PHOTOS: MARS 2020 DEPARTS EARTH FOR THE RED PLANET

IGNITION: MARS 2020 lights up at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Mission to the Red Planet.

LAUNCH: Great weather for a spectacular launch of MARS 2020. “Go Atlas, Go Centaur, Go Mars 2020”

Atlas V rocket with a Centaur RL10 upper stage booster escapes Earth’s gravity. Tucked within the Centaur nose cone is the Perseverance Rover and a specialized light helicopter, Ingenuity.

At 46 seconds, Atlas V accelerating to Mach 1 supersonic speed.

Aircraft at max dynamic pressure.

Traveling at 6000 mph, Atlas V jettisons Solid rocket boosters.

Atlas V throttling to constant 2.5G acceleration for payload jettison.

With Atlas V engine cut off, Centaur booster separates from Atlas. 

With its herculean mission accomplished, Atlas V drifts away. the Centaur booster will soon fire. monitoring of the mission will continue using space tracking video.

At a height beyond camera range, the Centaur booster with Perseverance at its tip is tracked using space tracking video generated “by actual telemetry data.”

The Centaur booster releases Perseverance injecting it into an interplanetary trajectory to Mars. Travel time: 7 months.

John Oró

Related Content:

44 YEARS AGO TODAY: VIKING 1 LANDED ON MARS IN SEARCH OF LIFE

Jerry Merz: The blizzard of 1949

1948, I was 14 and we had a New Year’s party and my mother had Lou and Dorothy and maybe Joe and Wilma for dinner, - but I’m not sure of that. I had just turned 15 on Christmas eve. After dinner, all of the old folks were playing cards and my dad told me to go to the south pasture and check the water. We had a pretty new Jeep pickup that I loved to drive. So I took it out and was driving in the hills. There was a big snow drift and instead of going around it, I decided to go through it and got stuck. I scooped and scooped most of the afternoon and finally got out and came home. There had been a lot of snow in November.

We had a radio but it was battery operated and barely came in. We didn’t have electricity. The weather looked menacing and thought we had better get to town. Christmas vacation was over and I had to go back to school on the 2 nd. Lyn was going to school in Seneca and so was Larry and Dottie. Dad had a new 47 Chevy and that’s what Mom kept and drove back and forth on the weekends. We put a caravan together with Dad ahead and Lou and Dorothy had a 48 Chevy and not sure if Wilma had a car or a pickup? I think they were in the caravan and we just got to town using the winter road – out through the pastures. The main road to Seneca was blown full of snow. All of the hills south of Calf Creek were full of snow. We’d go through the hills until we got to the stock yards and back on the road. The gravel stopped at the County line. It took 1 ½ hours to get to Seneca and it was snowing pretty hard. Dad and Lou turned around and headed back home and Joe took Wilma with him. Lyn stayed with her grandma. Mom and I went on to Mullen and by the time we got there, we could hardly see. We made it to Mullen and rented a basement at John Mallory’s right south of the Jewel Diner on highway 2. The Mallory’s were gone and the 2 nd day of the blizzard the furnace went out. So Mom called Louie Folk who sold hydro gas or propane and had probably put the furnace in. He made it down there in his big 4-wheel drive truck with the propane on the back and got the furnace started.

Later we found out that Dad, Lou and Joe got within ½ mile of the old ranch (Lou’s place) and the jeep quit. They all had to walk into Lou’s and spend the night. The next day it was a “real blizzard” of 1949. My Dad saddled a horse and rode over to his place and drained everything – stools and what water we had, then went back over and moved in with Lou. I think Wilma and Joe were there too until the blizzard ended.

Joe rode a horse home, got another horse and came up and got Wilma. It stayed cold and the wind would blow every day. We didn’t really have any way to feed hay. They were in the process of converting from horses to tractors and had a hay rack and fed what hay they could. The tanks were full of snow and the cows had ice on their faces. Dad and Lou had to go around and knock the ice off their faces so they could drink. The loss was pretty great. The cows and calves drifted and died. There was some protection in the Rowdy. I don’t know if they ever counted them. They counted the live ones. 

When the storm was over, they had called school off. I could see a little up to the school. It was a pretty nice day. I walk[ed]  down town and the drifts were as high as the buildings. A guy named Bud Gibson had a new little jeep with a canvas top. He got it started and drove up the sidewalk to the street that runs south and got out as far as highway 2. He came back and said it was plugged up solid. So the state got their snow moving equipment out which amounted to a 4-wheel drive truck with a V blade on the front. They got the word out that they needed help and asked if some of the high school kids would shovel. So I went to Lowe’s hardware and bought the last scoop they had for $2.89. So, I hired on to the state with about 30 of us high school kids. We would dig a trench down through a snow bank about 3-4’ foot wide. It was hard to get the snow scooped over the top. The truck would back up about 100’ and take a run for it and plow through the trench. They were able to get 4-5’, then start over. We did that for 3 days. We got to the top of the hill west of Seneca. – This was about 3-4 miles before Seneca.

That’s when a truck with a snow blower on the front came from Broken Bow and could move a lot more snow. So our job with the State was finished. So after that, Lee Boyer was raising turkeys – kind of a turkey farm about 5 miles east of Mullen and another one about 5 miles west of Mullen. He needed someone to scoop out his turkey houses. So he hired some high school boys, so I went along and scooped there, but never saw a turkey. I don’t know if it was a total loss. I never saw a live one or a dead one. We did the one east of Mullen first then went to the west one. There were numerous other little jobs around town that needed use of a scoop shovel, so I made good use of it.

We eventually heard from my Dad, but the phone he had – had to go through Seneca central. I don’t know if we even had a phone in Mullen, but heard from Dad anyway. We never made it back to the country and he never made it to town for 5 weeks. He was exhausted. He spent the night and loaded up groceries and went back to the ranch. After the army had airlifted hay in – in big airplanes. If they saw cattle, they would dump a few bales out. The Army sent in bulldozers and personnel to plow the roads to the ranches so they could get more supplies and feed for their cattle. Not knowing where they were going, it was just like a maze trying to follow their tracks but they eventually got to each ranch. Mostly the ones north of Seneca. Jim Miller had a half track that he brought up from Omaha that he had bought after the war. He went up to Lou’s but had to go in east of the place. It was impossible to get in on the west of the place.

He got stuck east of the place but had a winch and was able to winch on through the drift. The Army followed later. That’s when my Dad finally made it to town after the road was bulldozed. It was a few more weeks and Mom and I were able to come out to the ranch. I was doing the driving by then and was 15. Every time the wind would blow, which was every day, it would fill the tracks and they would have to start all over. It may have been March before we ever got back out to the ranch. A lot of the snow had dissipated. We were still following the tracks the Army had plowed. Karen and Georgia were with us. The main Seneca road didn’t thaw out when we came out here. It must have been late March, early April or maybe May before the snow was gone. The first of June, there was still snow in the lane on the way to the old ranch. 

The blizzard lasted 3 big days and 3 nights.

Left: “A Drift between Mullen & Seneca 3-4 weeks after 49 blizzard.” Right: “Dad had a new 47 Chevy and that’s what Mom kept and drove back and forth on the weekends.”

In 1946, Dad built on to the original house so we had a bathroom with running water. There was a kitchen and bedroom added on also. Was originally a couple shacks that made an L. The addition made a square. He had a carpenter finish it and Dad did all of the plumbing. He built on a porch.

One night about midnight in 1948, Georgia got the croup. Mom sent me to Doc Walkers. I knocked on the door and he answered and gave me something. It must have cured her. That was the first year I went to school in Mullen in the 8 th grade. We were living in the old Matthews Motel at the time which is where the drive-inn is now.

Jerry Merz
1933-2019

FROM HIS OBITUARY -

“Jerry was a true family man, taking the time to teach his children and grandchildren many important lifelong skills. While his grandkids were growing up, he spent time with each of their hobbies, whether it was cowboying, fishing, working on cars, welding, or watching high school sports. He was a wonderful neighbor, always willing to lend a helping hand. He was known for his kindness toward all animals, including numerous granddogs. He rarely hired anyone for repairs or labor, always saying “why would I pay someone to do something I can do myself?” Many of his projects included unusual components, therefore, his kids developed the term ‘Jerry-rigging.””

NAVIGATING PALEOTERRAN

Sea of Cortez, 2013

There are a couple of quick ways to find more on PaleoTerran:

1. The sidebar on the right provides access to the most recent articles by title. 

2. To see posts on a specific topic, use the TOPIC headings located just under the post titles of interest. Selecting the topic will pull up other posts on that particular subject.

Don’t hesitate to send your observations or corrections to me at paleoterran@icloud.com

John Oró

SHARP HARDNESS BY WASSILY KANDINSKY

Sharp Hardness by Wassily Kandinsky, 1926.

The remarkable painting above is just one of an extensive collection painted by Wassily Kandinsky. Born in Moscow in 1866, Kandinsky was first attracted to art in grammar school. He would later recall his initial motivation: 

"I remember that drawing and a little bit later painting lifted me out of the reality."

At the age of 20, Kandinsky entered the Law Faculty of Moscow University. After graduating with honors, he joined the school's faculty as Associate Professor. His return to painting would not occur until a decade later.

The organizing principle of Kandinsky's work became the study of "color, line, and composition," components readily apparent in his 1926 painting Sharp Hardness. The piece is also a delightful example of his view that "color lives by its mysterious life."

Invited to join the Bauhaus school of design and architecture in Weimar, Kandinsky and his wife moved to Germany in 1921. However, in 1933, the Nazis closed the Bauhaus, and the following year, Kandinsky and his wife moved to Paris, where Kandinsky lived the rest of his life.

Considered "the pioneer of abstract art," Kandinsky's prodigious work would inspire countless artists.

John Oró

Also, learn about these artists:

ARTIST INTERVIEW: DENVER'S ALIKI MCCAIN

FLORA: AN ARTIST’S LIFE REVEALED

The End of Night

Over 60 million Americans have problems sleeping. While insomnia has many causes, one is the use of electric lighting. Our circadian rhythms developed from Earth’s 24-hour rotation. Toward the end of the day, the slowly fading sunlight allowed the brains of our hominid ancestors to prepare for sleep. Around 1 million years ago, hominids began to use fire and congregate around campfires for warmth and safety. Socialization increased. Eventually, cooking developed and led to further brain evolution.

The first lamps - made from moss or other plant material and animal fat placed in natural stone recesses - are tens of thousands of years old. Portable lamps fueled by animal fat, and later oil, were carried by Cro-Magnon into the deep recesses of the Lascaux and Altamira caves where they painted remarkable images of ice age fauna between 13,000-18,000 years ago.

First used around 400 AD, candles were an essential form of lighting for 1,500 years until the development of gas lights at the end of the eighteenth century. Candles could be linked together to create a spectacle:

In 1761, at the coronation of George III, groups of 3000 candles were connected with threads of gun cotton and lit in half a minute. Those clustered below were showered with hot wax and burning thread.

Campfires, oil lamps, candles, and gas lamps cast a dim light, and nighttime activity remained limited. However, at some point, night was effectively overcome. A pivotal landmark was Edison's invention of the long-lasting incandescent lamp in 1879. The first lasting 13.5 hours.

My pick for the year heralding the end of night is 1893, the year Nikoli Tesla lit up the night at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Following a prolonged rivalry with Edison on the most effective current for delivering electricity – direct current vs. alternating current - Tesla used long-lasting bulbs (by Westinghouse) and alternating current to create "the most spectacular display the world had ever seen."

The dawn of electric lighting was the Internet of its age: it changed everything. By using electricity, "daytime" could last all day long. We could work day and night.

Let's return to the sleep problem. Imagine you are heading to bed, and the light your the bedroom is bright. When ready for sleep, you turn off the current to the incandescent bulb(s) and fall into immediate darkness. With no time to prepare, your brain whispers: "What, you expect me to release this stuff immediately? Can you at least warn me?"

Normally, as daylight fades with the onset of the evening, melatonin is released (dis-inhibited) in the brain. Working in concert with a build-up of adenosine, they bring on sleep. While some people fall into a deep sleep quickly, even with the lights on, many of us need a slow transition from light to dark to prepare for restful sleep. In the modern world, electrons heat the bulb's filament causing it to glow and shower photons on our retinas - even through closed eyelids - thus keeping us awake. Today, we control the onset of "night." We need to be a little wiser in order to get the sleep we need.

John Oró

First posted July 8, 2014.
This version lightly edited.

44 YEARS AGO TODAY: VIKING 1 LANDED ON MARS IN SEARCH OF LIFE

THE EXTRAORDINARY VIKING MISSION OPENED A NEW AGE OF SPACE EXPLORATION. IT ALSO OPENED A CONTROVERSY THAT PERSISTS TODAY

On August 20, 1975, a Titan IIIE rocket with a Centaur upper stage launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral. On reaching Earth orbit, the Centaur booster separated from Titan and injected the Viking 1 spacecraft - nestled inside its nose cone - into interplanetary space. The destination: Mars. (To reduce the chances of mission failure, three weeks later, NASA launched its twin, Viking 2.)

Composed of an orbiter and a lander, Viking 1 traversed 460 million miles of interplanetary space and entered Mars orbit 10 months later. While the orbiter imaged the planet's surface, the lander bided its time. 

MARINER DISCOVERS "FLOW FEATURES"

The audacious Viking program was preceded by the Mariner orbital missions from 1964-1971. While the early Mariners dispelled any possibility of artificial canals on Mars (and with it, any pending "War of the Words" conflict), Mariner 9 "far exceeded its expectations in every way." Orbital imaging revealed a Martian surface of "ancient river beds, craters, massive, extinct volcanoes, canyons, (and) layered polar deposits." Surprisingly, it also revealed an unexpectedly dynamic planet with "weather fronts, ice clouds, localized dust storms, morning fogs and more." 

I recall my awe on hearing the word "riverbeds," or, more scientifically, "flow features." In the search for life, this was Mariner 9’s fundamental discovery. Where there had been water, there may have been life. Perhaps, microbial life was still present just under the Martian surface. Alternatively, possibly only remnants of past life remained. Regardless, the discovery of any signs of present or ancient life would profoundly change the likelihood we are not alone in the cosmos. The search for signs life, past or present, was on! The means to this end: two intrepid Vikings. 

MISSION DEVELOPMENT

The first serious consideration of searching for life on Mars originated in the early '60s. Miquel Pairolí, in the biography Joan Oró, writes:

In 1964, when the Apollo Program was still under development, a reunion of about 100 scientists was held at Stanford University in California, directed by Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg, to plan for the exploration of planet Mars, through what would be called project Viking.

Klaus Biemann, having worked in mass spectrometry, had suggested sending a small mass spectrometer like the one developed by engineer (Kevin) Griffin at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. However, Dr. Oró suggested that, for the analyses to be more reliable and definitive, the mass spectrometer could be complemented with a gas chromatograph, reproducing, at a small scale, the LKB instrument that Oró utilized in his laboratory at the University of Houston.

Development of the extraordinary Viking missions took shape at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. NASA scientist Gerald Soffen was appointed to direct the program, a Science Steering Group was created, and three project missions were defined: 

1. Obtain high-resolution images of the Martian surface.

2. Characterize the structural composition of the atmosphere and surface.

3. Search for evidence of life on Mars.

A broad search for scientists specialized in research pertinent to the defined missions resulted in the selection of "an outstanding cross-section of the scientific community." Viking was a genuinely collaborative effort. Not only did it involve NASA and the Langley Research Center, but also the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, various aerospace companies, and multiple research scientists throughout the country. 

THE VIKINGS TAKE SHAPE

Deciding on the overall structure of the craft, or crafts, was the crucial first step. Two identical spacecraft would be created. Should the launch, orbit, or landing of Viking 1 fail, Viking 2 would be following right behind. Furthermore, each spacecraft would be composed of an orbiter and a lander. The research scientist selected to join the mission, armed with a vision of the project's structure, could now focus on their areas of expertise. Thirteen research groups - such as Orbiter Imaging, Inorganic Chemistry, and Radio Science – were created.

The orbiters would contain a high-resolution camera to systematically image the planet's surface. The resulting collection of overlapping images would be knit to create a detailed map of Mars. The Viking 1 orbiter would be used to confirm the Viking 1 landing site and to search for a favorable landing site for the approaching Viking 2 lander. Even more critical, the orbiters would relay signals from the Viking landers to JPL on Earth. 

By building the imaging and signal relay functions into the orbiters, the landers could be packed with research instruments - miniature laboratories that would be landed on the planet. Add a power source, a high gain antenna, three legs, a robotic arm with a scoop, two cameras along with a few other essentials, and you have a Viking lander ready for a ground-based examination of Mars. 

Viking Lander at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Alex Oró, a grandson of Joan Oró standing to the right of the lander.

VIKING 1 SOFT LANDS ON MARS

After the month of recognizance by the Viking 1 orbiter, the lander – built by Martin Marietta and weighing 1,270 pounds - separated from the orbiter and faced the gravitational pull of Mars. NASA reported:

 About 2 a.m. July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander separated from the orbiter and began its perilous descent to the surface. Plunging through the thin Martian atmosphere at nearly 10,000 miles per hour, the lander was protected by a heat-shielding aeroshell. At about 19,000 feet, a large parachute was deployed, slowing the hurtling spacecraft. At 4,000 feet, the parachute and aeroshell were released, and rockets fired, further slowing the lander's descent to just six miles per hour.

Following an "agonizing" 19 minutes - the time for the signal to reach Earth - JPL received confirmation from the craft. Viking 1 was on the surface of Mars and able to communicate! Mission director Tom Young described the reaction at JPL:

The excitement was overwhelming! People were hugging each other, jumping up and down - doing all those things you do when an extraordinary event has taken place.

Top left: First photograph from the surface of Mars. Top right: View during the congratulatory comments of President Gerald Ford. Bottom left: The first color picture from Mars. Bottom right: More detailed image of the reddish, rock strewn surface of Mars.

The world anxiously awaited the first image. Soon after landing, the imaging signal began to scroll across JPL's monitors. There it was—the rock-strewn surface of Mars. Vitally important, one the Viking three footpads could be seen solidly planted on the Martian surface; the vessel sat securely on the western slope of Chryse Planitia (the Plains of Gold).

SEARCHING FOR SIGNS OF LIFE

The research team's observations and studies proceeded in a coordinated fashion. Of the thirteen research groups, two were dedicated to the question of life: the Biology Group and the Molecular Analysis Group. (The persistent controversy on whether the Vikings detected signs of life on Mars 44-years ago would develop between these two groups.)

The Biology Group's experiments were the first to proceed. The group’s members included: 

Dr. Harold P. Klein, Ames Research Center, Moffett Federal Airfield, CA
Dr. Norman H. Horowitz, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA
Dr.Joshua Lederberg, Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Dr. Gilbert V. Levin, Biospherics, Inc., Rockville, MD
Vance I Omaya, Ames Research Center, Moffett Federal Airfield, CA
Alexander Rich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 

The Biology Group had designed "three distinct investigations" to search for biologic activity in the soil samples: Pyloric Release, Labeled Release, and Gas Exchange. The Pyloric Release and Gas Exchange experiments were negative revealing no signs of life. However, the Labeled Release (LR) experiment was positive! No doubt, a buzz a spread among JPL’s scientific community.

Dr. Klaus Biemann, lead of the Molecular Analysis Group.

Now, it was the Molecular Analysis Group's turn to begin their investigations. Under the leadership of Dr. Klaus Biemann of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, members included:

Dr. DuWayne M. Anderson, U.S. Army Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, NH
Dr. Alfred O.C. Neir, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Dr. Leslie E. Orgel, Salk Institute, San Diego, CA
Dr. John Oró, University of Houston, TX
Dr. Tobias Owen, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY
Dr. Priestley Toulmin III, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA
Dr. Harold C. Urey, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA

The group's instrument, a gas chromatographer - mass spectrometer (GCMS), would perform a highly sensitive analysis of the Martian soil looking for signs of organic matter coming from living microorganisms, or from residuals of past life. First developed in 1959, GCMS can detect organic matter down to a few parts per billion. 

GCMS was the core instrument in my father's research laboratory at the University of Houston. In addition to its essential role in his origin-of-life studies, John Oró (Joan in his native Catalan) and other scientists, including Klaus Biemann, had used GCMS to analyze the moon rocks brought back to Earth by the Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969. 

The photo on the left shows the gas chromatograph - mass spectrometer (GCMS) at the laboratory of Dr. John Oró at the University of Houston in the 1960’s. On the right is a graphic of the miniturized GCMS, approximately 1 cubit foot in size, that searched for organic matter on Mars.

I had seen the GCMS in the 1960s on occasional visits to my father’s lab. The problem: it was a huge instrument. Although the mass spectrometer portion of GCMS had been reduced in size by JPL mechanical engineer Kevin Griffin, additional reduction was needed. Furthermore, when combined gas spectrometry, the resulting instrument would overwhelm the lander. 

Dr. John Oró, origin of life scientist and member of the Molecular Analysis Group at JPL.

In the early ‘70s, my father made at least three consecutive trips to JPL, spending a month or more each summer. Among the Group’s activities: further miniaturization of GCMS. The challenge was daunting. Upon his return from JPL, using analogies, he would explain the Group’s progress to the family. The first summer, the apparatus had been reduced to the size of a “sea trunk,” still too massive to send to Mars. The following summer, it was reduced to the size of a “large suitcase.” By the third, the size a “valise.” The final GCMS that analyzed Martian soil had been reduced to approximately one cubic foot.

LIFE ON MARS, OR NOT?

Once NASA consolidated the results of Viking’s scientific studies, it was time to talk to the press. The prime question: had life been discovered on Mars? Marc Valldeoriola, in his biography Joan Oró: El Scientific de La Vida (The Scientist of Life), describes the event:

It was a strange day for everyone. It was a Friday in 1976. The press room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was full to overflowing, and the convened reporters were expecting some important news. … Space agency scientists had the results from the Viking probes … but no one had said anything and the secrecy with which the mission had been carried out was, in the public’s view, confirmation of rumors that had been circulating for some time: indeed, they had discovered life on the red planet.

The Biology Group was the first to present its results: one of their three experiments had shown signs of life! Frenzied questions erupted from the gathered reporters: “Is the life extraterrestrial? Will we be able to communicate with it? Will our lives change?” The reporters appeared to assume NASA had discovered signs of sentient life. In response, one the Biology Group scientist emphasized they were talking about signs of microbial life. 

As the flurry of questions continued, Joan Oró from the Molecular Analysis Group approached the speaker’s platform and spoke: 

“Gentlemen, my colleagues have shown you a slide of calculations that spoke on the existence of life. But I will give you a second version that, from other calculations, makes me reach a different conclusion: there is no life on Mars.” 

Thus began a still-brewing controversy: did the Vikings discover signs of life on Mars, or not? What evidence of life did the Biology Group uncover? What evidence did the Molecular Analysis Group find that negated that discovery? As it turns out, the answer hinged on what the GCMS did not discover.

Following the completion of the biology experiments, Viking’s robotic arm scooped soil from the Martian surface and channeled it into the GCMS. Earthen soil contains inorganic and organic matter (non-living and living matter). The latter represents the miracle of life. Studies in the 1950s and ’60s revealed that living matter can arise from non-living matter. Two members of the GCMS team had made the fundamental breakthroughs in this field. In 1953, at Harold Urey’s lab, graduate student Stanley Miller demonstrated that, in simulated primitive Earth conditions, amino acids could arise from non-living matter. In 1961, Joan Oró had shown that even nucleic acids such as adenine, a building block of the DNA we all carry, could also arise from non-living matter. 

The Viking’s GCMS had not found even the minutest sign of organic matter - down to the few parts per billion - in the Martian soil! Whatever caused the reaction in the Labeled Release experiment, it could not be life. 

THE CONTROVERSY PERSISTS

The controversy continues to smolder. In 2019, Gilbert Levin, the LR principal investigator, published his most recent argument. Nevertheless, in a review of that opinion, Paul Scott reported: 

The consensus from most scientists in the years since then has been that there was something in the soil mimicking life, but it wasn’t life itself.

I have yet to encounter another possibility: could both experiments, though showing contradictory results, have been correct? It is now generally agreed that Mars is “self-sterilizing” due to the intense ultraviolet radiation falling on the planet’s surface and the perchlorate salts within Martian soil that can destroy organic compounds. Consistent with this, GCMS found no organic matter to the few parts per billion in the surface soil at either the Chryse Planitia or Utopia Planitia sites. 

The surface and subsurface soils, at whatever depth they transition, differ in character. Mars surface soil is exceedingly dry, yet subsurface water is known to exist on Mars. At what depth did the transition zone occur at each landing site? 

The LR and GCMS samples were taken on different days and not likely to have been collected at the same trench. Could the LR soil have contained small amounts of subsurface soil containing traces of organic matter while the GCMS received samples only from sterilized surface soil?  

Countering this argument are the findings that the LR experiment was positive at both sites, and the GCMS findings were negative at both. This consistency at sites separated by approximately 4,000 miles (6,460 kilometers) argues for some other factor affecting the LR experiment. 

The Perseverance Rover is currently scheduled to launch on July 30,2020.

ENTER PERSEVERANCE 

So here we are. The 44th anniversary of the first landing on Mars and uncertainty on the presence of life on the planet persists. Fortunately, in Yoda’s words: “there is another.” Its name: Perseverance. 

The primary goal of NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s is to “determine whether life ever existed on Mars.” NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission Overview details the process:

For the first time, the rover carries a drill for coring samples from Martian rocks and soil. It gathers and stores the cores in tubes on the Martian surface, using a strategy called "depot caching." Caching demonstrates a new rover capability of gathering, storing, and preserving samples. It could potentially pave the way for future missions that could collect the samples and return them to Earth for intensive laboratory analysis.

The name “Perseverance,” the winning entry submitted to NASA’s “Name the Rover” contest by seventh-grader Alexander Mather from Burke, Virginia, is apt for the challenge. Perseverance provides a new opportunity to answer the question of life on Mars.. 

Following summer at Space Camp in Alabama, Mather’s interest had morphed from video games to space. As he and his generation rise, Mars’ secrets will be revealed. I know my father and so many others who intensely poured their being into the Viking missions are delighted.

John Oró

Jupiter: A cauldron of beauty “almost beyond belief.”

Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran

Five years and one month following its launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on July 4, 2016, the Juno spacecraft entered orbit around Jupiter. En route, Juno had reached a maximum speed of 384 miles per hour. On arrival, Juno - heavily armored against the "magnetic swarm of highly energized charged particles" - settled into a polar orbit around our most massive planet. 

Among its many scientific instruments was JunoCam, a camera that took some astonishing images. As Scott Bolton writes in American Scientist, JunoCam revealed a "beauty that is almost beyond belief.” 

The planet is beautiful, but it’s a savage beauty. Jupiter's atmosphere is a toxic mix of ammonia, hydrogen, helium, methane, nitrogen, and sulfur, along with traces of water. Always in turmoil, the atmosphere is roiled by powerful winds that produce swirling clouds and "Earth-size cyclones.”

Who creates these extraordinary images? The answer is both surprising and fascinating: citizen scientists. As Bolton observes:

"The citizen scientist is not modifying NASA images; they are creating the images themselves. They are the first humans to see Juno's discoveries."

As Juno orbits Jupiter, JunoCam "captures narrow strips with three color filters," generating a tremendous amount of digital information that has to be processed. That processing is performed mostly by volunteers from the public, or "citizen scientists." 

Ponder this for a moment. In Juno, we are witnessing the coupling of highly specialized technologists and scientists with "citizen scientists" who crunch the data and reveal these images of creation. No doubt, a model for future efforts.

John Oró

Edited 7/30/20