Octophins of Europa/Chapter 2/Discovery

Jupiter has 53 named moons including Europa, foreground. Scientists believe there are at least 69 Jovian moons, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration /NASA image


AFTER John Ginan was formally accepted for the Europa Colony Program (ECP) in early 2015, his first order of business was to spend at least three days in a NASA psychiatric facility. That was where he got the "Spoonman" moniker.

NASA's Europa-colony recruiters had suspected he was bipolar psychologically during the "First Wave" colonist-selection process; but his intelligence and physical-endurance assessments had registered at the top of the scales. In addition, stigma over most mental health conditions had not been a barrier to NASA employment for more than a century.

Spoonman stuck as a nickname because of all the ingenious spoon inventions that he created in the Cape Canaveral Behavioral Health Unit (BHU). Like the plastic knives and forks that patients received with their BHU meals, spoons were considered potentially dangerous objects; and patients had to ask for spoons if they wanted to snack between meals.

In general, John Ginan loved to eat sweets; in particular, he adored ice cream. Finding ways to enjoy his favorite dessert without asking for a spoon had fired the flames of his imagination.

First, he discovered no spoon was required at all when raiding the BHU's refrigerator-freezer, which was always stocked with vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The seemingly endless supply of frozen temptations in the freezer box were packaged in small, tub-like paper containers. The soon-to-be-dubbed Spoonman had realized quickly that he could pull off the little containers' lids, then tear off about half of the containers' remaining paper to consume the delicious contents without using a spoon.

Second, this 26th-century man followed in the cheesy footsteps of a 20th-century pop icon -- old fashioned television's Angus McGyver. Spoonman's grandfather, Daniel Ginan, had a favorite joke about McGyver that he would spring on anyone around him whenever necessity became the mother of invention: "McGyver could make a hand grenade out of a potato and a tampon!"

John Ginan discovered several other ways to craft spoons in the BHU:

• He could combine the paper lids from two or three of the little ice cream tubs to make a rudimentary spoon, which was particularly effective if he had the patience to allow the frozen treat to melt a bit.
• He extrapolated from the paper-lid-turned-spoon invention to other forms of utilizing readily available thick paper, including tool-making with manila folders.
• He realized that the index, middle, and ring digits could form an effective spoon -- ideally with a sink nearby to wash his sticky fingers.

When the BHU staff came to appreciate these displays of ingenuity, they started calling their ingenious patient Spoonman among themselves. Much to their chagrin, John Ginan had extraordinary hearing, so he called them out at the end of Day 1 in the BHU, insisting that the psychiatric staff and his sole fellow patient, Jim Pappel, call him Spoonman.

They all dutifully honored his request, and the Spoonman sobriquet stuck like glue.

Opening positions in chess /Wikimedia Commons image

Jim Pappel

Jim Pappel also was being evaluated in the BHU for "unspecified" bipolar disorder. Despite the commonality of being mechanical engineers in the ECP, the contrasts between Jim and Spoonman could not have been more stark.

Unlike Spoonman, who had no awareness of his precarious mental state before he was recruited for the ECP, Jim had known he was bipolar for more than a decade. He just chose to ignore it.

Unlike Spoonman, who grew up in a relatively stable neighborhood in Manhattan, Jim grew up in a low-income housing project in the perennially tough North End of Hartford, Connecticut.

Unlike Spoonman, who could trace his ancestry to the Mayflower Pilgrims and had such a fair complexion that his skin was almost transparent, Jim could trace his ancestry to the slave trade in Nigeria and had such dark skin that he was "out-of-Africa brown" as his grandmother Angela Pappel would often say.

Unlike Spoonman, who had no children, Jim had sired his first son when he was 16.

Spoonman had an itch to play chess from Day 1 of his confinement in the BHU, and he defeated two staff members handily, so his confidence had been transformed to hubris. Jim was game for the challenge on Day 1 of his three-day stay in The Unit.

The pair met over breakfast on Day 2 of Spoonman's BHU stay.

"One of the psychiatric nurses says you have rolled over two pretty good chess playahs on the BHU staff," Jim said, making his first move of the psychological game-within-the-game of chess.

"I am on a roll. If you want to play, why don't you go ahead and take white. I'll give you the first-move advantage," Spoonman replied, brimming with confidence as he gestured with his pancake-laden plastic fork to the chess board and pieces he had set up at an empty table in the nearly empty BHU cafeteria.

"Alright, but don't think you are going to play teacher and preacher on me. You are probably in the BHU because you don't know who you are; and I'm not interested in hearing any lecturing from anybody in this place."

"Sounds like you are bringing your 'A game' to this match, Jimbo!"

Jim quietly moved himself and his breakfast tray to the cafeteria's de facto chess table, then made his second move in the psychological game-within-the-game. "Nobody ever called me Jimbo in the hood. Your move," he said, advancing his queen's pawn two squares.

"It's about time somebody here challenged me for the middle of the board," Spoonman said, matching Jim's opening move by advancing his queen's pawn to block encroachment into his side of the board.

"Didn't you hear me when I said no teaching and no preaching? Are you going to play this game, or are you just gonna to talk about it?" Jim said in a serious tone as he advanced one of his knights to bring more force to bear in the center of the battlefield. "I'll say this: I don't care whether I win this match or not. I'm playing this game to figure out how you play, so I can definitely beat you in the next game!"

"Maybe I should start focusing on my A game," Spoonman replied, pushing his king's pawn forward one square to help brace his shiny black pieces against the growing potential of a bloody onslaught from his apparently skillful opponent.

"You're not listening. You're talking. I'm not bringing my best 'game' to this match. I already told you what I'm doing, and I'll tell you again. This round is all about figuring you out -- discovering how you play the game."

Jim's harsh rhetoric took hold on Spoonman as he pondered his next move. "Alright, alright, I'll focus on the game. Why don't you tell me where you're from?"

"I thought you wanted to focus on the game; but if you really want to know where I grew up, I was born in New London, Connecticut, and grew up in Venice, South Carolina.

Spoonman fell silent, realizing that he had probably lost the game-within-the-game and that he was at least one move behind in the mounting struggle to control the center of the playing field. The next hour of the match was fought hard, move-by-move, with barely a word said.

After the inevitable blood-letting in the center of the board, Spoonman conceded, "I'm not going to win this game, but I can play you to a stalemate."

"That's the first nearly intelligent thing you've said since we sat down to play," Jim said, pressing his advantage in the game-within-the-game.

"We're playing for a stalemate now," Spoonman replied.

"No, I can still win. You're playing for a stalemate. You really don't have a clue of who you are, or why you are here in the BHU, do you?"

Spoonman managed to fight Jim to a stalemate, but the effort was exhausting and emotionally raw. "I get it now," he said to his more-than-worthy chess adversary. "You were my teacher and my preacher."

"No, you don't get it at all," Jim said flatly. "This match wasn't about teaching, or preaching, or even chess. It was about your overblown ego and cocky attitude."

"I learned at least one thing, Jim: Over confidence can get me killed."

The next day, which was slated to be Spoonman's last in the BHU, he requested to spend one more day in The Unit.

On Day 1, all Spoonman wanted to do was get out of the BHU, but he had come to appreciate the group therapy sessions and coping skills he was learning. Additionally, the Day 2 care-team meeting after his humbling chess encounter with Jim had been an Earth-shattering eye-opener: He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

The diagnosis spurred both shock and relief in the blond-haired, blue-eyed wonder man.

The revelation that he had been bipolar for more than a decade was shocking.

When his NASA psychiatrist, Dr. Zeppelbaum, announced the diagnosis during his daily care-team meeting, Spoonman felt like he had looked up and saw a piano dangling in mid-air above his head. How, he asked himself in that moment, had such a dangerous condition develop without his considerably capable intellect being aware of it?

The relief associated with discovering his bipolar disorder was equally heavy with gravity: Much of his struggles and triumphs as a young man now made sense.

In terms of size and mass, Jupiter dwarfs all of its moon, including Europa. /NASA image 

Octophins of Europa/Chapter 1/Going Home

Europa is a satellite of Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. Scientists believe vast oceans of liquid water are below the mysterious moon's frozen surface. /NASA image


THE year is 2517, and half of the United States has surrendered to the advancing glaciers.

The front line of America's desperate struggle against mountains of ice stretches 3,000 miles, coast-to-coast from Hilton Head, South Carolina, to San Francisco. The summer is over, and the entire nation is bracing for yet another brutally cold winter.

John "Spoonman" Ginan has not seen his father, Goodman, since he began terrestrial-exploration training at Cape Canaveral on his birthday, Jan. 2.

Spoonman could fly no further north than D.C. to get as close as possible to New York City, which was home to him in many ways. The Modern Ice Age had made Reagan International Airport the last bastion of U.S. aviation north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The last leg of Spoonman's journey home is a bone-chilling trek on every snow machine imaginable. At the Reagan airport, the bevy of vehicles available to most travelers with family or professional business in The Big Apple is a menagerie of machinery. The collection at the airport's ground-transportation depot ranges from 100-year-old Arctic Cats, trailer-equipped snowmobiles, and the speedy anti-gravity Snow Devils that the U.S. government started deploying nation-wide in 2508.

Traveling in the trailer of a relatively new model snowmobile seems like the best value, so Spoonman tosses his backpack next to the spare gasoline canister and gingerly slides into the trailer's unexpectedly comfortable banana seat.

Goodman Ginan

When Spoonman emerges from the subway station in Hoboken, New Jersey, he does what he always does when he comes home -- gaze at the greatest walled city of all time. When it had become clear around 2220 that the Modern Ice Age had begun in the prior century, the citizens of NYC faced a choice: fight or flight.

Manhattan had decided to accept the Herculean challenge, designing then constructing walls of reinforced concrete 50-feet wide and 50-feet tall. The inhabitants of the great city's other three boroughs fled south.

Spoonman decides to take a creaky Arctic Cat with two other travelers across the long-frozen-solid and glacier-covered Hudson River to The Great Wall's Pier 45 Parapet. After tipping the Cat's driver generously, he looks at the parapet's entryway with mixed emotions -- this would be his last visit to the first city he had ever known. Like his wife and most of the other astronauts, engineers, and builders in Earth's first wave of Europa colonists, Spoonman's fate was to die on Jupiter's ice-clad, water-world moon.

The Pier 45 Parapet is one of seventeen 70-foot-high titanium towers that interlock The Great Wall and help protect America's financial center from the Northeastern Glacier's megaton pressure. After passing through the parapet's base, Spoonman re-hitches his backpack and scampers two blocks to the Christopher Street subway station. His next stop would be where he could always find his father in the hour after dawn -- atop the Battery Park Parapet.

Before he could feel his father's warm embrace in the chilled air that blankets the city, Spoonman climbs the hundreds of artfully crafted stairs that spiral up the inner wall of the Battery Park Parapet. In addition to being relatively close to Goodman's apartment in Greenwich Village, this rook-like outpost has unique commanding views. To the north, all of Manhattan is visible. To the south and east, feet-thick ice cover the once-bustling harbor, Long Island Sound, and the vast frozen expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

Spoonman opens the exit door at the top of the spiral staircase silently, hoping to surprise his father. He sees his dad's back, which is covered by a bright orange parka. Goodman had been surveying the icy wasteland surrounding the city since dawn. Now, he is deep in thought about his son's months-long journey to Europa, Jupiter's ice-clad satellite.

"The day is always darkest before the dawn," Spoonman says, borrowing a catch phrase that his father has told him at least dozens of times.

Goodman spins on his heels in an instant, the sound of his son's voice breaking the spell that the mysterious moon had cast upon him.

"Son! I was beginning to think I would have a frost-bit nose by the time you showed up," the older man says.

Father and son then hold each other in a bear hug, swaying gently as puffs of their flash-frozen breath flow from their fur-lined parka hoods.

After 30 seconds that alternately seem like an eternity and an instant for Spoonman as his father holds him close, Goodman leads his son to the parapet's edge.

"The Northeast Glacier is still inching its way up The Great Wall, you know," the retired mechanical engineer says.

"I know," Spoonman says, staring intently down the concrete slope of The Great Wall to the meters-thick sheet of ice and detritus that has encased the city since before he was born at Mount Sinai Hospital in 2483. "New Yorkers are lucky they listened to you and grandfather instead of Reginald Thump."

The son sensed his father's back stiffen reflexively at the mention of the Ginan family's arch nemesis.

Real estate magnate Reginald Thump served a shortened term as president of the United States because he was impeached and removed from office. /TLB Designs image


"Thump's plan for The Great Wall would have heaped cataclysm on top of disaster," Goodman says flatly, using his favorite turn of phrase when describing anything related to the real estate magnate and disgraced former U.S. president's ill-conceived scheme to save Manhattan.

"If that decrepit ass-hat had had his way," he said, looking over his right shoulder at Thump's frost-covered golden tower, "the glacier would have razed the city decades ago."

Goodman and his father were both outstanding mechanical engineers.

Thump's brilliance was limited to the mechanisms of turning a fast profit, usually on assets that were leveraged with debt to the hilt.

To be effective, Goodman's father knew years before the first gargantuan bucket of concrete was poured that The Great Wall would have to be the biggest public works project in the history of civilization. While he was president, Thump's minimalist approach to construction of the glacier-barrier wall would have saved U.S. taxpayers about a trillion dollars, but it would not have saved the city.

Thump could not help seeking the limelight and being a slave to his self-interest. Single-minded selfishness was the root cause of Thump's scandal-shortened single term as president of the United States. Narcissism doomed his presidency to impeachment in the House of Representatives and removal from office in a landslide vote in the Senate.

The trillionaire's attempt to cut corners during the final phase of The Great Wall's construction probably sealed his fate as the worst president in U.S. history. He had rarely emerged from his golden, 58-story monolith since Marine One had delivered him to the helipad on the skyscraper's roof in 2500. The city's vibrant tabloid press called Thump the Hermit of 5th Avenue.

"I am a compassionate man," Goodman says, draping his right arm across his son's broad shoulders, "but I can't wait much longer for that shit-heel to draw his last gasping breath."

Artist's conception of Europa's frozen surface, Jupiter, and the Sun /NASA image

Genevieve Ginan

AFTER talking for two hours about the great city of New York, The Great Wall, and Spoonman's impending great adventure, father and son made the slightly dizzying decent down the Battery Park Parapet's spiral staircase.

Before they parted outside the titanic tower, the men gaze at one another's faces through their parka hoods. "I'll be alright, dad," Spoonman says.

"I know, but I also know that this is the last time that I will see you in the flesh."

Neither of the engineers wanted to cry, so their last-ever clutch is short and sweet.

The astronaut-engineer is hankering for lunch before starting his journey south back to Cape Canaveral; but his eagerness is fueled by love, not hunger.

The Battery Park Parapet is only three blocks from the Golden Orchid, the Thai restaurant where Spoonman first met Genevieve Leigh.

In the summer of 2514, the then-bachelor had arrived at the eatery before his future bride, whom he had met online through the NASA astronaut online community. Through the restaurant's thick plate-glass window facing the street, he had watched with amusement the beautiful and brilliant woman's confusion as she tried to open the locked door that led to an apartment above the Golden Orchid.

He sensed the native New Yorker's embarrassment as she walked toward their table wearing a tight-fitting blouse and a smile that betrayed her nervousness, and her dismay over picking the wrong entryway door.

"Genevieve, it's great to see you," Spoonman said, attempting with great difficulty to pronounce his lunch-mate's name with a French accent.

"I'm so flustered," the tall brunette with dark-chocolate eyes said as she took her seat opposite from Spoonman across their ornate dining table.

"Your agitation is nothing compared to how I feel about butchering the pronunciation of your name."

"Please call me Genie," she said, quickly signally to a waitress before the conversation spun out of control into premature intimacy,

"The curry dishes are amazing here," Genie said, hoping to change the subject.

"I love Thai food, so pretty much every kind of curry they have here will work for me!" Spoonman said, with the prompting of his empty belly and gratitude for Genie's abilities as a conversationalist.

She had been recruited to be among the first Europa colonists for her communications skills, which were essential to overcome the 40-minute audio-signal delay over the 390-million miles separating Earth and Europa.

Communication skills also would be essential if the colonists encountered intelligent life on the Jovian moon.

After its awkward beginning, the rest of the soon-to-be couple's first date flowed effortlessly. The topics of conversation ranged rapidly from growing up in Manhattan, to the rivalry between their respective high schools, to the Europa colonist selection process, to what the pair expected when their spacecraft arrived at the ice-encrusted moon as it orbited the solar system's largest planet.

The curry had been very good.

Their first kiss outside the Golden Orchid was much more satisfying.

Scientists believe Jupiter's powerful gravitational forces are responsible for fractures in Europa's ice-encrusted surface. /NASA image

Reminder of humanity's place in the universe

Astronomer Carl Sagan was one of the most influential scientists and teachers of the 20th century. Millions of people around the world gained insights about the universe, and their place in it, from his television series "Cosmos" on PBS. /NASA image

Genius, compassion and humility are the keys to survival for humanity in the Atomic Era.

Carl Sagan possessed these priceless qualities in enormous quantities. In 1990, he urged NASA to spin Voyager I around to capture an image of Earth before the spacecraft left our solar system. That image of the "pale blue dot" where humanity will stand or fall inspired Sagan's genius, compassion and humility to reach astronomical proportions.

Sagan's words in the three-minute video below pack more wisdom than most of us will accumulate in a lifetime.

Video adapted from "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey"

Astronaut Scott Carpenter: genius, candor, service

The Mercury Seven gather after survival training in Africa: from left, Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra and Deke Slayton. /NASA image

Navy Cmdr. M. Scott Carpenter died Thursday, Oct. 10, at 88.

Interviewing Scott Carpenter in 2000 as part of a millennium project at the Concord Monitor was unforgettable. I had picked Alan Shepard for my slice of the yearlong Monitor project, which profiled 100 N.H. historical figures.

After somehow obtaining the home phone number of America's fourth astronaut in space, I called Carpenter's house in Boulder, Colo. The then-75-year-old picked up the land-line receiver and proceeded to give me one of the most candid and thought-provoking interviews I've ever had the pleasure to scribble into a notebook. The following is the complete Monitor interview, most of which has never been published before:

CC: Tell me about the competition for that first American flight into space.

Carpenter: (Shepard) was a very bright and articulate guy, but that first flight should have been mine. I remember thinking at that time that we were like the Seven Musketeers, and the camaraderie was incredible. He and John were the ones with leadership ambition. ... Al had a need to excel and curiosity. ... For Al, it was the competition. He felt for his comrades but he also had a need to be better than anyone else. Everything he did was evidence of that. He was single-minded in his pursuit of the first flight.

CC: What was the reaction among the other Mercury Seven when Shepard was chosen to be first in space?

Carpenter: I think John was most disappointed.

CC: The early astronauts played a large design role in the space program. Was engineering a key skill for the Mercury Seven?

Carpenter: Engineering was a key skill, and we were all excellent.

CC: How would you characterize President Kennedy's role in the space program?

Carpenter: It was his enduring legacy. ... We were sort of contemporaries. I had tremendous respect for him. Without Kennedy, we wouldn't have done this. He inspired it. But that inspiration outlived him.

CC: Did the Mercury Seven run wild at Coco Beach?

Carpenter: The same behavior is found in any group of young men. It was inappropriate, but that's the way it was.

CC: What is the legacy of the U.S. space program?

Carpenter: We'll get more return on that investment than we will on any other investment of that time. It played a role in bringing the Soviets down. It helped establish American technological preeminence. We had a new view, a new way of looking at the world. That's the secret of this whole venture -- the new knowledge that we brought back. It's beyond valuing.

U.S. astronaut Scott Carpenter ready to go on Aurora 7 launch day, May 24, 1962. /NASA image

Carpenter trains in a Mercury capsule simulator. /NASA image

Carpenter was a fellow ocean exploration and science pioneer with Jacques Cousteau in the 1960s. /Image via rolexmagazine.com

Carpenter helped test the first generation of modern underwater technology as a member of the Navy SEA-LAB project in the 1960s. /U.S. Navy image

John Glenn and Carpenter prepare for the future senator from Ohio's historic first U.S. orbital flight on Feb. 20, 1962. /NASA image

The members of the Mercury Seven were accomplished pilots in the Navy, Air Force and Marines. /NASA image

Carpenter tugs at his pressure suit after his completing the U.S. space program's second orbital mission in the Aurora 7 Mercury capsule. /NASA image

After setting an undersea endurance record in the Navy's SEA-LAB submersible living quarters, Carpenter attempts to have a conversation with President Johnson. A recording of the exchange features the aquanaut's helium-induced Mickey Mouse voice and an obviously distracted commander in chief. /U.S. Navy image

The Mercury Seven remained close friends through their lives. With Carpenter's passing, Glenn is the last of the first astronauts. /image via upi.com

Space telescope that found new worlds probably lost

The Kepler space telescope's honeycombed main mirror wieghs 86 percent less than solid designs. /NASA photo

After extending its 3.5-year mission by about six months, NASA's revolutionary Kepler space telescope is crippled and probably only has months to live.

Kepler has collected data leading to the stunning conclusion that there are potentially billions of Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy. Kepler has discovered 132 planets that Earth-based telescopes have confirmed. There are 2,700 other Kepler planet discoveries awaiting confirmation.

The Goldilocks Principal underlies Kepler's mission: finding planets that are not only Earth-sized but also orbiting a Sun-like star in a "habitable zone." This orbital sweet spot is not too warm and not too cold; it's just right to support life.

With two of its four gyroscopes now inoperative, Kepler has enough fuel onboard to steady itself for about six months. The second "reaction wheel" broke last week, and Kepler's wobble is posing a daunting challenge to NASA engineers.

In a May 15 prepared statement, NASA reported: "With the failure of a second reaction wheel, it's unlikely the spacecraft will be able to return to the high pointing accuracy that enables its high precision (photo imaging)."

The following images are artists' conceptions of planets Kepler has observed:

Kepler-47 is a circumbinary solar system in the constellation Cygnus, one of the space telescope's primary study areas. Multiple planets orbit two stars in Kepler-47. /NASA image

Kepler-62f is the smallest Earth-like planet discovered in a solar system's habitable zone. /NASA image

Kepler-69c is a super-Earth-sized planet in the Cygnus constellation. /NASA image

KOI-961 is a compact Cygnus solar system similar in size to Jupiter and its moons. The KOI-961 planets orbit a red dwarf star. /NASA image

Kepler-35b is a Saturn-sized planet orbiting two stars. /NASA image

Kepler-22b is the first Earth-like planet found orbiting in its solar system's habitable zone. /NASA image

Kepler-11 has a Sun-like star and six planets. /NASA image

Cassini spacecraft one of NASA's star robots

Mimas, the smallest of Saturn's inner moons, casts its shadow into the outer rings of the planet. Equinox on Saturn, when the Sun crosses the plane of the Ringed Planet's equator, and day and night are of equal length, occurs about every 15 years. In the few months before and after Saturn's equinox, several of the planet's inner moons cast shadows on its rings.

 

With Saturn and Earth at the closest point to each other in their orbits around the Sun, spectacular views of the Ringed Planet will be possible for the next few weeks using even a small telescope. But the best views of Saturn and its moons over the past decade have been from the Cassini spacecraft designed by NASA and European space agencies.

The Cassini-Huygens mission and the Mars rovers are star performers in NASA's drive to explore the solar system with robotic technology. Cassini has been exploring Saturn and its moons since 2004, deploying the Huygens lander in 2005 for a successful touchdown on Saturn's surface and sending thousands of images back to Earth since.

Manned spaceflight has many allures, but robotic space missions will have far longer reach at far lower cost for the foreseeable future.

Saturn is the second-largest planet in the solar system, with hallmark rings and more than 60 moons. /NASA images

Time progression images show a storm in Saturn's northern hemisphere raging for more than 18 months.

Saturn's dense, murky atmosphere serves as a backdrop for Rhea, the Ringed Planet's second-largest moon. This view from Cassini looks toward the rings at a 1 degree angle, making the unilluminated side of the rings appear to be a solid straight band.

An infrared image shows a ring of aurora stretching around Saturn's north polar region. Cassini also has captured images of massive hurricane-like storms swirling at Saturn's poles.

The Sun reflects off a liquid methane sea on Titan, the Ringed Planet's largest moon. Titan and Earth are the only known places in the solar system with bodies of liquid on their surfaces.

Twisted fissures show the effect of powerful tectonic forces on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

 

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, appears deceptively small compared to Dione, Saturn's third-largest moon, in this image captured by Cassini.

Titan rises over the Ringed Planet's horizon. Tethys, a relatively small member of Saturn's large and various extended moon family, is a shiny ball of ice spinning around the gas giant.

No lifeboat: Earth is humanity's hope for the future

On April 22, 1970, a crowd of environmentalists and other activists gathers in New York City to rally for the first Earth Day. /Image via Hulton Archive

Humanity could not exist without its lush green and blue planet Earth. In comparison, the other planets in our solar system are barren wastelands. We would likely have to burrow under ground to colonize the Moon and Mars.

Earth is humanity's only hope for the future, the basis upon which all our hopes and dreams rest. Understanding and protecting Earth's atmosphere is one of the greatest collective challenges facing our species. Human civilizations thrive when the temperature is just right, ice ages and epic droughts leave their mark with the death of millions.

Humanity came to life on Earth, and life will never be better for humanity than on Earth.

And Earth is hurtling through the endlessly cold darkness of space alone. Ignoring good stewardship of the planet poses enormous risk on a global scale.

Earth viewed over a Moon horizon during NASA's Apollo 8 mission in December 1968. Apollo 8 was humanity's first visit to another world, establishing the capability to travel to the planet's nearest neighbor and gathering photos of the Moon's desolate surface. /NASA image

Killer meteors: 'If it's coming in three weeks, pray'

On Feb. 15, a school bus-sized asteroid exploded several miles over Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring more than 1,200 people. The B612 Foundation, which is led by former U.S. astronaut Ed Lu, estimates there are 10 million asteroids of similar size in the inner solar system. /Image via abc.go.com


Scientists testifying before Congress on Tuesday said the effort to find small killer asteroids is behind schedule and there is little that could be done if a large asteroid capable of destroying civilization were detected a few weeks before it collided with Earth.

NASA is leading a global push to find and track these "near-Earth objects." The U.S. space agency is confident it has found 90 percent of near-Earth objects capable of wreaking the kind worldwide catastrophe that occurred 60 million years ago, when scientists believe a large asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs as well as thousands of other animal and plant species on the planet. But if there's a mile-wide asteroid bearing down on Earth now, we're apparently doomed.

"The answer to you is, if it’s coming in three weeks, pray," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

The effort to find smaller killer asteroids such as the one that exploded over Russia last month and injured more than 1,200 people is behind schedule, Bolden and President Obama's top science adviser testified. "Unfortunately, the number of undetected potential 'city killers' is very large," John Holdren said. "It’s in the range of 10,000 or more."

Congress has directed NASA to find 90 percent of near-Earth objects that are at least as big as a football field by 2020. But Bolden said more money and a new space-based telescope are needed to reach that goal. At the current rate of funding, he said the effort to detect "city killer" asteroids is about 10 years behind schedule.

The B612 Foundation says several years of advanced warning would be required to launch a mission to deflect an approaching killer asteroid: "In general, to deflect an asteroid we would need several years to decades of advance notice. That is because the amount (of energy) you need to deflect an asteroid greatly increases the closer it is to hitting you. In addition, we need a suitable launch window that allows a spacecraft to reach the asteroid."

Curiosity hits hole-in-one in search for life on Mars

The NASA Curiosity rover's first test drill hole in Martian rock apparently tapped an ancient lake bed. In an even more stunning discovery, the gray, clay-like rock bears traces of carbon that could be evidence of life from the Red Planet's disant past. /NASA images

A little luck sprinkled with a measure of NASA genius appears to have led to a major discovery on Mars.

In August, NASA's Curiosity rover landed close enough to a suspected ancient lake bed that mission leaders decided to take a detour away from their top objective, 14,000-foot-tall Mount Sharp, to collect a rock sample. In the Curiosity mission gameplan, the first use of the drill at the end of rover's robotic arm was planned to be only a test of the hardware and a "flushing" of the rover's rock dust collection and analysis system to make sure there was no contamination from Earth.

But photos of both the drill site and the rock dust collected from the drilling supported the lake bed theory, and an analysis of the rock dust was launched. Here are some excerpts from Curiosity chemistry instrumentation scientist David Blake's comments on NPR's Science Friday:

"We actually drove away from our primary destination, which is a place called Mount Sharp. It's a 5,000-meter, about 14,000-foot-tall, mountain in the middle of Gale Crater that has all these layered sediments from early Mars. So that's our ultimate destination. But it's about eight kilometers away. We kind of drove in the opposite direction because there was this real interesting area that many people on the team thought actually could be a lake bed. And so we're going to do one additional drill here to kind of make sure what we have and understand what it is, and then we'll take the long march to Mount Sharp. ...

"If we find (in the second drilling sample) what we think we've already found in the minerals, which tell us it's a habitable environment, and if the SAM instrument, which is a suite of instruments that do organic analyses, can find some organic compounds that clearly aren't from Earth, well, that would be a home run.

"And I'm not even suggesting it would be from organisms, just to know that there was carbon contained -- organic carbon -- contained inside this rock for three billion years that we could come there and analyze today."

Curiosity rover mission faces first glitch on Mars

 The Curiosity rover scoops its first sample of Martian rock last month. /NASA image

Looks like NASA is having its first OMG moment since landing the Curiosity rover on Mars last year. Due to a flash memory problem last week, the rover's main computer has been switched into a "safe mode" and a backup computer has been activated while NASA engineers try to figure out what's wrong.

March 5 Update:
- NASA reported progress in the effort to overcome a problem in Curiosity's primary "A-Side" computer. The Mars rover came out of computer "safe mode" March 2 and reactivated its high-gain antenna March 3. Curiosity could return to full operation this weekend, after engineers program the one-ton rover's "B-Side" computer to carry the mission.
- Computerworld.com reported the switchover of the operational software to Curiosity's backup computer is nearly complete: "At this point, NASA engineers are looking to keep Curiosity running on the B-Side system, while repairing the A-Side so it can be on stand-by as the new backup. NASA is on a deadline to get the rover fully functional before April 4, when communication with all Mars rovers and orbiters will end for about a month.

NASA press release

Newt was right: Develop a colony on the Moon

Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan take NASA's lunar rover for a spin on Dec. 11, 1972. /NASA image

 

Space exploration offers many benefits to humanity, mainly in the form of driving forward technological advancement. The best example of space exploration spurring technological innovation is NASA's Apollo Moon missions, which not only developed many valuable commercial products such as portable television cameras but also provided a critically important market for the first generation of computer chips.

But it's hard to understand the stubborn determination among many space exploration enthusiasts for sending manned missions to Mars. Humanity has unfinished business on the Moon, literally. Developing mineral resources and energy production on the Moon has the potential to generate economic activity valued at trillions of dollars.

The announcement this week that multimillionaire space tourist Dennis Tito is planning a privately funded manned fly-by of Mars is the latest misguided, and probably ill-fated, proposal to send humans to the Red Planet. Tito is expected to provide details about this so-called "Mission for America" during a Feb. 27 press conference.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation, a nonprofit group Tito created, provided a rough outline of the Mars shot on Wednesday:
- The mission would launch in 2018 and last 501 days
- Existing technology would be used, specifically the SpaceX Dragon capsule, which would be thrust toward Mars at the tip of a powerful rocket SpaceX has under development
- The journey would be a no-frills ride for the two-member crew, which would be expected to live on survivalist rations and clean up with sponge baths for a year and a half

Tito's foundation provided the following justification for the daring mission: "This 'Mission for America' will generate new knowledge, experience and momentum for the next great era of space exploration. It is intended to encourage all Americans to believe again, in doing the hard things that make our nation great, while inspiring youth through Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and motivation."

While I admire Tito's noble aspirations, establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon could accomplish the same goals and probably make life better on our home planet. Simply put, generating inspiration from space exploration is very nice, but generating inspiration and cash from human activity in space would be even better.

Several proposals have been made in recent years to return humans to the Moon and put them to work. Here's a sampling:
- During his 2012 U.S. presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich announced a plan to establish a colony on the Moon by 2020. While the Georgia Republican's proposal drew widespread criticism over its grandiose goals and Made-in-America focus, Forbes magazine hailed the potential for scientific advancement and economic development.
- In 2009, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin called on the United States to lead an international effort to return humans to the Moon: "In a new global effort to use the Moon to establish a global space consortium with a lunar surface facility as its epicenter, America can gain new leadership, international respect, and technological progress by collaborating with emerging space powers, not merely competing with them."
- In 2006, NASA released a document listing nearly 200 scientific and commercial projects that could be established on the Moon or in lunar orbit, including Earth and solar observation posts, human health experiments, power generation, communications systems and mining operations.
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Any colonization of the Moon would require exploitation of lunar resources such as ice and minerals. NASA's recent GRAIL mission should provide insight into the lunar subsurface.

NASA's Mars rover triumph for American ingenuity

On Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover snapped a series of images that were combined back on Earth to create a self-portrait of the car-sized robotic vehicle. The mosaic image above shows Curiosity at a location in Mars' Gale Crater that NASA dubbed "Rocknest," where the rover scooped its first samples of Martian soil. Four scoop marks can be seen in front of the rover, which dug a fifth hole after taking pictures of itself. /NASA image


Reports of the death of American technological prowess have been greatly exaggerated.

After successfully executing the most complicated robotic landing on another planet in August, NASA's latest Mars mission is literally on a roll, with the Curiosity rover collecting a treasure trove of scientific information on the Red Planet. Curiosity has been transmitting stunning images of the Martian surface back to Earth for months, and the rover successfully completed a critically important first use of the drill at the end of its robotic arm about 10 days ago.

The images shown in this blog post show the potential for the Curiosity mission to revolutionize our understanding of the geologic history of Mars. And the rover appears to be on the right track to achieving the mission's grandest goal: determining whether life has ever existed on the Martian surface.

This mosaic image captured with Curiosity's Mast Camera shows a panoramic view of the Martian surface looking east from "Rocknest." The image has been "white-balanced" to show what the rocks and soils would look like on Earth. /NASA image

On Dec. 7, 2012, Curiosity's Mast Camera captured this image of an outcrop NASA dubbed "Shaler." Scientists believe the layered rock was formed through a geological process called cross-bedding, which occurs on Earth with running water. The presence of liquid water is widely considered as one of the key conditions necessary for life forms to thrive. /NASA image

At an outcrop in an area NASA dubbed "Sheepbed," Curiosity's Mast Camera snapped this image of veiny rock on Dec. 13, 2012. Scientists believe the white veins in the rock are composed of calcium sulfate. On Earth, similar calcium sulfate deposits are formed when liquid water penetrates and circulates through rock fractures. /NASA image

Curiosity reaches 'biggest milestone' since landing

The Curiosity rover has drilled its first holes in Martian rock. The shallow hole on the right was a test run for the drill at the end of the rover's robotic arm. Instruments onboard Curiosity have analyzed the rock powder collected from the deeper hole, and NASA scientists are working to interpret that data. /NASA image


NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars passed the last major test of its equipment about a week ago, using the drill on its robotic arm for the first time.

In a prepared statement released Feb. 9, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, hailed deployment of the drill as a key achievement. "The most advanced planetary robot ever designed is now a fully operating analytical laboratory on Mars," he said. "This is the biggest milestone accomplishment for the Curiosity team since the sky-crane landing last August."

After drilling a shallow test hole, Curiosity bored about 2.5 inches into a rock called "John Klein," which was named in honor of a rover team member who died in 2011. Rock powder collected during the drilling has been analyzed with sensors onboard NASA's six-wheeled robotic geologist, and scientists are working to interpret that data. The car-sized rover is trying to determine whether the Gale Crater on Mars ever had conditions suitable for sustaining life, including clues in Martian rocks that would indicate the presence of liquid water millions of years ago.

Rock powder Curiosity collects is analyzed with the rover's Chemical and Mineralogy instrument as well as its Sample Analysis at Mars instrument.

The CheMin instrument uses X-ray technology to produce data that is transmitted back to Earth for detailed analysis. It can take upto 10 hours for the instrument to process a sample.

The SAM instrument has three devices that analyze rock powder at the molecular level: a quadrupole mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a tunable laser spectrometer. The quadrupole mass spectrometer and gas chromatograph are designed to detect organic compounds that could be the building blocks for Martian life. The tunable laser spectrometer is designed to analyze Martian carbon dioxide and to detect traces of methane. Many life forms on Earth produce carbon dioxide and methane.

Meteorite blast over Russia injures about 1,200

A meteorite explodes over the Ural Mountains in Russia this morning. /Image via newsinfo.inquirer.net


This shot across Earth's bow left a mark.

Russian officials are reporting a meteorite explosion over the Ural Mountains today has injured about 1,200 people, most suffering cut wounds from windows shattered in the blast. While far smaller that the mid-air meteorite explosion linked to the Tunguska Event in 1908, today's celestial event damaged at least 300 buildings, including the collapse of a metal factory's roof.

The meteorite that exploded this morning, which is estimated to have weighed 10 tons when it entered the Earth's atmosphere, literally shook the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia's Ural Mountains. The Russian Interior Ministry reported that about 1,200 people were injured, including more than 200 children.

Dramatic video of the meteorite explosion was captured on the dash cameras of several Russian motorists. Dash cameras are used widely in Russia because citizens fear encounters with corrupt police officers.

Feb. 15 asteroid flyby should be global wakeup call

In June 1908, scientists believe an asteroid exploded in the Earth's atmosphere several miles above a remote area of Siberia, leveling an estimated 80 million trees over an 830 square-mile area. /Image via webodysseum.com


When it comes to celestial objects striking the Earth, size definitely matters.

While the miles-wide asteroid that struck the planet 60 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs gets all the headlines, scientists believe smaller chunks of ice and rock are capable of leveling entire metropolitan areas. Earth likely will be spared an explosive encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14 tomorrow, but the planet apparently wasn't so lucky in 1908.

In what is widely known as the Tunguska Event, an asteroid or comet about the size of 2012 DA14, which is about as big as a cruise ship, entered the Earth's atmosphere on June 30, 1908, then exploded several miles above a remote area of Siberia. Millions of trees were flattened in the blast zone, which spanned an 830 square-mile area. The explosion, estimated to be more than 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, knocked people from their feet as far as 40 miles away.

Given the potential for such collisions to wreak cataclysmic destruction, you would think governments around the world would consider these so-called Near Earth Objects a top priority. “It’s like Mother Nature sending a warning shot across our bow,” Don Yeomans, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said of 2012 DA14 in The Washington Post last week.

It's easy to argue not enough is being done to track Near Earth Objects and to develop technology to alter their course if necessary to protect Earth. Scientists believe they have discovered 95 percent of Near Earth Objects capable of wiping out most terrestial life on the planet. But Near Earth Objects the size of 2012 DA14 are a different story.

"Saying we’re only going to find the civilization-killers is a (sub-par) threshold,” former U.S. astronaut Ed Lu told The Washington Post. “We can do better than that.”

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about 150 feet wide and is estimated to weigh more than a cruise ship. On Feb. 15, the asteroid is expected to pass 17,000 miles from Earth. Many communications satellites orbit the planet at an altitude of 22,000 miles. /NASA image