Their own green revolution

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  Planting and preserving: Adivasis embark on a new movement. Credit: Special arrangement 
• 
  The green collective: Developing their own nurseries.

Tribals in Madhya Pradesh have embarked on a unique ‘guerrilla-green’ operation of planting fruit bearing trees on any available piece of vacant land

To combat the twin problems of malnutrition and environmental degradation, adivasis of Harda and Betul districts of Madhya Pradesh have decided to launch ‘Operation Guerrilla Green’ — a movement to plant large numbers of fruit bearing trees on vacant land, wherever it is available.

Mobilised under the banner of Shramik Adivasi Sangathan (SAS), a local tribal rights organisation, tribals of the region have resolved to plant one lakh saplings this year on any barren- degraded land — be it government, forest, private or panchayat land.

To create awareness, the adivasis have begun a month-long planting campaign to coincide with hari jiroti — the Gond and Korku festival celebrating the beginning of the rains and the new sowing season.

The movement started with the adivasis taking out a Hariyali Yatra (Green March) from the local Chirapatla market in Betul district in the last week of July. Last week, they entered the ‘second phase’ of the movement and planted 1,000 saplings. Next, on August 15, the adivasis of Betul planted 10,000 saplings of fruit bearing trees on barren land in Umberdoh.

The ‘operation’ is similar to the Guerrilla Gardening movement, which is highly popular in several western countries and which involves planting of fruit and vegetable trees on abandoned or degraded land. The project will green degraded land and, at the same time providing nutritious fruits to the Gond and Korku tribals of this malnutrition-affected region.

However, it is a bit more complicated than your average ‘tree-planting-field trip’. To start with, the law is not on the tribals’ side, since the Forest Department does not permit any kind of plantation of fruit bearing trees (because they are considered commercial species) on forest land. As a result, several adivasis in Bod, Pippalbarra, Kamtha, Gavajhadap, Dhumka and Chunhajuri villages of Betul have reportedly been booked under sections of Indian Forest Act, 1927 and Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

“Some have as many as five cases registered against them for encroaching on forest land and destroying wildlife by their act of plantation,” says Anurag Modi of Shramik Adivasi Sangathan.

Hence the name Guerrilla-Green, which is a play of words on the unofficial but notorious and widely accepted term “Operation Green Hunt”, referring to the para-military offensive in the left-wing extremism affected districts of central India.

After being turned down by district authorities on their demand of planting saplings, the adivasis decided to develop their own nurseries. In three villages of Betul — Bod, Pippalbarra and Markadhana they have developed nurseries and planted around 15,000 saplings of awla, guava, cheeku and jamun among others. They plan to plant another 85,000 saplings by collecting naturally grown plants from river banks, under the trees, and replant them systematically.

“We are calling it ‘guerrilla’ because despite the Forest Department terming it illegal, the tribals have resolved to turn all the barren and degraded forest land around them lush green with fruit bearing trees,” says Mr. Modi.

Courtallam gets Tamil Nadu’s biggest eco-park

 

Photo: Special arrangement A front view of Courtallam Ecopark, near Five Falls. Photo: Special Arrangement

Set up over an extent of 37.23 acres in Tirunelveli district at a cost of Rs.5.73 crore

The State’s biggest eco-park has come up in a picturesque spot at Courtallam, a popular destination of tourists,down South.

Established over an extent of 37.23 acres in Tirunelveli district at a cost of Rs.5.73 crore, the park, adjacent to the famous ‘Five Falls,’ is awaiting a formal inauguration. The farm belonging to the Tamil Nadu Horticulture Development Agency (TANHODA) has been converted to accommodate the park.

Some of the attractive features of the park are adventure-play area, sunken garden, fern garden, royal drive, bamboo avenue, rock garden, children play area, murals, butterfly garden, eco pond and stream walk.

The Agency is also setting up two gardens at Yercaud: a botanical garden and Kurinji genetic heritage Garden, besides Paalai genetic heritage garden at Achadipirambu in Ramnathapuram district on an investment of about Rs.24 crore. TANHODA maintains seven parks and gardens in the State and 49 farms are under its control.

The botanical parks and gardens serve as study centres for students and attract large number of tourists, while these farms serve as model demonstration centres to the local growers. An official of TANHODA told The Hindu, “Courtallam eco-park is the biggest park in the State. Civil works are over and it will be thrown open to public very soon. We have completed 60 per cent of work in the upcoming parks in Yercaud and 50 per cent in Paalai Genetic Park. The remaining work will be completed before September and the facilities will be made available to the public before the next flower show in May”.

The garden improvement works at Bryant Park, Anna Park and Chettiar park in Kodaikanal, costing Rs.1.13 crore, have been completed in shortest time, the official adds.

Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies at 82

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  AP In this September 17, 1962 file photo, Neil Armstrong, one of the nine astronauts, is 
  shown as he was introduced to the press, along with the other astronauts in Houston
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  AP In this July 20, 1969 file photo provided by NASA shows Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin, the first men to land on the moon, plant the U.S. flag on the lunar surface. 
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  AP In this March 6, 1966 file photo Astronaut Neil Armstrong, pilot for the Gemini VIII mission is shown. The family of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, says he has died at age 82.

            Neil Armstrong, a self-described “nerdy” engineer who became a global hero when as a steely nerved U.S. pilot he made “one giant leap for mankind” with the first step on the moon. The modest man who entranced and awed people on Earth has died. He was 82.

Mr. Armstrong died on Saturday following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures, a statement from his family said. It didn’t say where he died.

He commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century’s scientific expeditions. His first words after setting foot on the surface are etched in history books and in the memories of those who heard them in a live broadcast.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” Mr. Armstrong said.

In those first few moments on the moon, during the climax of a heated space race with the then Soviet Union, he stopped in what he called “a tender moment” and left a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in action.

“It was special and memorable, but it was only instantaneous because there was work to do,” Mr. Armstrong told an Australian television interviewer this year.

Mr. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent nearly three hours walking on the lunar surface, collecting samples, conducting experiments and taking photographs.

“The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to,” Mr. Armstrong once said.

The moonwalk marked America’s victory in the Cold War space race that began on Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, a satellite that sent shock waves around the world.

Sunita Williams to embark on spacewalk on Aug. 30

 

AP U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams. File photo

Four ISS astronauts, including Indian-American Sunita Williams, will embark on two spacewalks outside the International Space Station to install new equipment and replace defective installations, NASA said.

The first spacewalk, scheduled to begin on August 20, will feature Expedition 32 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency in Russian Orlan spacesuits.

They will float outside the Pirs docking compartment airlock for a 6-1/2 hour spacewalk to relocate a cargo boom from Pirs to the Zarya module, complete the installation of micrometeoroid debris shields on the Zvezda service module and deploy a small science satellite.

The second spacewalk, scheduled on August 30, will feature NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide.

It will be a 6-1/2 hour excursion designed to replace a faulty power relay unit on the station’s truss, rig power cables for the arrival late next year of a Russian laboratory module, and install a thermal cover on a docking port.

The spacewalks will be the 163rd and 164th in support of space station assembly and maintenance. Padalka has conducted eight previous spacewalks and will wear a suit bearing red stripes.

Malenchenko has conducted four spacewalks and will wear blue stripes, according to a NASA statement.

Williams will wear a suit with red stripes for the fifth spacewalk in her career. Hoshide, wearing a suit with no stripes, will be conducting his first spacewalk. He is the third Japanese astronaut in history to conduct a spacewalk.

Sunita Williams to embark on spacewalk on August 30inShare

 

Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide (L), Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko (C) and US astronaut Sunita Williams (R) - AFP

 

           Four ISS astronauts, including Indian-American Sunita Williams, will embark on two spacewalks outside the International Space Station to install new equipment and replace defective installations, NASA said.
The first spacewalk, scheduled to begin on August 20, will feature Expedition 32 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency in Russian Orlan spacesuits.
They will float outside the Pirs docking compartment airlock for a 6 1/2 hour spacewalk to relocate a cargo boom from Pirs to the Zarya module, complete the installation of micrometeoroid debris shields on the Zvezda service module and deploy a small science satellite.
The second spacewalk, scheduled on August 30, will feature NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide. It will be a 6 1/2 hour excursion designed to replace a faulty power relay unit on the station's truss, rig power cables for the arrival late next year of a Russian laboratory module, and install a thermal cover on a docking port.
The spacewalks will be the 163rd and 164th in support of space station assembly and maintenance. Padalka has conducted eight previous spacewalks and will wear a suit bearing red stripes.
Malenchenko has conducted four spacewalks and will wear blue stripes, according to a NASA statement. Williams will wear a suit with red stripes for the fifth spacewalk in her career.
Hoshide, wearing a suit with no stripes, will be conducting his first spacewalk. He is the third Japanese astronaut in history to conduct a spacewalk.

Green tea extract 'eradicates 40% of skin cancer tumours'

          Scientists hope that a powerful new anti-cancer drugs based on green tea could soon be developed after they found that an extract from the beverage could make almost half of tumours vanish.
The University of Strathclyde team made 40 per cent of human skin cancer tumours disappear using the compound, called epigallocatechin gallate, in a laboratory study.
Green tea has long been suspected of having anti-cancer properties and the extract has been investigated before. However, this is the first time researchers have managed to make it effective at shrinking tumours.
Previous attempts to capitalise on its cancer-fighting properties have failed because scientists used intravenous drips, which failed to deliver enough of the extract to the tumours themselves.
So, the Strathclyde team devised a 'targeted delivery system', piggy-backing the extract on proteins that carry iron molecules, which cancer tumours Hoover up.
The lab test on one type of human skin cancer showed 40 per cent of tumours disappeared after a month of treatment, while an additional 30 per cent shrank.
"These are very encouraging results which we hope could pave the way for new and effective cancer treatments," said Dr Christine Dufes, a senior lecturer at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, who led the research.
"When we used our method, the green tea extract reduced the size of many of the tumours every day, in some cases removing them altogether.
"This research could open doors to new treatments for what is still one of the biggest killer diseases in many countries," she added.
According to her, when the extract is administered intravenously, it goes everywhere in the body, so when it gets to the tumours it's too diluted.
"With the targeted delivery system, it's taken straight to the tumours without any effect on normal tissue," she explained.
The "ultimate objective" was a clinical trial in humans - but Dr Dufes said that was some way off.
The results have been published in the journal Nanomedicine.

Multiple births on cosmic scale in distant galaxy

         Scientists have found a cosmic supermom. It is a galaxy that gives births to more stars in a day than ours does in a year.
Astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-Ray telescope to spot this distant gigantic galaxy creating about 740 new stars a year. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy spawns just about one new star each year.
It's about 5.7 billion light years away in the center of a recently discovered cluster of galaxies that give the brightest X-ray glow astronomers have seen. It is by far the biggest creation of stars that astronomers have seen for this type of galaxy massive galaxies that are in the center of clusters. But other types of galaxies, such as colliding galaxies, can produce even more stars, astronomers said.
But this is the size, type and age of galaxy that shouldn't be producing stars at such a rapid pace, said the authors of a study published today in the journal Nature.
"It's very extreme," said Harvard University astronomer Ryan Foley, co-author of the study. "It pushes the boundaries of what we understand."
There's another strange thing about this galaxy. It's fairly mature, maybe 6 billion years old. Usually, this type "are kind of just there and don't do anything new... what we call red and dead," said study lead author Michael McDonald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It seems to have come back to life for some reason."
Because of that back-to-life situation, the team of 85 astronomers has nicknamed the galaxy cluster Phoenix, after the bird that rises from the ashes. The galaxy that is producing the stars at a rate of two per day is in the center of the cluster and is the biggest and most prominent of many galaxies there.

Soon, penny-sized thrusters to propel small satellites

          Scientists may soon be able to power the smallest satellites in space through penny-sized rocket thrusters instead of today's bulky satellite engines.
The device, designed by Paulo Lozano, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a flat, compact square much like a computer chip covered with 500 microscopic tips that, when stimulated with voltage, emit tiny beams of ions.
Together, the array of spiky tips creates a small puff of charged particles that can help propel a shoebox-sized satellite forward.
It bears little resemblance to today's bulky satellite engines, which are laden with valves, pipes and heavy propellant tanks.
"They're so small that you can put several [thrusters] on a vehicle," Lozano said.
He added that a small satellite outfitted with several microthrusters could not only move to change its orbit, but do other interesting things - like turn and roll.
More than two dozen small satellites, called CubeSats, orbit Earth today. Their diminutive size classifies them as nanosatellites.
But these small satellites lack propulsion systems, and once in space, are usually left to passively spin in orbits close to Earth. After a mission concludes, the satellites burn up in the lower atmosphere.
Lozano added if CubeSats were deployed at higher orbits, they would take much longer to degrade, potentially creating space clutter.
"These satellites could stay in space forever as trash," Lozano said in a statement.
Engineering propulsion systems for small satellites could solve the problem of space junk. CubeSats could propel down to lower orbits to burn up, or even act as galactic garbage collectors, pulling retired satellites down to degrade in Earth's atmosphere.
However, traditional propulsion systems have proved too bulky for nanosatellites, leaving little space on the vessels for electronics and communication equipment.
In contrast, Lozano's microthruster design adds little to a satellite's overall weight. The microchip is composed of several layers of porous metal, the top layer of which is textured with 500 evenly spaced metallic tips.
Lozano and his group presented their new thruster array at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' recent Joint Propulsion Conference.

Preparations on for historic 100th mission of ISRO

 

       Preparations for the historic 100th mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) were on with the space agency planning to launch PSLV C-21, which will carry two foreign satellites in September.
“We have two capsules, a remote sensing satellite from France and a small Japanese satellite will be the co-passenger. Preparations are going on. We plan to have the launch in the second week of September,” ISRO Chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan said at the Chennai airport on Wednesday.
ISRO plans to launch 720-kg SPOT-6 remote sensing satellite from France (built by ASTRIUM SAS) and a 15-kg Japanese spacecraft Protiers on board the home-grown Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C21) in September, in what is perceived as a major milestone of sorts.

Is there life on Mars? If yes, what will it look like?

D. BALASUBRAMANIAN

 

          AP The quest: NASA’s rover “Curiosity” and ISRO’s (yet-to-be-named)planned orbiterfrom Mars Among the various issues that will interrogate whether the red planet harbours life forms.

This is a quotation from the book “Greetings, Carbon-based Bipedals!” by the famous science writer, the late Arthur Clarke — Editor: “Is there life on Mars? Report in 1000 words”. Reporter: “Nobody knows”, repeated 500 times.

NASA has just landed the rover “Curiosity” on Mars, and ISRO is sending a (yet-to-be-named) spacecraft in 2013 which will orbit Mars and transmit data from Mars to us. Among the various issues that these ships want to interrogate on/in Mars is the question of whether the red planet harbours life forms in it.

Long-lived fantasy

People have long fantasized on extraterrestrial life and even Martian equivalent of humans. Sci-fi books and movies play on this theme. Even Clarke’s own book title above paraphrases such aliens greeting us humans on earth.

Note he refers to carbon-based life, which is what all organisms living on earth are. Why this bias on carbon, when there are a hundred other elements? It is the extraordinary ability of the carbon atom, with its penchant to link bonds with four other atoms — be it other elements such as N, O, S, or C itself, at temperatures, pressure, moisture and other conditions that Earth provides which makes life possible.

For life to occur, flourish and sustain, the information content — both hardware and software — needs to be encrypted, stored, read and passed on down generations. The best material to do this is through molecules made of chemical bonds.

And of the 100-odd elements in the universe, carbon fits the bill under the conditions ambient on earth.

Carbon makes long chains or tapes using itself as the backbone of this chain. And carbon makes stable chemical links with other abundant elements such as N, O, S, and P. The chemistry of life on earth is written using this handful set of elements as the basic alphabet. DNA (and occasionally RNA), the genetic tape of all life forms on earth is such a carbon-based tape.

And it is the shuffling of the information in this genetic tape that has led to the diversity of life forms on earth, all evolved from an ancient ancestral life form, our own pro-biont.

Why carbon? Why not its neighbours nitrogen or boron, or its follower silicon? Nothing really, except under the ambient conditions on and surrounding the earth, the carbon chains stay stable, easily formed and changed, so that diversity in biological information encoded in the chemistry is facile under the environmental conditions obtained on earth.

Silicon chains?

There could well be conditions elsewhere in the universe where, say, silicon chains can play the biological information storehouse, but we are yet to find them. Herein lies the excitement of extraterrestrial life-seekers.

What have been the special conditions on Earth that made life form, flourish, diversify and sustain? What makes Earth life-friendly?

First, the surface and the top crust of the earth have provided the laboratory for making the molecules of life. Go beneath, it is too hot, too metallic and too high pressure.

Second are climatic conditions. Terrestrial temperature ranges between -40 to +50 degrees C (average around 20) on the surface. Higher than this, chemical reactions speed up (every 10 degree rise doubles the speed) and can change the chemical composition; below this, reactions run too slow.

Third is water, which is a liquid under these climatic conditions.

It is an excellent solvent, keeping in solution many life molecules, allowing them to mix and react. Water has the right size, melting and boiling points, vapour pressure, viscosity, polarity.

Chemistry in the liquid solution phase is optimal. In solids, reactants are hampered in motion while in the gas phase they tend to fly off.

Fourth, our moon is of the right size, able to control the spinning of the earth and its axis of rotation, thus stabilizing our climate and seasons.

Fifth is the ozone layer, which shields molecules on earth from being zapped away by cosmic radiation.

Sixth, the gravitational strength of Earth keeps useful gases such as N, O, CO and O from escaping off into space.

Seventh, we have a geomagnetic field which protects us from solar flares and storms.

Now look at Mars. It is deficient in several of this seven-fold path that sustains life on Earth. We are yet to determine whether there are regions that have soil on its crust, helping any life chemistry. Curiosity will hopefully let us know.

Too cold

Martian climate is a disaster for carbon-based life. Its surface temperature is minus 55 degrees, too cold for covalent chemical reactions to run at desirable speeds.

Its two tiny moons are more adornment than adjusters of climate or seasons. Water — perhaps there was some water in earlier times, but many believe that the dry channel like strips seen on the Martian surface come from such runoffs of water that once might have been.

Discovery of water bodies on or in Mars, if any, would be important. Also, given the atmosphere (or paucity of it) and the resultant pressure it exerts on the Martian surface, even if water were there, it would stay as liquid only in the 0-10 degree range, above which it would boil off. In addition, Martian gravity is just about one fourth of Earth’s; so, it would not be able to keep gases like N, O, CO and O (if at all) as well as we do. And its magnetic field is too feeble to shield off solar flares. (For more details, please look up www.biocab.org/LifeOn

Mars.html, from where I got these data).

No dismissing

So, is Mars devoid of life? Not necessarily. Recall even on Earth, we have life forms that live at 120 degrees, in frigid ice-cold climes, and we find microbes that handle radioactive rays with elan.

Hence, let us not dismiss such possibilities in yet-to-be-discovered enclaves in Mars. NASA and ISRO have their jobs cut out. But Carbon-based Bipedal Martians are pure sci-fi.

What then about non-carbon life, or non-water life? Say, silicon-based, or ammonia-based life chemistry? As the reporter wrote 500 times: “nobody knows”, but let us not dismiss it yet.

NASA to launch another Mars mission in 2016

 

     AP This image provided by NASA shows an artist rendition of the proposed InSight (Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) Lander.

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Encouraged by the success of “Curiosity”, NASA has announced to launch a new Mars mission in 2016 to take a better look into the guts of the Red Planet.

The mission called “InSight” will investigate why Mars’ crust is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like Earth’s.

Detailed knowledge of the interior of Mars in comparison to Earth will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve, the American space agency said.

“The exploration of Mars is a top priority for NASA, and the selection of ‘InSight’ ensures we will continue to unlock the mysteries of the Red Planet and lay the groundwork for a future human mission there,” said NASA administrator Charles Bolden.

“The recent successful landing of the Curiosity rover has galvanised public interest in space exploration and today’s announcement makes clear there are more exciting Mars missions to come,” he said referring to the success of Curiosity.

The 12th selection in NASA’s series of Discovery-class missions, ‘InSight’ is build on spacecraft technology used in the space agency’s highly successful Phoenix lander mission, which was launched to the Red Planet in 2007 and determined water existed near the surface in the Martian polar regions.

“Our Discovery Programme enables scientists to use innovative approaches to answering fundamental questions about our solar system in the lowest cost mission category,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

“’InSight’ will get to the ‘core’ of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars, well below the observations we’ve been able to make from orbit or the surface,” Grunsfeld said.

A classic example of biased and unscientific study

THE RECOMMENDATION: The mobile towers’ EMFexposure limit was recently lowered to 1/10th of the existing prescribed limit as a matter of abundant precaution. Photo: Nagara Gopal

For the past several years, there has been growing concern about the health impact of radiation from mobile towers. In 2008, Government of India adopted the Guidelines developed by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) for Electromagnetic radiation from mobile towers.The values chosen for the permissible Power Density are 4.5 W/Sqm for 900 MHz and 9 W/Sqm. for 1800 MHz.

Based on media reports and public concerns, the Government set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) of specialists on August 24, 2010. The Committee examined the environmental and health related concerns and indicated that most of the laboratory studies were unable to find a direct link between exposure to radio frequency radiation and health;and the scientific studies as yet have not been able to confirm a cause and effect relationship between radio frequency radiation and health. The effect of emission from cell phone towers is not known yet with certainty.

However, the IMC recommended lowering the mobile towers’ EMF exposure limits to 1/10th of the existing prescribed limit as a matter of abundant precaution. The Government accepted the recommendation and issued directions making the new norms applicable from September 1, 2012.

Among the inputs submitted to the Department of Telecom was a document "Report on Cell Tower Radiation" authored by Prof. Girish Kumar of the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay.

The report listed symptoms and diseases allegedly caused by electromagnetic radiation. The only items not included in it were jealousy and baldness! The author mined part of the scary data from "papers" of Arthur Firstenberg, the founder director of the "Cellular phone task force" which is “dedicated to halting the expansion of wireless technology because it cannot be made safe". Firstenberg filed and lost many suits against the spread of wireless technology.

Wikipedia, noted his claim that electromagnetic fields from his neighbour's cell phone are destroying his health and that he sued his neighbour seeking damages $ 530,000 for refusing to turn off her cell phone and other electronic devices!Firstenberg is a symbol of the collective schizophrenia against RF radiation.

Prof. Kumar uncritically accepted the Bio-initiative Report 2007 (BIR), a booklet well known for its lack of balance.

Advocacy document

The Committee on Man and Radiation (COMAR), a technical committee of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) noted that BIR is an advocacy document. BIR itself conceded that it was written “to document the reasons why current public exposure standards for non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation are no longer good enough to protect public health.”

Fourteen individuals under the direction of a 4-person organizing committee wrote BIR. “Most of its 21 sections are authored by single individuals or (in a few cases) pairs or trios of authors; the section ‘Key Scientific Evidence and Public Health Policy Recommendations’ was written by a pair of individuals and appears to reflect their views only,” COMAR clarified in a paper in Health Physics Journal. “There is no indication of how the members of the committee were chosen or how balance was provided in the group of contributors, a majority of whom have public records of criticism of existing exposure standards and guidelines.”

COMAR added that since appearing on the Internet in 2007, the BIR has received much media attention but, more recently, has been severely criticized by health organizations and scientific groups such as EMF-NET, a coordinating committee of the European Commission 6th Frame Work Programme, The Netherlands’ Health Council and Australian Centre for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research

BIR report was slammed by these agencies thus: “written in an alarmist and emotive language and the arguments have no scientific support from well-conducted EMF research;” “There is a lack of balance in the report; no mention is made in fact of reports that do not concur with authors’ statements and conclusions. It is “not an objective and balanced reflection of the current state of scientific knowledge;” and “As it stands it merely provides a set of views that are not consistent with the consensus of science.”

In May 2010, The INTERPHONE Study concluded that overall, no increase in risk of brain tumours was observed with the use of mobile phones. “There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at the highest exposure levels, but biases and error prevent a causal interpretation. The possible effects of long-term heavy use of mobile phones require further investigation", the authors added

The INTERPHONE study supported by WHO is the largest case–control study of mobile phones and brain tumours conducted to date, including the largest numbers of users with at least 10 years of exposure and the greatest cumulative hours of use of any study. Thirteen countries including UK, Sweden, France and Germany collaborated.

"Interphone study in 2010 mentions that excessive use of mobile phones has doubled to quadrupled brain tumor risk. However, they claim that for an average user, increase in cancer cases is not significant," the Prof. Kumar’s report says. By this assertion, the report is misinterpreting the lucid conclusion provided by the study

Prof. Kumar argued that the allowable power level must be brought down in India. "A number of adverse health effects have been documented at levels below the FCC guidelines, which include altered white blood cells in children; childhood leukemia; impaired motor function, reaction time, and memory; headaches, dizziness, fatigue, weakness, and insomnia etc", the report said, possibly based on the much criticized Bio-initiative Report 2007.

Prof. Kumar had cherry-picked many references to substantiate such claims. International agencies such as the WHO and national agencies have not accepted such preposterous claims.

A newspaper reported that in a building in Mumbai four cases of cancer were linked to radiation from a mobile phone tower. Based on this, Prof. Kumar estimated the power level at the building to be about 0.1 W/ m and claimed that the tower was the cause of cancer in “several” people in 2-3 years’ time!

He also measured a power level of 7,068 microwatt/m in the home of a cancer patient who allegedly developed cancer within an year of installation of a mobile phone tower, and links the cancer to radiation from the tower!

Arriving at a conclusion based on studying one or two individuals is not how epidemiological studies are conducted.

K.S. PARTHASARATHY

Former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board

ksparth@yahoo.co.uk

Challenges of space travel

Last month Sunita Williams entered the cosmos as part of NASA’s Expedition 32 which aims to perform more than 240 experiments at the International Space Station in addition to testing a micro-satellite deployment system and transporting new research equipment. September 17 is when the crew will next be on terra firma after seventy-nine days in zero gravity.

Re-adjusting to a life restrained by gravity has its complications particularly when propelling one’s body is achieved merely by wiggling fingers. Accidentally bumping into a surface often results in the astronaut careering through the cockpit.

In his book “Do Your Ears Pop in Space?” Col. Mike Mullane, a three-time astronaut, indicates that even eating in space involves slow, controlled movements to avoid spillage, not least because directing floating spheres of ‘spilled’ food into one’s mouth is a tiring and time-consuming exercise.

From getting accustomed to sleeping in weightlessness like a zombie with arms floating in front of one’s face to putting things down on a Velcro surface and then forgetting which of the many possible planes the object lies on, life in space requires adopting and adapting to a different lifestyle.

Spending extended periods of time in zero gravity has some adverse effects on the body, namely muscle and bone atrophy. According to NASA Science, muscles can disappear at a rate of 4 per cent per week, while bones atrophy at 1 per cent per month. In the absence of gravity, the body no longer recognises a need for the muscles (particularly those in the calves and spine) that ‘fight’ it and help maintain posture.

Periodic exercise maintains the body’s cardiovascular system but does not have the same effect as exercise on Earth because of the unnecessary (and therefore absent) resistance to gravity. Protracted exposure to weightlessness causes a loss of calcium and reduction in bone mass for the same reason, called osteoporosis. While post-menopausal women on earth are more prone to osteoporosis, both genders are equally prone to decalcification in space.

Furthermore, the mere act of living in space for days on end exposes an astronaut to a dose of space radiation equal to the dose an Earthling receives in a year. However this is only a fraction of the intake that scientists perceive as harmful. Also, the launch of space shuttles and the duration of expeditions are adjusted to avoid high solar activity.

If being bombarded by higher levels of cosmic and neutrino radiation is the downside of space travel, then physical growth is one of the perks. It certainly is true that disembarking astronauts are taller than embarking ones! This growth is due to zero gravity — the vertebrae of the spine spread out.

While this effect is permanent, not every aspect of adjusting to life in space is long-lasting. Space Adaptation Syndrome or ‘space sickness,’ which scars the start of an expedition for some astronauts, is caused by a sudden change in spatial orientation. The satisfaction of weighing zero Newton is also temporary, and ends once the shuttle re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere and gravity comes into play.

KASTURI SHAH

(The author graduated from boarding school at the Cheltenham Ladies' College in the U.K. and will be joining Princeton University next month)

Video of Mars rover descent released

 

NASA’s Curiosity rover has transmitted a low-resolution video showing the last two-and-a-half minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the Martian atmosphere, giving earthlings a sneak peek of a spacecraft landing on another world.

It was a sneak preview, since it’ll take some time before full-resolution frames are beamed back depending on other priorities.

The full video “will just be exquisite,” said Michael Malin, the chief scientist of the instrument.

NASA celebrated the precision landing of a rover on Mars and marvelled over the mission’s flurry of photographs — grainy, black-and-white images of Martian gravel; a mountain at sunset; and, most exciting of all, the spacecraft’s white-knuckle plunge through the red planet’s atmosphere.

Curiosity — a roving laboratory the size of a compact car — landed right on target late Sunday after an eight-month, 566-million-kilometre journey. It parked its six wheels about six km from its ultimate science destination Mount Sharp, rising from the floor of Gale Crater near the equator.

Extraordinary efforts were needed for the landing because the rover weighs one tonne, and the thin Martian atmosphere offers little friction to slow down a spacecraft. Curiosity had to go from 13,000 mph (21,000 kph) to zero in seven minutes — unfurling a parachute, and then firing rockets to brake.

In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered it to the ground at three kph.

At the end of what NASA called “seven minutes of terror”, the vehicle settled into place almost perfectly flat in the crater it was aiming for.

The nuclear-powered Curiosity will dig into the Martian surface to analyse what’s there and hunt for some of the molecular building blocks of life, including carbon.

It won’t start moving for a couple of weeks, because all the systems on the $2.5 billion rover have to be checked out. Colour photos and panoramas will start coming in the next few days.

Curiosity takes a look around

 

 

          Photo: AFP/NASA/JPL-Caltech /MSSS The first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater taken by NASA's Curiosity rover on August 8.

The Curiosity rover had sent more remarkable images from Mars’ surface, including the first 360-degree view of its surroundings, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which operates Curiosity, has said.

The images from Curiosity’s just-activated navigation cameras, or Navcams, after the mast has been lifted, include the rover’s first self-portrait, looking down at its deck from above. Another Navcam image set, in lower-resolution thumbnails, is the first 360-degree view of Curiosity’s new home in Gale Crater.

Also, two higher-resolution Navcams have provided the most detailed depiction to date of Mars surface adjacent to the rover.

“These Navcam images indicate that our powered descent stage did more than give us a great ride, it gave our science team an amazing freebie,” said John Grotzinger, project scientist for the mission from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

“The thrust from the rockets actually dug a one-and-a-half-foot-long trench in the surface. It appears we can see Martian bedrock on the bottom. Its depth below the surface is valuable data we can use going forward,” Mr. Grotzinger added.

Jennifer Trosper, JPL project systems manager, said the rover has deployed its seven—foot mast, which holds cameras and science and communications instruments. She said the rover has established full communications with Earth and has more power output than expected.

“The rover works perfectly,” she said.

Like Mojave

Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger compared one of the new images sent from Mars to the Mojave Desert at a press briefing Wednesday.

“It’ s quite an experience to be looking at a place that feels really comfortable” and familiar, he said. “What’ s going to be interesting is finding out all the ways that it’ s different.” Scientists know that the crater where Curiosity is situated was covered with water in the past, and the rover itself may well be sitting on the edge of what was once a river delta. Three-mile high Mount Sharp also sits in the midst of the 100 miles in diameter crater, and will be a major focus of the mission, according to JPL.

High-resolution close-up images released Wednesday also show what appear to be pebbles and gravel over a layer of what scientist believe is bedrock. One set of images also shows a small nearby indentation with exposed rock.

“You can see a harder, rocky surface under gravel and pebbles,” Mr. Grotzinger said, indicating that the site could become the rover’ s first destination.

NASA mission gives a peek of rover's Mars journey

  

 

 

             AP In this frame provided by NASA of a stop motion video taken during the NASA rover Mars landing, the heat shield falls away during Curiosity's descent to the surface of Mars on August 5, 2012.

NASA’s latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views of Mars and the journey there are yet to come.

“Spectacular,” mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. “We’ve not had that before.”

Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.

Locale aside, Curiosity is giving scientists an unprecedented sense of what it took to reach its Martian destination. The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that NASA processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.

In the video, the protective heat shield pops off and tumbles away. The footage gets jumpy as Curiosity rides on a parachute. In the last scene, dust billows up just before landing.

NASA twice tried to record a Mars landing. In 1999, the Mars Polar Lander carried similar gear, but it slammed into the south pole after prematurely shutting off its engines. Another effort was aborted in 2008 during the Phoenix lander’s mission to the northern plains when mission managers decided not to turn it on for fear it would interfere with the landing.

“It’s too emotional for me,” said Ken Edgett of the Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the video camera. “It’s been a long journey and it’s really awesome.”

The full high-resolution video will be downloaded when time allows and should give the first peek of a landing on another planet.

Curiosity’s journey to Mars spanned eight months and 352 million miles (566 million kilometers). The rover gently touched down Sunday night after executing an elaborate and untested landing routine. The size of a compact car, it was too heavy to land using air bags. Instead, it relied on a heat shield, parachute, rockets and cables to lower it to the ground.

During its seven-minute plunge through the atmosphere, Curiosity shed the spacecraft parts. On Tuesday, scientists got their first view of the castoffs. The eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had circled over the landing site and spotted Curiosity and the scattered parts.

“It’s like a crime scene photo,” said Sarah Milkovich, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.

The parachute appeared to be inflated, and the rocket stage that unspooled the cables crashed 2,100 feet (640 meters) from the landing site.

Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught Curiosity sailing through the Martian skies under a parachute. It was only the second time a spacecraft has been photographed on a parachute; the first was Phoenix during its descent to the surface.

The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity will spend the next two years chiselling into rocks and scooping up soil at Gale Crater to determine whether the environment ever had the right conditions for microbes to thrive. It will spend a chunk of its time driving to Mount Sharp where images from space reveal signs of past water on the lower flanks.

It’ll be several weeks before it takes its first drive and flexes its robotic arm. Since landing, engineers have been busy performing health checkups on its systems and instruments. Over the next several days, it was poised to send back crisper pictures of its surroundings including a panorama.

The rover was “still in great shape,” mission manager Michael Watkins said.

This report has been corrected for a factual error

A new oxidant in the atmosphere identified

 

 

It is time that the authorities evolve strategies to contain the emission of green house gases since the vehicle population is increasing at a rapid pace. Photo: M.A. Sriram

The new oxidant has “significant capacity” to oxidise sulphur dioxide

Scientists have for the first time found unequivocal evidence of another oxidant playing a vital role in the formation of gaseous sulphuric acid in the atmosphere. Until now, it was thought that the combination of OH (hydroxyl radical) oxidant with sulphur dioxide (SO) was the dominant way by which gaseous sulphuric acid is formed in the atmosphere. The results are published on August 9, 2012 in Nature.

R.L. Mauldin from the University of Helsinki and other co-authors are yet to identify the oxidant with certainty, and have named it as ‘X.’ They found the new oxidant has “significant capacity” to oxidise sulphur dioxide.

The investigation into the presence of ‘X’ was conducted in the boreal forest region in Finland. The OH concentrations are not constant throughout the day. The maximum concentration is found at noon and much lower values during night.

Measurements taken in the field for a week showed that the concentration of ‘X’ also does not remain constant during the day. But its levels are much higher than the hydroxyl radical (OH) during evenings and nights. And the levels of gaseous sulphuric acid measured were also much higher than expected if only OH were present.

“Sulphuric acid originating from this non-OH source may contribute up to 50 per cent of the total HSO budget, demonstrating the important role of this HSO formation route,” they write.

Since the new oxidant was found to be particularly abundant during the evenings and nights, the scientists postulate that it must be related to “reaction of surface emission, such as naturally produced hydrocarbons, with ozone.”

To confirm their findings, the scientists carried out laboratory experiments where SO was exposed to mixtures of ozone and various alkenes, and the resulting atmospheric sulphuric acid levels were measured.

The experiments were repeated using an OH scavenger. To their surprise, sulphuric acid was still being formed, thus confirming the results obtained in the field.

The most efficient way of producing atmospheric sulphuric acid from a non-OH source could be from monoterpenes than for other alkenes, they note. Apparently, monoterpenes, including limonene and alpha pinene used in the experiment, are emitted by trees. And these two were found in abundance in the field.

They followed the next logical step of reconfirming its actual production by the trees. They cut branches from different trees and measured the amount of OH and ‘X’ produced.

The amount of OH produced was “minor in comparison to production of ‘X.’”

In conclusion, they state: “Our findings add to the already substantial significance of forests in the Earth system by introducing a previously unknown oxidant, probably an sCI, capable of oxidizing at least SO and possibly also other atmospheric trace gases relevant to atmospheric chemistry.”

“The technique used by them to measure OH is known as chemical ionization mass spectroscopy (CIMS), and it has been used in a range of environments. It is therefore surprising that the significance of background signals has not been recognized in previous studies,” notes a News piece in the same issue of the journal.

“The forested environment studied by the authors emits large quantities of alkene, and so provides ideal conditions for the formation of ‘X.’ Measurements of ‘X’ are now needed in other environments, to determine its global impact on the production of atmospheric sulphuric acid.”

India to launch three satellites in September

India will launch three satellites in September and two more by the end of this year, said a senior official in Chennai.

“We will be launching Spot-6, a French satellite and a small Japanese satellite on board PSLV-C21 (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket, next month,” P.S. Veeraraghavan, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), told IANS.

The third is a communication satellite — GSAT-10 – on-board Ariane rocket from Kourou in French Guiana.

The Thiruvananthapuram-based VSSC is part of India’s space agency Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Mr. Veeraraghavan said the French satellite is expected to be in India soon while the Japanese satellite is already at ISRO’s launch centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

ISRO’s commercial arm Antrix Corporation Limited (Antrix) has entered into a commercial Launch Services Agreement with Astrium SAS, a company under EADS, France, for launching SPOT-6, an advanced remote sensing satellite.

The 800-kg SPOT-6 built by Astrium SAS will be the heaviest third party payload that ISRO will be carrying after the 350-kg Italian satellite Agile it put into orbit in 2007.

As the total luggage will be around 815 kg, ISRO will be using its Core Alone variant of PSLV (rocket without its six straps on motors).

This mission will take ISRO’s total tally of ferrying foreign satellites to 29.

The Indian space agency in order to augment its communication transponder capacity - automatic receivers and transmitters for communication and broadcast of signals - will be sending up GSAT-10.

According to Veeraraghavan, the space agency would launch SARAL satellite - an Indo-French initiative - using PSLV-C20 rocket sometime in October-November this year.

Agreeing that ISRO normally do not launch any rockets during that period, Veeraraghavan said if the weather is conducive the rocket could be sent up.

He said ISRO is also planning to launch GSAT-14 a small communication satellite that is considered as the replacement for India’s the education satellite Edusat, by this December or January next year using its heavier rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). The spacecraft will carry Ka band beacons, which are planned to be used to carry out studies related to rain and atmospheric effects on Ka band satellite communication links in Indian region.

ISRO will be flying the GSLV rocket this time with its own cryogenic engine. This will be the second GSLV rocket to fly with indigenous cryogenic engine. The first GSLV rocket that flew with indigenous cryogenic engine in 2010 was a failure.

Mr. Veeraraghavan said ISRO will be testing its GSLV Mark III model next March but without the cryogenic engine.

Key to finding life on Mars lies in the deserts of Chile

 

      AP NASA scientist Adam Steltzner explains the Curiosity rover's path to the surface of Mars in Pasadena, California, on Thursday. (Right) An artist’s rendering of Curiosity on Martian surface.

When NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) lands its rover, Curiosity, on Mars on Monday it will be the latest in a series of missions to the red planet that began more than three decades ago. The MSL mission isn’t a search for life. Curiosity will sniff for chemicals that could be relevant to life, but it won’t be looking for biological organisms as such.

Why is this? Given the huge public interest in life on Mars, why doesn’t NASA just go and look for it directly? To understand, you have to go back to 1976, and NASA’s trailblazing Viking mission. Two identical spacecraft landed on Mars to look for microbes in the topsoil. Several experiments were performed. One consisted of adding a nutrient broth to soil to see if anything consumed it and gave off carbon dioxide. To scientists’ surprise, something did — repeatedly — on both spacecraft. When the soil was heated, the response stopped. To this day the designer of the experiment, Gilbert Levin, insists he found life on Mars.

Few scientists agree. The other Viking experiments did not give such clear-cut results, and NASA’s official position is that the mission did not detect life. So what caused the broth to emit gas? Nobody really knows. It may indeed have been life, but it may also have been complex soil chemistry.

Conditions on the surface of Mars are very harsh. Radiation is intense. Water exists, but almost never in liquid form. Reactive chemicals such as oxidants can accumulate over immense durations without being washed away or neutralised. So it’s perhaps no surprise that adding liquid broth made the soil fizz.

Because of the inconclusive Viking results, the direct search for life on Mars has effectively stalled, as it’s hard to know precisely what to look for. What would be an unambiguous signature of life anyway? Scientists can’t even agree on a definition of life as we know it, let alone a possibly different form of life. And when the soil chemistry is unfamiliar, the problems are compounded.

Clarification could come, however, by seeking out Mars-like surfaces on Earth and studying what, if anything, lives there. Mars is very cold and very dry but, of the two, the dryness is the more serious obstacle: water is crucial to known life.

The driest place on Earth is the Atacama Desert in Chile, and for years astrobiologists have been sifting the soil there, looking for hardy microbes able to eke out an existence in the hyper-arid terrain. For a while it looked as if no life could withstand the desiccating conditions of the Atacama’s core, but then in 2006 a visiting chemist from the University of Lleida in Spain, Jacek Wierzchos, made a discovery.

Projecting out of the parched dusty surface of the desert are countless natural sculptures made of common salt. Mr. Wierzchos broke one open and was puzzled to find a distinctive dark layer inside. He dissolved the salt rock and found the colouration was caused by several new species of microbe living inside.

How do Mr. Wierzchos’ bizarre microbes survive? It seems that enough light penetrates the salt to permit photosynthesis. But what supplies the all-important water? This was the most astonishing part. A distinctive property of salt, known as deliquescence, is its ability to suck in moisture directly from the air. The microbes scavenge this sparse resource, ingesting tiny quantities of water from microscopic pores inside the crystalline matrix. Although the fierce desert sun bakes the water out of the salt in the daytime, there is enough humidity in the air at night to replenish it by deliquescent absorption. So even if it never rains, life can go on.

Could Mars harbour microbes in a similar setting? It’s not impossible. There are salt deposits there too, and although the Martian atmosphere is much thinner and holds less water vapour than the Atacama Desert, there may be niche environments in which deliquescent absorption could still operate. Cocooned in salt, protected from the oxidising soils and the intense ultraviolet radiation, Martian microbes may be able to photosynthesise, and support a Lilliputian ecosystem sustained by traces of water permeating salt rocks.

Unfortunately, MSL won’t be targeting such environments. It will, however, be looking for organic compounds that could hint at some form of Martian biology.

Meanwhile, the Atacama Desert hosts the closest analogue of what a real, live Martian might be like. We can only wait expectantly for signs of something similar on the red planet. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012

(Paul Davies is director of the Beyond Centre for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University)

Mars rover faces a tricky landing

 

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science and technology space programme

It’s the U.S. space agency’s most ambitious and expensive Mars mission yet and it begins with the Red planet arrival on Sunday of the smartest interplanetary rover ever built.

It won’t be easy. The complicated touchdown NASA designed for the Curiosity rover is so risky that it’s been described as “seven minutes of terror” — the time it takes to go from 20,920 kmph to a complete stop.

Scientists and engineers will be waiting anxiously as the spacecraft plunges through Mars’ thin atmosphere and, in a new twist, attempts to slowly lower the rover to the bottom of a crater with cables.

Scientists on Earth won’t know for 14 minutes whether Curiosity lands safely as radio signals from Mars travel to Earth. If it succeeds, a video camera aboard the rover will have captured the most dramatic minutes for the first filming of a landing on another planet.

“It would be a major technological step forward if it works. It’s a big gamble,” said American University space policy analyst Howard McCurdy.

The future direction of Mars exploration is hanging on the outcome of this $2.5-billion science project to determine whether the environment was once suitable for microbes to live. Previous missions have found ice and signs that water once flowed. Curiosity will drill into rocks and soil in search of carbon and other elements.

Mars is an unforgiving planet with a hostile history of swallowing man-made spacecraft. It’s tough to fly there and even tougher to touch down. More than half of humanity’s attempts to land on Mars have ended in disaster. Only the U.S. has tasted success.

“You’ve done everything that you can think of to ensure mission success, but Mars can still throw you a curve,” said former NASA Mars-specialist Scott Hubbard, who now teaches at Stanford University.

The Mini Cooper-sized spacecraft travelled eight and a half months to reach Mars. In a sort of celestial acrobatics, Curiosity will twist, turn and perform other manoeuvres throughout the seven-minute thrill ride to the surface.

Why is NASA attempting such a daredevil move? It had little choice. Earlier spacecraft dropped to the Martian surface like a rock, swaddled in airbags, and bounced to a stop. Such was the case with the much smaller and lighter rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004.

At nearly a ton, Curiosity is too heavy, so engineers had to come up with a new way to land. Friction from the thin atmosphere isn’t enough to slow down the spacecraft without some help.

During its fiery plunge, Curiosity brakes by executing a series of S-curves similar to how the space shuttle re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. At 1,450 kph, it unfurls its huge parachute. It then sheds the heat shield that took the brunt of the atmospheric friction and switches on its ground-sensing radar.

Curiosity then jettisons the parachute and fires up its rocket-powered backpack to slow it down until it hovers. Cables unspool from the backpack and slowly lower the rover at less than 3.2 kmph. The cables keep the rocket engines from getting too close and kicking up dust.

Once the rover senses touchdown, the cords are cut.

Even if the intricate choreography goes according to script, a freak dust storm, sudden gust of wind or other problems can mar the landing.

The rover’s landing target is Gale Crater near the Martian equator. Scientists know Gale was once waterlogged. Images from space reveal mineral signatures of clays and sulphate salts — which form in the presence of water — in older layers near the bottom of the mountain.

During its two-year exploration, the plutonium-powered Curiosity will climb the lower mountain flanks to probe the deposits. As sophisticated as the rover is, it cannot search for life. Instead, it carries a toolbox including a power drill, rock-zapping laser and mobile chemistry lab to sniff for organic compounds, considered the chemical building blocks of life. It also has cameras to take panoramic photos. Curiosity will explore whether the crater ever had the right environment for microorganisms to take hold.

Rover: first step to human space programme to Mars

 

 

        AP Seeking life: The rover is equipped with a drill to gather samples underground and send them to a self-contained lab to determine if there are any microorganisms present on the planet.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has high expectations for the upcoming landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars and is certain of great science results, a lab engineer says.

Torsten Zorn, a robotics engineer with JPL and a four-year veteran on the Curiosity project team, told Xinhua in an interview that the most interesting part of the venture could be learning more about the geological history of Mars.

Zorn said scientists want to find out how Mars’ once wet surface dried up, how long the process took and what caused the changes. The findings will be important for scientists to determine whether Mars is habitable for humans.

To find life, in any form, Zorn said, is a goal of Curiosity. The rover is equipped with a drill to gather samples underground and send them to a self-contained lab to determine Mars’ geological conditions and changes, and if there are any microorganisms present on the planet. The small lab will also test the soil samples to see if there are signs of life in the history of Mars.

Curiosity will test the Mars soil only with its own equipment after it lands on the planet on Sunday (August 5) but future missions will bring samples back to Earth for more study, Zorn said.

Zorn said many Americans have volunteered for the first one-way trip to Mars, but he said that if scientists can send human to Mars, they can also guarantee a return trip.

Paving the way

Curiosity will help pave the way for future manned Mars missions, Zorn said.

“It will definitely do its part to further help man’s ability to land on another planet,” he said. “We have a couple of different instruments onboard that will increase our knowledge of the environment, the radiation environment, the chemistry of the surface. There are many different ways that are helping should we decide to pursue a human space program to Mars. This is one of the stepping stones towards that goal.” Curiosity will concentrate on a small area of Mars to conduct detailed research, Zorn said, but following traces of water should be the general rule.

Curiosity also will take video images for the first time and send them back to Earth, Zorn said.

Using plutonium decay

The rover also will be the first to use nuclear power thanks to a radioisotope thermoelectric generator that will utilize the heat of plutonium-238’s radioactive decay.

The long-lived power supply will enable Curiosity to operate for at least a full Mars year (687 Earth days, or 1.9 Earth years).

Zorn said nuclear power is not new to spacecraft and was available in the 1960s. The technology is much more advanced now and suitable for use in a long-range rover such the Curiosity. “I am very close to 100 percent sure” of success, he said, adding that the lab has tested Curious under almost all scenarios and has prepared several years for the mission.

Curiosity represents an international effort, Zorn said, because it contains parts from Russia, Spain and Canada.

With a length of 10 feet and weight of 899 kg, the rover is the largest vehicle humans have sent to other planets, Zorn said. The Curiosity program has cost a total of 2.5 billion dollars, including 1.8 billion dollars for spacecraft development and science investigations, NASA said.

Curiosity, launched on Nov. 26, 2011, will travel almost 352 million miles (567 million km) to reach Mars.

Curiosity sets down on Mars, beams first image

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• AP This photo released by NASA's JPL, shows one of the first images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars on Sunday evening.
• AP In a photo provided by NASA, the Mars Science Laboratory team in the MSL Mission Support Area reacts after learning the the Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars and images start coming in at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Mars, in Pasadena, California.
• AP In this photo released by NASA's JPL, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) team members talk in the MSL Mission Support Area at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ahead of the planned landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars, in Pasadena, California on Sunday.

In a show of technological wizardry, the robotic explorer Curiosity blazed through the pink skies of Mars, steering itself to a gentle landing inside a giant crater for the most ambitious dig yet into the red planet’s past.

A chorus of cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Sunday night after the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever built sent a signal to Earth. It had survived a harrowing plunge through the thin Mars atmosphere.

“Touchdown confirmed,” said engineer Allen Chen. “We’re safe on Mars.”

Minutes after touchdown, Curiosity beamed back the first pictures from the surface showing its wheel and its shadow, cast by the afternoon sun.

It was NASA’s seventh landing on Earth’s neighbour; many other attempts by the U.S. and other countries to zip past, circle or set down on Mars have gone awry.

The arrival was an engineering tour de force, debuting never-before-tried acrobatics packed into “seven minutes of terror” as Curiosity sliced through the Martian atmosphere at 20,920.5 kph.

In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground at a snail-paced 2 mph. A video camera was set to capture the most dramatic moments which would give earthlings their first glimpse of a touchdown on another world.

The extraterrestrial feat injected a much-needed boost to NASA, which is debating whether it can afford another Mars landing this decade. At a budget-busting $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the priciest gamble yet, which scientists hope will pay off with a bonanza of discoveries.

Over the next two years, Curiosity will drive over to a mountain rising from the crater floor, poke into rocks and scoop up rust-tinted soil to see if the region ever had the right environment for microscopic organisms to thrive. It’s the latest chapter in the long-running quest to find out whether primitive life arose early in the planet’s history.

The voyage to Mars took more than eight months and spanned 352 million miles (566 million kilometers). The trickiest part of the journey? The landing. Because Curiosity weighs nearly a ton, engineers drummed up a new and more controlled way to set the rover down. The last Mars rovers, twins Spirit and Opportunity, were cocooned in air bags and bounced to a stop in 2004.

The plans for Curiosity called for a series of braking tricks, similar to those used by the space shuttle, and a supersonic parachute to slow it down. Next - Ditch the heat shield used for the fiery descent.

And in a new twist, engineers came up with a way to lower the rover by cable from a hovering rocket-powered backpack. At touchdown, the cords cut and the rocket stage crashed a distance away.

The nuclear-powered Curiosity, the size of a small car, is packed with scientific tools, cameras and a weather station. It sports a robotic arm with a power drill, a laser that can zap distant rocks, a chemistry lab to sniff for the chemical building blocks of life and a detector to measure dangerous radiation on the surface.

It also tracked radiation levels during the journey to help NASA better understand the risks astronauts could face on a future manned trip.

After several weeks of health checkups, the six-wheel rover could take its first short drive and flex its robotic arm.

The landing site near Mars’ equator was picked because there are signs of past water everywhere, meeting one of the requirements for life as we know it. Inside Gale Crater is a 5-kilometre-high mountain, and images from space show the base appears rich in minerals that formed in the presence of water.

Previous trips to Mars have uncovered ice near the Martian north pole and evidence that water once flowed when the planet was wetter and toastier unlike today’s harsh, frigid desert environment.

Curiosity’s goal: to scour for basic ingredients essential for life including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and oxygen. It’s not equipped to search for living or fossil microorganisms. To get a definitive answer, a future mission needs to fly Martian rocks and soil back to Earth to be examined by powerful laboratories.

The mission comes as NASA retools its Mars exploration strategy. Faced with tough economic times, the space agency pulled out of partnership with the European Space Agency to land a rock-collecting rover in 2018. The Europeans have since teamed with the Russians as NASA decides on a new roadmap.

Despite Mars’ reputation as a spacecraft graveyard, humans continue their love affair with the planet, lobbing spacecraft in search of clues about its early history. Out of more than three dozen attempts flybys, orbiters and landings by the U.S., Soviet Union, Europe and Japan since the 1960s, more than half have ended disastrously.

One NASA rover that defied expectations is Opportunity, which is still busy wheeling around the rim of a crater in the Martian southern hemisphere eight years later.