NASA scales back hunt for life on Mars

The Exomars rover was going to drill into Martian soil to look for life (Image: ESA)

Is there life on Mars? We might not find out for some time. The search has hit a major hurdle because NASA has cancelled plans for ambitious new missions to the Red Planet.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) were planning a pair of joint missions to Mars that could have made important strides in the search for past or present life.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which was to launch in 2016, would have followed up on hints of methane discovered in the Martian atmosphere by previous missions. The gas is of particular interest as it is commonly produced by microbes on Earth.

The ExoMars rover, which had been slated for launch in 2018, would have drilled beneath the Martian surface to get samples of pristine material, possibly including complex carbon-based molecules that could have provided clues to past Martian life.

But NASA has told ESA that it can no longer afford to participate in those missions, agency officials confirmed today.

Russian rescue?

The missions may end up being cancelled or at least drastically scaled back, although ESA is reportedly trying to bring the Russian space agency on board instead.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden and other officials explained in press briefings today that they had to make tough choices in crafting NASA's budget for 2013.

The White House's proposed 2013 budget for NASA was released on Monday 13 February along with those of all other departments and agencies.

If approved by Congress, the budget will give NASA $17.7 billion in 2013, about the same as it got in 2012, but around $1 billion less than it had been projecting for 2013 when making plans over the last few years.

No more flagship

The Mars budget was slashed as a result, with NASA's contribution to the flagship ExoMars mission the main casualty.

"We just could not do another flagship right now," Bolden said. "It was not in the cards … in these very difficult fiscal times."

NASA still hopes to mount a less costly mission to Mars in 2018, but it might not land on the surface. The agency has not specified exactly where it would go, but orbiters tend to be less expensive than rovers.

The proposed budget also confirms that NASA plans to continue building the James Webb Space Telescope with a launch targeted for 2018, and continue payments to private space companies like SpaceX to help them develop space taxis that could take crew to the International Space Station.

NASA wants $830 million for space taxi development in 2013. It asked for a similar amount in 2012, but Congress cut it by more than half, to about $400 million.

http://www.newscientist.com/

»»  Read More...

Time to give SETI a chance

Earth 2.0 is in our sights. Checking it for signs of life will be the next big issue

THE thousands of probable worlds discovered in orbit around other stars are making our corner of the universe appear a lot friendlier to life these days.

The Kepler space telescope, which has its eye on 150,000 stars, is beginning to home in on Earth-size planets. Can Earth 2.0 be far behind? What will it be like?

Earth 2.0 would be a rocky planet the size of our own, orbiting a star like the sun at a distance where the surface temperatures would allow liquid water oceans, assuming the planet was sheathed in an atmosphere containing greenhouse gases.

In other words, it will be a world that we might find habitable. We won't be able to see this other Earth directly, but we will know it is there because of the influence it has on its star. Even so, we will inevitably ask: "Is it inhabited?"

Answering that question will be hard. It is quite probable that Earth 2.0 will be hundreds or even thousands of light years away; too far from us to detect trace chemical "biosignatures" that would suggest life.

There is another way. We could look for life on Earth 2.0 via "technosignatures" such as radio signals produced by intelligent life. These would be cheaper and easier to find than biosignatures. It is a long shot, but one that is affordable and we can do it now. In fact the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been on the case since the 1990s.

Despite being denied public funds and derided by some politicians for seeking "little green men", SETI still carries out searches with private money.

For decades we have blindly checked the sky overhead or targeted stars that are old enough, metallic enough and stable enough to have rocky planets in the right orbits. Now, thanks to Kepler, we know where to look. Digital technologies are speeding up the searches, but they require investment to reap the rewards.

SETI is a logical addition to the publicly funded endeavours exploring other worlds. It is time to fund it properly, either with public money or privately.

Now that we know there are planets beyond our solar system, and where to find them, we should give SETI a fighting chance to see if anybody is home.

Jill Tarter is director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California

http://www.newscientist.com/

»»  Read More...

Lost treasures: President Nixon's moon rocks

 

(Image: Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images)

Priceless lunar samples gifted after the Apollo landings fell into wrong hands – meet the moon-hunter who went undercover to get them back

By weight, the moon rocks collected during the Apollo missions are worth far more than diamonds, and in any case, they have a priceless historical value. They are relics of humanity's greatest adventure to date.

Not all are properly accounted for, however. That's why Joseph Gutheinz, a former NASA investigator, has spent much of his career tracing moon rocks that have gone missing: he's even staged elaborate stings to lure would-be illegal sellers. And there's one particular group of moon rocks that Gutheinz is keen to recover.

The Apollo samples add up to about 382 kilograms. The vast majority are stored in a pristine high-security NASA vault in Houston, Texas. But after the first landing by Apollo 11 in 1969, US president Richard Nixon presented lunar dust embedded on plaques to 135 nations, US states, and territories. In 1972, Nixon presented another round of plaques, each with a fragment collected by the crew of Apollo 17. NASA considered each sample the property of the people of the nations and states to which it was given - but many plaques were stolen or lost (see map).

Gutheinz first learned that these plaques might not be in their rightful places as an investigator in NASA's Office of Inspector General. He had been looking into complaints about attempted sales of bogus lunar rocks and dust, so he decided to go undercover. The effort was called Operation Lunar Eclipse. Using the alias John's Estate Sales, Gutheinz placed an advert in USA Today. "Moon Rocks Wanted," it read.

Gutheinz received a call from someone offering the Apollo 17 plaque given to Honduras. He settled on a price of $5 million dollars and asked the seller, Alan Rosen, to leave it in a bank vault in Miami, Florida. Once there, Gutheinz and NASA agents seized it. In 2003, the plaque was returned to the Honduran government.

Gutheinz now teaches law, and has incorporated the moon rock mystery into his course on investigations, setting students loose to trace the remaining lost plaques. Gutheinz and his students have located 77, but nearly 160 are still missing.

Some, like the rock gifted to Malta, were stolen from museums. Others were taken by politicians. The Romanian plaque, for example, was auctioned off from the estate of executed dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Gutheinz suspects that many people who acquired the rocks underestimated their rarity, and so some have turned up in inglorious places. One of them, West Virginia's, had been sitting in a box in the garage of a retired dentist.

The strangest case of Gutheinz's career, however, is the one he is investigating at the moment. Coleman Anderson, a one-time fishing boat captain on the reality TV series Deadliest Catch, is suing the state of Alaska for title to its Apollo 11 plaque. Anderson claims he salvaged the plaque after a fire at the museum where it was displayed 37 years ago. The curator of the Alaska state museum has asked Gutheinz for advice on how to get the plaque back.

Gutheinz says the plaques are too precious to be in private hands, but accepts that many may be beyond his reach. "I think we'll get a lot back, but we're never going to get 100 per cent," he says.

 http://www.newscientist.com/

»»  Read More...