Category: Mars

European space scientists have strongly recommended a mission equipped with a Rover as the next scientific mission to Mars as part of the European Space Agency?s [ESA] Aurora programme of planetary exploration.

The mission would conduct a detailed analysis of the Martian environment and search for traces of past or present life. A launch in June 2011, followed by a two year journey, would arrive on the Red Planet in June 2013. A detailed proposal will be prepared for consideration by ESA member states at the agency?s Council Meeting at Ministerial Level in December 2005.

The recommendation was made by European scientists at an international space workshop held at Aston University, Birmingham, England on the 6th and 7th April 2005. The ESA workshop, hosted by the UK?s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council [PPARC], brought together space scientists and agency officials from Europe, Canada, North America and the international space community in order to debate robotic mission options up to 2013 in the first phase of the Aurora programme.

Three candidate missions were considered: BeagleNet, ExoMars and its variant ExoMars-Lite. Consideration was also given to the preparatory activities needed to develop a sustainable, long-term Mars Exploration programme and how efforts to 2011 address the requirements of a Mars Sample Return [MSR] mission within an overall Aurora roadmap.

Following scientific and technology presentations of each candidate mission an evaluation process was undertaken by the scientists measured against key criteria. The outcome and consensus of the workshop recommended a mission which blended key technologies and objectives from each of the candidate missions as the first robotic mission in the Aurora programme. This recommendation will form the basis of a detailed proposal by the scientific community to be considered at the ESA?s Council Meeting at Ministerial Level in December 2005.

The recommended mission will consist of a Soyuz launcher to deliver a probe which includes at least one Rover for scientific exploration of the Martian environment. Telecommunications [data relay] between the probe and Earth will be achieved via NASA orbiting spacecraft. The Rover would be equipped with a suite of scientific instruments designed to search for traces of past or present life on Mars; to characterise the shallow subsurface water/geochemical composition and its vertical distribution profile; and to identify surface and environmental hazards to future human missions. Taking into account the exciting and scientifically intriguing results from ESA?s Mars Express orbiter the recommended mission will also incorporate instruments to specifically measure seismic phenomena which could be caused by volcanoes, hydrothermal activity or Marsquakes. The Rover will also contain a drill capable of penetrating the surface to a depth of 2m and a Beagle 2 type life marker experiment such as a Gas Analysis Package [GAP] capable of studying stable isotopes in the atmosphere, rocks, and soil. The entry, descent and landing system [EDLS] will utilise key technologies involving airbags and possibly retrorockets. To be launched by a Soyuz Fregat 2b vehicle in June 2011 from ESA?s spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana the probe and Rover would arrive on the surface of Mars in June 2013 after a two year voyage.

Looking beyond 2011 the scientists confirmed their commitment to collaborating in an international Sample Return Mission in 2016 [which would include sample acquisition and handling, mobility and planetary protection], as a logical sequence to the recommended mission in the future roll out of ESA?s Aurora programme.

Commenting on the workshop Prof. Jean Pierre Swings, Chair of ESA?s Exploration Programme Advisory Committee, said,? This workshop has brought an extremely wide range of scientists together from a diverse range of disciplines to recommend what will be a tremendously exciting mission for European space. It builds upon the success of ESA?s Mars Express whilst driving new technologies that will form the foundation for the future development of the Aurora programme?.

In terms of UK involvement Dr. Mark Sims, University of Leicester and Chair of PPARC?s Aurora Advisory Committee was buoyant,? This is a great result for European planetary exploration with significant involvement for the UK. The UK community has worked hard to ensure that the Aurora programme reflects the scientific and industrial expertise we have in the UK and the recommended mission builds upon the heritage of Beagle 2 and Huygens. We look forward to making major contributions to this scientific mission of discovery to the Red Planet?.

Original Source: ESA News Release

NASA has approved up to 18 more months of operations for Spirit and Opportunity, the twin Mars rovers that have already surprised engineers and scientists by continuing active exploration for more than 14 months.

“The rovers have proven their value with major discoveries about ancient watery environments on Mars that might have harbored life,” said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “We are extending their mission through September 2006 to take advantage of having such capable resources still healthy and in excellent position to continue their adventures.”

The rovers have already completed 11 months of extensions on top of their successful three-month prime missions. “We now have to make long-term plans for the vehicles because they may be around for quite a while,” said Jim Erickson, rover project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Erickson cautioned though, “Either mission could end tomorrow with a random part failure. With the rovers already performing well beyond their original design lifetimes, having a part wear out and disable a rover is a distinct possibility at any time. But right now, both rovers are in amazingly good shape. We’re going to work them hard to get as much benefit from them as we can, for as long as they are capable of producing worthwhile science results.”

“Spirit and Opportunity are approaching targets that a year ago seemed well out of reach,? said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. ?Their successes strengthen NASA’s commitment to a vision with the ambitious targets of returning samples from Mars and sending human explorers to Mars.”

Opportunity is within a few football fields’ length of a region called “Etched Terrain,” where scientists hope to find rocks exposed by gentle wind erosion rather than by disruptive cratering impacts, and rocks from a different time in Mars’ history than any examined so far. “This is a journey into the unknown, to something completely new,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rover’s science instruments.

To reach the Etched Terrain, rover planners have been pushing the rover fast. Opportunity has overtaken Spirit in total distance driven. It has rolled more than three miles — eight times the original goal. On March 20, Opportunity also set a new martian record of 722 feet in a single day’s drive. Drive-distance estimates can vary by a few percent. The long drives take advantage of crossing a plain so smooth it’s “like an East Coast beach,” said JPL’s Jeff Favretto, mission manager on the Opportunity shift in recent weeks. Also, Opportunity’s solar panels, though now dustier than Spirit’s, still generate enough power to allow driving for more than three hours on some days.

Spirit is in much rougher terrain than Opportunity, climbing a rocky slope toward the top of “Husband Hill.” However, with a boost in power from wind cleaning its solar panels on March 9 and with its formerly balky right-front wheel now working normally, Spirit made some longer one-day drives last week than it had for months. “We’ve doubled our power,” said JPL’s Emily Eelkema, mission manager. “It has given us extra hours of operations every day, so we can drive longer and we’ve used more time for observations.”

The jump in power output has taken some urgency out of Spirit’s southward climb. With Mars now beginning southern-hemisphere spring, the sun is farther south in the sky each day. If not for panel-cleaning, Spirit might be facing the prospect of becoming critically short of power if still on the north-facing slope by early June.

“We still want to get to the summit of Husband Hill and then head down into the ‘Inner Basin’ on the other side,” Squyres said. “But now we have more flexibility in how we carry out the plan. Before, it was climb or die.” Cresting the hill is now not as crucial for solar energy, but it still offers allures of potential exposures of rock layers not yet examined, plus a vista of surrounding terrain. In orbital images, the Inner Basin farther south appears to have terracing that hints of layered rock.

Both rovers do have some signs of wear and exposure. Spirit’s rock abrasion tool shows indications that its grinding teeth might be worn away after exposing the interiors of five times more rock targets than its design goal of three rocks. Researchers probably won’t know the extent of wear until Spirit’s next rock-grinding attempt, which may be weeks away. Also, troubleshooting continues for determining whether Opportunity’s miniature thermal emission spectrometer is still usable despite tests indicating a problem last month. All other instruments on both rovers are still working normally.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

This image, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA?s Mars Express spacecraft, shows part of the Medusa Fossae formation and adjacent areas at the highland-lowland boundary on Mars.

The HRSC obtained this image during orbit 917 with a resolution of approximately 13 metres per pixel. The scene shows an area located at about 5? South and 213? East.

The Medusa Fossae formation is an extensive unit of enigmatic origin found near the Martian ?highland-lowland dichotomy boundary? between the Tharsis and Elysium centres of volcanic activity. This dichotomy boundary is a narrow region separating the cratered highlands, located mostly in the southern hemisphere of Mars, from the northern hemisphere’s lowland plains.

The cratered highlands stand two to five kilometres higher than the lowland plains, so the boundary is a relatively steep slope. The processes that created and modified the dichotomy boundary remain among the major unanswered issues in Mars science.

The boundary between the old volcanic plateau region and part of the widespread deposits of the Medusa Fossae formation, called Amazonis Sulci, is shown in this image. In general, the formation appears as a smooth and gently undulating surface, but is partially wind-sculpted into ridges and grooves, as shown in the mosaic of nadir images.

It is commonly agreed that the materials forming Medusa Fossae were deposited by pyroclastic flows or similar volcanic ash falls. The plateau walls of the volcanic massif are partly covered by lava flows and crossed in places by valleys which were most likely carved by fluvial activity.

The remains of water-bearing inner channels are visible in the centre of the valleys and at the bottom of the massif. Superposition of the lobe-fronted pyroclastic flows indicates that the water erosion ended before their deposition. Later, a ?bolide? impacted near the massif and the ejecta blanket was spread as a flow over parts of the plateau, implying water or ice was present in the subsurface at the time of impact.

A bolide is any extraterrestrial body in the 1-10 kilometre size range, which impacts on a planetary surface, explodes on impact and creates a large crater. This is a generic term, used when we do not know the precise nature of the impacting body, whether it is a rocky or metallic asteroid, or an icy comet, for example.

Original Source: ESA News Release

Shifting glaciers and exploding volcanoes aren?t confined to Mars? distant past, according two new reports in the journal Nature.

Glaciers moved from the poles to the tropics 350,000 to 4 million years ago, depositing massive amounts of ice at the base of mountains and volcanoes in the eastern Hellas region near the planet?s equator, based on a report by a team of scientists analyzing images from the Mars Express mission. Scientists also studied images of glacial remnants on the western side of Olympus Mons, the largest of the volcano calderas in the solar system. They found additional evidence of recent ice formation and movement on these tropical mountain glaciers, similar to ones on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa.

In a second report, the international team reveals previously unknown traces of a major eruption of Hecates Tholus less than 350,000 million years ago. In a depression on the volcano, researchers found glacial deposits estimated to be 5 to 24 million years old.

James Head, professor of geological sciences at Brown University and an author on the Nature papers, said the glacial data suggests recent climate change in Mars? 4.6-billion-year history. The team also concludes that Mars is in an ?interglacial? period. As the planet tilts closer to the sun, ice deposited in lower latitudes will vaporize, changing the face of the Red Planet yet again.

Discovery of the explosive eruption of Hecates Tholus provides more evidence of recent Mars rumblings. In December, members of the same research team revealed that calderas on five major Mars volcanoes were repeatedly active as little as 2 million years ago. The volcanoes, scientists speculated, may even be active today.

?Mars is very dynamic,? said Head, lead author of one of the Nature reports. ?We see that the climate change and geological forces that drive evolution on Earth are happening there.?

Head is part of a 33-institution team analyzing images from Mars Express, launched in June 2003 by the European Space Agency. The High Resolution Stereo Camera, or HRSC, on board the orbiter is producing 3-D images of the planet?s surface.

These sharp, panoramic, full-color pictures provided fodder for a third Nature report. In it, the team offers evidence of a frozen body of water, about the size and depth of the North Sea, in southern Elysium.

A plethora of ice and active volcanoes could provide the water and heat needed to sustain basic life forms on Mars. Fresh data from Mars Express ? and the announcement that live bacteria were found in a 30,000-year-old chunk of Alaskan ice ? is fueling discussion about the possibility of past, even present, life on Mars. In a poll taken at a European Space Agency conference last month, 75 percent of scientists believe bacteria once existed on Mars and 25 percent believe it might still survive there.

Head recently traveled to Antarctica to study glaciers, including bacteria that can withstand the continent?s dry, cold conditions. The average temperature on Mars is estimated to be 67 degrees below freezing. Similar temperatures are clocked in Antarctica?s frigid interior.

?We?re now seeing geological characteristics on Mars that could be related to life,? Head said. ?But we?re a long way from knowing that life does indeed exist. The glacial deposits we studied would be accessible for sampling in future space missions. If we had ice to study, we would know a lot more about climate change on Mars and whether life is a possibility there.?

The European Space Agency, the German Aerospace Center and the Freie Universitaet in Berlin built and flew the HRSC and processed data from the camera. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) supported Head?s work.

Original Source: Brown University

Image credit: NASA/JPL
NASA has suspended use of one of the mineral-identifying tools on the Opportunity Mars rover while experts troubleshoot a problem with getting data from the instrument, the robot’s miniature thermal emission spectrometer.

“As always, our first priority is to protect the instrument, so we have turned it off while we plan diagnostic tests,” said Jim Erickson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project. “Opportunity’s other instruments are healthy and providing excellent science, and Spirit’s entire instrument suite is working well and being kept busy by the science team.”

Both Opportunity and Spirit, its twin, have been examining Mars since January 2004, more than four times as long as their successful three-month primary missions. While researchers work to diagnose the spectrometer-data problem and seek the best way to mend it or work around it, Opportunity is continuing its journey and observing a crater called “Vostok.” On the other side of the planet, meanwhile, martian winds have revealed themselves as dust devils in new images from Spirit and caused mixed effects on the rover itself, depositing dust on a camera and removing dust from solar panels.

On March 3 and 4, Opportunity transmitted data sets for 17 successful readings by its miniature thermal emission spectrometer but also reported that eight other attempted readings yielded incomplete data sets. This spectrometer, from high on the rover’s mast, observes rocks and other targets from afar. It measures the infrared radiation they emit in 167 different wavelengths, providing information about the targets’ composition. Two other types of spectrometers, mounted on the rover’s robotic arm, provide additional information about composition when the rover is close enough to touch the target.

Researchers are considering several possible root causes for the spectrometer-data problem. One possibility is malfunctioning of an optical switch that tells a mirror in the instrument when to begin moving. Another is that the mirror is not properly moving at a constant velocity. “If it is the optical switch, we could use a redundant one built into the instrument,” said Dr. Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, lead scientist for the miniature thermal emission spectrometers on both rovers. He added that, if the root cause cannot be remedied, scientists could still get useful data from the instrument in its currently impaired condition.

Even a total loss of the miniature thermal emission spectrometer would not end the rover’s usefulness. In fact, NASA took a calculated risk by disabling this instrument on Opportunity 10 months ago, though the current problem appears unrelated to potential damage anticipated then. At that time, rover operators began using a “deep sleep” technique to conserve energy on Opportunity during reduced-sunshine months of Mars’ winter. Turning off power to overnight heaters let the instrument get cold enough to possibly damage its beam-splitter. However, the spectrometer kept working through the coldest months. Christensen said, “What we’re seeing now does not appear to be any problem with the beam-splitter.”

The rover team is not restricting use of Spirit’s miniature thermal emission spectrometer while troubleshooting the problem on Opportunity.

Spirit’s work capabilities grew with a sudden jump in output from solar panels on March 9, which caused the daily power supply to double. In a possibly related development three days earlier, some dust appeared to have blown onto lenses of Spirit’s front hazard-avoidance camera, enough for slight mottling in images from both the left and right eyes of the stereo camera, but not enough to affect the usefulness of the camera. Mottling in left-eye images cleared markedly the same day the power increased. Team members speculated that Spirit’s power boost, like similar ones on Opportunity in October, resulted from wind removing some accumulated dust from solar panels. Spirit captured pictures of dust-lofting whirlwinds on March 10, adding evidence for windy local conditions. Images the next day showed solar panels cleaned of most of their dust buildup.

Opportunity’s rear hazard-avoidance camera picked up some dust contamination three months ago. The dust on it has not affected operations and has neither decreased nor increased perceptibly since first noticed. No dust has contaminated lenses of the navigation cameras or panoramic cameras on either rover. From all cameras combined, the rovers have returned more than 72,000 images. Images and other geological data from Spirit and Opportunity are successfully providing unprecedented evidence about wet environmental conditions in Mars’ past.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, has managed NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover project since it began in 2000. Images and additional information about the rovers and their discoveries are available on the Internet at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mer_main.html and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Mars is often enveloped by planet-wide dust storms – their biting winds choke the air and scour the arid surface. Tornado-like dust devils dance across the planet so frequently that their numerous tracks crisscross each other, tracing convoluted designs in the red soil. Martian dust includes magnetic, composite particles, with a mean size of one micron–the equivalent to powdered cement or flour in consistency. This size range is about five percent the width of a human hair.

By comparison to how a dust devil in Arizona might stir up uncultivated farmland, the scale on Mars is much more daunting. “These martian dust devils dwarf the five-to-10 meter terrestrial ones, can be greater than 500 meters in diameter and several thousand meters high. The track patterns are known to change from season to season, so these huge dust pipes must be a large factor in transporting dust and could be responsible for eroding landforms,” said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona (Tucson)

Mars has only a faint atmosphere [less than one percent of terrestrial pressures], yet offers up its history of dust devils as swirling tracks in a remarkable landscape of wind-swept and carved terrain. These tiny twisters tend to appear in the middle afternoon on Mars, when solar heating is maximum and when warm air rises and collides with other pressure fronts to cause circulation.

In his first press conference after the Spirit rover landed, the principal investigator for the rover’s science package, Cornell’s Steven Squyres, described one instance his team has been discussing: the intriguing possibility that at Gusev, over their mission, the rover’s camera may actually be able to animate a dust devil in action.

Squyres informally proposed a mini-series of frames, or twister movie which with some meterological luck, might offer a rare example of surface weather on another planet.

“At the Pathfinder site during its 83 sol mission, approximately thirty dust devils were either sensed by the pressure drop as they passed over the lander, or were imaged by the Pathfinder camera,” says Smith. “Based on these observations, one might expect to see several dust devils per hour from an active site on Mars between 10 am and 3 pm. Few, if any dust devils will be present at other times. Dust devils typically form during late spring and summer and can be found at all latitudes. Exactly, how their population density varies around the planet is currently unknown.”

In addition to Pathfinder’s run-in with a dust devil, previous missions to Mars have run into very dusty days. For instance, there was a dust storm covering the Viking Lander I (VL-1) site on Martian day (1742) or sol 1742 (1 Martian year=669 Earth days). In 1971, Mariner 9 and 2 USSR missions all arrived during a dust storm.

“Rovers and other robots must be carefully designed to withstand the sandblasting that they will endure from dust devils,” said Smith. “Bearing surfaces and solar panels must be protected and dust accumulation on solar panels will lower their efficiency.”

Actual mini-tornadoes of this magnetic dust, or dust devils, have been caught in the act by orbital cameras are highlighted by images below. These miniature tornadoes can span about 10 to 100 meters wide with 20- to 60-mile-per-hour (32- to 96-km/hr) winds swirling around a heated column of rising air. One might expect to see several dust devils per hour from an active site on Mars between 10 am and 3 pm, when rising afternoon air is hottest.

Original Source: Astrobiology Magazine

On three consecutive days, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity accomplished unprecedented feats of martian motion, covering more total ground in that period than either Opportunity or its twin, Spirit, did in their first 70 days on Mars.

Spirit, meanwhile, has uncovered soil that is more than half salt, adding to the evidence for Mars’ wet past. The golf-cart-size robots successfully completed their three-month primary missions in April 2004 and are continuing extended mission operations.

Opportunity set a one-day distance record for martian driving, 177.5 meters (582 feet), on Feb. 19. That was the first day of a three-day plan transmitted to the rover as a combined set of weekend instructions. During the preceding week, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had sent Opportunity and Spirit an upgrade of the rovers’ software, onboard intelligence the rovers use for carrying out day-to-day commands.

The new record exceeded a two-week old former best by 13 percent. As on all previous long drives by either rover, the traverse began with “blind” driving, in which the rover followed a route determined in advance by rover planners at JPL using stereo images. That portion lasted an hour and covered most of the day’s distance. Then Opportunity switched to “autonomous” driving for two and a half hours, pausing every 2 meters (6.6 feet) to look ahead for obstacles as it chose its own route ahead.

The next day, Opportunity used its new software to start another drive navigating for itself. “This is the first time either rover has picked up on a second day with continued autonomous driving,” said Dr. Mark Maimone, rover mobility software engineer at JPL. “It’s good to sit back and let the rover do the driving for us.”

Not only did Opportunity avoid obstacles for four hours of driving, it covered more ground than a football field. Opportunity has a favorable power situation, due to relatively clean solar panels and increasing minutes of daylight each day as spring approaches in Mars’ southern hemisphere. This allows several hours of operations daily.

On the third day of the three-day plan, the robotic geologist continued navigating itself and drove even farther, 109 meters (357 feet), pushing the three-day total to 390 meters (nearly a quarter mile). In one long weekend, Opportunity covered a distance equivalent to more than half of the 600 meters that had been part of each rover’s original mission-success criteria during their first three months on Mars.

Opportunity has now driven 3,014 meters (1.87 miles) since landing; Spirit even farther, 4,157 meters (2.58 miles). Opportunity is heading south toward a rugged landscape called “etched terrain,” where it might find exposures of deeper layers of bedrock than it has seen so far. Spirit is climbing “Husband Hill,” with a pause on a ridge overlooking a valley north of the summit to see whether any potential targets below warrant a side trip.

As Spirit struggled up the slope approaching the ridgeline, the rover’s wheels churned up soil that grabbed scientists’ attention. “This was an absolutely serendipitous discovery,” said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers’ science instruments. “We said, ‘My gosh, that soil looks very bright. Before we go away, we should at least take a taste.”

The bright patch of disturbed soil, dubbed “Paso Robles,” has the highest salt concentration of any rock or soil ever examined on Mars. Combined information gained from inspecting it with Spirit’s three spectrometers and panoramic camera suggests its main ingredient is an iron sulfate salt with water molecules bound into the mineral. The soil patch is also rich in phosphorus, but not otherwise like a high-phosphorus rock, called “Wishstone,” that Spirit examined in December. “We’re still trying to work out what this means, but clearly, with this much salt around, water had a hand here,” Squyres said.

Meanwhile, scientists are re-calibrating data from both rovers’ alpha particle X-ray spectrometers. These instruments are used to assess targets’ elemental composition. The sensor heads for the two instruments were switched before launch. Therefore, data that Opportunity’s spectrometer has collected have been analyzed using calibration files for Spirit’s, and vice-versa. Fortunately, because the sensor heads are nearly identical, the effect on the elemental abundances determined by the instruments was very small. The scientists have taken this opportunity to go back and review the results for the mission so far and re-compute using correct calibration files. “The effect in all cases was less than the uncertainties in results, so none of our science conclusions are affected,” Squyres said.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, has managed NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover project since it began in 2000. Images and additional information about the rovers and their discoveries are available on the Internet at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mer_main.html and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.

Original Source: NASA/JPL News Release

Image credit: ESA
Dr. David Ermer, with his company, Opti-MS Corporation, is currently constructing a miniature Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer that can detect biological signatures at a very high resolution and sensitivity, but yet be small enough to be used for robotic and human applications in space exploration.

Ermer is using an innovative system that he developed at Mississippi State University, and he has received a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award to continue his research to build and test his device.

A mass spectrometer is used to measure molecular weight to determine the structure and elemental composition of a molecule. A high-resolution mass spectrometer can determine masses very precisely, and can be used to detect such things as DNA/RNA fragments, whole proteins and peptides, digested protein fragments, and other biological molecules.

A Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer (TOF-MS) works by measuring the time it takes for ions to travel through a vacuum area of the device known as the flight tube. Time of flight mass spectrometry is based on the fact that for a fixed kinetic energy, the mass and the velocity of the ions are interrelated. “Electric fields are used to give ions a known kinetic energy,” Ermer explained. “If you know the kinetic energy and know the distance the ions travel, and know how long it takes to travel, then you can determine the mass of the ions.”

Ermer’s device uses Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization, or MALDI, where a laser beam is directed at the sample to be analyzed, and the laser ionizes the molecules which then fly into the flight tube. The time of flight through the tube correlates directly to mass, with lighter molecules having a shorter time of flight than heavier ones.

The analyser and detector of the mass spectrometer are kept in a vacuum to let the ions travel from one end of the instrument to the other without any resistance from colliding with air molecules, which would alter the kinetic energy of the molecule.

A typical sample plate for a TOF-MS can hold between 100-200 samples, and the device can measure the complete mass distribution with one single shot. Therefore, huge amounts of data are created within a very short time interval, with the time of flight for most ions occurring in microseconds.

Ermer’s TOF-MS combines a relatively simple mechanical setup with extremely fast electronic data acquisition, along with the ability to measure very large masses, which is essential in doing biological analysis.

But the most unique aspect of Ermer’s device is its size. The commercial mass spectrometers that are currently available are at least one and a half meters long. That’s a fairly large volume to include on an in-situ scientific vehicle such as the golf car-sized Mars Exploration Rovers or even the larger Mars Science Laboratory Rover scheduled to launch in 2009. Ermer has devised a way to miniaturize a TOF-MS to an amazing 4? inches long. He estimates that his device will have a volume of less than 0.75 liters, a mass of less than 2 kilograms and require less than 5 watts of power.

Ermer used a non-linear optimization technique to create a computer model of a mass spectrometer. There were 13 parameters he input that had to be selected, including the spacing of the different elements in the TOF-MS and the ion acceleration voltages. Using this technique Ermer was able to find some unique solutions for a very short TOF-MS.

“I’m trying to build a Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer that is small enough to actually go in space,” Ermer said. “The main application that NASA is looking at is searching for biological molecules, to find evidence of past life on Mars. They also want to be able to do molecular biology on the space station, although the Mars application has a higher priority. My device should come in under all the requirements that NASA has, as far as the power, size, and weight requirements.”

Ermer also sees potential for his device to be used commercially as well. “What I have is a portable device to measure biological molecules,” he said. “If you were at an airport and found a white powder you’re going to want to know if it is anthrax or chalk dust fairly quickly. So you want a small, fairly cheap, portable device to be able to do that.” In his proposal to NASA, Ermer stated, “The main (commercial) application for miniature TOF-MS is the screening of infectious disease and biological agents. We also believe that the superior performance of our design will allow penetration into the general TOF-MS market.”

Ermer received the $70,000 SBIR award in mid-January, and has already built and tested a larger proof of concept design, which validates the technology that he designed for his TOF-MS. “So far, the tests have gone extremely well,” Ermer said. I have detected molecules up to 13,000 Daltons (Dalton is an alternate name for atomic mass unit, or amu.) The device is operating as designed for masses up to 13,000 Daltons and has mass resolution somewhat better than a full sized device at 13,000 Daltons. We are currently working on detecting mass out to 100,000 Daltons and initial results are promising.”

“Getting the device up and running is probably the biggest hurdle,” Ermer said about the challenges of this project. “A lot of the hard things are done, but the electronics are really difficult. For this device you have to generate high voltage pulses of about 16,000 volts. That was probably the hardest thing we’ve had to do so far.”

The electron multiplier detector is specially designed for miniature time of flight spectrometry by an outside company. Ermer and his own company designed most of the other parts of the device, including the vacuum housing and the laser extractor. Since it’s so small, creating these parts requires very high tolerance machining, which was also done by an outside company.

The NASA SBIR program “provides increased opportunities for small businesses to participate in research and development, to increase employment, and to improve U.S. competitiveness,” according to NASA. Some objectives of the program are to stimulate technological innovation, and to use small businesses to meet federal research and development needs. The program has three phases, with Phase I receiving $70,000 for six months of research to establish feasibility and technical merit. Projects making it to Phase II receive $600,000 for two more years of development, and Phase III provides commercialization of the product.

Ermer is a professor at Mississippi State University. He has been doing research in fields related to mass spectrometry since 1994, and for his PhD thesis at Washington State University, he looked at the energy distributions of ions that are generated in different materials by a laser. For his postdoctoral research at Vanderbilt, he studied the MALDI technique using an Infrared Free Electron Laser. More information about Opti-MS can be found at www.opti-ms.com.

Nancy Atkinson is a freelance writer and NASA Solar System Ambassador. She lives in Illinois.

The discovery of a frozen sea close to the equator of Mars has brought the possibility of life on Mars one step closer. Open University scientist Dr John Murray is among the scientists who made the discovery from the High Resolution Stereo Camera images on board the Mars Express probe – the first European mission to another planet.

Dr Murray, of the Department of Earth Sciences, said: ?The fact that there have been warm and wet places beneath the surface of Mars since before life began on Earth, and that some are probably still there, means that there is a possibility that primitive micro-organisms survive on Mars today. This mission has changed many of my long-held opinions about Mars ? we now have to go there and check it out?.

The water that formed the sea appears to have originated beneath the surface of Mars, and to have erupted from a series of fractures known as the Cerberus Fossae, from where it flowed down in a catastrophic flood, and collected in a vast area 800 x 900 km about 5 million years ago. It initially averaged 45 metres deep, making it about the same size and depth as the North Sea. It was the pack-ice which formed on the surface of the sea that drew the attention of Mars Express scientists.

The young age of this feature has caused excitement among scientists. Although formed at the time when early hominids on Earth were evolving from apes, this is very young in geological terms, and suggests that vast flooding events, which are known to have occurred from beneath Mars? surface throughout its geological history, are still continuing to happen. The presence of liquid water for thousands of millions of years, even beneath the surface, is a possible habitat in which primitive life may have developed, and might still be surviving now. Clearly this must now be considered as a prime site for future missions looking for life.

The discovery was made by Dr Murray, Jan-Peter Muller (University College London), Gerhard Neukum (Free University, Berlin & Principal Investigator) and a team of international scientists working on the pictures sent back from Mars, and is to appear in the scientific journal Nature.

Mars Express, Europe?s first ever space mission to another planet, entered the orbit of Mars successfully on Christmas Day 2003, and since January 2004 the high resolution stereo camera on board has been taking a massive number of stereo images of the surface from altitudes as low as 270 km, showing details down to 10 metres.

Original Source: Open University News Release (Word Document)

NASA researchers believe they’ve found strong evidence that there could be underground life on Mars, huddled around pockets of liquid water. They haven’t found the life directly, but instead have discovered a unique methane signature that matches similar environments here on Earth, such as subsurface areas around Rio Tinto, a red-stained river in Spain. In order to get confirmation, NASA would need to send a spacecraft to Mars capable of drilling into the ground – unfortunately, none are planned currently.