Life search in Mars

sponsored by www.careerbd.net

Key components of a new approach to discover life on Mars were successfully launched into space Friday as part of a twelve-day, low-Earth orbit experiment to assess their survivability in the space radiation environment -- a prelude future journeys to Mars.

Would you know microbial life if you saw it? What if you were a robot? A newly developed "Life Marker Chip" might give future robotic explorers a tool they can use to know if the rock, sand, water or ice they're examining contains life. This device, as well as a few dozen other experiments recently headed to space aboard the Foton microgravity mission.

The unmanned Soyuz-U launcher blasted off from the Kaikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on September 14th. 9 minutes after launch, the Foton-M3 spacecraft separated from the rocket's upper stage, and went into an orbit that takes it around the Earth every 90 minutes.

The spacecraft is carrying a payload of 43 experiments designed to test the effects of microgravity and radiation. The experiments include fluid physics, biology, protein crystal growth, meteoritics, radiation dosimetry and exobiology. And one interesting member of the mission is the Life Marker Chip.

The nickname for the Life Marker Chip is the Mars pregnancy test since it works on the same principle. It contains a tray of very specific proteins, each of which acts like a plug. If microbial life is present on Mars, some of its protein molecules will come into contact with the LMC, and then bond, like a very specific puzzle piece. This will allow the robot to not only report on evidence of life, but give very specific information about what kind of life process is being observed.

The trip to space on board the Foton is just a test. Scientists want to see what happens to the experiment when it's exposed to the radiation and microgravity of being in orbit. The experiment, as well as the other 40ish experiments on board the capsule will be recovered when the capsule returns to Earth on September 25th.

If everything works properly, the Life Marker Chip will be installed onto ESA's ExoMars mission; a rover that will blast off for the Red Planet in 2013. Maybe then we'll get the answer we're hoping for: Mars is pregnant… with life.

Technorati : Life search in Mars

Google Moon Gets a Big Update with NASA

This is just in time for all those teams considering building a robot lunar rover to win $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize.

NASA said Tuesday that it has added new lunar imagery to Google's Moon Web site, a photographic display of the moon with information graphics about the Apollo landings.

The additions are part of an ongoing partnership between NASA and Google, which signed a Space Act agreement in December 2006 to work on Web projects together. NASA, for example, recently added photographs taken from the satellite sensor Landsat into Google Earth.

The updated moon site includes higher resolution lunar maps and additional content from the Apollo missions, including panoramic images, audio and video clips, and descriptions of the astronauts' activities, according to NASA. The site also features detailed charts of different regions of the moon "suitable for use by anyone simulating a lunar mission," the space agency said.

"NASA's objective is for Google Moon to become a more accurate and useful lunar mapping platform that will be a foundation for future web-based moon applications, much like the many applications that have been built on top of Google Maps," Chris Kemp, director of strategic business development at NASA's Ames Research Center, said in a statement.

Google and the nonprofit X Prize Foundation announced earlier this week that they will offer $20 million to the first team that can put a robotic rover on the moon that can travel 500 meters. (It is offering an additional $5 million for second place, and $5 million for bonus feats.)

When Google Moon was released last year, it was a bit of a joke. Google Earth, but for the Moon. Zoom in far enough and the familiar lunar craters were replaced with swiss cheese. The time for silliness is over, Google Moon has gotten an update, and they're making it a serious learning tool this time around. The website incorporates photographs from orbiters and the Apollo missions to let you zoom in and out, exploring the Moon.

Head over to Google Moon, and follow along. You can change the view between Charts, Apollo, Visible and Elevation. All of the Apollo landing sites are marked on the map, so you can click each one to get more information.

Zoom in all the way, and you don't see swiss cheese anymore. Instead you see the most detailed images available from NASA showing high resolution details about the landing sites. Each landing site has more than 10 additional detailed place markers, showing points of interest about the mission.

For example, click on the Apollo 16 mission, and the interface informs you there are 21 additional place markers. Click to zoom in, and you can see all the little markers. Click on any one and you'll see more details, such as interesting rocks, craters, and landing spacecraft. Some of the detailed views are just photographs, but others are panoramas that you can scroll around to see the landscape from the astronauts' point of view. Very cool!

There are also some landmarks with audio clips and video clips. All in all, the site feels like an educational CD-ROM.

And that's part of its problem - it's not really an atlas of the Moon, and more of a presentation of the Apollo missions. Many of those lunar craters have names. There are plenty more interesting features on the Moon than just the Apollo landing sites. I'd love to see some of that information incorporated as well. They could also bring in images from other spacecraft, like ESA's SMART-1 to provide better coverage in some areas.

My other concern is that it doesn't really work if you zoom all the way out. Instead of seeing a nice view of the whole Moon, there's a confusing set of repeating images showing the same portions of the Moon over and over again. Google Maps does the same thing with the Earth, but still, it should look like you're zooming into the Moon.

Technorati : Google Moon