New Mars Forums

Hey Scott,

Yep, Stu's much better :-)

To be perfectly honest, I don't think I would buy one of those lottery tickets unless I was sure that the people I'd be sharing the community with had at least *some* of that Right Stuff. For such a venture to succeed it would need to involve people who actually believed in it, probably *only* people who believed in and were committed to it, people who were prepared for - and would welcome - the challenges, who would go into it with their eyes totally open. I hate to use the word "undesirables" but I feel I must - you wouldn't want to live in such a community with people who didn't realise how isolated they'd be, or who would be unsuited psychologically for the task. I'm sure the various Navies of the world wouldn't be too keen on selecting crews for their submarines by lottery, just as NASA won't select the crew of the first manned Mars mission by putting all the astronauts names ina  helmet and pulling half a dozen out.

Also, I can't help thinking that if you made entrance, literally, a lottery, well, at the risk of sounding elitist here myself you'd get disruptive elements in the mix, people who had no real interest in or passion for Mars, and who just bought a ticket along with their weekly cash lottery ticket because they were at the same counter. You might get people who actually *wanted* to disrupt the community buying tickets, in the hope that they'd get in and then they'd deliberately undermine it.

I think lotteries in general are a bad way of choosing this kind of thing. I mean, look what happened to Willy Wonka. He thought it was a great idea to put golden lottery tickets in his chocolate bars to select the kids he'd show around the Chocolate Factory, and what a disaster THAT turned into! ;-)

As for your idea - proposal - for a virtual art gallery...? Well, I don't know enough about the Phi side of your idea to comment on that, I'll have to research that on here when I get a chance, but maybe this is something worth pursuing - a "Mars Art" art competition, in schools, with the winners going on show in a virtual "Mars Art Museum" website...?

Stu

That's nice of you, thanks :-)

Yes, the star watches are very rewarding, and I am sure there are many societies doing the same thing in other countries too. I run an astronomy society here in the Lake District and we often hold public sky gazing events, whenever there's a comet or an eclipse visible we set our gear up in a big park by the river and just show people what's going on. These events are always well attended by kids (the trick is to hold them, if possible, on a Friday or Saturday night - no school the next day :-) Not always possible with eclipses of course) and there are always a couple of "kids only" scopes set up, close to the ground, so they don't have to wait in line with the grown-ups. We held a Mars Night (as described in my "LOST MARS" article) in August and that attracted LOADS of kids, and I am sure that some of them appreciated Mars as a real planet for the first time that night.

On my own, Outreach-wise, I give lots of talks to community groups and general public audiences - most recently a special "Beagle Approaches Mars" talk at a nearby science college... sigh... but most of my "work" is in schools tho, talking to kids aged between 6 and 11 (don't know what Grade that is over there in the US, sorry), giving illustrated lectures and presentations about astronomy and space, usually (BIG surprise, I know) about Mars. They can be very rewarding - I can go into a school feeling fed-up and generally burnt-out about space, and come out two hours later as fired-up as ever. They can be quite humbling too, tho - at a school I visited before Christmas I met a young boy who has barely survived leukemia of a sort, and he was ill during the talk. Kind of hard to be all funny and entertaining after that as you can appreciate. But something good came of it - I belong to a mailing list for meteorite collectors, and when I mentioned the young boy on that I was sent almost a dozen meteorites as presents for him by dealers. He's almost got as many meteorites as I do now! ;-)

But this is why I'm so passionate about Mars, you see? I know my place, I know I can't go, but when I go into a school, and talk about Mars, it's in the hope that it will make some of them want to. So I show them the ol'faithful slides of Marineris and Olympus, pass around my tiny phial of martian meteorite, bounce kids across the room to show them what low martian gravity would be like, and at the end of all that most of the kids in the class eagerly put their hands up when I ask "Who wants to go to Mars to see these things for real one day?" But *some* of them have a look in their eyes that tells me they're serious, they really do want to go. So they're the ones I look at when I tell the class that if they work hard enough, do the right exams, and really, REALLY want to go, any of them could go to Mars when they grow up. Then those few look back, and smile, and that's a real "shiver up the spine" moment I can tell you... :-)

And this is why I'm so proud of, and defensive about, Beagle. That little pocket watch probe is going there for you, for me, for all the kids I talk to in all the classes in all the schools here, and all around the world too. It's not a huge LOST IN SPACE robot, it's the size of the lid of one of the garishly-coloured plastic bins the kids throw their waste paper into in class. It's a gorgeous shiny and gold, like an old fashioned watch, or a chocolate coin; it looks like something they themselves could build in class as a science project, you know? And it has a definite goal all kids can understand - to look for life. It's because all kids are fascinated by aliens that they "get" Beagle. It's real to them. If you think about it, it's doing exactly what any self-respecting ten year old would do if they went to Mars - digging about under the dirt for bugs ;-)

I have bookings for several schools in the new year, approximately 300 kids all waiting for me to go tell them the latest news - and show them the latest pictures - from Beagle, so you'll have to forgive me if I get a bit grrrr'y about it on here. It's just that, well, it's Our probe, you know? It's there for us. In many ways, it's one *of* us.

If I could go and throw a blanket over the poor shivering little thing I would. But I can't, so I'll just keep telling the kids I meet in the street every day that they shouldn't give up on Beagle just yet.

I'm not.

Well, I was just outside in my yard, looking at Mars through my telescope - it's VERY close to the Moon tonight, and little more than an orange spark in the eyepiece now, even at 200x, compared to the beautifully-detailed disc I could see back in August - and even tho Beagle's landing site is out of view, hidden around the other side of the planet right now, I sent the little guy my best wishes. I STILL don't have that sinking feeling in my gut that told me the Polar Lander and MCO were lost, so I'm not giving up hope until that all-important first week in January.

Stu

Hi Cindy,

Weird coincidence - I've just come back home from a trip thru to a nearby lakeside town called Keswick, I went there to take pictures because the day is so sparkling and cold here. We had an overnight temperature of minus 5 degrees C here, so today everything is covered in hoarfrost, and the grass is very, very crunchy underfoot because the grass is as brittle as crystal. When it snows, the sound we hear most is a soft, impacting "scrunch" and a squeak as you described, that's when the snow is only a couple of inches deep, but when it is thicker the sound is softened and deadened into more of a gentle "CRUMP"ing sound...

Wish I could show you the pics I took today... blue and white sky, ice halo around the low Sun, reflected in the still, icy waters of the lake... the mountain tops dusted in snow that looks like icing sugar ("Frosting" for our US members) has been sprinkled on them, kids running around jumping on the ice to break it up to skim across the lake... just spectacularly pretty.

Stu

...and then, one day, some of the second or third generation serfs get so fed up with paying their taxes to their Martian Atreides or Harkonnens masters and dump all their tea out of an airlock...

Revolution anyone? ;-)

Stu

The Sky From Beagle

Having seen pictures sent back by the Viking and Pathfinder probes, we?re all pretty familiar with the appearance of the rock-strewn landscape which Beagle hopefully landed on Christmas Day, and the MERs will land on next month, but have you ever wondered what the sky would look like if you were stood beside one of the probes on Mars? Or, more, specifically, what the night sky would look like? Well, because I have, often, I?ve been playing about with ? sorry, I mean carefully experimenting with ? my planetarium software (STARRY NIGHT, for the record, excellent program) to see what Beagle?s view of the sky would have been after dark on the day of its landing, and in the hope it?s of interest to a few people in the Group I thought I?d let you know what I found when I set the timer on the program. Note: although the following details are specific to the first evening of Beagle?s stay as far as times are concerned, they?re still fairly accurate for the sky Beagle will be seeing now, and for the view you?d get if you were standing next to one of the MERs after they arrive in Jan, the appearances and positions of the planets won't change very much between now and then, so take your pick, ok? :-)

(Note 2: some experts insist that because Mars? atmosphere is very dusty ? something the pictures taken by Viking and Pathfinder show very clearly ? its night sky will be ruined by haze, and only the brightest stars and planets would be seen. I like to be more optimistic and think that because the atmosphere would settle down at night after the dust devils stopped blowing, and because Mars? atmosphere is thinner than Earth?s, and because there?s no pollution (chemical or ?light?) there, the night sky on Mars could actually be very nice, possibly as good as Earth?s at times when winds have cleared some of the dust away, so hereafter I?m assuming it?s a ?good? clear night on Mars?  ;-) )

Okay, so what would you see, standing there on Mars after dark? Well, on a ?good? night, the sky above Beagle 2 ? or the MER of your choice in January - might well be ablaze with stars. I like to think the brighter ones would be reflected in its solar arrays too. So, the first thing you?d notice standing there would be stars. Lots and lots of stars.

By midnight, if you looked to the south east, you would see the familiar hourglass-shape of Orion shining above the horizon, but from Beagle?s landing site at least it would appear to be upside down compared to our view of it from here in the UK. Instead of being the farthest from it, Betelgeuse, the red giant star marking The Hunter?s left shoulder, would be closest to the horizon, and possibly blazing with an even more pronounced red hue thanks to atmospheric dust?? Below and to the right of Orion, Sirius, brightest star in the sky, would be a silvery-blue beacon, but it might take you a few moments to figure out why it looked ?wrong?: here on Earth, at least from the UK?s latitude, we?re accustomed to seeing Sirius flashing and sparkling in the sky with a multitude of colours because it is always very close to the horizon, and therefore its light is always significantly distorted by the trembling of the atmosphere, but on Mars its light would be steadier and more intense. It would be very strange to see Sirius not twinkling like crazy?

To the north-east, the yellow-tinged star Capella would be shining brightly, just to the right of a short, faint smudge of light ? a comet called Linear T7. At the moment T7 it is too faint to see with the naked eye from here on Earth, but from Mars, with its thinner air and zero pollution, it should just about be visible to the naked eye?

Low in the east, above and to the right of Castor and Pollux, the two brightest stars of Gemini, you?d see a bright golden-coloured star which isn?t really a star at all, but the planet Saturn. Saturn is easily visible to the unaided eye from Earth ? in fact it?s very easy to see from the northern hemisphere after dark right now ? and you might think that because Mars is slightly closer to Saturn than Earth, the Ringed Planet would appear brighter from the surface of the Red Planet, but the difference in distance is so small Saturn wouldn?t look much better at all.

And assuming the sky wasn't too dusty, in the background, dominating everything, would be The Milky Way. Only really visible from dark sites here on Earth, the Milky Way could be so bright from the airless surface of Mars that it would look like it had been airbrushed across the sky.Mottled here and there with bright star clouds and obscuring areas of dust, it could look very three-dimensional compared to our terrestrial views?

At some point thru the night you?d see a brilliant ?star? moving overhead, a lantern-bright spark of light so bright it would actually cast shadows behind you as it skated swiftly through the constellations. Very quickly it would pass overhead and then fall towards the eastern horizon, passing to Saturn?s left before vanishing behind the distant hills. This ?star? would be Phobos, Mars? largest and closest moon. We?ll come back to Phobos later on?

Deimos, smaller and farther away than Phobos, wouldn?t look anywhere near as impressive.

Three hours before sunrise a new ?star? would appear above the eastern horizon, strikingly-bright and a gorgeous blue-white colour. Again, this star is actually a planet ? Jupiter, largest world of all Earth?s brothers and sisters. Given Mars? thin air and good seeing, perhaps a keen-eyed observer would be able to spot some or all four of the famous ?Galilean Moons? with their naked eye..?

Half an hour later, with the eastern sky starting to lighten, taking on a dark plum hue, yet another new ?star? would slide up from behind the eastern horizon. But this one is very special, and just its colour ? its beautiful blue-green ? would give away its true nature, because standing beside Beagle 2 two hours before sunrise you would see Earth shining in the sky, a dazzling ?Morning Star?, almost as bright as Venus appears here from Earth. If you had a pair of binoculars clipped to your belt ? or maybe a ?Magnify? function on your visor ? you?d be able to zoom-in and see the Moon hugging close to Earth, a silvery glint compared to the sapphire- and emerald-hued star of Earth. And a telescope trained on Earth on the morning of Beagle's landing would have shown it as a broad crescent, with the rich green mass of South America just visible through the clouds?

With half an hour to go until your local sunrise the sky would be brightening rapidly, and only the brightest stars would still be visible. The Milky Way would have faded from view, and Saturn and Jupiter would be visible only as tiny glints, but Earth would still be easy to find, and if anything its blue hue would be enhanced by the contrast with the burning pink and lavender sky behind it. But if you looked a couple of fingers? width above the eastern horizon you might just glimpse the planet Mercury shining there, at the end of a diagonal line of four planets, all beautiful, all pointing towards the rising Sun?

Then sunrise, and Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn and Earth would all vanish as the sky was reclaimed by the brilliant Sun. The Sun that will shine on Beagle 2 is a pale imitation of the one that shines on Earth - less than two thirds as large - and that shrunken Sun will provide very little heat in the brittle martian air? but there would still be more than enough light to allow you, and Beagle?s cameras, to see the delicate frost that covered the surrounding rocks overnight disappear with the first touch of the Sun?s rays?

Not a bad view, I think you?ll agree ;-)

I mentioned we?d come back to Phobos. Well, everyone knows that we can see solar eclipses here on Earth when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. This can happen on Mars too, but not a) twice as often because Mars has two moons, and b) not as dramatically, because the moons are much, much smaller. But if you?re in the right place at the right time you can experience a ?kind of solar eclipse? on Mars, when Phobos flies past the Sun? and if my program is working right, and if Beagle 2 landed near the centre of its planned landing ellipse (and isn?t barking from the bottom of a crater), it will experience a ?Phobos eclipse? mid-morning on February 7th. If you were standing beside Beagle at that time you?d notice the world around you grow darker for a few moments as Phobos covered part of the Sun, and as the moon?s shadow rippled over the rocky plain towards you, you might just be able to see a dark ?notch? taken out of the lower right part of the Sun?s disc before the eclipse finished and full daylight returned.

I wonder if any measurements taken by Beagle at that time will record a drop in air temperature or surface brightness? Would be nice to be proved right ;-)

(Such eclipses will occur for the MERs too, I?m sure, I just haven?t worked out the details yet).

Hands up who?d like to see all that for real one day..?

Stu

Reports on BBC radio and websites, following this morning's briefing from the Beagle team, are putting forward a theory that Beagle may have landed in a 1km wide crater just found in the centre of the landing ellipse. This crater was identified on images taken by the NASA Mars Global Surveyor, and the MGS imaging team sent the Beagle team an image of the crater late last night.

Full story, and pic, here
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mars … rater.html

Few points...

* Unlikely Beagle is in the crater, it would be VERY unlucky if it
was.

* Even if it is in the crater, craters aren't like wells, they aren't abyss-like, so if Beagle is in the crater it's not as if it's fallen into a bottomless pit like Gandalf and that Balrog...

* The existence of the crater does, however, mean that there would me many more rocks and boulders in the landing zone than previously thought. When craters are formed a lot of debris comes hurtling out, and falls back to the ground, making a very dangerous area for a probe of ANY kind to land in. If Beagle came down near the crater it would have fallen into a much more hazardous rockfield than hoped for, with consequences for opening-up, airbag jettisoning, communications etc.

Still a long way to go tho, and this is by no means a "smoking gun".

Stu

Indeed... even more mind-boggling is the possibility that Miranda has actually been shattered in the distant past by impacts with asteroids or comets, and the Miranda we see today has actually re-assembled from the pieces. The whole moon is like a huge jigsaw puzzle, or a rocky and icy Rubiks Cube, with scarps and cliffs and ridges sticking out all over the place...

Then you've got Miranda, one of Saturn's smaller moons, which has a massive crater called Herschel dominating one whole hemisphere, making it look like the Death Star from STAR WARS. Stand on Herschel's central peak and look back at Saturn, and you'd see the rings cutting it it half vertically like a massive sword. That's got to be one of the best views in the solar system... :-)

Stu

I think that's one of Kim Stanley Robinson's ideas, first described in his pre-R/G/B Mars novella "THE MEMORY OF WHITENESS" and then returned to later, I think, in BLUE MARS.

Stu

I was browsing various threads earlier today and came across a request for any links to websites which give details of space activities for the year ahead. I know of one, an excellent one from JPL, but as I can't find the actual posting again I figure I'll just start from scratch. So, here you go, hope this proves useul to whoever asked the question...

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/calendar

There is a LOT of detail on here - anniversaries, launches, astronomical info, but it is an official JPL site, updated regularly to take into account slips in schedules and timetables etc. I find it an invaluable resource as a writer and Outreach educator.

Stu

It would be a lot more constructive, and supportive of the Beagle team, and dare I say "patriotic", to not dismiss Beagle as an "add on" and give it the credit it's due. Many people seem to be forgetting that as well as looking for life, Beagle's mission - like that of each MER - includes the detailed study of the interiors of martian rocks with a grinding tool and microscope, studies of the chemistry of the soils and dusts around the lander, weather measurements, photo recces etc etc.

Not at all bad for an add-on.

Stu

Hi all, from a disappointed but patient UK,

I wish people would stop sounding Beagle's death knell before we even know it's in hospital. All the methods tried to detect a signal from it so far have been, at best, Plan Bs, with limited potential for success. The link with Mars Odyssey was never tried or tested before Beagle's launch, it's really only being tried because the probe's there, and Jodrell Bank is a back-up plan too, as welcome as its efforts are. The best chance for communicationg with Beagle will be - and was always going to be - via Mars Express, so many of us over here (tho, I admit, by no means all of us) are just biding our time until Jan 4th when MEx passes over the intended landing site. If nothing's heard then, well, maybe it'll be time to take stock, but for now let's all just wish Beagle well, sheltering from the wind and the dust devils behind a rock there on Isidis, and send our very best wishes and support to Colin Pillinger and the team, who must be going through absolute agony right now after so many years hard work.

>> While this is a bummer and very bad PR for Mars exploration, I'm stoked that Mars Express made it.  I believe that it's going to be a LOT more useful than Beagle.

I couldn't disagree more with that, sorry. How could any probe do something more "useful" than finding life? Just think about it. If Beagle finds life on Mars (you'll note I'm not using the past tense) it will be THE Biggest science discovery for generations, possibly EVER, and will be the catalyst for an explosion in interest in martian exploration, both manned and unmanned. Think about it logically. If Beagle finds some bacteria, inside a rock or under the surface, the demand for a full-scale sample return mission asap will be *deafening*, internationally. And when that happens, and the returned samples give us more data, scientists are going to want even MORE data, of higher quality, so the demand for a **manned** mission to study martian life and its environment properly will be even *more* deafening. There'd finally be a REASON for going to Mars that the public, who would be paying the bill, thru taxes, could appreciate and understand.

We are never going to sell a manned Mars mission on the basis of interesting geology or climatology; people just aren't turned on by rocks. But if Beagle finds life if and when it wakes up it will light a fire under planetary science, and under public interest *in* science, and that's when politicians - ultimately the only people who can initiate a manned Mars program - will see there are votes to be gained from going to Mars. Then we'll see some action, particularly with China declaring its bold intentions to anyone who will listen.

So, I'm really saddened by the thought that anyone could dismiss Beagle like that. I am 1000% behind the MERs, I wish them every success in the world(s), but as exciting as the discovery of water will be for us here, in this knowledgeable community, with its appreciation of the long-term significance of finding water on Mars, it will not cause the man, woman or child in the street to turn over the TV from The Simpsons or Pop Idol to watch the latest news bulletin from Mars. But the discovery of life, well, that will Change Things, and will have consequences for the short-term exploration of Mars that the discovery of water would not.

As for the discovery of water on Mars being good news for terraformers, well, I still, honestly, hand on my heart believe that terraforming - as attractive and bold a project as it is - will not happen for many hundreds of years, if ever. Too hard, too expensive, an absolute no-hoper for any politician or political party or even political system because of its staggering time-scale, and with interest in the Moon growing again we are going to see domed-over-crater cities on the Moon many, many years before we even send lichen to Mars.

Beagle isn't "Lost in space" at all, it's just not calling home yet. I still believe it will, and when it does it will have a very good chance of changing and shaping the course of Mars exploration for the next twenty years or so. This isn't a competition, Beagle and the MERs are doing different jobs, in different places, and comparing their relative merits is a bit irrelevent. But I won't have our "Plucky little Beagle" dismissed as being less use than the MERs.

I hope the MERs do find lots of water on Mars, it would be great to be able to look up at Mars on the next clear night after and think "Wow, there's water on there..."

But to look up at Mars and think "Wow, there's *life* on there..." well, wouldn't that be something? :-)

Stu