• NASA: Evidence of Life on Mars

NASA scientists last night unveiled compelling evidence of life on Mars.

A special mission to the Red Planet has revealed the likely presence of a form of pond scum – the building blocks of life as we know it.

Of course, the first thing to do when you see a sensational story in the Sun is to disbelieve it, and the second is to look for sources. Lots of people have re-posted this article as fact, or written other articles proclaiming OMG LIFE ON MARS !!!11!, but the only source they can refer to is the Sun.

Fortunately, my friend Mr. Google was able to provide a more reasoned account of the story:

• Fossils in seabed on Earth shape search on Mars

It seems that there’s lots of gypsum and similar types of rock on Mars. Researchers have recently discovered that gypsum on Earth holds lots of microscopic fossils of ocean life:

The scientists said they are impressed by the unexpected discovery of 6-million-year-old fossils in rocks from a time when the Mediterranean Sea was known to have dried up completely.

During a NASA phone briefing Wednesday, J. William Schopf, director of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life at UCLA, said the fossil life forms include organisms much like those in the oceans of today – phytoplankton, diatoms, and cyanobacteria, better known in a non-ocean environment as “pond scum.”

So the findings on Earth give scientists a clue where to look for evidence of life on Mars. The Sun reporters (one of whom is listed as “Sun Spaceman”) seem to be a little confused about what was reported. The real story is how this affects future plans for Martian exploration:

• Hunt for Extraterrestrial Life Guides Next Wave of Space Exploration Missions

It’s much more interesting to look at pictures of rocks when they’re ROCKS ON MARS:

Meanwhile, here’s an actual discovery that doesn’t sound as glamorous, but is pretty significant:

• Scientists Say Ice Lurks in Asteroid’s Cold Heart

“For a long time the thinking was that you couldn’t find a cup’s worth of water in the entire asteroid belt,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Today we know you not only could quench your thirst, but you just might be able to fill up every pool on Earth – and then some.”

The general spin on this is that it might explain where the Earth’s water came from. More importantly, though, the need for water is one of the major obstacles to humanity getting off the Earth and into the rest of the system. On the other hand, I’ve seen what mining sites look like here. We’d better clean up our act a whole lot before we make our way to the asteroid belt.

This is also pretty interesting:

• Persistent Evidence of a Jovian Mass Solar Companion in the Oort Cloud

Do you know about the Oort cloud? It’s pretty awesome.

• Whale protesters sail for southern ocean
• Japan sends ships to monitor whaling protests

And looking up a bit, Burt Rutan & co. unveiled their second generation space ship yesterday. This one is supposed to carry actual paying passengers in the next couple of years:

• Virgin joins 70-mile-high club with launch of spaceship

• Video: Navy Captures Pirate Mothership

And here’s a pretty neat video of the space shuttle’s external fuel tank falling to earth. Unfortunately, jettisoning the tank and allowing it to burn up in re-entry shows off one of the problems with NASA- the tank may not be nearly as valuable or clever as the shuttle, but it’s a pretty substantial piece of construction. Lots of people make noise about how useful the tanks would be in orbit- empty tanks could serve as structural elements for habitats or even (so they say) smaller spacecraft that don’t have to enter the atmosphere. This sounds like a good idea, but I’m not really a rocket scientist. Even if it doesn’t work, however, the mentality of disposable resources should have gone out with the cold war space race.

Oh, another NASA problem is boring announcers.

(by way of NASA Watch)

And finally, this. You should click for the full-sized picture.

• Space Shuttle Transits the Sun

It’s always worth posting the NASA Watch entry instead of whatever article it links to:

• Moon Outpost or Bust

“Apparently, the view of NASA’s acting Administrator is that the Moon is a box to be checked-off on the way to Mars. Hence, we don’t really need to establish an outpost because we’re just satisfying a political requirement in implementing policy, not conducting a technical experiment to use the Moon to prepare for journeys beyond.”

And today’s news:

• NASA Releases Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Request
• U.S. ANNOUNCES REVIEW OF HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT PLANS (pdf)

• New Administration Puts NASA In Tough Position

NASA is facing a critical deadline on whether to retire the space shuttle fleet, however, it still lacks an agency chief to make the $230 billion decision.

According to one presidential expert, NASA is so far off the White House radar, it might as well be on Pluto.

“As each day goes by, the need for these decisions becomes greater and greater, and the absence of an administrator becomes more and more an issue,” said John Logsdon, a member of the NASA Advisory Council and former Obama campaign advisor.

And more problems ahead:

• NASA Workforce Issues – The Crisis is Here

So let’s look at some of the decisions that are (or aren’t) being made in  this climate:

• NASA slashes Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle crew size to four
• A Shift in Policy? Moon Base Axed?

“It is time to reconsider whether we want to go ahead with the Constellation program to place a base on the moon. Many of us in the space community would be eager to recreate the thrill of Apollo. However, from the public’s standpoint, going back to the moon in 2020 would not invoke the same sense of awe and inspiration it did 51 years earlier when it was a seemingly impossible task.”

The old men who run NASA are still stuck in the Apollo mentality. We’ve already gone to the moon out of hubris once, and after planting a flag and hitting a golf ball around, we couldn’t remember any good reason to stay there. Now they propose skipping the moon in favor of thrills and out-of-touch notions of inspiration.

Building a spacefaring civilization takes more than thrills and flag-planting. It takes the hard work of learning how to live and work in space. We’re not getting anywhere else for any useful purpose if we don’t use the moon as a stepping-stone.

Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on NASA alone.

• Little Robot Aims To Get Moon Ready For Outpost

• STS-119 Shuttle Mission Imagery

Backdropped by the blackness of space and the thin line of Earth’s atmosphere, the International Space Station is seen from Space Shuttle Discovery as the two spacecraft begin their relative separation.

By way of NASA Watch, here’s the shuttle flying around the ISS:

• A Greenhouse on the Moon

Jane Poynter and husband Taber MacCallum, Paragon CEO, are well known experts in the closed biological systems communities, and were themselves experimental subjects within a sealed ecosystem as resident scientists in the famous Biosphere 2 project of the early 90’s. Spending two years living with six others in a 3.2 acre greenhouse type structure in Oracle, Arizona, the largest closed system ever built, they emerged as a couple with a newly created company.

Growing the first plant on another world has enormous symbolic importance as well as important scientific research value for creating self contained lunar outposts and eventual settlements. “Plants have been grown in essentially zero gravity and of course in Earth gravity, but never in fractions of gravity,” said Dr. Volker Kern, Paragon’s Director of NASA Human Spaceflight Programs who conducted plant growth experiments in space on the US Space Shuttle. “Scientifically it will be very interesting to understand the effects of the Moon and one sixth gravity on plant growth.”

• Top 10 Worst Space Foods

No pictures for this one, and all the better, really:

• Report: cosmonaut grumbles about space bureaucracy

Population in Space at Historic High: 13

Here’s the baker’s dozen breakdown of the three spaceships in orbit today [last Thursday, in fact- jfb]:

* Soyuz TMA-14: Three people aboard, including space tourist Charles Simonyi and the new Expedition 19 crew for the station which numbers two, a Russian and an American. Launched Thursday and will arrive at the station Saturday morning.
* Space Shuttle Discovery: Seven people aboard, returning from the space station after delivering the last pair of U.S. solar wings to the orbiting laboratory, boosting it to full power during their STS-119 mission. The shuttle is due to land Saturday in Florida to end a 13-day spaceflight.
* International Space Station: Currently home to three astronauts, one each from the United States, Russia and Japan. Two will return home April 7 with Simonyi to end their Expedition 18 mission.

• NASA Cassini Image: Busy Moon

Half an hour after Prometheus tore into this region of Saturn’s F ring, the Cassini spacecraft snapped this image just as the moon was creating a new streamer in the ring.The dark pattern shaped like an upside down check mark in the lower left of the image is Prometheus and its shadow. The potato shaped moon can just be seen coming back out of the ring.

• Briny pools ‘may exist on Mars’
• Could Mud Volcanoes Exist On Mars?

• Spider May Have Survived Months in Space
• NASA Astronauts Perform Space Station’s First ‘Spacewalk Swab’ to Test Planetary Protection Concept
• Astronomers catch a shooting star for 1st time

• Colbert tops poll to name NASA space module
• Lawmaker Backs Stephen Colbert’s NASA Win

• Saudi monarch credited with ‘radical, fundamental changes’

Worried about the collapse of civilization? Concerned that Kyoto is too little, too late? Overwhelmed by feelings of doom and gloom? Here’s a new take on the standard story of humans consuming themselves to death:

• Easter Island’s Controversial Collapse: More To The Story Than Deforestation?

“Societies don’t just go into a tailspin and self-destruct,” says Stevenson, an archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “They can and do adapt, and they emerge in new ways. The key is to put more back into the system than is taken out.”

While evidence suggests the Rapa Nui people cut down 6,000,000 trees in 300 years, for example, they were also developing new technological and agricultural practices along the way—such as fertilization techniques to restore the health of the soil and rock gardens to protect the plants. As a result, every rock on Easter Island has probably been moved three or four times, Stevenson said.

What they don’t say is that it’s any fun to live through this sort of adjustment. I wouldn’t take it as an excuse to let things go to shit.

Here’s someone with some political courage. It’ll be interesting to see who attacks him for this:

• Holder: U.S. a ‘nation of cowards’ on race discussions

How does all this stimulus money affect things I care about?

• Stimulus Bill Is a Step Forward for Pedestrians, Cyclists & Cities
• Compromise on stimulus bill gives NASA $1 billion
• Extra NASA funds: An initial step towards gap reduction options/extension

Tales of crime:

• Woman uses headlock, wedgie to thwart burglary
• Goat breaks into home, eats cake

Things that fall from the sky:

• Lights in the sky meteors, not space junk
• Jersey City UFO mystery solved: It’s another flying ‘tooth’

And things that go up into the sky:

• NASA and ESA Prioritize Outer Planet Missions

• Fonda’s Anti-War Film Gets DVD Release

The movie hit cinemas in 1972, the same week Fonda made a controversial trip to Hanoi, North Vietnam, visiting opposition forces.

A week after its release, the film was removed from theatres, with director Francine Parker blaming pressure from the White House for making the movie “disappear”.

You heard about last week’s big satellite crash, yes?

• Fireball over Texas may be from doomed satellites
• We need an astral air control
• ESA Program Will Monitor Space Debris

It’s been a year since Kosovo gained an official semblance of independence. You can ask the (somewhat reduced) Republic of Georgia what that did for international relations.

• Kosovo Celebrates Birthday, Serbs Insult
• One year on, Kosovo’s stability remains fragile

• Kyrgyzstan to Close U.S. Air Base Used for Afghan War

We could very well end up using the base under some new arrangement, but this makes clear it will be an arrangement with Russia, not KZ. So this means that we have to accept Russia reclaiming its sphere of influence, if not its old borders, in Central Asia. It also threatens our supply lines to Afghanistan, which are already threatened from the other side as well:

• Pakistan militant attack halts US, NATO supplies

It was not immediately clear whether supply convoys could reach Afghanistan through alternative, smaller routes in the region. Another official in the area, Fazal Mahmood, said repair work had begun on the bridge.

Up to 75 percent of the fuel and supplies destined for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan travel through Pakistan after being unloaded at the port of Karachi. Most are driven along the Khyber Pass.

Meanwhile, the news from space…. Iran managed to launch a satellite this week, but it remains to be seen if it’s a big move or just a propaganda ploy:

• Iran satellite move sparks fears
• Iran zooms into space with 50-year-old technology

“The rocket is not that sophisticated,” David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank, told The Washington Times. “That Sputnik technology, a little metal ball that goes ‘beep beep beep,’ is not the same as a nuclear warhead or a telecommunications satellite. It’s harder to send heavier objects and more sophisticated objects into space or across a continent.”

And assorted bumps along the way:

• Mars rover recovers after bout of amnesia
• Major Incident Occurs On ISS
• Today’s Video: We got a wicked shimmy up here

Back on Earth, the stimulus bill may turn into more life support for Detroit. A generation’s worth of debt to prop up a failing industry:

• AP: Senate votes to help Americans buy cars
• Revisiting the Stimulus and Transit

The word on the street is that after some small victories in the House ($3B added to capital funding for transit) there will be another fight in the Senate where various amendments are being proposed to strip transit funds and move them to highways, or to simply add $50B to highways.

This could be interesting- it’s a civil disobedience action that’s actually part of a larger strategy, well-targeted and hopefully well-organized. DC is famously a black hole for media events, but this one might cut through all the crap.

• Biggest Ever US Civil Disobedience on Climate at Congressional Power Plant

As Congress continues to sputter on solutions for the climate crisis, a national coalition of more than 40 environmental, public health, labor, social justice, faith-based and other advocacy groups have announced plans to engage in civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C. on the afternoon of March 2, 2009.

The event, known as the Capitol Climate Action (CCA), will be the largest mass mobilization on global warming in the country’s history. The event reflects the growing public demand for bold action to address the climate and energy crises. It means no more waiting, no more excuses, and no more coal.

A couple more along those lines:

• Climate change might be altering waters along US west coast
• Coal Turkey: States, Environmentalists Lead Charge Against Coal Plants

I’ve been saving up some Sea Shepherd stories for you. Soon come.