Barack Obama released a comprehensive space policy Saturday that endorsed sending astronauts back to the moon by 2020 as a possible precursor for going to Mars
The first time he has committed to that goal and said the reach for the stars should be a U.S.-led international effort.
“Human exploration beyond low-earth orbit should be a long-term goal and investment for all space-faring countries, with America in the lead,” the policy paper said.
The paper promises funding for an additional flight after the space shuttle’s planned retirement in 2010 and to “expedite” development of a successor.
But beyond promising funding to “minimize” the gap until a new rocket flies — now not scheduled until 2015 — the plan makes no specific financial commitment.
Plans are underway to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by the year 2020.
Earth & Sky spoke with Pete Worden, Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. We asked him why humanity should return to the moon.
Pete Worden: There are a lot of different reasons to go to the moon. First and foremost, it’s our first step in expanding into the solar system. But along that journey, there’s unbelievable scientific opportunities. The moon itself is a very interesting body. It holds the clues to how the solar system was formed, clues that we can’t find on Earth.
A new manned lunar spacecraft, called Orion, is being developed to fly by the year 2015. The idea is to construct a lunar habitat capable of withstanding the harsh environment and also utilizing natural resources, such as moon rocks with ore for nuclear fuel.
Pete Worden: I think it’s very important to understand that space programs are part of the American psyche. I think that if the space program disappeared tomorrow, each citizen would say they’ve lost something, that America is less than it was. Clearly, human exploration is an interesting and important point. I think most people would agree at some point that humanity is expanding into the solar system, into the universe. This is the first step, and that’s an important aspect of it.
Subsurface Martian cows are highly unlikely. But scientists are seriously considering the possibility of bacteria.
A team of researchers reported Thursday that the bursts of methane originated from three specific regions in the planet’s northern hemisphere, where it was midsummer. The gas came out at a rate of 0.6 kilograms a second, the scientists said, and the plume contained 19,000 metric tons of methane.
“This is the first definitive detection of methane on Mars,” Michael J. Mumma of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the leader of the research team, said at a news conference, “and the first definitive maps and identification of active regions of release.”
The findings appeared in a paper published online Thursday by the journal Science. Dr. Mumma said additional scientific papers describing other time periods of the observations, which span from 2001 to last year, were being prepared.
Methane — the simplest of hydrocarbon molecules, with one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms — is fragile in air. It falls apart when hit by ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. That means any methane in the Martian air must be recent.
When the presence of methane was reported in 2004 by three teams of scientists, the findings generated surprise and skepticism because only a few explanations seemed to be plausible.
One was geothermal chemical reactions involving water and heat in volcanoes or underground hot springs. But evidence for recent volcanism on Mars is scarce. Also, volcanoes would be expected to spew other gases like sulfur dioxide, and those are not plentiful in the planet’s atmosphere.
A second possibility is biological. On Earth, a class of bacteria known as methanogens breathes out methane as a waste product.
NASA’s current Mars strategy is to look for signs of water and perhaps life in the planet’s distant past. “Perhaps we need to also think in terms of present-day life holding on somewhere in the subsurface,” said Lisa M. Pratt, a professor of geological sciences at Indiana University who participated in the news conference but was not involved with the research.
Even if the source turns out to be geological in origin or to have come from long-extinct bacteria, the sites would still be prime locations to look for other microbes that thrive on methane as food. “It gives us a bull’s-eye to go after,” Dr. Pratt said.
Because of the difficulty in measuring methane, many scientists wondered if the earlier reports really showed methane or if all three teams had been misled by their data.
Dr. Mumma’s group used telescopes in Hawaii to examine the light reflected off Mars. Different molecules absorb different wavelengths of light, and the scientists reported seeing black lines in the spectrum corresponding to methane and to water vapor. As Mars rotated, bringing different areas into view of the telescope, the scientists could measure variations in the concentrations.
The concentrations in 2003 were densest over three regions — known as Terra Sabae, Nili Fossae and Syrtis Major — and as high as 45 parts per billion. The scientists said that mineralogy of the surface suggested these areas had flowing water in the far Martian past.
Nili Fossae had been under consideration for the landing site for NASA’s next surface rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, but was not among the four finalists announced in November. Last month, scientists reported that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had spotted exposed outcrops of carbonate rocks in Nili Fossae, perhaps the vestige of ancient lakes and seas.
At the news conference, Michael Meyer, the lead scientist for the Mars program at NASA headquarters, said that a recent decision to delay the launching of the rover to 2011 from 2009 could allow reconsideration of Nili Fossae. An instrument aboard the science laboratory would be able to detect methane at levels of 100 parts per trillion.
Year-end reviews of top news stories often reek of gloom and doom. Not so with top science/technology stories. Lists assembled by scientific organizations and publications tend to glow with discovery and promise. A small sampling makes the point.
Major advances in geneticists’ ability to reprogram living cells made most of those lists. The journal Science calls it the “breakthrough of the year.” This is the ability to take a living adult cell – say a skin cell – and return it to the state of a stem cell. That’s a cell that can become any one of many different types of cells. The new techniques for such reprogramming demonstrated last year represent such an advance over anything done in the past that geneticists expect to gain unprecedented insight into what Science calls “the biology of how a cell decides its fate.”
Equally prominent is the demonstration for the first time ever that astronomers can see alien planets directly from telescopes on the ground and in space. Over 300 planets orbiting other stars have been found so far. Astronomers located them by analyzing how their gravity tugged on their star or how they dimmed the star’s light when passing in front of it. Now several alien worlds have been imaged directly in what one astronomer called “the beginning of a new era” in planet hunting.
Also, astronomers using the infrared sensor on the Hubble Space Telescope have detected carbon dioxide and methane on an alien planet. Both gases are considered possible indicators of organic life processes. That planet is too hot to sustain life. But NASA says demonstrating that such biomarkers can be detected encourages astronomers to expect that they can pick up life signs on smaller more hospitable planets when the next-generation James Webb Space Telescope is on orbit around 2013.
There was new encouragement in searching for ways to make hydrogen a practical fuel. Chemists have used electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for two centuries. But the catalysts (such as platinum) used to facilitate the process are too costly and require conditions too specialized for large scale use. Last year, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology team reported successful use of a catalyst based on relatively cheap and abundant cobalt that works under relatively easily maintained conditions. There’s a long way to go from this lab demonstration to an industry that uses sunlight-generated electricity to produce hydrogen fuel. But, as a commentary in Science pointed out, with the route to a practical catalyst now open, experts expect progress can be swift.
Advances in computing power and in analysis using DNA and related life molecules encouraged scientists in their quest to understand the development of earthly life. Researchers reported that 70 percent of the DNA of the extinct mammoth now has been sequenced. They expect soon to read the entire mammoth code. And at France’s University of Lyon, Manolo Gouy and colleagues reported getting a better estimate of the nature and date of the last common ancestor from which organic life subsequently evolved billions of years ago. The clues are hidden in the present-day chemistry of organic life.