Category Archives: Mars Colonization

Cheryl Santa Maria Digital Reporter

Wednesday, May 7, 2014, 3:50 PM - We may be one step closer to putting life on Mars. By 2021, NASA hopes to be growing plants on the red planet.

NASA's next Mars rover is expected to land on the planet in 2020, and it may be bringing a few plants along with it.

Researchers hope to conduct a plant-growth experiment which could pave the way to a human colonization on Mars.

"In order to do a long-term, sustainable base on Mars, you would want to be able to establish that plants can at least grow on Mars," Mars Planet Experiment deputy principal investigator Heather Smith said at an April 24 conference in Washington.

"This would be the first step in that we just send the seeds there and watch them grow."

RELATED: NASA captures mysterious light on Mars

Scientists hope to attach a box to the exterior of the next Mars rover which will contain Earth air and about 200 seeds.

The seeds will receive water when the rover touches down. It's hoped the box will turn into a mini-greenhouse within two weeks.

"We would go from this simple experiment to the greenhouses on Mars for a sustainable base," Smith added.

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NASA hopes to put greenhouse on Mars

The Mars Plant Experiment, or MPX, could help lay the foundation of eventual colonization of Mars. The MPX team plans to use a CubeSat box -- a case for tiny satellites on the outside of the rover, to hold Earth air along with about 200 seeds of Arabidopsis, a flowering plant commonly used by researchers. The seeds would receive water from the rover on its arrival, and would have about 15 days to grow in the small greenhouse.

That would be the goal, said Heather Smith, MPX deputy principal investigator of NASA's Ames Research Center Smith. We would go from this simple experiment to the greenhouses on Mars for a sustainable base. Furthermore, it also would be the first [known] multicellular organism to grow, live and die on another planet.

"In order to do a long-term, sustainable base on Mars, you would want to be able to establish that plants can at least grow on Mars," Smith said in late April at the Humans 2 Mars conference in Washington, D.C. This would be the first step in that. We just send the seeds there and watch them grow."

The 2020 rover, based on NASAs Curiosity rover, will search for past life on Mars while collecting rock and soil samples to bring back to Earth. NASA officials said that by June they will be deciding what instruments the rover should carry in the mission.NASAs previous Curiosity rover proved after its August 2012 landing that Mars was once capable of supporting microbial life.

NASA said Tuesday that its Curiosity rover has completed its third drilling into a Martian rock and is now preparing to use its internal instruments to study the collected sample.

"The drill tailings from this rock are darker-toned and less red than we saw at the two previous drill sites," Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe, deputy principal investigator for Curiosity's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, said in a statement. "This suggests that the detailed chemical and mineral analysis that will be coming from Curiosity's other instruments could reveal different materials than we've seen before. We can't wait to find out!"

The mission's two previous rock-drilling sites yielded evidence last year of an ancient lakebed environment with a chemical energy source that provided conditions favorable for microbial life billions of years ago.

The rovers current location is at a waypoint called "The Kimberley," about 2.5 miles and along the route toward the mission's long-term destination on lower slopes of Mount Sharp.

Sample material will be delivered in coming days to onboard laboratories for determining the mineral and chemical composition.

Read more here:
NASA Aims To Establish Greenhouse On Mars By 2021; Curiosity Mars Rover Drilled Slab Of Martian Sandstone

Scott Sutherland Digital Meteorologist, theweathernetwork.com

Tuesday, May 6, 2014, 2:09 PM - Mars One announced its latest round of cuts Monday, and the number of Canadians still in the running dipping to just 54, from the nearly 2,000 that originally signed up. So, what's next for these potential Mars colonists?

A total of 21 Canadians were cut from the list of candidates as of Monday, due to a mixture of personal or medical reasons. According to Mars One, most of those cut for personal reasons were between the ages of 40-50, while those cut for medical reasons were in the 20-30 age group. For some of those who didn't pass the medical examination, there was very likely a sense of disappointment, but their participation up to this point may have saved their lives.

What really left an impression with us is the fact that the medical tests turned out to have a major impact on the candidates' lives," said Mars One Chief Medical Officer Norbert Kraft, MD, in a statement, "as some of them found out that they needed to undergo an operation, where sick and needed medical attention, or even had a malignant form of cancer that otherwise would not have been detected in such an early stage."

Now, the 54 Canadians who made the cut, along with 651 others from nations around the world, will advance to the interviews round of the selection process, which will apparently be televised for the world to see. Although it has solely been up to the Mars One selection committee to choose candidates so far, it may very well be up to us, the public, to decide who advances to the final stage. According to the Mars One website, the audience will choose one winner from each region of the world, and the selection committee will choose additional candidates.

After the interview stage ends and the candidates moving forward have been selected, they will be split into international teams, and will start on the first short-term training program for the mission. Their goal: prove to the world that they have the 'right stuff' to be the very first human colonists on Mars.

Six teams of four members each are expected to advance from there to the Mars One astronaut corps, to begin their final training. The first team of four is expected to lift off sometime in 2024, for a landing on Mars in 2025, and new teams will arrive every two years afterwards.

Can it be done?

Mars One has an ambitious plan, for sure, but doesn't necessarily reach beyond our capabilities. We don't have what it takes right at this moment, of course, but there's roughly 10 years before the first crew launches. With their dedicated approach to the mission, they could be the ones developing the technologies and techniques that we use for planetary colonization for years to come.

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54 Canadians still in the running for one-way trip to Mars

Plant life may touch down on Mars in 2021.

Researchers have proposed putting a plant-growth experiment on NASA's next Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch in mid-2020 and land on the Red Planet in early 2021. The investigation, known as the Mars Plant Experiment (MPX), could help lay the foundation for the colonization of Mars, its designers say.

"In order to do a long-term, sustainable base on Mars, you would want to be able to establish that plants can at least grow on Mars," MPX deputy principal investigator Heather Smith, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, said April 24 at the Humans 2 Mars conference in Washington, D.C. "This would be the first step in that we just send the seeds there and watch them grow." [The Boldest Mars Missions in History]

Smith and her colleagues aren't suggesting that the 2020 Mars rover should play gardener, digging a hole with its robotic arm and planting seeds in the Red Planet's dirt. Rather, MPX would be entirely self-contained, eliminating the chance that Earth life could escape and perhaps get a foothold on Mars.

The experiment would employ a clear "CubeSat" box the case for a cheap and tiny satellite which would be affixed to the exterior of the 2020 rover. This box would hold Earth air and about 200 seeds of Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant that's commonly used in scientific research.

The seeds would receive water when the rover touched down on Mars, and would then be allowed to grow for two weeks or so.

"In 15 days, we'll have a little greenhouse on Mars," Smith said.

MPX would provide an organism-level test of the Mars environment, showing how Earth life deals with the Red Planet's relatively high radiation levels and low gravity, which is about 40 percent as strong as that of Earth, she added.

"We would go from this simple experiment to the greenhouses on Mars for a sustainable base," Smith said. "That would be the goal."

In addition to its potential scientific returns, MPX would provide humanity with a landmark moment, she added.

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NASA May Put Greenhouse on Mars in 2021

timothy posted yesterday | from the let's-get-this-process-underway dept.

As reported by Tech Times, research conducted aboard the ISS has shown that Earth bacteria could survive the rigors of travel to Mars better than might be expected. "Research into bacterial colonization on the red planet was not part of the plan to terraform the alien world ahead of human occupation. Instead, three teams investigated how to prevent microbes from Earth from hitching a ride to the red planet aboard spacecraft. It is nearly impossible to remove all biological contaminants from equipment headed to other planets. By better understanding what organisms can survive in space or on the surfaces of other worlds, mission planners can learn which forms of microscopic life to concentrate on during the sanitation process. 'If you are able to reduce the numbers to acceptable levels, a proxy for cleanliness, the assumption is that the life forms will not survive under harsh space conditions,' Kasthuri Venkateswaran of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of all three papers, said."

Read more here:
ISS Studies Show Bacteria From Earth Could Colonize Mars

April 22, 2014

Image Caption: Space greenhouse. Credit: NASA

ESA

It is a race against time for ESAs Gravi-2 experiment following launch last Friday on the Dragon space ferry. Stowed in Dragons cargo are lentil seeds that will be nurtured into life on the International Space Station.

Gravi-2 continues the research of its predecessor into how sensitive plants are to gravity.

To find out, 768 lentil seeds will be subjected to different levels of simulated gravity. Spinning them in centrifuges at different speeds on the Space Station will recreate gravity, similar to how astronauts and fighter pilots are subjected to high-forces in human centrifuges.

The goal is to see at what gravity level the seedlings begin to show growth differences. Kept spinning for 30 hours at four different centrifuge speeds, the seedlings will be observed as they grow.

Anyone with plants at home knows that keeping a plant happy requires the right environment. The lentils need to survive a launch and grow in microgravity before they are chemically fixed to undergo detailed lab analysis on their return to researchers on the ground.

Dragons launch was expected a few weeks earlier and Gravi-2 researchers had to check that the lentils would survive the extra waiting time before launch. After testing, the lentil seeds were declared still fit to fly.

Once aboard, the plants will be grown in ESAs space greenhouse and time-lapse photography will show how the roots curve towards the downwards force.

Read this article:
How Sensitive Are Plants To Gravity?

Would you take a trip to Mars if it meant you could never return to Earth?

Thats a question one Purdue student has already answered yes to.

Max Fagin, a first year masters student in aerospace engineering, is one of 1,000 students in the running to join the Mars One mission to send humans to the red planet.

Mars One, a not-for-profit organization, plans on establishing the first human colony on Mars. Fagin was one of nearly 200,000 people from all over the world interested in the mission.

One of the biggest challenges in any space exploration endeavor is the total mass you have to launch to your destination, Fagin said. On Mars, you have to launch not just the crew, but the habitat, the vehicle that will get (the crew) there, the vehicle that will get them back and fuel for both of them. Its an incredibly difficult mission; thats why we havent done it yet.

The catch is the Mars One crew is unable to return to Earth upon arrival.

Michael Grant, an assistant professor of aeronautical and astronautical engineering and Fagins faculty adviser, said although Mars One may face some political ramifications, making the trip one-way simplifies and expedites the colonization process.

Theres a lot of research being done at NASA right now to figure out how to put people on Mars, which is a really hard problem because the atmosphere of Mars is extremely thin, Grant said. It would be like flying at 100,000 feet here and the normal jet airliners fly at about 35,000 feet.

It would be easier to send people near Mars without actually landing on the surface, but Grant said that would be like taking kids to Disney World and not letting them out of the car.

It would be pretty painful to get out there to see it and not be able to land on it, Grant said.

Continue reading here:
Purdue student closer to a trip to Mars

InterAksyon.com The online news portal of TV5

MANILA Filipino militant groups launched Wednesday a series of mass actions against what they called the US imperialist agenda in Asia, just as United States President Barack Obama was set to arrive in Japan on the first leg of his East Asia tour that will also include the Philippines.

The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (New Patriotic Alliance) marched to the US embassy in Manila, but its members later clashed with Manila police. In a statement, Bayan secretary general Renato M. Reyes, Jr. said: The US pivot to Asia combines military rebalancing and free trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). The US seeks to maintain its dominance in the region by violating the national sovereignty and plundering the economies of their so-called allies. The people of Asia stand to gain nothing from the Obama visit and the US agenda he carries.

Bayan is coordinating with various anti-bases and anti-globalization groups in Japan, South Korea and the United States for a series of protests against the US pivot and the TPPA. Apart from the April 23 protest in Manila, anti-bases and anti-war groups in Japan such as the Asia-Wide Campaign are set to hold protests in time for the US-Japan Summit on April 24. Groups in South Korea are also expected to hold protests against US military bases in the Korean peninsula and the continued implementation of the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the promotion of the TPPA. Bayan-USA will join Japanese and Korean activists in the US for coordinated actions in the afternoon of April 25 in Los Angeles, Seattle, New York and San Francisco. Filipino migrants are expected to hold protest actions on April 27.

On April 28 and 29, Bayan will lead a nationally coordinated protest as Obama lands in Manila. The militants said he will witness the signing of the Agreement on Enhanced Defense Cooperation, which they called a de facto basing pact disguised as an access agreement, and which Sen. Miriam Santiago had deemed unconstitutional if it is not concurred in by the Philippine Senate.

We will fight the new defense agreement with the US. We oppose this new form of US military occupation and colonization. The US military and economic agenda will only reinforce the status of the Philippines as an American neo-colony, and Philippine president Benigno Aquino III as Obamas cheerleader and puppet in Asia, Reyes said.

We demand regional peace and development. We join our friends from Japan, Korea, Guam, and Australia to demand the removal of US troops in Asia and the Pacific. We reject US economic dictates as we fight for genuine economic sovereignty. We condemn both the Aquino and Obama regimes for exploiting the maritime dispute with China in order to justify entrenching US troops in the region. Our national interest will not be served if we take the side of one bully against another, he added.

Earlier Tuesday, Bayan and other groups picketed the Chinese consulate in Makati City to denounce its bullying and its continued moves to harangue Manila for filing a complaint with the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea over Beijings excessive claims of the 9-dash line in the South China Sea. The left-leaning groups stressed, though, that while they denounced Chinas aggression, they do not want the Philippines to fall into the mode of believing that it is the US that will save the country from its giant neighbor

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Clash mars PH launch of internationally coordinated protests vs Obama Asia trip

SpaceX scrubbed Monday's scheduled launch of a robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station, due to a helium leak on the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage.

Word of the postponement came a little more than an hour before the Falcon 9 was to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

NASA said that the next opportunity for launch would come at 3:25 p.m. ET Friday.

Photographers focus on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket as it sits on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday.

"A fix will be implemented by the next launch opportunity ... though weather on that date isn't ideal," SpaceX said in a status update.

Forecasters had put the chance of acceptable weather for launch at 80 percent for Monday, but only 40 percent for Friday.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is packed with about 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) of supplies and equipment for the station. This is the third of 12 round-trip resupply flights that SpaceX is conducting under the terms of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.

Billionaire's grand vision

This particular mission is notable because it's the first time the Falcon 9 has been outfitted with a set of four landing legs. The 25-foot-long (7.6-meter-long) foldable legs are part of a long-term experiment to see whether the Falcon 9 rocket can be recovered and reused.

This time around, the legs won't play a useful role. They're just part of a test to relight the rocket engines after stage separation and ease the first stage's fall into the Atlantic Ocean, so that it can be recovered intact by a SpaceX team.

Link:
SpaceX Postpones Launch to Space Station Until Friday

SpaceX scrubbed Monday's scheduled launch of a robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station, due to a helium leak on the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage.

Word of the postponement came a little more than an hour before the Falcon 9 was to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

NASA said that the next opportunity for launch would come at 3:25 p.m. ET Friday.

Photographers focus on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket as it sits on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday.

"A fix will be implemented by the next launch opportunity ... though weather on that date isn't ideal," SpaceX said in a status update.

Forecasters had put the chance of acceptable weather for launch at 80 percent for Monday, but only 40 percent for Friday.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is packed with about 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) of supplies and equipment for the station. This is the third of 12 round-trip resupply flights that SpaceX is conducting under the terms of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.

Billionaire's grand vision

This particular mission is notable because it's the first time the Falcon 9 has been outfitted with a set of four landing legs. The 25-foot-long (7.6-meter-long) foldable legs are part of a long-term experiment to see whether the Falcon 9 rocket can be recovered and reused.

This time around, the legs won't play a useful role. They're just part of a test to relight the rocket engines after stage separation and ease the first stage's fall into the Atlantic Ocean, so that it can be recovered intact by a SpaceX team.

Original post:
SpaceX postpones launch