Sensitive Laser Instrument Could Aid Search for Life on Mars

Minuscule traces of cells can be detected in a mineral likely present on Mars, a new study shows. The results, obtained using a technique developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL), could help mission scientists choose Martian surface samples with the most promise for yielding signs of life.

INL's instrument blasts off tiny bits of mineral and looks for chemical signatures of molecules commonly found in cells. While other methods require extensive sample handling, this analysis relies on a "point-and-shoot" laser technique that preserves more of the rock and reduces contamination risk. In the current online issue of the peer-reviewed Geomicrobiology Journal, the researchers report they could detect biomolecules at concentrations as low as 3 parts per trillion.

High sensitivity is crucial for NASA's search for life on Mars, says INL scientist Jill Scott, whose team collaborated with researchers at the University of Montana-Missoula on the study.

"The worst-case scenario is a false negative," Scott says. "If you're just missing stuff, that would be devastating."

While other techniques also have achieved parts-per-trillion sensitivity, they often require scientists to first extract the organic cell remnants from the mineral. This type of preparation can use up large amounts of sample and potentially introduce contamination.

INL's method is based on a technique called laser desorption mass spectroscopy. By focusing a laser beam on a spot less than one-hundredth the width of a pencil point, the researchers can knock microscopic fragments off the mineral. Those fragments react with organic molecules to form detectable charged particles called ions. The team can then study the ion patterns for signatures that might be specific to biomolecules.

Typically, this method would require the organic molecules to be embedded in a synthetic matrix that encourages ion formation. But the INL team simply relies on the rock to act as the matrix, eliminating the need for sample preparation.

"We thought, what can the rock do for you?" Scott says. "You don't want to damage the sample more than you have to. You'd like to just shoot it directly."

With funding from NASA's Astrobiology program, the researchers have done previous studies showing that minerals like halite and jarosite yield distinct ion patterns when organic molecules are present. This time, they tried thenardite, a compound thought to be part of the Martian surface. Because thenardite is left behind when lakes dry up, its presence could signify the past existence of water -- and hence life.

The team tested thenardite samples taken from the evaporated Searles Lake bed in California. They also created artificial thenardite samples that contained traces of stearic acid, which is left behind by dead cells, and glycine, the simplest amino acid used by organisms on Earth. In all cases, the researchers found a distinct ion pattern that did not appear for thenardite alone, suggesting they had detected a signature for the biomolecules.

The team also measured the sensitivity of its instrument for the first time. By testing more and more dilute artificial samples, they found they could detect the stearic acid signature at levels as low as 3 parts per trillion. In fact, the signatures became even more distinct as concentration dropped, presumably because more ion-producing matrix surrounded each biomolecule.

While the instrument is too big to send into space, it could potentially be used for analysis if NASA brings Martian samples back to Earth.

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Mars Sample Return: Bridging Robotic, Human Exploration

The first robotic mission to return samples to Earth from Mars took a further step toward realization with the recent publication of a mission design report by the iMARS Working Group. The report defines key elements of the future internationally-funded mission involving the cooperation of ESA, NASA and other national agencies.

iMARS, which stands for the International Mars Architecture for the Return of Samples, is a committee of the International Mars Exploration Working Group made up of scientists, engineers, strategic planners, and managers. The report, which comes after months of deliberation, outlines the scientific and engineering requirements of such an international mission to be undertaken in the timeframe of 2020 to 2022.

The Mars Sample Return mission is an essential step with respect to future exploration goals and the prospect of establishing a future human mission to Mars. Returned samples will increase the knowledge of the properties of Martian soil and contribute significantly to answering questions about the possibility of life on the Red Planet. This mission will improve the understanding of the Mars environment to support planning for the future human exploration.

The iMARS report outlines the mission’s scientific objectives including the types and quantities of samples to be returned from Mars; the different mission elements (launchers, spacecraft, Mars lander, a rover and a Mars ascent vehicle) and ground processing facilities necessary to contain and analyse the received samples in a protected environment. A preliminary timeline for the mission and approximate budget has also been defined.

“Exploration is gaining momentum year by year, as is the experience and knowledge gained by ESA and its international partners in this area,” says Bruno Gardini ESA’s exploration program manager in the Directorate of Human Spaceflight and iMARS study leader. “The information we gain from current Mars missions and from the ISS provide a basis not only for future robotic missions but also a stepping stone for the human exploration missions.”

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NASA Spacecraft Reveal Largest Crater in Solar System

New analysis of Mars' terrain using NASA spacecraft observations reveals what appears to be
by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor have provided detailed information about the elevations and gravity of the Red Planet's northern and southern hemispheres. A new study using this information may solve one of the biggest remaining mysteries in the solar system: why does Mars have two strikingly different kinds of terrain in its northern and southern hemispheres? The huge crater is creating intense scientific interest.

The mystery of the two-faced nature of Mars has perplexed scientists since the first comprehensive images of the surface were beamed home by NASA spacecraft in the 1970s. The main hypotheses have been an ancient impact or some internal process related to the planet's molten subsurface layers. The impact idea, proposed in 1984, fell into disfavor because the
basin's shape didn't seem to fit the expected round shape for a crater.

The newer data is convincing some experts who doubted the impact scenario.

"We haven't proved the giant-impact hypothesis, but I think we've shifted the tide," says Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Andrews-Hanna and co-authors Maria Zuber of MIT and Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., report the new findings in the journal Nature this week.

A giant northern basin that covers about 40 percent of Mars' surface, sometimes called the Borealis basin, is the remains of a colossal impact early in the solar system's formation, the new analysis suggests. At 5,300 miles across, it is about four times wider than the next-biggest impact basin known, the Hellas basin on southern Mars. An accompanying report calculates that the impacting object that produced the Borealis basin must have been about 1,200 miles across. That's larger than Pluto.

"This is an impressive result that has implications not only for the evolution of early Mars, but also for early Earth's formation," says Michael Meyer, the Mars chief scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington.

This northern-hemisphere basin on Mars is one of the smoothest surfaces found in the solar system. The southern hemisphere is high, rough, heavily cratered terrain, which ranges from 2.5 to 5 miles higher in elevation than the basin floor.

Other giant impact basins have been discovered that are elliptical rather than circular. But it took a complex analysis of the Martian surface from NASA's two Mars orbiters to reveal the clear elliptical shape of Borealis basin, which is consistent with being an impact crater.

One complicating factor in revealing the elliptical shape of the basin was that after the time of the impact, which must have been at least 3.9 billion years ago, giant volcanoes formed along one part of the basin rim and created a huge region of high, rough terrain that obscures the basin's outlines. It took a combination of gravity data, which tend to reveal underlying structure, with data on current surface elevations to reconstruct a map of Mars elevations as they existed before the volcanoes erupted.

"In addition to the elliptical boundary of the basin, there are signs of a possible second, outer ring - a typical characteristic of large impact basins," Banerdt says.

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NASA Spacecraft Fine-Tunes Course for Mars Landing

NASA engineers have adjusted the flight path of the Phoenix Mars Lander, setting the spacecraft on course for its May 25 landing on the Red Planet.

"This is our first trajectory maneuver targeting a specific location in the northern polar region of Mars," says Brian Portock, chief of the Phoenix navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The mission's two prior trajectory maneuvers, made last August and October, adjusted the flight path of Phoenix to intersect with Mars.

NASA has conditionally approved a landing site in a broad, flat valley informally called "Green Valley." A final decision will be made after NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter takes additional images of the area this month.

The orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera has taken more than three dozen images of the area. Analysis of those images prompted the Phoenix team to shift the center of the landing target 8 miles southeastward, away from slightly rockier patches to the northwest.

Navigators used that new center for planning today's maneuver.

The landing area is an ellipse about 62 miles by 12 miles. Researchers have mapped more than five million rocks in and around that ellipse, each big enough to end the mission if hit by the spacecraft during landing.

Knowing where to avoid the rockier areas, the team has selected a scientifically exciting target that also offers the best chances for the spacecraft to set itself down safely onto the Martian surface.

"Our landing area has the largest concentration of ice on Mars outside of the polar caps. If you want to search for a habitable zone in the arctic permafrost, then this is the place to go," says Peter Smith, principal investigator for the mission, at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Phoenix will dig to an ice-rich layer expected to lie within arm's reach of the surface. It will analyze the water and soil for evidence about climate cycles and investigate whether the environment there has been favorable for microbial life.

"We have never before had so much information about a Mars site prior to landing," says Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is chairman of the Phoenix landing-site working group and has worked on Mars landings since the first successful Viking landers in 1976.

"The environmental risks at landing -- rocks and slopes -- represent the most significant threat to a successful mission. There's always a chance that we'll roll snake eyes, but we have identified an area that is very flat and relatively free of large boulders," says JPL's David Spencer, Phoenix deputy project manager and co-chair of the landing site working group.

Today's trajectory adjustment began by pivoting Phoenix 145 degrees to orient and then fire spacecraft thrusters for about 35 seconds, then pivoting Phoenix back to point its main antenna toward Earth. The mission has three more planned opportunities for maneuvers before May 25 to further refine the trajectory for a safe landing at the desired location.

In the final seven minutes of its flight on May 25, Phoenix must perform a challenging series of actions to safely decelerate from nearly 13,000 mph. The spacecraft will release a parachute and then use pulse thrusters at approximately 3,000 feet from the surface to slow to about 5 mph and land on three legs.

"Landing on Mars is extremely challenging. In fact, not since the 1970's have we had a successful powered landing on this unforgiving planet. There's no guarantee of success, but we are doing everything we can to mitigate the risks," says Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters in Washington.

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NASA Mission Finds New Clues to Guide the Search for Life on Mars

NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has found evidence of salt deposits. These deposits point to places where water once was abundant and where evidence might exist of possible Martian life from the Red Planet's past.

A team led by Mikki Osterloo of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, found approximately 200 places on southern Mars that show spectral characteristics consistent with chloride minerals. Chloride is part of many types of salt, such as sodium chloride or table salt. The sites range from about half of a square mile to 25times that size.

"They could come from groundwater reaching the surface in low spots," Osterloo says. "The water would evaporate and leave mineral deposits, which build up over years. The sites are disconnected, so they are unlikely to be the remnants of a global ocean."

Scientists used Odyssey's Thermal Emission Imaging System, a camera designed and operated by Arizona State University, Tempe, to take images in a range of visible light and infrared wavelengths.

Thermal infrared wavelengths are useful for identifying different mineral and rock types on the Martian surface. Osterloo found the sites by looking through thousands of images processed to reveal, in false colors, compositional differences on the Martian surface.

Plotted on a Mars map, the chloride sites appear only in the southern highlands, the most ancient rocks on Mars. Osterloo and seven co-authors report the findings in this week's issue of the journal Science.

"Many of the deposits lie in basins with channels leading into them," says Philip Christensen, co-author and principal investigator for the camera at Arizona State University. "This is the kind of feature, like salt-pan deposits on Earth, that's consistent with water flowing in over a
long time."

Scientists think the salt deposits formed approximately 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago. Several lines of evidence suggest Mars then had intermittent periods with substantially wetter and warmer conditions than today's dry, frigid climate.

Scientists looking for evidence of past life on Mars have focused mainly on a handful of places that show evidence of clay or sulfate minerals. Clays indicate weathering by water, and sulfates may have formed by water evaporation. The new research, however, suggests an alternative
mineral target to explore for biological remains.

"By their nature, salt deposits point to a lot of water, which potentially could remain standing in pools as it evaporates," says Christensen. "That's crucial. For life, it's all about a habitat that
endures for some time."

Whether life ever has existed on Mars is the biggest scientific question driving Mars research. On Earth, salt is good at preserving organic material. Bacteria have been revived in the laboratory after being preserved in salt deposits for millions of years.

"This discovery demonstrates the continuing value of the Odyssey science mission, now entering its seventh year. The more we look at Mars, the more fascinating a place it becomes," says Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

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Liquid Water Found Flowing on Mars? Not Yet

Liquid water has not been found on the Martian surface within the last decade after all, according to new research.

The finding casts doubt on the 2006 report that the bright spots in some Martian gullies indicate that liquid water flowed down those gullies sometime since 1999.

"It rules out pure liquid water," says lead author Jon Pelletier of The University of Arizona in Tucson.

Pelletier and his colleagues used topographic data derived from images of Mars from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Since 2006, HiRISE has been providing the most detailed images of Mars ever taken from orbit.

The researchers applied the basic physics of how fluid flows under Martian conditions to determine how a flow of pure liquid water would look on the HiRISE images versus how an avalanche of dry granular debris such as sand and gravel would look.

"The dry granular case was the winner," says Pelletier, a UA associate professor of geosciences. "I was surprised. I started off thinking we were going to prove it's liquid water."

Finding liquid water on the surface of Mars would indicate the best places to look for current life on Mars, says co-author Alfred McEwen, a UA professor of planetary sciences.

"What we'd hoped to do was rule out the dry flow model -- but that didn't happen," says McEwen, the HiRISE principal investigator and director of UA's Planetary Image Research Laboratory.

An avalanche of dry debris is a much better match for their calculations and also what their computer model predicts, said Pelletier and McEwen.

Pelletier says, "Right now the balance of evidence suggests that the dry granular case is the most probable."

They added that their research does not rule out the possibility that the images show flows of very thick mud containing about 50 percent to 60 percent sediment. Such mud would have a consistency similar to molasses or hot lava. From orbit, the resulting deposit would look similar to that from a dry avalanche.

The team's research article, "Recent bright gully deposits on Mars: wet or dry flow?" is being published in the March issue of Geology.

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NASA Delays Mars Scout Mission to 2013

NASA says that the next mission in the Mars Scout program, originally planned for launch in 2011, is now targeted for launch in 2013. The schedule slip is because of an organizational conflict of interest that was discovered in one of the mission proposal team's Phase A Concept Study. This was the shortest delay for the mission possible because opportunities to send spacecraft to Mars occur only once every 26 months, the space agency says.

The Mars Scout Program is designed to send a series of small, low-cost missions to the Red Planet that are competitively selected. The first robotic spacecraft in this program is the Phoenix lander, which was launched Aug. 4, and is scheduled to land in the icy northern polar region of Mars on May 25, 2008.

NASA will fund current proposals to meet a new launch date in 2013. Revised proposals will be due in August 2008, and the evaluation and selection will take place in December 2008.

In November, NASA postponed the Scout mission's evaluation, selection, and announcement so the agency could resolve an organizational conflict of interest. The conflict of interest was discovered shortly after the concept study reports were received.

The extent of the conflict was severe enough that NASA determined its only recourse was to stop the evaluation and reconstitute the entire review panel that provides the technical and cost analyses for mission selections, the agency says in its announcement.

"The panel's independent expertise and evaluation are critical to maintaining a fair and competitive mission selection process," says Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters in Washington. "This was a difficult decision, but necessary to preserve the integrity of the process, while ensuring we have adequate resources for the mission we ultimately select."

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Astronomers Monitor Asteroid to Pass Near Mars

Astronomers funded by NASA are monitoring the trajectory of an asteroid estimated to be 164-feet wide that is expected to cross Mars' orbital path early next year. Observations provided by the astronomers and analyzed by NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., indicate the object may pass within 30,000 miles of Mars at about 6 a.m. EST on Jan. 30, 2008.

"Right now asteroid 2007 WD5 is about half-way between the Earth and Mars and closing the distance at a speed of about 27,900 miles per hour," says Don Yeomans, manager of the Near Earth Object Office at JPL. "Over the next five weeks, we hope to gather more information from observatories so we can further refine the asteroid's trajectory."

NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth. The Near Earth Object Observation Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," plots the orbits of these objects to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Asteroid 2007 WD5 was first discovered on Nov. 20, 2007, by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey and put on a "watch list" because its orbit passes near the Earth. Further observations from both the NASA-funded Spacewatch at Kitt Peak, Ariz., and the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico gave scientists enough data to determine that the asteroid was not a danger to Earth, but could potentially impact Mars. This makes it a member of an interesting class of small objects that are both Near Earth Objects and "Mars crossers."

Because of current uncertainties about the asteroid's exact orbit, there is a 1-in-75 chance of 2007 WD5 impacting Mars. If this unlikely event were to occur, it would be somewhere within a broad swath across the planet north of where the Opportunity rover is.

"We estimate such impacts occur on Mars every thousand years or so," says Steve Chesley, a scientist at JPL. "If 2007 WD5 were to thump Mars on Jan. 30, we calculate it would hit at about 30,000 miles per hour and might create a crater more than half-a-mile wide." The Mars Rover Opportunity is currently exploring a crater approximately this size.

Such a collision could release about three megatons of energy. Scientists believe an event of comparable magnitude occurred here on Earth in 1908 in Tunguska, Siberia, but no crater was created. The object was disintegrated by Earth's thicker atmosphere before it hit the ground, although the air blast devastated a large area of unpopulated forest.

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Mars Rovers Survive Severe Dust Storms, Ready for Next Objectives

Two months after sky-darkening dust from severe storms nearly killed NASA's Mars exploration rovers, the solar-powered robots are awake and ready to continue their
mission. Opportunity's planned descent into the giant Victoria Crater was delayed, but now the rover is preparing to drive into the half-mile diameter crater as early as Sept. 11.

Spirit, Opportunity's rover twin, also survived the global dust storm. The rovers are 43 months into missions originally planned to last three months. On Sept. 5, Spirit climbed onto its long-term destination called Home Plate, a plateau of layered bedrock bearing clues to an explosive mixture of lava and water.

"These rovers are tough. They faced dusty winds, power starvation and other challenges -- and survived. Now they are back to doing groundbreaking field work on Mars. These spacecraft are amazing," says Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Victoria Crater contains an exposed layer of bright rocks that may preserve evidence of interaction between the Martian atmosphere and surface from millions of years ago, when the atmosphere might have been different from today's. Victoria is the biggest crater Opportunity has visited.

Martian dust storms in July blocked so much sunlight that researchers grew concerned the rovers' daily energy supplies could plunge too low for survival. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., put Opportunity onto a very low-energy regimen of no movement, few observations and reduced communication with Earth. Skies above both rovers
remain dusty but have been clearing gradually since early August.

Dust from the sky has been falling onto both rovers' solar panels, impeding their ability to collect energy from the sun. However, beneficial wind gusts removed some of the new buildup from Opportunity almost as soon as it accumulated.

Opportunity drove to the lip of Victoria Crater in late August and examined possible entry routes. This week, Opportunity has been driving about 130 feet toward its planned entry point. The route will provide better access to a top priority target inside the crater: a bright band of
rocks about 40 feet from the rim. "We chose a point that gives us a straight path down, instead of driving cross-slope from our current location," says Paolo Bellutta, a JPL rover driver plotting the route. "The rock surface on which Opportunity will be driving will provide good traction and control of its path into the crater."

For its first foray into the crater, Opportunity will drive just far enough to get all six wheels in; it will then back out and assess slippage on the inner slope. "Opportunity might be ready for that first 'toe dip' into the crater as early as next week," says JPL's John Callas, rover project manager. "In addition to the drives to get to the entry point, we still need to conduct checkouts of two of Opportunity's instruments before sending the rover into the crater."

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Video Interview: Mars Phoenix Lander Ready For Liftoff

Deborah Bass, the deputy project scientist on the mission, talks about the Mars Phoenix Scout Lander's trip to find evidence of past life on the Red Planet. The lander was built by Lockheed Martin. The University of Arizona is leading the mission.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will claw into the icy soil of the Martian northern plains. The robot will investigate whether frozen water near the surface might periodically melt enough to sustain a livable environment for microbes.

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32-Mile Cable Installed for 1st Deep-Sea Observatory

Oceanographers have completed an important step in constructing the first deep-sea observatory off the continental United States. Workers in the multi-institution effort laid 32 miles (52 kilometers) of cable along the Monterey Bay sea floor that will provide electrical power to scientific instruments, video cameras, and robots 3,000 feet (900 meters) below the ocean surface. The link will also carry data from the instruments back to shore, for use by scientists and engineers from around the world.

The Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) observatory, due to be completed later this year, will provide ocean scientists with 24-hour-a-day access to instruments and experiments in the deep sea. The project is managed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Currently, almost all oceanographic instruments in the deep sea rely on batteries for power and store their data on hard disks or memory chips until they are brought back to the surface. With a continuous and uninterrupted power supply, instruments attached to the MARS observatory could remain on the sea floor for months or years.

"MARS represents the first step in a long-planned process to transform the way the oceans are studied," says Julie Morris, director of NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences. "Marine scientists will no longer be required to go out to the ocean for their studies. The ocean is about to come into their offices."

If something goes wrong with the instruments, scientists will know immediately, and will be able to recover or reprogram them as necessary.

Slightly thicker than a garden hose, the MARS cable is buried about three feet below the sea floor along most of its route, so it will not be disturbed by boat anchors or fishing gear.
The cable itself contains a copper electrical conductor and strands of optical fiber. The copper conductor will transmit up to 10 kilowatts of power from a shore station at Moss Landing, Calif., to instruments on the sea floor. The optical fiber will carry up to 2 gigabits per second of data from these instruments back to researchers on shore, allowing scientists to monitor and control instruments 24 hours a day, and to have an unprecedented view of how environmental conditions in the deep sea change over time.

"After five years of hard work, we are thrilled to bring the age of the Internet to the deep ocean, so we can understand, appreciate and protect the two-thirds of our planet that lies under the sea," says MBARI Director Marcia McNutt. "We are grateful for the help of our talented partners and visionary sponsors. MARS has truly been a team effort."

At the seaward end of the MARS cable is a large steel frame about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and 15 feet (4.6 meters) on each side. This "trawl-resistant frame" will protect the electronic "guts" of the MARS observatory, which will serve as a computer network hub and electrical substation in the deep sea. The researchers hope to install these electronic components into the trawl-resistant frame in the fall of 2007.

After the electronics package is installed and tested, scientists from around the world will be able to attach their instruments to the observatory using underwater extension cords. These instruments will be carried down from the surface and plugged into the science node using MBARI's remotely operated vehicles.

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NASA Completes Key Review of Orion Spacecraft

NASA has established arequirements baseline for its planned new Orion crew exploration vehicle, bringing America's next human spacecraft a step closer to construction, the space agency says.

The Orion project completed its system requirements review in cooperation with its prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, March 1, NASA says. The review marked the first major milestone in the Orion engineering process and provided the foundation for design, development, construction and safe operation of the spacecraft that will carry explorers to Earth orbit, tothe moon, and eventually to Mars, the space agency says. The detailed requirements established in this review will serve as the basis for ongoing design analysis work and systems testing.

"This is a significant step in the development of a space transportation system that will expand our horizons to include other worlds," says Skip Hatfield, Orion Project manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The Orion review followed an overall review of requirements for the Constellation program that was completed in November. Similar reviews are planned later this spring for ground and mission operations systems that will support Constellation launch systems and space flight operations ground infrastructure.

"We have now completed program-wide launch vehicle and human spacecraft system requirements reviews," says Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley. "These are important pieces of a management and engineering puzzle that will allow us to accomplish the goal of putting humans back on the moon."

The Orion requirements data set was reviewed by agency and contractor scientists and engineers from across the country. More than 1,700 topicscovering all aspects of vehicle performance, design and qualification werediscussed during the course of the formal review.

Once all project-level reviews are complete, the Constellation Program will hold another full review to update baseline requirements. A lunar architecture systems review of equipment associated with surface exploration and science activities on the moon is expected in the spring of 2009.

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Successful Rosetta Swing-by -- Next Stop Earth

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta spacecraft successfully completed a swing-by of Mars in the early hours of Sunday morning (February 25). Not only did this mark an important milestone on the spacecraft's 7.1 billion km journey to comet Churyumov Gerasimenko but it provided a unique opportunity to gather further scientific data and images from the Red Planet, scientists say.

The critical gravity assist maneuver around Mars has helped Rosetta change direction – putting it on the correct track towards Earth its next destination planet whose gravitational energy Rosetta will exploit in November this year to gain acceleration and continue on its 10-year journey to the comet which it will reach in 2014.

Mission controllers at ESOC, ESA's Space Operations Centre in Germany confirmed that Rosetta had successfully completed the swing-by. At its closest approach Rosetta passed the surface of Mars at a distance of 250 km (155 miles) travelling at a mere 10.1 km/second relative to the center of the planet.

During the swing by there was a 25 minute period when Rosetta passed into the shadow of Mars denying the probe the ability to generate power using its solar arrays. At this time the spacecraft was put into "eclipse mode" with no science operations taking place on the orbiter instruments, mission scientists say.

However, during the lead up to the closest approach and after the eclipse period the flyby presented scientists with a golden opportunity to calibrate the payload with instruments on other orbiting spacecraft such as Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Prior to the orbiter's instruments being switched off the Optical, Spectroscopic, and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS) captured some detailed images showing the atmospheric features of Mars, including cloud systems above the North polar cap, the scientists say.

Professor Keith Mason, CEO from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), says, "Rosetta has provided some amazing images of Mars from a completely different perspective. Data gathered during the swing-by will complement that collected by other current missions enabling us to build up a comprehensive picture of the make up of Mars."

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