dried on the particles as a stain or cement, 
and that the iron may have been leached out of crustal materials 
by an active hydrologic cycle.

* Remote-sensing data at a scale of generally greater than 1 
kilometer and an Earth analog correctly predicted a rocky plain 
safe for landing and roving, with a variety of rocks deposited by 
catastrophic floods that are relatively dust free.

* Imaging revealed early morning water ice clouds in the lower 
atmosphere, which sublimate away as the atmosphere warms.

* Abrupt temperature fluctuations with time and height were 
recorded in the morning, which was consistent with warming of the 
atmosphere by the surface and convected upwards in small eddies 
into the atmosphere.

* Dust devils were frequently measured by temperature, wind and 
pressure sensors, and at least one likely contained dust, 
suggesting that these gusts are a mechanism for mixing dust into 
the atmosphere.

* The soil chemistry of Ares Vallis appears to be similar to that 
of the Viking 1 and 2 landing sites, suggesting that the soil may 
be a globally deposited unit.

* Some rocks at the landing site appear grooved and fluted, 
suggesting abrasion by saltating sand-sized particles.  Dune- 
shaped deposits were also found in a trough behind the Rock 
Garden, indicating the presence of sand.

* The weather was similar to the weather encountered by Viking 1; 
there were rapid pressure and temperature variations, downslope 
winds at night and light winds in general.  Temperatures at the 
surface were about 10 degrees Kelvin warmer than those measured by 
Viking 1.

* The atmosphere has been a pale pink color due to fine dust mixed 
in the lower atmosphere, as was seen by Viking.  Particle size and 
shape estimates and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere 
are also similar to that measured by Viking.

Additional information, images and rover movies from the Mars 
Pathfinder mission are available on JPL's Mars news media web site 
at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsnews or on the Mars Pathfinder 
project's home page at http://marsweb.jpl.nasa.gov .  Images from 
Mars Pathfinder and other planetary missions are available at 
NASA's Planetary Photojournal web site at 
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov.
------------------------------------------------------------------

1997 - THE YEAR OF MARS PATHFINDER
By Diane Ainsworth
From The "JPL Universe"

9 January, 1998

[The] mission captivates the world while setting new standards in 
planetary exploration.

Of all the headline news in 1997, Mars Pathfinder's remarkable 
landing and performance on the surface of frozen, nearly airless 
Mars stole the show.  Pathfinder became a landmark mission and a 
catalyst for new and affordable ways of exploring other worlds.

Pathfinder's landing marked America's return to the red planet 
after more than 20 years.  In addition to a swift, seven- month 
cruise to the planet, Pathfinder dived directly into the Martian 
atmosphere and landed with the aid of a parachute and giant cocoon 
of airbags.  This novel entry technique had never been 
demonstrated before.

Nor had any spacecraft before Pathfinder carried a roving vehicle 
the size of a small microwave oven to the surface of another 
planet.  Pathfinder's companion rover, named "Sojourner" after 
Sojourner Truth, a female abolitionist who lived during the 
American Civil War, was the first robotic vehicle ever to make 
direct measurements of rocks and soil on Mars.

Over the course of three months--which was three times the design 
lifetime of the spacecraft--Mars Pathfinder returned about 2.6 
gigabits of data, which included more than 16,000 images of the 
Martian landscape from the lander camera, 550 images from the 
rover and about 8.5 million temperature, pressure and wind 
measurements.  All science objectives had been fulfilled when the 
mission ended, 83 days after a nearly perfect landing on July 4.  
The only remaining objective was to complete a high-resolution 
360-degree image of the landing site called the "Super Pan," of 
which 83 percent had been received.  The last successful data 
transmission cycle from Pathfinder was completed at 3:23 AM 
Pacific Daylight Time on Sept.  27, 1997.

Sojourner, built to last seven days, wound up roaming the floor of 
an ancient flood basin and exploring about 250 square meters (820 
square feet) of the Martian surface.  In all, the rover traveled a 
total of about 100 meters (328 feet) in 230 commanded maneuvers, 
performed more than 16 in-situ chemical analyses of rocks and 
soil, and carried out numerous soil mechanics and technology 
experiments.

"The mission demonstrated a reliable and low-cost system for 
placing science payloads on the surface of Mars," said Project 
Manager Brian Muirhead.  "We've validated NASA's commitment to 
low-cost planetary exploration, shown the usefulness of sending 
microrovers to explore Mars, and obtained significant science data 
to help understand the structure and meteorology of the Martian 
atmosphere and to understand the composition of the Martian rocks 
and soil."

"Pathfinder was an unequivocal success and has given us phenomenal 
insights into how to operate future landers and rovers on the 
surface of Mars," added Dr. Wesley Huntress, associate 
administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, when the mission 
was officially declared over.  "I congratulate the entire 
Pathfinder team on their accomplishment, which is a lofty but 
wonderful standard for future missions to attempt to exceed."

Part of NASA's Discovery program of low-cost planetary missions 
with highly focused science goals, the spacecraft used an 
innovative method of directly entering the Martian atmosphere.  
Assisted by an 11-meter (36-foot) diameter parachute, the 
spacecraft descended to the surface of Mars and landed, using 
airbags to cushion the impact.

This innovative method of diving into the Martian atmosphere 
worked like a charm.  "Every event during the entry, descent and 
landing (EDL) went almost perfectly," said Mission Manager Richard 
Cook.  "The sequences were executed right on time and well within 
our margins."

Pathfinder's descent through the Martian atmosphere was nearly 
flawless.  After being suspended from a 20-meter (65-foot) bridle 
and firing its retro rockets, the spacecraft released a 5.8-meter 
(19-foot) diameter cluster of airbags intended to soften the 
landing.  The entry, descent and landing sequence marked the first 
time this airbag technique had been used.  Pathfinder hit the 
ground at a speed of about 18 meters per second (40 mph) and 
bounced about 16 times across the landscape before coming to a 
halt, Dr. Tim Parker of JPL later reported.  The airbag sustained 
little damage.  To top it off, the spacecraft landed on its base 
petal, consequently allowing a thumb-sized auxiliary antenna to 
communicate the successful landing just three minutes after 
impact.

Once safely on the surface, Pathfinder opened its solar- powered 
petals and unveiled the small, 10.5-kilogram (23-pound) rover and 
science instruments to their new home.  Science operations got 
under way within a day of landing, after the rover had exited the 
lander using one of two exit ramps.  As the rover ventured out 
into unexplored territory, the lander's camera began to image the 
surroundings, often taking shots of the rover so that scientists 
and engineers could monitor the vehicle's progress.  A new 
portrait of the Martian environment began to emerge as the 
spacecraft started to record weather patterns, atmospheric 
opacity, winds and a variety of other Martian conditions.  The 
rover's alpha proton X-ray spectrometer began studying rocks and 
making direct measurements of their chemical compositions, another 
first in this mission.

Some of the rocks near the landing site were rich in silica, or 
quartz, and some were identified as possible conglomerates, 
reported Project Scientist Dr. Matthew Golombek and his 
colleagues.  Conglomerates are usually formed by running water, 
which smoothes and rounds pebbles and cobbles found in the 
conglomerate.  Running water would also be the agent necessary to 
deposit these rocks in a sand or clay matrix.

"If you consider all of the evidence we have at Ares Vallis--the 
rounded pebbles and cobbles and the possible conglomerate, the 
abundant sand- and dust-sized particles and models for their 
origins, in addition to the high silica rocks," Golombek said, "it 
suggests a water-rich planet that may have been more Earth- like 
than previously recognized, with a warmer and wetter past in which 
liquid water was stable and the atmosphere was thicker."

A panoramic view of Pathfinder's Ares Vallis landing site was 
featured on the cover of the Dec.  5, 1997 issue of Science, 
showing traces of this warmer, wetter past.  The Ares Vallis flood 
plain was covered with a variety of rock types, boulders, rounded 
and semi-rounded cobbles and pebbles, deposited by floods that 
occurred early in Mars' evolution.

"Before the Pathfinder mission, knowledge of the kinds of rocks 
present on Mars was based mostly on the Martian meteorites found 
on Earth, which are all igneous rocks rich in magnesium and iron 
and relatively low in silica," Golombek and his colleagues 
reported in Science.  Chemical analyses of more than 16 rocks and 
studies of different regions of soil--along with spectral imaging 
of rock colors, textures and structures-- confirmed that these 
rocks had compositions distinct from those of the Martian 
meteorites found on Earth.

"The rocks that were analyzed by the rover's alpha proton X- ray 
spectrometer were basaltic or volcanic rocks, with granite- like 
origins, known as andesitic rocks," Golombek said.  "The high 
silica or quartz content of some rocks suggests that they were 
formed as the crust of Mars was being recycled, or cooled and 
heated up, by the underlying mantle.  Analyses of rocks with lower 
silica content appear to be rich in sulfur, implying that they are 
covered with dust or weathered.  Rover images show that some rocks 
appear to have small air sacks or cavities, which would indicate 
that they may be volcanic.  In addition, the soils are chemically 
distinct from the rocks measured at the landing site."

Golombek noted that the rocky surface and rock types found in Ares 
Vallis matched the characteristics of a flood plain on Earth, 
created when a catastrophic flood washed rocks and surface 
materials from another region into the basin.  Ares Vallis was 
formed in the same way that the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile) 
Ephrata Fan of the Channeled Scabland in Washington state was 
formed, and the Pathfinder scientists traveled to that area a year 
before the landing to study the geology and experiment with rover 
prototype hardware.

Additional data from the Pathfinder landing site revealed that 
magnetic dust in the Martian atmosphere had been gradually 
blanketing most of the magnetic targets on the lander over time.  
"The dust is bright red, with magnetic properties that are similar 
to that of composite particles," Golombek said.  "A small amount 
of the mineral maghemite has been deposited almost like a stain or 
cement.  These results could be interpreted to mean that the iron 
was dissolved out of crustal materials in water, suggesting an 
active hydrologic cycle on Mars.  The maghemite stain could be a 
freeze-dried precipitate."

Another team of scientists used daily radio Doppler tracking and 
less frequent two-way radio ranging techniques during 
communications sessions with the spacecraft to pinpoint the 
location of the Pathfinder lander in inertial space and the 
direction of Mars' rotational axis.

Dr. William Folkner, an interdisciplinary scientist at JPL, and 
co-investigators were able to estimate the Martian polar moment of 
inertia, which showed that Mars had a dense metallic core 
surrounded by a lighter mantle.  The results implied that the 
radius of Mars' core was larger than about 1,300 kilometers (807 
miles) and less than about 2,400 kilometers (1,490 miles).  Mars' 
core and mantle were probably warmer than Earth's at comparable 
depths.

"Variations in Mars' rotation around its own spin axis are thought 
to be dominated by mass exchange between the polar caps and the 
atmosphere," Folkner said.  "During winter, part of the atmosphere 
condenses at the poles.  If the southern cap increased 
symmetrically as the northern cap decreased, then there would not 
be any change in moment of inertia or rotation rate.  However, 
because of Mars' orbital eccentricity, differences in elevation 
and albedo, the polar caps are not formed symmetrically.

"The unbalanced waxing and waning of the Martian polar ice caps 
results in seasonal changes in air pressure at the Pathfinder and 
Viking landing sites," he added.  "These changes in air pressure 
are correlated with changes in Mars' rotation rate, which have 
been observed in our radio tracking measurements."

The season and time of arrival of Mars Pathfinder in the late 
northern summer resulted in some variations in the temperature of 
the upper atmosphere compared to Viking data, Dr. Tim Schofield, 
JPL team leader of the atmospheric structure and meteorology 
instrument, and colleagues reported.

High in the atmosphere, at altitudes of 80 kilometers (50 miles) 
above the surface, temperatures were cold enough to make carbon 
dioxide condense and form carbon dioxide clouds.  At altitudes of 
between 60 and 120 kilometers (37 and 75 miles), the Martian 
atmosphere was an average of 20 degrees colder than Viking 
measurements, Schofield said.  Seasonal variations and 
Pathfinder's entry at 3 AM local solar time, compared with 
Viking's entry at 4 PM local solar time, may account for these 
variations.  On the surface, however, daytime temperatures were 
typically 10 to 12 degrees warmer than Viking surface 
temperatures.

Pathfinder measured regular pressure fluctuations twice a day, 
which suggested that a moderate amount of dust was being uniformly 
mixed in a warm lower atmosphere, as was the case with Viking 
data.  The daily average pressure reached a minimum on the 20th 
day of the mission (Sol 20), indicating the winter south polar cap 
had reached its maximum size.

Schofield said that surface temperatures followed a regular daily 
cycle, with a maximum of 15 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 
a minimum of minus 105 degrees Fahrenheit at night.  The science 
team also observed rapid daytime temperature fluctuations of up to 
30 degrees Fahrenheit in as little as 25 to 30 seconds.  These 
observations suggested that cold air was warmed by the surface and 
convected upward in small eddies.  Among a variety of other 
science findings, Pathfinder also observed winds that were light 
and variable compared to the winds encountered by the Viking 
landers.  The winds blew steadily from the south during the 
Martian nights, but during the day they rotated in a clockwise 
direction from south to west to north to east.  Whirlwinds or dust 
devils were detected repeatedly from mid-morning through the late 
afternoons.

Additional scientific findings are likely to result in the months 
ahead as researchers continue to analyze data from this mission.  
Meanwhile, another mission--Mars Global Surveyor--will be 
observing the planet from space, while other missions gear up for 
launches in the near term.  As part of a sustained program of 
exploration, Mars is likely to become a familiar place to everyone 
over the next decade.
------------------------------------------------------------------

RECONFIGURED MGS READY FOR MISSION BASED ON NEW ORBIT 
By Diane Ainsworth
From The "JPL Universe"

9 January, 1998

1997 saw the arrival of two spacecraft at Mars and the beginning 
of an extended program of Mars exploration.  Two months after 
Pathfinder's landing, NASA's Mars Global Surveyor was captured in 
orbit on Sept.  12, after a 10-month journey through deep space.

Global Surveyor was designed to replace Mars Observer, which was 
lost in August 1993.  Ingenuity, teamwork and an exceptionally 
dedicated group of engineers and scientists quickly went to work 
to develop and launch the spacecraft within a short amount of time 
and on a tight budget.  The time and cost of the mission broke all 
the records--26 months to build the spacecraft at a cost of only 
$148 million, which was well under the cost cap and a fraction of 
what it cost to build previous spacecraft destined for Mars.

Mars Global Surveyor carried six scientific instruments to study 
Mars' climate, surface topography and subsurface resources.  Its 
primary scientific objective, though, was to map the entire 
surface of the red planet.

The journey to Mars wasn't as smooth as the team had hoped for, 
but each problem that cropped up was remedied in a creative and 
swift manner.  In mid-November, as the spacecraft began to 
aerobrake into the upper fringes of the Martian atmosphere, 
structural damage to the yoke hinge of one of the solar panels, 
incurred during initial deployment of the panels shortly after 
launch, caused the unlatched panel to begin flexing during each 
dip lower into the Martian atmosphere.

Mechanical stress analysis tests suggested that the solar panel 
yoke--a triangular, aluminum honeycomb material sandwiched between 
two sheets of graphite epoxy--had probably fractured on one 
surface during initial deployment.  The analysis further suggested 
that the fractured surface, with increased pressure on the panel 
during aerobraking, began to pull away from the aluminum honeycomb 
beneath it.

The flight team at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, in 
collaboration with atmospheric specialists at JPL, decided upon a 
more gradual aerobraking strategy in which to lower the 
spacecraft.  Aerobraking was reinitiated at 0.2 newtons per square 
meter (3/100,000 of 1 pound per square inch), about one- third of 
the original aerobraking level.  That level was thought to be 
safe, but could be adjusted in the event of additional trouble 
with the panel.

Science teams then came up with a new aerobraking strategy and a 
new mapping orbit.  The new mapping orbit would be a mirror image 
of the original mapping orbit, but it would take an additional 
year to set up.  The spacecraft would have to take a six-month 
hiatus in the spring of 1998 to allow Mars to move into the proper 
alignment for mapping.  The spacecraft's orbit would take Global 
Surveyor across Mars' equator at 2 AM rather than at 2 PM, and the 
side of Mars that would have been dark would now be illuminated by 
the Sun.

"From the perspective of the science instruments, the orbit will 
look just like the original orbit, except that instead of taking 
data from north to south on the sunny side of Mars, Global 
Surveyor will be making its observations in a south to north 
direction in the sunlight," said Glenn E.  Cunningham, Mars Global 
Surveyor project manager, at a mid-November press briefing at JPL.  
Rather than reaching its final mapping orbit in mid-January 1998, 
and beginning the science mission in mid-March 1998, Mars Global 
Surveyor would achieve its final orbital position in mid-January 
1999, and mapping was to begin in mid- March 1999.  Apart from the 
year's delay in beginning mapping, the new mapping orbit would 
preserve all of the science objectives of the mission.

During this year's hiatus, Global Surveyor will remain in a fixed, 
elliptical orbit in which it will pass much closer to the surface 
of Mars during each periapsis--or closest part of its orbit around 
Mars--than it will in the final mapping orbit.  These close-range 
bonus passes will provide superb opportunities for data 
acquisition.  The spacecraft's full suite of instruments, 
including the laser altimeter, will be turned on during this time 
to study the planet close up.

"We expect to gain some spectacular new data during this time," 
Cunningham said.  "The spacecraft's orbit will still be elliptical 
during this period, with a duration of between eight to 12 hours, 
but at periapsis, the surface resolution will be much greater and 
the lighting angles will be spectacular."

If additional problems arise with the aerobraking process, the new 
mission plan will offer the Surveyor team other opportunities to 
reach an elliptical orbit that will satisfy many of the mission's 
science objectives.  These so-called "off- ramps" from the 
aerobraking process will be detailed in a new mission plan to be 
reviewed by NASA officials in February 1998.

With renewed vigor that the science mission had not been 
compromised, the flight team resumed aerobraking on Nov.  7.  
Since then, the spacecraft's scientific instruments have performed 
flawlessly, continuing to return new information about Martian 
magnetic properties, its atmosphere, surface features, 
temperatures and mineralogy.

Among the most intriguing science discoveries was confirmation 
that Mars had a weak, non-uniform, planet-wide magnetic field.  
The discovery continues to baffle scientists, but it was the first 
time that Mars' magnetic field had, in fact, been studied.

The spacecraft's magnetometer, which began making measurements of 
Mars' magnetic field after its capture in orbit on Sept.  11, 
detected the magnetic field just four days after the beginning of 
its orbit around Mars.  The existence of a planetary magnetic 
field has important implications for the geological history of 
Mars and for the possible development and continued existence of 
life on Mars.

"Preliminary evidence of a stronger than expected magnetic field 
of planetary origin was collected and is now under detailed 
study," said Dr. Mario Acuna, principal investigator of the 
magnetometer/electron reflectometer instrument at NASA's Goddard 
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.  "This was the first 
opportunity in the mission to collect close-in magnetic field 
data.  Much additional data will be collected in upcoming orbits 
during the aerobraking phase of the mission to further 
characterize the strength and geometry of the field.

"The current observations suggest a field with a polarity similar 
to that of Earth's and opposite that of Jupiter, with a maximum 
strength not exceeding 1/800 of the magnetic field at the Earth's 
surface.

"This result is the first conclusive evidence of a magnetic field 
at Mars," Acuna continued.  "More distant observations obtained 
previously by the Russian missions Mars 2,3 and 5 and Phobos 1 and 
2 were inconclusive regarding the presence or absence of a 
magnetic field of internal origin."

The magnetic field holds important clues to the evolution of Mars.  
Planets like Earth, Jupiter and Saturn generate their magnetic 
fields by means of a dynamo made up of moving molten metal at the 
core.  This metal is a very good conductor of electricity, and the 
rotation of the planet creates electrical currents deep within the 
planet, which give rise to the magnetic field.  A molten interior 
suggests the existence of internal heat sources that could give 
rise to volcanoes and a flowing crust responsible for moving 
continents over geologic time periods.  The latter phenomenon is 
called plate tectonics.

"A magnetic field shields a planet from fast-moving, electrically 
charged particles from the Sun, which may affect its atmosphere, 
as well as cosmic rays, which are an impediment to life," Acuna 
said.  "If Mars had a more active dynamo in its past, as we 
suspected from the existence of ancient volcanoes there, then it 
may have had a thicker atmosphere and liquid water on its 
surface."

It is not known whether the current weaker field now results from 
a less active dynamo, or if the dynamo is now extinct and what the 
scientists are observing is really a remnant of an ancient 
magnetic field still detectable in the Martian crust.

"Whether this weak magnetic field implies that we are observing a 
fossil crustal magnetic field associated with a now extinct 
dynamo--or merely a weak but active dynamo similar to that of 
Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune--remains to be seen," 
Acuna said.

Mars Global Surveyor is the first in a sustained program of 
robotic exploration of Mars.  In December 1998, a second pair of 
spacecraft will be launched toward the red planet, carrying 
instruments that will augment this new global portrait of Mars.  
As those spacecraft arrive at Mars, Global Surveyor will be 
generating a global map of the planet that will aid in the 
selection of future landing sites.
------------------------------------------------------------------

MARS GLOBAL SURVEYOR FLIGHT STATUS REPORTS
JPL releases

26 November, 1997

Over the last two weeks, few activities other than normal 
aerobraking operations have occurred on the Mars Global Surveyor 
mission.  As of today, the spacecraft has completed 49 orbits 
around Mars, including 13 passes through the atmosphere since the 
resumption of aerobraking on November 7th.

Currently, the spacecraft completes one orbit around Mars every 
32.1 hours.  This period of revolution represents nearly a 13-hour 
reduction as compared to the original 45-hour orbit that Surveyor 
entered upon arrival at the red planet.  Predictions provided by 
Dan Johnston of the navigation team show that aerobraking will 
continue to shrink the orbit period at an average rate of about 14 
minutes per orbit over the next week.

In other aerobraking-related events, the atmospheric science team 
reports an increased presence of dust in the Martian atmosphere in 
the southern hemisphere.  This situation will be closely monitored 
over the next few weeks because global dust storms have the 
potential to cause large variations in atmospheric pressure at 
aerobraking altitudes.

After a mission elapsed time of 384 days from launch, Surveyor is 
187.60 million miles (301.91 million kilometers) from the Earth 
and in an orbit around Mars with a high point of 26,040 miles 
(41,907 km), a low point of 76.7 miles (123.5 km), and a period of 
32.1 hours.  The spacecraft is currently executing the P49 command 
sequence, and all systems continue to perform as expected.  

9 January, 1998

Over the winter holidays, a relatively stable Mars atmosphere has 
allowed the Surveyor flight team to achieve slightly faster than 
normal aerobraking progress in terms of reducing the size of the 
spacecraft's orbit.  Currently, the spacecraft takes 23.5 hours to 
complete one revolution around Mars.  This orbit period is nearly 
45 minutes less than that predicted for this time one month ago.

During the last three weeks, some of the passes through the 
atmosphere have resulted in an air resistance force experienced by 
the spacecraft as high as 0.35 newtons per square meter.  In 
contrast, the pressure target as specified by the baseline 
aerobraking plan measures only 0.25 newtons per square meter.  
Much of the increase in aerobraking progress has come as a result 
of this differential.  However, because the dust storm season on 
Mars lasts for several more months, the atmospheric advisory group 
has informed the flight team that the stable atmospheric 
conditions may not continue.

In terms of long-range process, Surveyor has completed nearly 87 
revolutions around the red planet since arriving last September.  
The current plan involves aerobraking until late March or early 
April to shrink the orbit to just under 12 hours.  At that time, 
aerobraking will be temporarily suspended by raising the low point 
of the orbit out of the atmosphere.  This plan will allow for a 
concentrated period of science data collection during the summer 
of this year.  The summer pause is also necessary so that Mars 
will be at the right place in its orbit around the Sun when the 
spacecraft begins mapping operations in March 1999.

After a mission elapsed time of 428 days from launch, Surveyor is 
201.62 million miles (324.47 million kilometers) from the Earth 
and in an orbit around Mars with a high point of 20,346 miles 
(32,744 km), a low point of 75.8 miles (122.0 km), and a period of 
23.5 hours.  The spacecraft is currently executing the P88 command 
sequence, and all systems continue to perform as expected.  The 
next status report will be released on Friday, January 30th.
------------------------------------------------------------------

NEXT GENERATION:  MARS '98
From The "JPL Universe"

9 January, 1998

The Mars Surveyor '98 program is the next generation of spacecraft 
to be sent to Mars.  Consisting of an orbiter--to be launched Dec.  
10, 1998, and lander, set for launch on Jan.  3, 1999--the Mars 
'98 mission will add to the knowledge gained by the Global 
Surveyor and Pathfinder missions.  The general science theme for 
the 1998 Surveyor missions is "Volatiles and Climate History."

The Mars '98 orbiter will arrive at Mars Sept.  23, 1999, while 
the lander will touch down Dec.  3, 1999.  Upon arrival at Mars, 
the spacecraft will use a series of aerobraking maneuvers to 
achieve a stable orbit, and then use atmospheric instruments and 
cameras to provide detailed information about the surface and 
climate of Mars.

The '98 orbiter mission will carry a rebuilt version of the Mars 
Observer Pressure Modulated Infrared Radiometer (PMIRR), as well 
as the Mars color imaging system.  PMIRR will observe the global 
distribution and time variation of temperature, pressure, dust, 
water vapor and condensates in the Martian atmosphere.  The 
imaging system will observe synoptically Martian atmospheric 
processes at global scale and study details of the interaction of 
the atmosphere with the surface at a variety of scales in both 
space and time.  In addition to the science payload, the orbiter 
spacecraft will provide an on-orbit data relay capability for 
future US and/or international surface stations.

The lander will land near the southern polar cap and is equipped 
with cameras, a robotics arm and instruments to measure the 
composition of the Martian soil.  Two small microprobes are also 
piggybacking on the lander, which will penetrate into the Martian 
subsurface to detect water ice.

The science package for the lander includes the Mars Volatile and 
Climate Surveyor (MVACS) integrated lander payload, the Mars 
Descent Imager (MARDI) and an atmospheric lidar experiment 
provided by the Russian Space Agency Institute for Space Science.  
The integrated lander payload includes a surface stereo imager 
with Mars Pathfinder heritage; a meteorology package; an 
instrumented robotic arm for sample acquisition, soil manipulation 
and close-up imaging of the surface and subsurface; and the 
thermal and evolved gas analysis experiment for determining the 
nature and abundance of volatile material in the Martian soil.

The images obtained while the lander descends to the surface will 
establish the geological and physical context of the landing site.  
The atmospheric lidar experiment will determine the dust content 
of the Martian atmosphere above the landing site.

Dr. John McNamee of JPL is Mars Surveyor '98 project manager.
------------------------------------------------------------------

GALILEO STARTS TWO-YEAR EXTENDED EUROPA MISSION 
By Jane Platt
From The "JPL Universe"

9 January, 1998

After yielding a rich harvest of science results in 1997, NASA's 
Galileo spacecraft wrapped up its primary mission on Dec.  7 and 
began a two-year follow-on journey, known as the Galileo Europa 
mission.

The transition from primary to extended mission brought a change 
in management.  Bob Mitchell, who served as mission director for 
the last year of Galileo's primary mission, was appointed project 
manager for the Galileo Europa Mission, taking over from Bill 
O'Neil, who served as Galileo project manager for the flight to 
Jupiter and the two-year primary mission at Jupiter.  O'Neil will 
serve as a consultant on the senior staff of JPL's 
Telecommunications and Mission Operations Directorate pending his 
next assignment at the Laboratory.

"A great bounty of Jupiter system science has been obtained and 
the continuing study of these data will surely add many more 
important discoveries," O'Neil said of the mission.  "I've been 
involved with the Galileo mission since its beginning in 1977, and 
have been at the helm since 1990 for the flight to Jupiter, the 
first-ever outer planet entry and orbit insertion, and throughout 
the two-year primary mission tour of the Jovian system.  I feel 
extraordinarily fortunate to have had this priceless, truly unique 
experience.  But it is time for new challenges.  I am delighted to 
turn the reins over to Bob Mitchell.  Having worked closely with 
Bob for more than 25 years, I know that he will do a superb job 
leading the team."

"Accomplishing what we have set out to do with such a small team 
is going to be a real challenge," Mitchell said.  "But we have an 
excellent team in place, and I'm looking forward to it."

The first flyby of the Galileo Europa Mission took place on Dec.  
16, when the spacecraft swooped past Europa at an altitude of 200 
kilometers (124 miles), making it the closest Europa encounter of 
the entire Galileo mission.  The extended mission will include 
seven more Europa flybys, four encounters with Callisto, and one 
or two close flybys of Io, depending on spacecraft health.

Pictures and other data returned by Galileo during its primary 
mission continued to fascinate the public in 1997.  New images of 
Europa revealed evidence of ice flows, a complex network of 
crisscrossed ridges, chunky ice rafts and relatively smooth, 
crater-free patches.  The areas of rafting added to the mounting 
evidence of liquid oceans under Europa's icy crust at some point 
in its history.  The presence of oceans would increase the odds 
that life could have existed there.

"We're intrigued by these blocks of ice, similar to those seen on 
Earth's polar seas during springtime thaws," said Dr. Ronald 
Greeley, an Arizona State University geologist and Galileo imaging 
team member.  "The size and geometry of these features lead us to 
believe there was a thin icy layer covering water or slushy ice, 
and that some motion caused these crustal plates to break up."

Galileo investigators discovered a hydrogen atmosphere around 
Ganymede and both hydrogen and carbon dioxide in an atmosphere on 
Callisto.  The spacecraft also found that Europa has an 
ionosphere, produced by ionization of its tenuous oxygen 
atmosphere.  This finding came after a series of six occultation 
experiments, when the radio signal was interrupted while Europa 
was positioned between Galileo and Earth.  These experiments were 
performed during Galileo's encounters with Europa in December 1996 
and February 1997.

"While this discovery does not relate to the question of possible 
life on Europa, it does show us there are complex surface and 
atmospheric processes occurring there, and Europa is not just some 
dead hunk of material," said lead investigator Dr. Arvydas Kliore 
of JPL.

Galileo also transmitted new evidence of numerous high- 
temperature volcanoes on Jupiter's volatile moon, Io.  One recent 
discovery revealed a new dark spot the size of Arizona on Io.  The 
visible change occurred between Galileo's seventh and tenth orbits 
of Jupiter, and produced a dark area about 400 kilometers (249 
miles) in diameter, surrounding a volcanic center named Pillan 
Patera.

"This is the largest surface change on Io observed by Galileo 
during its entire two-year tour of the Jovian system," said 
Galileo imaging team member Dr. Alfred McEwen, a University of 
Arizona research scientist.

Other significant results from Galileo this past year included the 
confirmation of the spacecraft's 1996 discovery of a magnetic 
field and magnetosphere on Ganymede, and the discoveries that all 
the Galilean moons except Callisto have a core.  Callisto did show 
signs of surface erosion and blanketing at fine scale.

"Before Galileo, we could only make educated guesses about the 
structure of the Jovian moons," said Dr. John Anderson, a JPL 
planetary scientist.  "Now, with the help of the spacecraft, we 
can measure the gravitational fields of the satellites and 
determine their interior structure and density.  We can determine 
how the matter is distributed inside."

Galileo's instruments also detected some interesting, Earth- like 
phenomena on Jupiter, including the presence of lightning and 
aurora.  Recent findings confirm the suspicion that the 
thunderstorms provide energy for the low pressure centers on 
Jupiter, which in turn feed the Great Red Spot, white ovals and 
other large storms.

In 1997, Galileo also found clusters of volcanic vents and hot 
spots in greatest concentration on Io in the areas closest and 
farthest from Jupiter.  Other discoveries include evidence of salt 
and carbon dioxide in Europa's icy crust and landslides on 
Callisto.

While the spacecraft was busy making scientific history, Galileo 
team members made history of their own in January.  O'Neil, 
Johnson, and others met with Pope John Paul II during a trip to 
Italy.

"None of us ever anticipated that Project Galileo would result in 
a papal audience, "O'Neil said.  "The Pope seemed very interested 
in learning about Galileo results.  He encouraged continuing 
exploration of the universe."

O'Neil and Johnson received honorary doctorates from the 
University of Padova and attended the Three Galileos Conference, a 
meeting designed to honor Galileo the man, Galileo the mission, 
and Galileo the new national telescope of Italy.
------------------------------------------------------------------

EUROPA:  THE 'GEM' OF JUPITER 
Voice of America Transcript

15 January, 1998

Announcer:  The Voice of America presents New Horizons, a weekly 
program on developments in science, technology and medicine.  
Today, "Europa:  the 'Gem' of Jupiter," a look at the planned in-
depth exploration of one of Jupiter's major moons during the 
second leg of the US Galileo mission.

TAPE:  CUT ONE--O'NEIL:  (:18)

"Galileo is a tremendous success of the human creativity and 
spirit.  It will surely be recorded as one of the great feats of 
the 20th century.  Galileo is now embarked on its two year 
extended mission...  To particularly study Europa and Io in a 
manner far beyond anything envisioned even a few years ago..."

TEXT:  Bill O'Neil, project manager of the just-concluded first 
phase of the US space agency's Galileo Jupiter mission.  The 
project was named for the Italian astronomer, Galileo Galilei, 
who, with his homemade telescope, first observed Jupiter and 
discovered its four main moons some 400 years ago.  For two years 
ending last month (December, 1997), the intrepid unmanned Galileo 
spacecraft sent a constant stream of data and hundreds of high-
resolution pictures of the biggest planet in our solar system, its 
close-in moons, and several nearby asteroids.

Through complex feats of navigation, the spacecraft followed a 
zigzagging course between Jupiter and its satellites, using the 
gravity of one moon to propel it toward a flyby of the next one, 
where the spacecraft would collect more pictures and data for 
transmission to earth.  Galileo accomplished this in spite of 
problems with its high-gain antenna, which developed shortly after 
its launch in 1989.

The spacecraft also sent a parachute-borne atmospheric probe down 
into Jupiter's gas ball, gathering information about the huge 
planet's weather systems. Galileo has now begun a second phase of 
Jupiter exploration--one that will take a far more detailed look 
at its enigmatic ice-covered moon, Europa.  Bob Mitchell of NASA's 
Jet Propulsion Lab is manager of the Galileo Europa mission, known 
as "gem."

TAPE:  CUT TWO--MITCHELL:  (:22)

"We're going to be generating a lot more high-resolution data.  
We're flying up close to Europa.  Europa as you probably know is 
the focus of it.  Europa is kind of exciting just because of the 
fact that we know there is a lot of ice.  We suspect there may be 
a liquid ocean under there, and that kind of a finding right here 
in our own solar system would be very exciting."

TEXT:  The Galileo Europa mission, just getting underway, will run 
for two years, as did Galileo's first phase of operations at 
Jupiter which began in December of 1995.  Torrance Johnson has 
been Galileo project scientist since mission planning got underway 
in 1977.  He says that if the next two years are as productive as 
the previous ones, it will be an astounding record, indeed.

TAPE:  CUT THREE--JOHNSON:  (:49)

"I'm reminded of a couple of years ago when we started planning 
this fabulous journey and realized that we had to deal with the 
loss of the high-gain antenna.  And I estimated at that time that 
we'd achieve 70 percent of our original science objectives as a 
result of using these tools.  And I took a lot of ribbing from my 
scientific colleagues about being so bold as to come out with a 
number like that.  And I'm here to publicly confess that I was 
wrong.  I'm not going to give you a new number, but it's over 100 
percent, I'm sure.

"There are two reasons for that.  One is the tremendous skill and 
dedication of the people working for Galileo...  And the second is 
that the target cooperated.  Jupiter dished up some nice juicy new 
surprises for us that went far beyond what we had in our list of 
original objectives anyway."

TEXT:  Dr. Johnson says the high points of Galileo's first two 
years at Jupiter included spectacular thunderstorms and pictures 
of lightning in the big planet's atmosphere.

TAPE:  CUT FOUR--JOHNSON:  (:40)

"In those clouds and in those atmospheric features we were able to 
see those bright spots...  Huge lightning bolts in Jupiter's 
atmosphere 10 to 100 times more powerful than lightning bolts on 
the earth...  We have found that the winds blow into these spots 
and blow down--huge massive downdrafts carrying dry air into the 
depths of the Jupiter atmosphere.  The spectrometer has been able 
to measure differences in humidity in various parts of these spots 
of over a factor of 100--suggesting that we now are beginning to 
understand the meteorological conditions that led to the extremely 
dry conditions that the probe found when it descended through one 
of those spots."

TEXT:  But perhaps the most exciting discovery during the Galileo 
spacecraft's first two years of Jupiter exploration concerned the 
big moon, Ganymede--one of Jupiter's four close-in Galilean 
satellites.  These were the moons first detected by the Italian 
astronomer for whom the spacecraft was named.  Ganymede, it seems, 
has its own magnetic field, which, as Torrance Johnson explains, 
puts it in select company.

TAPE:  CUT FIVE--JOHNSON:  (:32)

"This was something we had never anticipated.  Our first flyby of 
Ganymede we found evidence for it.  It's been building with our 
subsequent flyby's.  We're now convinced that Ganymede has its own 
magnetic field and has a magnetosphere around it."

"You might think this is the smallest magnetosphere in the solar 
system--when this magnetosphere is added to the ones we know about 
at the earth, mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, it's 
the seventh magnetosphere known--but it's actually a little bit 
bigger than mercury's magnetic field.  So it's not even the 
smallest magnetosphere."

TEXT:  The Galileo craft also got a brief look at Io--the most 
dynamic of Jupiter's four main moons--with its active volcanoes 
that spew material into the magnetosphere surrounding Jupiter.  
The volcanic ash forms a doughnut-like torus around the planet.  
Galileo's sensors were also able to take the temperature of the 
lava from Io's volcanic eruptions.  It was several hundred degrees 
hotter than typical lava here on earth.

But it is the enigmatic icy moon, Europa, that's been attracting 
the greatest attention--and is now the focus of part two of 
Galileo's mission, called gem.  Galileo's instruments spotted ice 
floes, or "rafts," on the surface of Europa's ice cover, 
indicating melting at some time in the past.  As Torrance Johnson 
put it, does this mean there's an ocean underneath?  And if there 
is liquid water, is there the possibility of life?

TAPE:  CUT SIX--JOHNSON:  (:12)

"This is of course one of the reasons why we're very interested in 
Europa--the possibility that there may be liquid water underneath 
that ice surface.  Certainly there was melting disruption of that 
crust in the recent geological past."

TEXT:  Zeroing in on the cause and the timing of that surface 
melting is the primary research objective of gem--the Galileo 
Europa mission.  Ronald Greeley, a professor of geology at Arizona 
State University, says there seems to be heat in the interior of 
Europa.

TAPE:  CUT SEVEN--GREELEY:  (1:04)

"Europa is really the gem of the solar system...  We've known for 
some time that she has an outer frigid shell of ice and a heart of 
rock and metal.  The big question has been:  'has that heart ever 
been warm?  Warm enough to disrupt the surface?'  What the Galileo 
pictures have shown us with abundant evidence is that, yes, heat 
flow from that interior has been sufficient to rip the surface 
apart.

"What is the evidence for that?  First, there are areas that 
resemble icebergs and ice floes.  This has to reflect near-surface 
heat.  We've also seen places where the icy crust has been ripped 
apart and dark material has filled in that rift area.  And just 
recently, we've seen places where heat apparently has driven 
molten material--or at least ductile material--up toward the 
surface where it's ruptured the surface like a blister and left 
behind structures that are frozen in place like glaciers."

TEXT:  Spectrographic analysis of the images from Galileo show 
that, around these iceberg and glacier-like structures, there are 
mineral deposits, blue in color, that are embedded in Europa's icy 
surface.  These deposits were evidently brought up by whatever 
warm material caused the blistering and rupturing of the surface.  
Project scientist Torrance Johnson says these deposits are further 
evidence that there at least was liquid water on Europa at one 
time.

TAPE:  CUT EIGHT--JOHNSON:  (:30)

"We now believe they are very heavily hydrated minerals--that is, 
minerals with lots of water attached to them.  And we believe that 
the types of minerals that we would call salts--not normal table 
salt, but more like Epsom salts, things like magnesium and sulfur 
and sulfates and sodium sulfates.  These are the types of salts 
found in some primitive meteorites.  And their presence on the 
surface in these young areas suggests that they were dissolved in 
water, brought to the surface and formed evaporative deposits on 
the surface of Europa."

TEXT:  Other tantalizing evidence that there at least once was 
water on Europa is the presence of impact structures on the ice.  
These are similar to what might have been left by a meteorite that 
struck the surface--leaving a hole in the ice that promptly froze 
over.  Ronald Greeley:

TAPE:  CUT NINE--GREELEY:  (:38)

"We think those impact structures--we don't see a crater 
preserved--but we think they're similar to what we can obtain in 
hyper-velocity impact experiments...  
The crater form is not preserved, but what you see is the series 
of ring fractures and the scar of the impact.  So we would suggest 
that the structures we see on Europa reflect that kind of impact--
that is, a thin, brittle layer overlying a viscous sub-medium."

TEXT:  The impact scars and surface mineral deposits on Europa 
clearly suggest the effects of water--welling up from beneath a 
thin ice coating toward the surface.  But the question remains:  
when did these events occur?  Recently or a long time ago?  And 
does any liquid water yet remain under Europa's surface ice, or is 
it frozen through?

TAPE:  CUT TEN--GREELEY:  (:20)

"The big unknown is the timing of the events.  Has that heart been 
warm throughout geologic history and is it currently warm?  Are 
the features we're looking at the result of recent events or the 
reflection of geologic past?  Those are some of the questions that 
we hope to address during gem."

TEXT:  Over the two years of the "gem" mission, the Galileo 
spacecraft will conduct eight flybys of the large icy satellite of 
Jupiter.  If there is currently any liquid water under Europa's 
ice, what would be the visible evidence detectable to the 
spacecraft--the "smoking gun," if you will?  We asked Ron Greeley:

TAPE:  CUT ELEVEN--GREELEY:  (1:17)

"This is a fundamental question of course that a lot of people are 
interested in.  I think the only definitive way that we on gem 
would be able to resolve the issue is, if we can see surface 
changes that occur either from the time of the voyager data or the 
time during Galileo.  What kinds of surface features would these 
be?  We might see places of surface changes--coulees (flows) of 
material that could be erupted onto the surface.  We might be able 
to see active geysers of the sort that are observed on Io.

"Those are probably long shots--but they would provide very clear-
cut evidence that Europa is currently active.  What we do know is 
that in at least the recent geologic past, there has been slush, 
or at least very warm ductile ice.  The kinds of features that 
we're seeing--like the iceberg set in a matrix--all of those 
things clearly point to that style of deformation and the presence 
of that kind of material.  The issue is the timing.  That's a 
problem that's under current debate, and a clear answer has not 
emerged yet."

TEXT:  Project scientist Torrance Johnson says it's unlikely that 
Galileo will determine for certain whether liquid water resides 
under Europa's ice.  Making that determination would require more 
intensive day-to-day contact--of the type achieved by a spacecraft 
in permanent orbit around Europa.

TAPE:  CUT TWELVE--JOHNSON:  (:49)

"Really determining for sure whether there's an ocean there now--
that may be the job of the next mission for which we hope we're 
laying the groundwork.  Where a series of multiple flyby's give us 
insight into the general gravity structure of Europa, probably to 
determine whether the upper layers of Europa are responding to 
tides like an ocean requires an orbiter.  That's the type of thing 
people do on the earth with orbiters.  It's the type of thing we 
did on Venus with orbiters--actually looking at solar tides in the 
solid body of Venus.  Those types of geodetic experiments 
typically need many, many, many gravity passes in a very 
repetitive way.  That's probably something that could only be done 
with an orbiter, although we may get hints from our eight more 
encounters."  

TEXT:  One of the factors that might determine whether liquid 
water exists on Europa now has to do with the source of its 
endogenous heating.  The principal source is internal friction 
caused by tidal effects as the big moon whips through Jupiter's 
monstrous magnetic field.  But as Torrance Johnson explains, that 
may only be part of the story.

TAPE:  CUT THIRTEEN--JOHNSON:  (1:30)

"Europa is being heated today as we speak, pretty heavily by 
tides.  It's the second most tidally-heated body in the system 
after Io.  It's also being heated by radioactive heat sources.  
All of these bodies have a significant amount of rock in them.  
The rock contains uranium, potassium and thorium--the same 
elements that decay in the earth and the other terrestrial planets 
and produce heat.  So it's those things together that produce the 
heat budget."

"Now whether that heat is sufficient for maintaining a Liquid 
ocean turns out to be a complicated geophysical problem.  It's one 
of those cases where you run the model one way and it says 'yes, 
maybe,' and you run the model another way and it says 'no, maybe.' 
and the differences between those models are things that we don't 
have a good handle on theoretically or in the laboratory--things 
like the exact response of the ice on Europa to tidal flexing--how 
much heat is deposited for so much strain in the surface."

"There are a lot of things that tend to favor melting, however--
things like the possible salinity of the ocean, which would lower 
its melting temperature.  And things like the currents induced in 
an ocean by tides, which also would dissipate energy and heat as 
they do on the earth.  So most of the current geophysical models 
that people are running on Europa suggest that there is enough 
energy there to keep a liquid ocean present--but not for certain, 
which is one of the reasons we're still searching for physical 
evidence."

TEXT:  In addition to intensively surveying Europa, the Galileo 
spacecraft will spend a small amount of time over the next two 
years in a repeat examination of the moon, Io, as well as of 
Jupiter, itself.  Galileo science planning manager Karen Buchsbaum 
says that one of the questions the team hopes to resolve is 
whether Io, like the moon Ganymede, has a magnetic field.

TAPE:  CUT FOURTEEN--BUCHSBAUM:  (:58)

"When we return to Io for two close flyby's--one in October and 
one in November, 1999--the first will be a more equatorial pass, 
the second a polar pass.  We'll be able to do detailed gravity 
studies to understand better the internal structure.  We want to 
understand the interaction of Io with the magnetosphere (of 
Jupiter) and the plasma torus.  We want to resolve the issue left 
from December of 1995 about whether Io has its own internal 
magnetic field--as was shown with Ganymede--and we want to study 
the supply of materials provided by Io to the magnetosphere as the 
volcanic activity spews material forth from the moon itself."

"Finally, and very importantly, we have high-resolution imaging 
and spectral data that we want to collect to give us the best-ever 
data that we would have of active volcanic vents on Io and an 
opportunity to study the composition of the lava on the surface of 
Io."

TEXT:  As the Galileo spacecraft embarks upon phase two if its 
mission to Jupiter and its environs, one of the principal concerns 
of scientists and planners is the huge planet's immense radiation 
fields.  Mission manager bob Mitchell says the tiny craft held up 
well during its first two years at Jupiter.  Can it make it for 
two more?

TAPE:  CUT FIFTEEN--MITCHELL:  (:45)

"Jupiter's radiation environment is a very harsh one.  And the 
spacecraft is designed originally to do what it has done to date--
a little bit more, but about what we've done so far.  And by the 
time we're done with what we have designed to do--which is eight 
flyby's of Europa--and then dip down and have two close flyby's of 
Io, which is way down deep in the radiation--by the time we've 
done all that, we will have well exceeded what the spacecraft was 
designed to do."

"But our experience with these kinds of spacecraft systems is that 
they typically perform well beyond what the initial design 
requirements were.  So we're optimistic that this thing is going 
to work for a full two years more.  But we can't know for sure."

TEXT:  Whatever discoveries are made over the remaining two years 
of Galileo's mission at Jupiter, they will be icing on the cake, 
given the already impressive record established by the tiny but 
intrepid spacecraft during its first phase of operations.  Project 
scientist Torrance Johnson:

TAPE:  CUT SIXTEEN--JOHNSON:  (:28)

"We've had a wonderful two years exploring this system--and it is 
a system.  Many of us on the Galileo science team are involved in 
trying to update textbooks and encyclopedia articles and we're 
finding it a very tough task, because we can't just take our 
previous text and add a few lines for Galileo results.  We're 
having to tear it up and literally rewrite the textbooks.  That's 
what the last two years have done for us, and I suspect that we're 
going to have even more of that with the next two years of 
extended operations."

TAPE:  MUSIC THEME

Announcer:  You've been listening to New Horizons, a weekly Voice 
of America program on developments in science, technology and 
medicine.  Today you heard, "Europa:  the 'Gem' of Jupiter," a 
look at the planned in-depth exploration of one of Jupiter's major 
moons during the second leg of the US Galileo mission.  This 
program was written and produced by Brian Cislak.
------------------------------------------------------------------

ORIGINS ADVANCES ITS STUDY OF STAR, GALAXY AND LIFE FORMATION 
By Jane Platt
From The "JPL Universe"

9 January, 1998

1997 was a busy year for the Origins program, an ambitious and 
intriguing series of missions to teach us more about star and 
galaxy formation and extend the search for life beyond our solar 
system.

For the first of the Origins missions, the Space Infrared 
Telescope Facility (SIRTF), the year was spent with planning and 
design during the project's Phase B.  SIRTF passed its preliminary 
design review and non-advocate review in late September, and will 
undergo its critical design review in the fall of 1998.  The 
development of SIRTF's large, sensitive infrared detector arrays 
was completed and construction of the flight detectors was 
initiated.  SIRTF will enter Phase C/D in April 1998.

With a planned launch in 2001, SIRTF will explore galaxy evolution 
and star formation in other galaxies, and will probe the distant 
reaches of the observable universe to study some of the most 
luminous galaxies known.  Within our own galaxy, SIRTF will search 
for brown dwarfs, and will detect and characterize extra-solar 
disks that may represent new solar systems forming.  SIRTF will 
complete NASA's Great Observatories Program, a suite of 
observatories designed to study the universe at all wavelengths.  
The other observatories in this family are the Hubble Space 
Telescope, the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, and The 
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.

NASA has selected the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center 
(IPAC), which is operated jointly by Caltech and JPL, to be the 
home institution for the SIRTF science center.  Dr. Tom Soifer of 
Caltech has been named director of the center, which will be 
responsible for operating SIRTF and processing its data.  The 
SIRTF mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space 
Science.

Another in the series of Origins missions, the Space 
Interferometry Mission, entered Phase A in October 1997.  Chris 
Jones, the former Cassini spacecraft development manager, was 
appointed project manager for SIM, which will have an 
unprecedented ability to pinpoint stars and determine with high 
accuracy ages and distances in the universe.  Within the Milky Way 
galaxy, SIM will search for signs of planet formation in disks of 
material orbiting other stars.  The spacecraft will look for the 
wobble of stars that are caused by planets orbiting around them.

As the world's first long baseline optical space interferometer, 
SIM will serve as a technological stepping stone for the 
Terrestrial Planet Finder, a future Origins mission designed to 
capture a "family portrait" of other planetary systems. The Planet 
Finder would characterize the atmospheres of newly-discovered 
"Earthlike" planets to determine which of them might be habitable.

The planned Keck interferometer successfully completed its 
preliminary design review in September, with a critical design 
review scheduled next summer.  The Keck project will link the two 
10-meter (393-inch) telescopes at Hawaii's Keck Observatory on 
Mauna Kea into one interferometer, later adding four 2-meter (79-
inch) outrigger telescopes to complete the six-element imaging 
array.  The project has begun the process of applying to Hawaii's 
conservation district for permits to install the outriggers.  The 
linking of the two main telescopes is scheduled for completion in 
2000, with 2002 set as the target date for the outriggers to begin 
operations.

The Keck interferometer will survey 500 nearby stars, using 
astrometry for extra-solar planet detection.  It will look for the 
wobble caused by planets of a mass as low as Uranus out to a 
distance of 10 parsecs.  The so-called "warm Jupiters," the type 
of planets currently being detected indirectly, will be seen 
directly using the six-element interferometer.

In addition, the Keck interferometer will determine the extent of 
the zodiacal dust clouds believed to shroud other solar systems, 
gathering information that will affect the design of the 
Terrestrial Planet Finder.

New images of various celestial objects were captured by the 2-
Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), which began operations in 1997 
using the first of a pair of twin telescopes.  The two 1.3 meter 
(51-inch) telescopes will peer through the Milky Way galaxy's 
curtain of interstellar dust to conduct a near-infrared survey of 
the entire celestial sky.  Operations began in 1997 at the 
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory site atop Mount Hopkins near 
Tucson, Ariz., while the other 2MASS telescope, at a National 
Optical Astronomy Observatories site in Cerro Tololo, Chile, will 
begin operating in February of 1998.  2MASS, which is primarily 
funded by NASA, is based at the University of Massachusetts, 
Amherst.  IPAC is processing the 2MASS data.

The survey is designed to catalogue 300 million stars and 1 
million galaxies in the local universe, along with such exotic 
targets as quasars, black holes and brown dwarfs.  It will also 
observe many known asteroids and possibly some comets.

It's expected that 2MASS will discover new infrared sources that 
may form the basis for future space observatories, like the 
Advanced X-Ray Facility (AXAF), the Space Infrared Telescope 
Facility and the Next Generation Space Telescope.

Another project supported by Caltech's IPAC is the Wide-Field 
Infrared Explorer (WIRE), which has a mission to discover how 
galaxies change through time and to detect the birth of new 
galaxies, called proto-galaxies.

Within weeks of the September 1998 launch of the WIRE spacecraft 
into low Earth orbit, this small telescope will detect tens of 
thousands of starburst galaxies--galaxies where stars are forming 
at a much higher rate than usual--as well as an unknown number of 
proto-galaxies.
------------------------------------------------------------------

LOS ALAMOS INSTRUMENTS TO PROSPECT FOR WATER ON THE MOON
From Los Alamos National Laboratory

30 December, 1997

Sometime in the next month or so, Los Alamos National Laboratory 
scientists will gather information bearing on a major question 
impacting the future of space colonization:  does the moon have 
water?  Three Los Alamos instruments on the National Aeronautics 
and Space Administration's Lunar Prospector, scheduled for a Jan.  
5, 1998, launch, will look for water, map the location of valuable 
elements and gather data on events that release gases from below 
the surface of Earth's nearest neighbor.

"If we can find sufficient water, it's going to be a land rush 
like the Oklahoma Sooners," said Bill Feldman, project leader for 
the Los Alamos instrument package.  Los Alamos is a Department of 
Energy laboratory.

Feldman is confident that Los Alamos' neutron spectrometer will 
find water if it is there--even if it occurs in a very small 
amount--most likely in the form of dirty ice in permanently shaded 
craters near the moon's poles.  The instrument, which detects and 
distinguishes neutrons of different energies, should find even 
faint traces of any ice that is within three feet of the lunar 
surface.

Ever since last year, when radar mapping instruments on the 
Clementine probe suggested the possible presence of water on the 
moon, the importance of Lunar Prospector has grown.  Ice, likely 
deposited by comet and meteoroid impacts, would open the way to 
interplanetary colonization.

"Water is the key resource that will support life as well as 
travel from the moon to the planets.  Besides sustaining life for 
moon colonies, hydrogen from the ice can be extracted for rocket 
fuel," Feldman said.

"I am sure that there are people who would colonize the moon once 
sufficient water is available," he continued.  "The moon is one of 
the best environments you could possibly have for any number of 
scientific and commercial enterprises."

In addition to serving as a fueling station for interplanetary 
travel, a moon colony could provide a base for important research 
in radio, ultraviolet and infrared astronomy.

Lunar Prospector will take four and one-half days to reach the 
moon, but Los Alamos scientists will turn on their three 
instruments--the neutron spectrometer, an alpha particle detector 
and a gamma ray spectrometer--90 minutes after launch.  They want 
to calibrate the sensors in transit to the moon and make sure 
everything is working perfectly when the spacecraft reaches its 
polar orbit around the moon.

After three high-altitude orbital maneuvers at the moon and about 
a week after launch, Lunar Prospector will settle into its mapping 
orbit, skimming about 60 miles above the lunar surface.

The neutron spectrometer, the latest in a long line of such 
instruments built for Los Alamos' nonproliferation programs for 
the past 35 years, detects neutrons that escape into space when 
cosmic rays strike the upper layers of the moon's surface.

The spectrometer measures neutrons it encounters in three 
different ranges of speed, or energy.  Neutrons that strike heavy 
elements bounce around like a ping-pong ball without losing much 
energy, whereas neutrons bouncing against hydrogen--the lightest 
element and a principal component of water--give up their energy 
to the hydrogen relatively quickly.  The detector will see very 
few medium-energy neutrons in an area with hydrogen, because the 
high-energy neutrons generated by cosmic rays quickly become lower 
energy neutrons.  If the detector sees few or no medium-energy 
neutrons, water must be present.

Feldman said the instrument could give indications of water within 
a few days of beginning its mapping work, if a lot of water is 
present, or it could take weeks to make a determination.

"If it's a small spot of ice in a large field of view, it will 
produce only a small dip in the data," he explained.  "That will 
take a lot of tweaking and a lot of interpretation, and I'll be 
loath to say anything definite until we're really sure."

Prospector also will carry a Los Alamos gamma ray spectrometer 
experiment that will provide global maps of the major rock-forming 
elements on the lunar surface.  The instrument records the 
spectrum of gamma rays and neutrons emitted by elements contained 
in the moon's crust.  The map of certain elements will provide 
clues to lunar evolution, and tell future lunar '49ers where to 
look for such valuable elements as aluminum, iron, uranium and 
titanium.

The moon was sampled during Apollo missions 25 years ago, but 
along a near-equatorial orbit that covered only 20 percent of the 
moon.  Lunar Prospector will map the elements over the remainder 
of the moon's surface.

An alpha particle spectrometer from Los Alamos will give 
scientists more information about the moon's minor--by Earth 
standards--seismic activity.  Lunar magma that cooled just beneath 
the outer crust contains uranium, and as uranium-238 decays it 
produces radon.  If moonquakes vent radon to the surface, the 
spectrometer will capture the evidence by recording the alpha 
particle signatures of radon's radioactive decay .

The three spectrometers were tested for a year and integrated with 
Lunar Prospector by Lockheed Martin, which built the spacecraft.  
The mission is scheduled to last one year.

Lunar Prospector is part of NASA's Discovery Mission series.  Alan 
Binder of Lockheed-Martin Missile and Space Corporation is the 
principal investigator.  Southwest Research Institute in Texas 
provided electronics for the Los Alamos instruments.  Los Alamos 
staff members Bruce Barraclough and Dick Belian are scientific 
collaborators on the project and Ken Fuller of Los Alamos' Space 
Engineering Group was the principal engineer.
------------------------------------------------------------------

ANNOUNCEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY FOR 10 STARDUST EDUCATOR FELLOWSHIPS
NASA release

STARDUST is the fourth of several flight missions in NASA's 
Discovery program.  The goal of the Discovery program is to design 
small, less expensive spacecraft with specific scientific goals 
that can be built in 36 months or less.  Mars Pathfinder and Lunar 
Prospector are examples of Discovery missions chosen in the past.  
More information on this exciting project can be found on the 
Internet at:  http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/top.html

The spacecraft will launch in February 1999 on board an expendable 
launch vehicle and rendezvous with Comet Wild 2 in January 2004, 
coming within 150 kilometers (93 miles) of the comet's nucleus.  
The spacecraft will be the first ever to collect dust spewed from 
a comet and return it to Earth for detailed analysis.  The comet 
samples are made up of ancient pre-solar interstellar grains and 
material that condensed in the solar nebula, a diffuse cloud of 
gas and dust from which the Sun and planets were formed.  A sample 
return capsule will reenter Earth's atmosphere and land on a dry 
lake bed in Utah in January, 2006.

Stardust Workshop/Stardust Presenters

Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) STARDUST Outreach Opportunity 
Program is implementing a nation-wide teacher training initiative 
and developing educational modules.  This effort is targeted at 
grades 4-8.

Initially, 10 STARDUST Educator Fellows will be recruited from 
around the country to help field test the STARDUST educational 
modules and Teacher Training Workshop.  This initial group will 
help test and modify the workshop presentation.  An additional 
Announcement of Opportunity will be distributed in late 
spring/summer 1998 to solicit candidates from whom an additional 
15 Educator Fellows will be selected and trained in fall 1998.

Candidates selected for the STARDUST Educator Fellowship will 
receive:

* an all-expenses-paid intensive training workshop on:  the 
STARDUST mission; science and educational aspects necessary to 
effectively present the STARDUST related topics; and comets and 
other small Solar System bodies.  This will take place on three 
to-be-determined days during April 26-May 2 in Denver, Colorado at 
Lockheed Martin Astronautics.

* a crash course on presentation strategies and a complete teacher 
training presenter package to use for STARDUST workshops

* priority updates and mailings on the latest STARDUST mission 
information and materials

* materials to help plan and promote STARDUST workshops

* continued contact with the STARDUST science team to answer 
questions and to facilitate discussion

The STARDUST Educator Fellowship Team will reflect a 
geographically and institutionally diverse mix of presenters from 
a variety of environments - science centers/museums; school 
districts; universities; educational organizations; etc.  - to 
ensure a diverse team and reach.

In return, selected Fellows must commit to conducting a minimum of 
two educator training workshops per year (approved by the STARDUST 
Education Outreach Team) and to sharing evaluation information 
from those workshops with the STARDUST educational partners.

The training will provide Fellows with a unique opportunity to 
interact with STARDUST Project scientists and engineers.  The 
Education Outreach Team will serve as a liaison for the Fellows to 
facilitate the dissemination of new information and continued 
contact with the STARDUST Fellowship Team.

While a variety of factors will be used in the final selection, 
the profile of ideal STARDUST Educator Fellows includes:

* actively teaching or conducting teacher training in a formal or 
informal science environment (e.g., school district, science 
center, museum, educational organization);

* willing to conduct a minimum of two STARDUST Teacher Training 
Workshops on their own during each year they are involved with the 
program;

* has a written commitment from their host institution (current 
employer or sponsoring organization) to provide release time for 
the Teacher Training and an expressed willingness to support the 
candidate in conducting at least two STARDUST Teacher Training 
Workshops per year;

* willing to submit a resume, two letters of reference and a two-
page proposal outlining their interest in STARDUST and how they 
envision sharing the educational activities for which they will be 
trained; and

* a commitment to provide timely reports and assessment 
information back to the STARDUST Education Outreach Team.

Selection

STARDUST Educator Fellows will be chosen from extensive networks 
of classroom teachers, curriculum specialists, and museum/science 
center educators.  The STARDUST Educator Fellowship Team will be 
selected in order to provide a geographic and institutional mix of 
presenters from a variety of environments:  science 
centers/museums; school districts; universities; educational 
organizations; etc., ensuring a diverse team of STARDUST Fellows 
across the country.  An announcement of those selected will be 
made by March 6, 1998.

Please contact Kerri Beisser at 703/683-9740 for applications to 
the fellowship.

Attn:  Kerri Beisser
STARDUST Educator Fellowship Proposals 
Challenger Center for Space Science Education
1029 North Royal Street Suite 300
Alexandria, Virginia 22314

703-683-7546 FAX
------------------------------------------------------------------

NASA SOFTWARE CLEARLY DISPLAYS BREAST TUMOR SCANS IN 3-D
NASA release N97-088

Clear, accurate three-dimensional (3-D) images made from a series 
of scans of a breast and tumor were shown by NASA at the 
Radiological Society of North America Conference, McCormick Place, 
Booth 9322, Chicago, IL, from November 30 until December 5, 1997.

Each high fidelity 3-D picture is known as a "reconstruction," a 
computerized object that a physician wearing 3-D glasses can see 
from all angles on a computer monitor.

"These reconstructions are highly accurate 3-D visual models of 
affected breasts with tumors.  Once this technique is fully 
developed, we think physicians will be able to visualize the 
borders of tumors more clearly," said Dr. Muriel Ross of NASA's 
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA.  Ross is director of the 
Ames Biocomputation Center that uses computer technology to 
improve medical practices.

In the new technique, a series of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) 
breast scans are combined to make a 3-D image using Reconstruction 
of Serial Sections (ROSS) software that was developed in the 
Biocomputation Center.  The method eliminates "noise," or 
interference, seen in more common renderings of breast tissues 
done in many clinics.

"For this initial reconstruction, we combined features of the ROSS 
software we have been using with another version we use for 
Computed Axial Tomography (CAT) scans," Ross said.  "Eventually, a 
special version of the software will be developed for MRI.  In the 
meantime, we have demonstrated that high fidelity, 3-D 
reconstructions can be made from typical MRI breast scans."

Normally, mammograms are used for initial screening for breast 
cancer.  If a suspicious lump is detected, a follow-up MRI using 
contrast medium can be conducted.  "The medium is injected into 
the patient's blood stream.  This medium rapidly concentrates in 
the tumor, which shows in the scan as a bright area.  But even 
with this technique, it is hard to see where the tumor begins and 
ends," Ross said.

"Later, we intend to work with sonograms," she said.  A sonogram 
is a scan that uses sound to visualize objects inside bodies.  "We 
want to reduce noise that comes from multiple, echo-like 
reflections of sound coming from tissues.  Borders of objects can 
be difficult to define because echoes bounce and can interfere 
with one another."

The NASA Biocomputation Center at Ames will become part of a 
larger National Biocomputation Center soon to be established by 
NASA and Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, according to Ross.  
"The new center will be a national resource to further the use of 
virtual reality in medicine," Ross said.  Virtual reality is a 
computer-created environment that simulates a real-life situation.

In work related to the breast tumor 3-D imaging program, the NASA-
Stanford biocomputation team is working on virtual reality 
computer tools to aid in complex facial reconstructive surgery.  
Surgeons can use a big-screen workbench, special gloves, computer 
tracking wands and software to manipulate a 3-D computer image of 
the patient.

"The surgeon can work on the virtual reality image and replace the 
soft tissues to see what the patient may look like after facial 
reconstruction.  If the doctor doesn't like the results, it's easy 
enough to start all over," Ross said.

The team is interested in working with mastectomy patients needing 
breast reconstruction, and with children who need reconstructive 
surgery to correct deformities of the head and face.  Eventually 
the system could be used in other medical specialties or surgical 
procedures.

Virtual reality will allow surgeons to rehearse complex procedures 
before an operation.  In addition, the team expects virtual 
reality will be a powerful teaching tool for medical students.  A 
digital library of computerized "virtual patients" will be created 
that physicians can use to share information about uncommon 
procedures, according to researchers.

Development of the breast tumor enhancement software follows an 
agreement that enlists NASA technologies to fight breast cancer 
and other women's illnesses.  The agreement was signed in October 
in Washington, DC, by representatives of NASA and the Department 
of Health and Human Services.  Major areas of concern are cancer, 
reproductive health, pregnancy, osteoporosis and education.

Additional information is available on NASA technologies being 
used to detect and treat breast cancer by calling the NASA HQ 
Newsroom at 202/358-1600 or via the Internet at URL:  
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/cancer_tech.html
------------------------------------------------------------------

SENATOR GLENN GETS A "GO" FOR SPACE SHUTTLE MISSION
NASA release 98-8

16 January, 1998

NASA today named John Glenn to the crew of the Space Shuttle 
Discovery, scheduled to launch in October.  Glenn will serve as a 
payload specialist on that mission.

Glenn made history 35 years ago when he strapped himself into a 
nine- by -seven foot capsule atop an experimental rocket and 
became the first American to orbit the Earth.  Recently he asked 
NASA if he could fly again to conduct space-based research on 
aging, but only if he met the agency's physical and mental 
requirements.

"Not only is John Glenn a Marine test pilot, an astronaut, and the 
first American to orbit the Earth, he brings a unique blend of 
experience to NASA," said NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin.  
"He has flight, operational, and policy experience.  Unlike most 
astronauts, he never got the opportunity for a second flight.  He 
is part of the NASA family, an American hero, and he has the right 
stuff for this mission."

Glenn, who still flies his own plane, flew 149 missions as a 
Marine fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, and was hit by 
enemy fire 11 times.  As a test pilot, he set a transcontinental 
speed record and recently set a record for speed on a flight from 
Dayton, OH, to Washington.

Since aging and space flight share a number of similar 
physiological responses, the study of space flight may provide a 
model system to help scientists interested in understanding aging.  
Some of these similarities include bone and muscle loss, balance 
disorders and sleep disturbances.  Space biomedical researchers 
and gerontologists believe more research in these areas could help 
older people live more productive and active lives, and could 
reduce the number of individuals requiring long-term medical care 
in their later years.

Senator Glenn has been a catalyst in promoting the use of space 
flight for the benefit of healthy and productive aging.

The human research on this mission will be conducted by NASA and 
the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes 
of Health.  The research was peer reviewed by independent 
scientists, and includes studies on sleep disorders, muscle 
atrophy, balance, and clinical evaluations of blood and heart 
function.

"The research on this mission will contribute to building our 
knowledge and understanding of the aging process," said Dr. 
Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging.  "The 
data collected will be used to conduct continued research on how 
aging affects sleep cycles, muscle deterioration, and balance."

Dr. Michael DeBakey, Chancellor Emeritus of Baylor Medical 
College, who reviewed the medical data on Glenn, said he sees "no 
evidence to prevent him from going into space.  Flying Senator 
Glenn offers important opportunities to study the effects of the 
space environment on aging systems as has never been done in the 
past."

Dr. Robert Butler, professor of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai Medical 
Center, director of the International Longevity Center, agreed.

"It serves both science and a better understanding of what human 
beings of all ages will experience as we enter the next century to 
have an older person included on a space flight," said Butler, one 
of the nation's foremost gerontologists.  "Senator Glenn is 
particularly well qualified since he has done this before, and 
because of his work with NASA and the National Institute on Aging 
to develop research that will lead to a better understanding of 
the effects of aging.  His involvement makes a bold statement 
about the capabilities of older people and will help us understand 
the effects of aging and space flight.  Senator Glenn's courage 
and willingness to undertake this mission are notable."

NASA has previously flown astronauts up to 61 years old.  At least 
eight crew members over the age of 55 have flown multiple 
missions.  Shannon Lucid was 54 when she spent six months aboard 
the Russian space station Mir.

Before NASA made the decision to fly Glenn, the senator underwent 
a battery of medical tests conducted by NASA physicians and by 
independent consultants.  They all found him medically qualified 
for space flight.  According to NASA flight surgeons, Glenn's 
fitness level is excellent.

"We have 42 years of medical history on Senator Glenn and we were 
able to perform an exhaustive medical evaluation," said Dr. Denise 
Baisden, a NASA flight surgeon.  "He is medically qualified to 
fly."

A distinguished group of multi-disciplinary medical experts, led 
by Dr. Clifford C. Dasco of Baylor College of Medicine, concurred 
with Baisden's recommendation.  "There are no significant medical 
issues that would prevent Senator Glenn from going into space on 
the Space Shuttle," the panel concluded.
------------------------------------------------------------------

FIRST STATION ELEMENT TO BE SHIPPED TO RUSSIAN LAUNCH SITE
NASA release 98-7

16 January, 1998

The International Space Station will complete a major milestone 
toward its first launch as the first station piece, a US-funded 
and Russian-built control module, is shipped from a Moscow factory 
next week to its Russian Space Agency launch site in Baikonur, 
Kazahkstan.

In advance of the shipment of the control module, formerly called 
the Functional Cargo Block and designated by the Russian acronym 
FGB, a rollout ceremony and press conference will be held at the 
Khrunichev State Research and Production Center in Moscow at 11 AM 
Moscow time on Saturday, January 17.  Highlights of the rollout 
ceremony will be broadcast, tape-delayed, on NASA Television at 3 
PM EST Saturday, with a repeat airing at 6 PM EST.  The actual 
shipping of the control module is scheduled to begin on Thursday, 
Jan.  22.

The 20-ton module is targeted for a late June launch to begin the 
five-year, 45-flight orbital assembly of the new space station.  
It will be launched on a Russian Proton rocket from the Baikonur 
Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan.  The control module was built by the 
Khrunichev factory, under contract to The Boeing Company, the 
prime contractor to NASA for the International Space Station.  It 
will depart Khrunichev via a special rail car late next week to 
begin the 1,200-mile, five- day train journey to Baikonur, where 
it will begin five months of launch preparations and final 
testing.

"When the control module arrives at Baikonur, all of the elements 
for our first two launches will be undergoing final launch 
processing," International Space Station program manager Randy 
Brinkley said.  "The year of the International Space Station is 
1998.  This is something that all of us have looked forward to for 
a very long time.  We have a lot of exciting and challenging 
activities ahead as we begin our assembly in orbit.  The 
incredible efforts of a worldwide engineering and development team 
will be coming to fruition, and a new, unprecedented phase of 
space construction will begin."

Shortly after the control module is launched from Russia, 
Endeavour will launch on Space Shuttle mission STS-88 from the 
Kennedy Space Center, FL, with the second piece of the station, a 
connecting module called Node-1, built by Boeing at NASA's 
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL.  The node was 
shipped to Kennedy to begin a year of launch preparations and 
final testing in June 1997.  Two mating adapters have since been 
shipped to Kennedy from California and are being attached to the 
node prior to its launch.  Endeavour's crew will dock the control 
module to the node and perform three spacewalks to make final 
connections between the two components during the 11-day flight.  
The station will then await the launch of the Russian-built 
Service Module, a component that will become the early living 
quarters, targeted for December.  The first crew of the new 
station is planned for launch on a mission in early 1999.

The 20-ton control module will provide early power and propulsion 
for the station as well as the capability to remotely rendezvous 
and dock with the Service Module.  Construction began on the 
control module at Khrunichev in December 1994.

NASA Television is available in the continental United States and 
is carried on GE-2, Transponder 9C, 85 degrees West longitude, 
vertical polarization, with a frequency of 3880 MHz, and audio of 
6.8 MHz.
------------------------------------------------------------------

EXTRATERRESTRIAL CUISINE IS COOKING IN CORNELL LAB
From Cornell University News Service

19 January, 1998

For out-of-this-world space habitat menus, Cornell experts develop 
plant-based foods, such as tofu cheesecake and carrot 
"drumsticks."  After months in a space habitat, astronauts on the 
moon or Mars will have Cornell University to thank if their daily 
meals are culinary delights.

To help NASA plan the cuisine for future lunar and Martian space 
colonies, a Cornell chef, nutritionist, food and biological 
engineer and vegetarian cooking teacher are collaborating to 
develop and test tasty, nutritious and economical recipes that 
astronauts can prepare from a limited set of 15 to 30 crops to be 
grown in future space habitats.  Wheat and potatoes are the 
staples to be complemented with rice, soy and peanuts, salad crops 
and fresh herbs, all to be grown hydroponically in artificially 
lit, temperature- controlled space farms.

The fare now being tested at Cornell by weekly taste-testing 
panels composed of students, faculty and staff includes seitan 
tacos with lettuce and tomato sprinkled with earth-made cheese, 
carrot "drumsticks," tempeh sloppy Joes, basil pesto with soy 
nuts, pasta primavera and tofu cheesecake.

"Our goal is to develop a database of food-processing information 
and a menu of at least 100 primarily vegetarian recipes of 
familiar and new menu items based on crops raised in a 
bioregenerative life support system," said Jean Hunter, associate 
professor of agricultural and biological engineering at Cornell 
who is heading up the project.

The team also is developing a food-related decision-making 
strategy for NASA to use in bioregenerative life support systems 
for multiyear missions such as a lunar scientific colony or 
Martian surface exploration.  Bioregenerative life support, in 
which plants and microorganisms regenerate air, water and food for 
the crew, is envisioned for long-term space exploration, starting 
15 to 20 years from now.

"Because the cost of transporting food for these missions will be 
astronomical, only about 15 percent of calories will be from 
earth-made foods," added David Levitsky, professor of nutritional 
sciences and of psychology at Cornell who also is working on the 
project.  "Our dishes, therefore, will typically contain under 10 
percent of calories from earth-made foods.  These imported foods 
will probably be the fats, flavor concentrates and various meat 
and dairy-based foods to be used mostly as condiments as well as a 
few luxuries, such as chocolate.  This will allow the crew to 
splurge on weekly special meals and a monthly feast, which will be 
important to break up the monotony and isolation of long-term 
space travel."

Also working with Hunter and Levitsky are Rupert Spies, a chef and 
lecturer in food and beverage management in Cornell's School of 
Hotel Administration who collaborates in recipe development and 
helps to make the dishes attractive and appealing, and Adriana 
Rovers, formerly a caterer and teacher of vegetarian cooking who 
prepares the recipes and runs the tasting panels.  Ammar Olabi, a 
graduate student in food science, is responsible for the database 
structure of the procedural, sensory, nutritional and cost data 
for the foods and for statistical analysis of the data.

Graduate students Cheryl Greenwalt and Kenn Dai and undergraduates 
Mike Tsay and Mark Schroeder also are associated with the project 
through their research on development of novel food ingredients 
from residues of farming and food processing in space.

With a three-year grant from NASA, the researchers launched the 
project six months ago.  They now are developing sweeteners and 
oils from wheat and potatoes, looking both to the past and the 
future for food-processing approaches.  The researchers are 
looking at 1,000-year-old traditional food-processing strategies 
as well as turning to their high-tech laboratories.  For example, 
they are using microorganisms to help convert wheat straw and 
other crop residues into oil, and surplus wheat and potato starch 
into a sweetener.  They also are continually testing recipes with 
substitutions as needed for ingredients that cannot be provided 
from Earth or grown in a space colony.

Although several other institutions also are developing foods for 
space travel, Cornell's project is unique in that it also will 
include:

* labor and equipment cost analyses for each ingredient and recipe 
that take into account time, power and space constraints.  Costs 
will be scaled for crew sizes ranging from 4 to 200 persons;

* acceptability ratings of the menu items as assessed by volunteer 
panels.  This will be based not only on weekly taste panels at 
Cornell but on a four-week controlled study near the end of the 
project to determine the overall acceptability of the space diet;

* integration of nutrient, cost and acceptability data for 
individual recipes into an optimization model, which will select 
low-cost diets for any given mission;

* suggestions for foods and food ingredients necessary to import 
from Earth and for the selection and development of future food 
crops for space;

* training of future crew members, space habitat design engineers 
and food-service personnel at the Johnson Space Center in how to 
prepare the most appetizing meals with the greatest variety 
possible within the constraints of a space diet.

"Food plays a critical role in the overall psychological well-
being of isolated crews," Levitsky said.  "We will, therefore, 
strive to make the diet familiar to the crew, give them a sense of 
mastery in preparing the food and a sense of pride or ownership in 
producing attractive and tasty dishes.  We'll focus on these 
factors in a series of training workshops planned for the third 
year of the project."

PHOTO CAPTION:
[http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Jan98/nasa.food.ssl.html]
Jean Hunter, professor of agricultural and biological engineering 
at Cornell, displays hydroponically-grown plants for the space 
cuisine project.  Frank DiMeo, Cornell University Photography.  A 
high-resolution copy of this photo (1000 x 803 pixels, 410K) is 
available here.
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End MARSBUGS Vol.  5, No.  1

