NASA Mars Film Featuring Carl Sagan

(Source: electricspacekoolaid)

Discover The Life Of A Martian Gardener With AstroGardening

With Nasa looking forward to manned missions to Mars within a couple of decades, thoughts are turning to how astronauts there might sustain themselves.

Ferrying food supplies from Earth will be enormously expensive and if colonies are developed then their residents will probably need to become as self-sufficient as possible.

Some scientists are already devoting research into what plants might be cultivated on the Red Planet. It turns out that despite the thin and unbreathable atmosphere and lack of a protective shield against radiation, the soil itself is fit for crops.

One UK scientist who is investigating the potential for gardening on Mars is Dr Louisa Preston, of the Open University. After gaining her degree in geology, Louisa switched to astrobiology. Now she has joined forces with Canadian artist Vanessa Harden to design a Martian garden.

They envisage sending robots to Mars to set up space greenhouses where seed pills containing seeds, clay and nutrients could be scattered and then nurtured even before the first human residents arrive. And they are looking to Kickstarter to raise funding to begin building their concept here on Earth.

“It costs something like $80,000 just to deliver four litres of water to the Moon, let alone Mars,” Preston told Sen. “It is ridiculously expensive to ship things to other planets. And the journey takes so long that fresh fruit and vegetables just wouldn’t survive.

“So a Mars settlement would need to be self-sufficient. Fortunately, a number of plants should grow well in Martian soil, such as potatoes, tomatoes, asparagus and some seeds and grains. It has been shown that you can even grow some flowers like marigolds in ground-up meteorites.”

She added: “You can’t just plant seeds in Martian soil because of the lack of a decent atmosphere and the problem of radiation from space. You would also need to garden in self-contained units to avoid contaminating Mars — planetary protection is very important.”

Preston sees geodesic domes as a way to go to building greenhouses for Mars, with plastic covers to protect from UV radiation but let light in. She now is planning with Vanessa to build prototypes which can be installed in museums and art galleries for people to visit.

As well as being a peaceful and tranquil area, there will be plants growing in red dirt that Preston intends will simulate Martian soil as closely as possible. Interactive exhibits will entertain as well as educate youngsters. And the highlight will be to meet the robotic gardener.

“We just want to open everyone’s minds to the idea of gardening on another planet,” says Preston. “We also want them to think how, if Earth’s population continues to grow and if we keep playing around with the atmosphere, then we might have to think about living somewhere else.”

Their Kickstarter target is £10,000. At the time of writing they had raised £1,210, with 16 days to go.

Backing the project can bring you rewards such as a postcard from Mars, your own seed pills, a stylish T-shirt and more. Plus the warm glow of supporting a project that will also help research into how humans might feed themselves on another world. You can read more about the AstroGardening venture on Kickstarter.

image: Pat Rawlings/NASA

Buzz Aldrin Has New Yorkers Buzzing About Mars

When Buzz Aldrin’s new book landed in stores Tuesday (May 7), starstruck fans turned out in droves to see the legendary Apollo 11 astronaut talk about his vision for creating the first permanent human colony on Mars.

At least 300 people packed into the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Union Square, some carrying stacks of Aldrin’s “Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration” (National Geographic Books) to be signed, while others just tried to catch a glimpse of the second man ever to walk on the moon.

In the audience, one boy with an Apollo pen made rocket ship noises and at least one baby and one teenage girl separately were dressed in mock NASA astronaut flight suits. Nearly everyone rose to their feet to snap pictures when Aldrin made his entrance. [Buzz Aldrin’s Visions for Mars Missions & More (Video)]

“I think it’s pretty awesome that he’s probably one of the only people in the city right now who has been off this planet,” said Philip Gazzara, a Queens man who was excited to stumble on the event on his way to Trader Joe’s.

Buzz Aldrin became a household name his star power when he set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, bounding off the lunar module just after his crewmate, the late Neil Armstrong. But today Aldrin is firmly against sending humans back to the place he famously explored, for now at least.

He thinks the U.S. and a group of international partners need to set their sights on Mars, and ultimately he doesn’t want to send astronauts there only to bring them back home. Aldrin envisions sending space pilgrims to colonize the forbidding planet, and his book he lays out a plan to get there, which includes an initial expedition to Mars’ largest moon Phobos followed by deep-space cruisers that could ferry people from Earth to Mars.

In a Q&A session with co-author, Leonard David, a veteran space journalist and frequent contributor to SPACE.com, Aldrin touched on the historical implications of putting bootprints on the Red Planet.

“History, hundreds and thousands of years in the future, will observe that moment of making that commitment to do that,” Aldrin said. Whichever leader decides to do so, Aldrin added, would exceed Alexander the Great, Genghis Kahn and Christopher Columbus in solar system fame.

Aldrin hopes to have an American president commit to continuous manned Mars exploration by 2019, and he is confident that space officials will have no trouble finding willing pioneers. The astronaut pointed to the 78,000 people who have already applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One.

Not everyone in the audience was as optomistic about Aldrin’s vision. Tom Marshall, who came in from New Jersey, had serious doubts about the plan, hinging on U.S. partnership with other countries like China. “If we don’t get along down here, we can’t make it up there.”

Asked why he came out to see Aldrin, Marshall simply said, “He landed on the moon.”

That stark fact proves endlessly captivating to Aldrin’s fans and the astronaut handles the inevitable flurry of questions about his Apollo 11 lunar landing with wit. One young boy in the audience asked Aldrin what he did during his trip to the moon, to which the astronaut replied, “We waited until it was time to come home.” Another kid asked what it first felt like to step on the moon, and Aldrin answered shortly, “It felt good,” teasing that “fighter pilots don’t have feelings; we have ice water running through our veins.”

The surfaces of Asteroid Itokawa, the Moon, Venus, Mars, Titan, and Earth. All images show a view of nearby rocks to the distant horizon. The amount of surface modification evident of each of the bodies increases roughly from left to right.

From the the rubble pile asteroid of Itokawa, the cratered plains of the moon, the volcanic basalts of Venus, the basalt filled craters of Mars, the eroded icy cobbles of Titan to the great oceans of Earth, a variety of surfaces in our solar system is represented.

(Source: annesastronomynews.com)

We Need To Tackle Mars Dust Before Launching Manned Mission

Manned missions to Mars could be scuppered by the tiniest of annoyances — dust. A team of space safety experts repeatedly flagged up the issue at the Humans 2 Mars Summit (H2M) in Washington DC, according to a report by the New Scientist.

The conference is a highly reputable one, attended by the likes of Nasa chief Charles Bolden. Its focus is on debating the main obstacles we need to overcome in order to send humans to Mars by 2030. Now, with more than 20,000 people applying (and paying) for the chance to go to the Red Planet for Mars One’s reality TV show, the possibility of toxic dust is probably going to be one giant addition to any disclaimer the hopeful astronauts have to sign.

Dust, as we all know, gets everywhere. If you’ve ever been in a Khamsin — the hot, dry, dusty seasonal winds that blow in the Middle East — you’ll know it’s fairly unpleasant. It gets in your eyes, your clothes and your throat grows hoarse from swallowing it. Earthly dust we can deal with, but it turns out dust on the Red Planet has the potential to do far more than irritate.

Nasa chief medical officer Richard Williams, Paragon Space Development cofounder Grant Anderson, Curiosity Rover’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) principle investigator Paul Mahaffy and Boeing engineer and technical lead for the Environmental Control and Life Support System on the ISS Greg Gentry painted a picture of an inhospitable Mars where the dust is potentially inescapable. They pointed to serveral examples from Mars itself, and from Moon missions, that support this assumption.

Most recently Curiosity scooped up a robotic handful of Mars dust from Rocksnest that Mahaffy believes contains perchlorates. It’s something that was previously picked up by Nasa’a Phoenix lander on Mars in 2008 near the planet’s north pole. Perchlorates are salts that in large quantities can interrupt iodine uptake in the thyroid gland, and thus potentially interfere with the normal release of hormones.

Curiosity’s Chemcam also took samples from veins in the YellowKnife region and found high levels of calcium sulfate that it is predicted exist in the form of bassanite or gypsum. We have gypsum here on Earth, where it’s commonly used in plaster or fertilisers, but we don’t know how much there is on Mars’ surface.

“Gypsum is not really toxic per se, but if you breathe it in you do start to see a build-up in the lungs that’s equivalent to the coal-dust lung experienced by miners,” said Anderson. “That leads to breakdowns in lung capacity.”

Of course astronauts heading to Mars on a one-way trip will be in space suits any time they’re wandering round the planet’s surface, but our trips to the Moon show how impossible it is to keep dust off those suits. Reports from Apollo missions in the late 60s and early 70s revealed what a pain the dust was for explorers. It was so sharp it would wear through their outer gloves and would stick to everything, and it reportedly even caused “lunar hayfever”.

Part of it was down to the dust’s spiky surface, but a large part was also down to how static it was. UV rays and solar winds manipulate electron levels by day and night, powering up dust’s electrostatic charge. Wetting surfaces to wipe it off only made the dust stick more firmly. It’s like the silicate minerals all over Mars’ surface — if they mix with water in human lungs, they will become more damaging, combining to create dangerous chemicals.

Anderson predicts Mars dust will also be charged up, and that it will be nearly impossible to stop them entering a safe site through the airlocks where astronauts acclimatise back to normal conditions.

“The Apollo programme spent $17 million (£11 million) trying to solve their lunar dust problems, and I’m not sure they made much progress, because they had to do the tests on Earth,” said Anderson. “For Mars, the precursor robotic missions should all have some way to test how dust is going to kill you.”

According to a blog in the Washington Post Gentry commented that astronauts aboard the ISS spend most of their time making sure instruments, filters and surfaces are clean — “we are happy when we get 30 hours of science out of the crew a week,” he said.

So for now, it looks like Dyson needs to get to work on a spaceworthy air purifier.

Cosmos Will Get a Sequel Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson

More than three decades after it aired, Carl Sagan’s groundbreaking, brilliant 13-part TV series Cosmos:A Personal Voyage will finally get a sequel.

Cosmos, which originally ran in 1980 and was rerun many times over the following decade, is widely regarded as one of the first, and best, TV shows to make science accessible to everyone. You can watch the show now on Hulu, but despite its brilliance it is still a show from more than 30 years ago, and you can tell — the special effects are primitive by today’s standards, but more importantly some of the content has been superseded by discoveries in the intervening years.

So, it’s high time someone made a sequel to it, and now someone is! In partnership with Sagan’s colleagues Ann Druyan (who is also his widow) and Steven Soter, Seth MacFarlane — yes, that Seth MacFarlane — is going to produce a new 13-part series to serve as a sequel and modern update to Sagan’s masterpiece.

Taking over the hosting duties will be none other than well-known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has served as host of NOVA ScienceNOW on PBS for the past five years, so he has plenty of experience making science accessible to the general public. It would be difficult to think of anyone who would be better able to succeed the late, great Carl Sagan.

The folks working on it will take their time and do it right — it’s not scheduled to air until sometime in 2013.

The producers of the show say the new series will tell “the story of how human beings began to comprehend the laws of nature and find our place in space and time.” They go on to boast: “It will take viewers to other worlds and travel across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience.”

That’s the good news. The bad — or at least, potentially bad — news is that, because of MacFarlane’s involvement, the series will air in prime time, and on Fox.

Now, in one way I’m all for showing it in prime time on a major network, because it’ll be that much more likely that people who routinely ignore the Discovery Channel, the Science Channel and, yes, PBS will actually see it.

I’m less thrilled, though, that it will have to compete with other, more mainstream prime-time shows — and it’ll be on Fox, which doesn’t have the greatest track record for giving shows a chance to pull their ratings up once they go down.

Now, maybe the fact that MacFarlane is involved — and Joss Whedon isn’t — will help. I certainly hope so.

You can find out more about the plans for the series.

(Source: spaceplasma, via applepiesfromscratch)

It’s Time to Get Serious About Going to Mars, NASA Says

If NASA is to land humans on Mars by the 2030s, as President Barack Obama has directed, there’s not much time to settle on a plan and develop the technologies required, agency officials said Monday (May 6).

In the 1960s, America seized an opportunity to go to the moon, and succeeded. A second opportunity for a leap forward in space is upon us now, said NASA chief Charles Bolden at the Humans 2 Mars Summit here at George Washington University.

“Interest in sending humans to Mars I think has never been higher,” Bolden said. “We now stand on the precipice of a second opportunity to press forward to what I think is man’s destiny — to step onto another planet.” [Buzz Aldrin’s Visions for Mars Missions & More (Video)]

Yet the road to Mars is long and challenging, and the difficulties are scientific, technological, political and economic, experts said.

Of Launches and Landings
Sending astronauts to the Red Planet will likely require at least three missions: one to launch the crew and the vehicle that will take them to Mars, one to launch the habitat humans will live on at the planet’s surface, and one to launch the vehicle that will lift off from Mars to take the crew home, said Doug Cooke, a former NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate who now heads a space consulting firm.

Overall, about 200 to 400 metric tons of equipment will have to be launched from Earth’s surface for the project — a mass roughly equivalent to that of the International Space Station. And about 40 metric tons of that mass will have to be delivered to the surface of Mars at one time. So far, NASA has been able to land only 1 metric ton at a time — a feat recently accomplished in nail-biting fashion when the agency landed the Curiosity rover last summer.

While this phase, called Mars entry, descent and landing, will be one of the most challenging elements of the mission, at least as difficult is the return, when the astronauts will have to lift off from the surface of Mars and travel home. [Missions to Mars: Robotic Invasion of Red Planet (Infographic)]

“To me this is one of the biggest challenges,” said Mike Raftery, director of space station utilization and exploration at Boeing, the primary contractor for NASA’s heavy-lift rocket being developed to go to Mars. “We have to essentially land a launch pad on the surface that’s then ready to launch the crew back to Earth.”

Watch: Flying To Mars - How Long Does It Take?

Living Off The Land
In addition to the launch system, Mars crews will have to bring their own life-support systems, medicine, food, communications systems and navigation equipment. Yet the space travelers won’t be able to pack everything they’ll need. Instead, they will have to take advantage of some of the resources on Mars, such as water and oxygen for breathing, drinking and other needs. However, the technologies needed to extract and use such resources don’t yet exist.

“We’re going to have to rely on being able to live off the land,” said James Reuther of NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist. “Those will require significant technology investments in order to actually bring that about.”

Engineers must also develop a means of shielding astronauts from the dangerous radiation in space, both during the journey to the Red Planet and on the Martian surface, which lacks a strong enough atmosphere to protect from these damaging particles.

And to adequately plan for a human landing, additional precursor missions may also be necessary.

“It’s very likely that we’ll send some kind of lander or rover to the site we want to send people to first, to drill a couple meters down to tell us if we have fresh water,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate. Such a spacecraft could also serve as a beacon to guide the crewed lander down to the chosen spot on Mars.

Despite the complexity of all these challenges, NASA has a limited amount of time to plan its mission if it wants humans to arrive in the 2030s.

Ticking Clock
By 2020, engineers must choose an architecture for the mission, including what type of propulsion to use to get to Mars, and how many launches are required, said Sam Scimemi, NASA’s International Space Station director. It must also establish partnerships with any other nations it hopes to team with for the journey. By 2025, the design for all the major vehicles and technologies must be completed and frozen.

“That’s pencils down,” Scimemi said. “We don’t have a lot of time. If we’re going to get there we have to have a realistic approach from a budget, political and cultural standpoint.”

Still, many NASA and industry experts expressed confidence it can be done.

“In the coming days we have the opportunity to write history, to determine the future of humankind,” said Artemis Westenberg, president of Explore Mars Inc., the nonprofit space advocacy group that organized the conference. “We of Explore Mars give you this platform of this three-day summit. Now all you have to do is tell each other and the world the how” of getting to Mars.

You can watch the Humans 2 Mars Summit live on SPACE.com through May 8.

78,000 Apply for Private Mars Colony Project In 2 Weeks

Huge numbers of people on Earth are keen to leave the planet forever and seek a new life homesteading on Mars.

About 78,000 people have applied to become Red Planet colonists with the nonprofit organization Mars One since its application process opened on April 22, officials announced today (May 7). Mars One aims to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 as the vanguard of a permanent colony, with more astronauts arriving every two years thereafter.

“With 78,000 applications in two weeks, this is turning out to be the most desired job in history,” Mars One CEO and co-founder Bas Lansdorp said in a statement. “These numbers put us right on track for our goal of half a million applicants.”

Mars One estimates that landing four settlers on Mars in 2023 will cost about $6 billion. The Netherlands-based organization plans to pay most of the bills by staging a global reality-TV event, with cameras documenting all phases of the mission from astronaut selection to the colonists’ first years on the Red Planet.

The application process extends until Aug. 31. Anyone at least 18 years of age can apply, by submitting to the Mars One website a 1-minute video explaining his or her motivation to become a Red Planet settler. (You can also watch other applicants’ videos at the site.)

Mars One charges an application fee, which ranges from $5 to $75 depending on the wealth of the applicant’s home country. United States citizens pay $38, Lansdorp said.

When the application process closes, reviewers will pick 50 to 100 candidates from each of the 300 regions around the world that Mars One has identified. By 2015, this pool will be whittled down to a total of 28 to 40 candidates, officials said.

This core group will be split into groups of four, which will train for their one-way Mars mission for about seven years. Finally, an audience vote will pick one of these groups to be humanity’s first visitors to the Red Planet.

So far, Mars One has received applications from more than 120 countries, officials said. The United States leads the way with 17,324, followed by China (10,241) and the United Kingdom (3,581). Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Argentina and India round out the top 10.

“Mars One is a mission representing all humanity, and its true spirit will be justified only if people from the entire world are represented,” Lansdorp said. “I’m proud that this is exactly what we see happening.”

The announcement of Mars One’s application flood comes in the middle of a big week for manned Mars exploration. Scientists, engineers, NASA officials and a range of other Red Planet exploration advocates are currently meeting in Washington, D.C. for the Humans 2 Mars summit, which runs through Wednesday (May 8).

And today, famed Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin released his new book, “Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration” (National Geographic Books), which was written with veteran space reporter (and SPACE.com columnist) Leonard David.

Buzz Aldrin Wants To Send People On A One-Way Trip To Mars

In a wide-ranging interview with PopularScience.com, Aldrin talks about a mission to Mars, 34 years of sobriety and the future of American leadership in space.

With enough money and enough might, humans could probably get to Mars in the next couple of decades. It’s a proposition made all the more relevant by the continuing findings of the rovers Opportunity and Curiosity. It would be a mammoth undertaking, but it’s possible, at least in concept. But should humans go, and should we stay? Will we? Buzz Aldrin thinks so.

Aldrin releases a new book today, “Mission to Mars,” in which he argues a future U.S. president should commit by 2019 to sending humans to Mars, and not returning them safely to Earth. It will take a brave leader to suggest something like this, but brave leaders have sparked space exploration before, he says.

His plan centers around something called a Mars Cycler, which Aldrin first conceived of nearly 30 years ago. It would create a “celestial triad of worlds,” hubs for the ebb and flow of passengers, cargo and commerce among Earth, the moon and Mars. The ships would be new designs—he says he’s “incensed” that most current space exploration prototypes look like Apollo—and he doesn’t want them to use solid rocket motors, a “technology that keeps popping up out of the casket.”

“Let’s take a page from commercial airliners and ratchet ourselves up from the disposable Dixie-cup model,” he writes.

The Cycler would need several steps to get off the ground. First, the project would include a practice run on the big island of Hawaii. A habitat module or some other system component would be remotely delivered by some robotic technology, probably controlled by a satellite or via radio link from Houston. Secondary components would have to be air-dropped together, with extreme precision. Then things get real. The first off-planet element would be a control center or habitation module, delivered to the L2 Earth-moon gravity-balancing point. That, in turn, would become a place from which controllers would manage the remote landing of the first moon habitat. Eventually, all this practice would lead to a remotely controlled delivery of the first stages of a Mars base.

“If we persevere on this path, we can reach out some 200 million miles to Mars before 2035—66 years after Neil Armstrong and I flew the quarter-million miles through the blackness of space to touch down onto Tranquillity Base,” Aldrin writes. “There’s a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight.”

I was intrigued, so I decided to ask to him about this. It turned out Buzz was eager to talk. As I quickly realized, conversations with Buzz are not necessarily back-and-forth. When he’s excited about something, he’s going to tell you about it, tangents and all. I wanted to ask if I could yell at the moon with him, but we didn’t get that far before his people pulled him offline for another interview.

PopularScience.com: Why would you want humans to stay on Mars permanently?

Buzz Aldrin: The uniqueness of that has yet to be fully reached. We bring people back. But the purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings. And the leader of an Earth organization who makes a commitment to history—of humans living on Earth, to begin permanent settlement/occupation of not the moon, but of another planet—this leader will have a legacy for history that will supersede Columbus, Genghis Khan or almost any recognized leader. I guess religiously, that might include Jesus Christ and Mohammed and Abraham and David. They are obviously going to be remembered for their contribution to human history.

This will probably take two decades from commitment, and result in the non-return of humans from the surface of Mars. They would occupy a permanent Mars base, built previously from a moon of Mars, and my favorite selection is the inner moon, Phobos. Over a period of three different visits to the moon Phobos, the Mars base will be assembled remotely, from sequentially-landed large elements, habitats and whatever else, that are to become the permanent base.

PS: How would the Mars Cycler get people to Mars?


Aldrin: I was motivated to improve the U.S. strategy of going back to the moon in 1985. That’s a long time ago. Going back to the moon would be a great achievement for tourism adventure flights. But it resulted in the Aldrin Cycler, which was published in ‘86. It included cycling spacecraft between Earth and Mars, back and forth. It was really the first major disclosure of a new strategy of transportation for permanent transportation economics, of delivering human beings from the Earth to Mars.

The cycler consists of two mated together, side-by-side connected, interplanetary spacecraft. It’s the very basic component of future projections by my USV, unified space vision, which is my personal-experience replacement for President Bush’s vision for space exploration.

I tried to change the name of the book, but it was just too late to add an “s,” so it would be “Missions to Mars,” not “Mission.” My plan for the future is unique in a sense, because it implies human permanence at Mars. Humans transported to the surface of Mars by cycling spacecraft. It’s kind of complex, but every other synodic period, a cycler delivers to Mars. That means you would need two cyclers, one for the first, third, fifth, ninth odd number of 26-month opportunities, and the other cycler, for 2, 4, 6 even-numbered synodic periods. It’s a major improvement on the Aldrin Cycler, that was first discovered/invented/worked out, but not patented, in 1985.

PS: What’s your Unified Space Vision?

Aldrin: It unifies five elements of space policy: 1) exploration; 2) science; 3) development; 4) commercial; and 5) security. Many, many people have verified that that is national space policy, those five items. We unite those five elements strategically by comparing and integrating our five elements of space policy with every other country internationally. Like ESA, JAXA, China, India, Germany—all of those space policies of other internationals are essential to be integrated into my unified space vision, because of the moon. At the moon, the U.S., in my opinion, needs absolutely to lead an international lunar base. This discourages commercial human landings on the moon by government subsidy. Let’s not have the taxpayers paying for a big rocket, a lunar landing, so that commercial human beings from the U.S. can dig up and mine and occupy the international lunar base.

PS: In the book you mention that your nickname at NASA was “Dr. Rendezvous,” because your MIT doctoral thesis was about two piloted aircraft meeting in space. Is that why are you interested in this cycler concept?

Aldrin: It’s ironic. My selection as an astronaut was unique because I had not been trained as a test pilot. So my application, along with Ed White, my very close friend who graduated West Point and was killed in the Apollo [1] fire, he and I applied in 1962 for the second group. Ed was selected, I was not. I made it in the 1963 selection of astronauts, because of the change of not requiring test pilot training, which I had intentionally avoided. But I had written my thesis on space rendezvous at MIT, and was very motivated for the space future, in the Air Force or anywhere else.

That’s some background as to why you are interviewing me after two autobiographies. In 1973, I wrote “Return to Earth,” which was made into a movie in 1976. But it dealt only with mental health issues and depression. It did not include alcoholism recovery, and I now have 34 years of sobriety from alcohol. The most recent autobiography, “Magnificent Desolation,” described my recovery from alcoholism.

PS: What do you think of space tourist Dennis Tito’s plan to swing around Mars and back? Is this how you envision a future Mars Cycler working?

Aldrin: Sort of. It has the essence of a gravitational swingby of Mars, to bring the spacecraft back in as short a time as possible. Those times occur in 2016 and 2018 but not again until 2031. We probably can’t make 2016, but we can make 2018. That would bring the spacecraft back, if successful, just prior to the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing.

PS: Does the cycler plan borrow a page from modern airlines?

Aldrin: Absolutely. Airlines, private industry, followed the government system of airplanes to deliver the mail. The government system to deliver the mail from one city to another, and then reuse the airplane. It led obviously to transporting not just mail, or cargo, but the private delivery of human beings between city and city and back.

Now there is the commercial potential of transportation of human beings from the surface of the Earth, to Earth orbit and potentially to swing by the moon, and back to Earth. Or to swing by Mars and return to Earth, and be the delivery system of us, or international human beings, from Earth to Mars. Then we’re not expending the vast resources that would be needed to bring people back from Mars.

PS: How should we get started? What’s the most important aspect?

Aldrin: The first element, before the retirement of space shuttle, was supposed to be to deliver a test bed to the space station. Long-duration life support systems, separate from the station but connected. The second element would be a prototype of an interplanetary habitation module, delivered to the space station, which could become a safe haven for astronauts at the station to abandon a disabled space station, separate in this hab module, and be returned to Earth. The third, fourth and fifth iteration is further testing of the interplanetary space vehicle, referred to in my book, in low-Earth orbit, to the moon, in cycling orbits, to L2 and L1, and to lunar surface as the first element of the international lunar base. That would be to test radiation, systems, etc to support other nations’ human beings on the surface of the moon.

July 2019 would be the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. It would be the ideal time, in my estimation, for the president elected in 2016 and 2020, from whichever party, to gain the legacy of the two-decade commitment to permanence of human beings on the planet Mars. That is the essence of Buzz Aldrin’s Unified Space Vision. It’s a very unique and beautiful opportunity for U.S. leadership.

image 1: Aldrin’s newest book. credit: National Geographic
image 2: The Most Famous Footprint In History: Buzz Aldrin’s photo of his own boot print on the moon appears in his new book “Mission to Mars,” out today. credit: NASA

Going on THIS WEEK…

Explore Mars and the George Washington University Space Policy Institute present the The Humans to Mars (H2M) Summit, 6-8 May 2013 at the Lisner Auditorium of the George Washington University in Washington, DC.

What do we need to land humans on Mars by 2030? If you want to know the answer, we invite you to join us at the Humans to Mars Summit. There is a live webcast! (http://h2m.exploremars.org/webcast/).

H2M will be a comprehensive Mars exploration conference to address the major technical, scientific, and policy-related challenges that need to be overcome to send humans to Mars by 2030. 

Check it out! Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. 

(Source: pennyfournasa)

Wind, Not Water, Formed Mound On Mars, New Analysis Suggests

A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet’s famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the mound’s features suggests. If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound holds evidence of a large body of water, which would have important implications for understanding Mars’ past habitability.

Read more here.

(Source: knowledgethroughscience)

Martian Avalanches

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spots about 20 new craters on Mars each year. The craters are between 1 and 50 meters across (3 to 150 feet). Closer scrutiny of the spacecraft images revealed thousands of small avalanches near 16 of the craters, thought to be caused by the shock waves in the Martian atmosphere, created by incoming meteors.

The avalanches discovered by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter appear as dark streaks on the hilly terrain that surrounds the craters. They show up only in areas where there is a lot of light-coloured dust on the ground. To form, it seems the surface’s dust coating was shaken loose and slid downhill, revealing the darker rocks beneath.

We all know Earth is geologically active, with active earthquakes and volcanoes, and plus we have winds and water, not to mention life. Earth is a world of change. That’s one reason avalanches on Mars are so much fun. I can remember a time just a few decades when the other walkable worlds in our solar system – Mercury, Venus, Mars and the moons of the outer planets – were assumed to be “dead” in comparison to Earth. At that point, there was little evidence for any sort of movement on their surfaces, with the exception perhaps of seasonal changes seen to cross the face of Mars, now known to be caused in part by planet-wide dust storms that kick up every two years, when Mars is closest to the sun in its orbit.

How stunned we all were in 1979 when the Voyager 1 spacecraft found active volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io! It was like pointing a finger at a dead rock and saying, “It lives!”

Today, with spacecraft in orbit around our neighboring world Mars and other worlds in our solar system, we’re able to see all sorts of change on other worlds. That includes shifting sand dunes on Mars and … avalanches. Isn’t the picture above wonderful? Wouldn’t you love to go there and see it?

Bottom line: Orbiting spacecraft have now seen avalanches of dust on Mars. They’re thought to be caused by meteors penetrating the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere, creating shock waves in the Martian atmosphere that spread across an area about a million times larger than the meteorite craters. Images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed thousands of small avalanches near 16 of Martian meteorite craters.

images: A puff of dust from an avalanche on Mars, seen by orbiting spacecraft. credit: University of Arizona/JPL/GettyN

(Source: invaderxan, via invaderxan)

Landslides and lava flows at Olympus Mons on Mars

Giant landslides, lava flows and tectonic forces are behind this dynamic scene captured recently by ESA’s Mars Express of a region scarred by the Solar System’s largest volcano, Olympus Mons.

The image was taken on 23 January by the spacecraft’s high-resolution stereo camera, and focuses on a region known as Sulci Gordii, which lies about 200 km east of Olympus Mons.

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(Source: astronemma, via astronemma)

A short sequence of photos showing some craters and linear features on Mars’s moon Phobos.  Photographed by the Viking 1 Orbiter.

(Source: pappubahry)

Put all your bad omens aside
— This is what it really means when a planet is in retrograde

You usually hear about a planet being “in retrograde” from astrologers, which might give you the impression that the term is mystical jargon. In fact, it does have an astronomical meaning. That meaning just happens to come from a rather outdated concept, when the Earth was still the center of the solar system. Today, it explains why planets seem to go backwards in the sky.

A long time ago, some astronomer looked at the sky, noticed that one of these moving stars had started moving backwards, and thought, “This can’t be good.” That set the precedent for the astrological concept of retrograde astronomical motion as an omen of bad times for people on Earth.

When people finally understood that Earth and the traveling stars were actually all planets moving around a central sun, things became a bit more clear. The reason they change direction is because our orbits are different. In the case with Earth and Mars, Mars has a longer orbit and so when we overtake the planet we view it on the starry background as if it is moving backwards.

Retrograde Mars (APOD)

Via io9