It was a bright, sunny late January day in St. Louis with a hint of warmth as I recall. I was sitting at my desk signing the 100 or so checks that had to go out at the end of the month when my wife called. All she could say was “Oh! Those poor kids.” She was referring to the Challenger disaster and the fact that Christa McCauliffe, the first real civilian to go into space and a teacher from a small school in New Hampshire, was killed in full view of her students on national TV.

Living in an apartment literally behind the office complex where I worked, it took me less than a minute to sprint home. For the rest of the day – a day in retrospect much like 9/11 – I was glued to the TV as history unfolded before my eyes. Even 20 years later I have a hard time trying to put my emotions into context. I was sorry for the astronauts of course. But much more than that, I realized that the tragedy signaled the end of the space age as we had come to know it.

By 1986 it had become apparent that NASA had oversold the Shuttle. Thinking back that day to April of 1981 when I snuck out of work and went to the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill to sit in the bar and watch the launch of the very first shuttle, I tried to recapture the feeling of watching the machine as it rose majestically into the air. “Go! Go! Go!” Everyone in the crowded bar was screaming at the top of their lungs as the excitement of the day made me think that I was witnessing a gigantic step forward on mankind’s road to the stars.

It wasn’t to be. Instead, the Shuttle proved to be something of a lemon, a multi billion dollar space truck that the government had to pay corporations to use by charging a pittance for satellite launching compared to what it actually cost the government to launch and maintain. We knew this by January 28, 1986. What we didn’t know and didn’t find out until the Presidential Commission on the disaster returned its damning findings was that NASA had ossified into a glacial bureaucracy that no amount of tinkering could fix because the problems were spiritual, not systemic.

NASA had stopped listening to the music, the siren song coming from the stars. Their thoughts and energies were earthbound. They had lost the “can-do” spirit of the go-go 60’s and become just another incompetent federal bureaucracy.

Dr. Pat Santay was flight surgeon to the Challenger crew and obviously has some poignant, gripping memories from that day. I urge you to read this post in its entirety. Her introduction especially caught my eye:

NASA has evolved into a culture that does not tolerate criticism well. It is a place where being a “team player” means shutting up and doing what you are told, or else you will be marginalized and your career finished. That is not the sort of place where innovation—or safety—thrive.

I still believe that space exploration and colonization is the destiny of humanity and that one day our decendants will fly from star to star the way we drive from city to city. I no longer imagine them flying in NASA spacecraft, however. The astronauts of Challenger and Columbia are some of the pioneers that slowly but surely bring us closer to that dream. To all of them I say, the dream is alive and well…but that NASA stopped dreaming a while back and is now just semi-comatose. We will make it into outer space to explore strange, new worlds; to seek out new civilizations and go where noone has gone before—but it will be through the courage of private citizens whose boldness is not limited by a risk-adverse and earth-bound government bureaucracy. I personally look to them to bring the future.

It is not cheap going into space. It costs NASA around $1,500 per pound to put a man into space and keep him alive. Before the kind of future Pat is talking about becomes a reality, that number is going to have to be sliced by 90%. And the corporations that can do it are probably already in existence.

NASA’s current plans call for returning to the moon by 2018. To my mind,, it’s an even money bet to see whether a commercial enterprise beats the government back there or not. Given NASA’s recent track record with making deadlines and having projects come in under budget, I suspect that unless the issue is pressed, NASA would lose that bet.

The American space program actually defined this country for a while. No longer. If nothing else, the fact that NASA has been staffed by small men with small dreams has turned a once proud agency and showcase for US achievement into a shell of its former self. I’m with the Doc; it’s time to look elsewhere for those who dream big dreams and have the drive and determination to make them come true.

A little bit of all of us died that horrible day 20 years ago. But soon…very soon, we may start hearing the music again.

The year 2005 will go down as one of the most innovative and remarkable years in the history of science. Of course, you could probably make the same boast about any year in the last quarter century or so. Our knowledge and understanding in a multitude of scientific disciplines is increasing so fast that it takes one’s breath away to think where we were in 1980 and where we are now. In fields as diverse as cosmology, medicine, the mind, and human origins, this year has seen some startling breakthroughs that have added substantially to the richness of our understanding of humanity and our place in the universe.

I have taken what I consider the top ten science stories from a variety of sources. Some topics are more general rather than specific to reflect a multitude of advancements.

Feel free to add or subtract from this list in the comments.

10. NASA ANNOUNCES NEXT GENERATION MANNED SPACE VEHICLE

The question uppermost in everyone’s mind is can NASA get it right? Will they be able to bring the next generation manned crew exploration vehicle (CEV) home on time and within very tight budgetary limits? The new Administrator Michael Griffin is making all the right noises about the new CEV even going so far as to say he will deliver on the project two years early. But given NASA’s history, many are skeptical.

9. GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE CONTINUES

Plenty of fodder for both advocates and detractors of global warming this year as several atmospheric models of how much CO2 should be in the atmosphere proved to be massively wrong while ice core evidence from Greenland shows a spike in CO2 levels not seen in 600,000 years. The beat goes on in 2006.

8. CONTINUING TO UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF GENES

From discovering clues to the origins of homo sapiens to unlocking the secrets of life itself, the pace of discovery in the study of genes continues to amaze and awe laypeople like me.

7. “SUPER EARTH” DISCOVERED

In a development that will become more commonplace once various earth-based systems come on-line and the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) is launched, a rocky planet 7.5 times the size of the earth was discovered just 15 light years away. With 150 planets and counting, the coming decade will see an explosion of planet discoveries that could very well answer the question “Are we alone?”

6. MARS PROBES REVOLUTIONIZE OUR VIEW OF THE RED PLANET

Both European and US Martian probes continue to surprise and amaze scientists, finding what appears to be methane (which could be a sign of subsurface life) as well as the almost certainty of water. The little Rovers Opportunity and Spirit approach the end their second year still working magnificently and beaming back pictures and data that continues to amaze. Not bad for a couple of rovers that were only supposed to last three months.

5. NUKE REACTOR OKAYED THAT COULD PRODUCE FUSION ENERGY

The Europeans and Japanese have decided to go ahead and build the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France. The concept behind this project has such enormous implications for our future that the decision to finally build it must be considered a top story for any year. If everything goes well, within 3-5 years, we should have the world’s first fusion reactor – a breakthrough that will eventually lead to truly clean nuclear energy.

4. HOORAY FOR HUYGENS!

In a triumph of both technological wizardry and international cooperation, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sent the European probe Huygens drifting gently toward the surface of Saturns enigmatic moon Titan. The spectacular pictures sent back from the only moon in the solar system known to have an atmosphere will have scientists scratching their heads for years to come.

3. THE YEAR OF THE HURRICANE

It was the busiest hurricane season on record which caused a speculation fest among global warming advocates that atmospheric warming was to blame. Thankfully, the grown ups stepped in and pointed out the cyclical nature of Atlantic hurricanes, much to the displeasure of people who thought they could accuse George Bush of another crime against humanity.

2. STS-114

The Space Shuttle returned to flight following the Columbia disaster. Despite years of work to make Shuttle launches safer, NASA engineers had to go back to the drawing board as insulation on the external fuel tank continues to fall off in dangerous chunks.

1. BULLSEYE!

The top science story of 2005 has to be the Deep Impact Mission to Comet Tempel 1. The probe traveled 250 million miles in order to deliberately crash into the comet so that scientists could get a glimpse of what’s inside. The mission succeeded beyond all expectations and was a masterpiece of precision and “gee whiz” gadgetry. Truly. Awesome.

I know that I was a little heavy on space stories here but frankly, that’s where my interest lies. I would genuinely be interested in some competing stories anyone may have. Feel free to use the comment section to supply recommendations and links.

UPDATE

This post has been published for less than an hour at this point and I’ve already received two emails asking about the ID vs. Evolution story.

At the risk of angering some of my most loyal and supportive readers, I will say that the reason the story was not included was because I don’t believe it to be a science story but rather a political one. The “debate” over the efficacy of ID is largely one sided and besides, there have been no significant breakthroughs in research on Intelligent Design that would be worthy of including in a post about the top science stories for 2005 .

NASA’S NEW HORIZONS PROBE IS HEADED TO PLUTO AND THE KUIPER BELT

One of the most amazing things to me, a 51 year old amateur space nut, is that the missions NASA has launched to the planets over the last 40 years have been conducted largely under the radar of press coverage and interest by the American people. This state of affairs will probably be looked on 500 years from now by historians with some measure of astonishment. They will marvel at the fact that mankind’s initial attempts to explore their solar system neighborhood would have been met with a collective yawn by a media that routinely reports every pimple that breaks out on Brittany Spear’s face but can’t find the time or effort to describe the wondrous, almost magical efforts to answer questions that have been asked by humanity since our ancestors were loping effortlessly across the African savannah.

Who are we? Why are we here? Are we alone?

In a very real sense, NASA’s New Horizon’s mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt beyond will close the first chapter in our quest to solve some of the most fundamental mysteries of the universe. And the fact that this effort has been given such short shrift by our celebrity-obsessed, trivia reporting media reveals much about our manic efforts to remain ignorant about matters so sublime in their implications for adding to the encyclopedia of human understanding that one could actually question the collective sanity of the human race if not for the fact that there are plenty of examples already.

On January 11, 2006, NASA will launch the New Horizons spacecraft toward an expected rendezvous with Pluto in 2015. While there has been much discussion among scientists in the last year or so about whether or not Pluto is a planet, the mission will conclude mankind’s initial effort to photograph and study all nine bodies we have studied and believed to be planetary bodies for 75 years. Recent evidence suggests that there are other icy, rocky bodies even bey0nd Pluto which will probably continue to call into question Pluto’s nomenclature. If so, the value of going to Pluto will be to study an entirely new class of objects in the solar system, a not insignificant goal in and of itself. One interesting note is that last year, the international astronomical body in charge of classifying objects was ready to yank Pluto’s designation as a planet until tens of thousands of school children wrote letters asking them not to. Just goes to show that even scientists can’t resist the importuning of a child.

Pluto is weird. It’s very small – less than 1/5 the size of Earth – with gravity that’s 2 1/2 times less than on our moon. Speaking of moons, Pluto’s satellite Charon is half the size of it’s mother planet! The two bodies do a strange gravitational dance around each other that scientists are still scratching their heads trying to figure out.

Pluto’s orbit is highly irregular. It careens around the solar system like a drunken sailor, passing inside the orbit of Neptune (thus for a time making Neptune the most distant planet) as well as orbiting in the opposite direction than the rest of the planets.

What makes going to Pluto so exciting is that what we know about that impossibly cold, icy world could be written on a postcard. Even the Hubble Telescope can only resolve Pluto into a barely discernible circular smudge. And one of the weirdest of planetary catastrophes may inhibit our observations – the collapse of Pluto’s atmosphere.

Evidently, the farther Pluto gets from the sun and the colder it gets, atmospheric physicists believe that the mass of the atmosphere will completely freeze and become too heavy to remain above the planet. It will thus drift to the surface of the planet or “collapse” thus not only obscuring the surface from our efforts to photograph it but probably make efforts to measure the atmosphere itself problematic:

Pluto has been racing away from the sun since its closest approach in 1989 and scientists do not know how much time remains before Pluto’s atmosphere collapses. Once that happens its atmosphere is not expected to re-emerge for about 200 years.

“Some people think its 20 years off and some people think its five years off,” said Stern. “No one really knows when Pluto’s atmosphere will snow out and collapse.”

As frigid Pluto grows even colder as it travels further from the sun, scientists believe that more and more of its surface will be cloaked in nitrogen-based snow, accelerating the freezing process that causes the atmosphere to collapse. Stern said the New Horizons team cannot be sure that there will still be an atmosphere to study until less than a year from encounter.

Another aspect of this mission that will set it apart from other planetary missions is speed. The Galileo mission to Jupiter took nearly 4 years of space travel, taking a gigantic elliptical path toward the planet after being launched from earth. And the Cassini probe took more than 6 years to reach Saturn after being launched from earth, going around the sun twice (and getting 2 gravity assists from Venus) before swinging by earth for another gravity assist, on the way to Jupiter for another boost until finally settling into an orbit around Saturn.

Because of its relatively small size – about as big as a grand piano – Horizons will be rocketed toward Pluto using a multi stage booster:

[T]he New Horizons spacecraft, which is about the size of a grand piano, will be lifted into orbit atop a Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket equipped with five solid-rocket boosters, a Centaur upper stage and a special STAR 48B solid propellant-fueled third stage that will propel the spacecraft out of low Earth orbit and toward its destination.

About a year after launch, assuming the spacecraft gets off in time for the gravity assist, New Horizons would encounter Jupiter, snapping pictures, making measurements and picking up speed as it slingshots past the gas giant on an eight-year cruise.

How fast will the probe be going? Faster than any spacecraft that has ever left earth:

When launched on its Atlas V rocket in January, New Horizons will be the fastest spacecraft ever to leave Earth, and that speed is crucial. New Horizons will cross the orbit of the moon in just 9 hours-something that took Apollo spacecraft over three days to accomplish after their launch to a speed of 25,000 miles per hour.

New Horizons will then journey to Jupiter for a gravitational slingshot to further speed the journey to Pluto. Whereas the two most recent missions NASA sent to Jupiter-Galileo and Cassini-took 6 and 4 years, respectively, the much faster New Horizons spacecraft will make its trip to Jupiter in just 13 months.

Four billion miles is a long way to go to snap a few pictures and take some measurements. That’s why once the probe swings within 10,000 kilometers of Pluto it will continue on into the mysterious Kuiper Belt where scientists think we will find leftover elements dating to the very beginning of the solar system. The potential gold mine of scientific information is so rich that the National Academy of Scientists put a mission to the Kuiper Belt as the number one priority for exploration this decade.

Outside of our missions to Mars, public interest in planetary probes of this sort is confined to a few fans like me and the scientific community. What does it say about our culture and perhaps even the state of our educational system that this is so? Is it so difficult to inculcate a sense of wonder and curiosity at the universe in our children that they can grow up oblivious to the stupendous achievement inherent in hurling a spacecraft 4 billion miles into the void and having it arrive on target in order to give us a glimpse of eternity?

Perhaps future generations will have more reverence for the efforts of the scientists and engineers who for nearly half a century have enriched our knowledge of the cosmos almost beyond measure with their single minded determination to explore space. Their achievements will be noted as long as humans are writing history.

And the hell of it is, we are a poorer species collectively by virtually ignoring their accomplishments,

I recently wrote an article on NASA’s plans to return to the moon by 2020 using a dual track launch approach, lifting the crew into near earth orbit by using the new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and marrying up with a previously launched payload that would include a service module and lunar descent vehicle.

I questioned whether NASA could complete such a project in the planned time frame and within the $104 billion budget they had set for themselves:

This ambitious timetable is a good goal but would seem to be unrealistic. Every major project undertaken by NASA in the past has taken longer to develop than anticipated and cost more than was originally thought. Why should we think they can suddenly get things right on the new crew exploration vehicle?

Would it surprise you to learn that there is a very serious effort underway by private corporations to try and beat NASA at their own game and that they know that they can accomplish a moon mission in less time and for vastly less money than NASA could even dream?

It shouldn’t:

According to SpaceDev’s chief, Jim Benson, the private group has found that a more comprehensive series of missions could be completed in a fraction of the time and for one-tenth of the cost of the NASA estimate.

Each mission, as envisioned by SpaceDev, would position a habitat module in lunar orbit or on the moon’s surface. The habitat modules would remain in place after each mission and could be re-provisioned and re-used, thus building a complex of habitats at one or more lunar locations over time, according to a press statement on the study findings.

Benson also noted: “We are not surprised by the significant cost savings that our study concludes can be achieved without sacrificing safety and mission support.”

These guys are not a bunch of rocket geeks sitting in in their mother’s basement idly wondering what it would be like if they had $10 billion to build a real cool rocket. These are dead serious businessmen who have run the numbers and come up with some startling conclusions:

In outlining their study findings, SpaceDev has blueprinted a conceptual mission architecture and design for a human servicing mission to the lunar south pole – targeted for the period between 2010 and 2015.

The length of stay on the Moon would be seven or more days – depending on cost, practicality and other issues. The SpaceDev study explored a range of technologies that would be needed: hardware that exists now, is currently under development, and proposed technology that NASA or other nations could spearhead, or might be developed by the private sector in time to be incorporated into lunar operations.

The SpaceDev study underscores a key finding: A combination of technology already under development by companies could be combined to create a growing and lasting presence at the Moon at costs significantly lower than those proposed by other organizations.

The reason for setting up at the moon’s south pole is the probability that there is abundant water in the form of ice in that region. Water would be used not only for its potability but for its usefulness in making rocket fuel (by combining oxygen in the water with liquid nitrogen or hydrogen) as well as fuel for rovers and the lunar habitat itself. The water could also be used to supply breathable air for habitat.

Part of NASA’s huge cost is contained in the development of the new CEV which the agency pegs at around $15 billion. And NASA is planning much, much larger payloads so there is a necessity for heavy lift capability not present in the private venture’s plans.

But what is truly exciting about this development is the recognition that a moon mission is doable and affordable. Ten billion dollars for a private sector venture is a lot of money and is probably right on the outside of the envelope where corporations would be willing to invest for such a small initial return on their investment.

But if a way can be found to spread the risk while searching for ways to efficiently exploit the moon’s resources, it may be possible to convince some of the big boys – Boeing, Lockheed, and perhaps even some of the larger mining companies like Kennecott – to climb aboard and get the project off the ground.

We are on the cusp of a transition in the exploration of space between public and private ventures. The flight last year of Burt Ruttan’s Spaceship One was a tiny step forward down a road that will have many starts and stops. The problems ahead for private companies who wish to test the waters in outer space are enormous. Companies will be asked to basically take a leap of faith and invest billions of dollars into ventures with uncertain returns and the real possibility of loss.

But the potential returns down the road are incalculable. Here’s what I wrote after Spaceship One’s historic flight where it was able to claim the $10 million X-Prize:

If there is ever going to be a private sector manned space flight industry, there’s going to have to be some kind of track record for investors to have confidence in. Perhaps the value of space tourism will be to show venture capitalists that a market exists beyond tourism for manned spaceflight. Medical research, metallurgical breakthroughs, even something as pie-in-the-sky as mining asteroids could all be huge moneymakers by the middle of this century. This will not be achieved by government owned space programs which are, by their very nature, “risk averse” but by private companies whose desire to make a profit will lead to the next great leap forward in man’s quest to explore the unknown.

In January, 2004 President Bush outlined his goals for the future of manned space flight. He proposed decommissioning the aging shuttle fleet by 2010 and replacing it by 2014 with a newer, more up to date spacecraft that would be able to not only service the Space Station but also return man to the moon by 2020.

Recently, NASA has fleshed out those proposals with some specifics. And judging by some of the plans, NASA will have a difficult time trying to both meet a budgetary requirement of $104 billion over 12 years as well as bringing the systems on line in the time period specified.

The new manned vehicle system will be, as NASA Administrator Mike Griffin joked, “an Apollo on steroids.” Using the same solid fuel rocket used by the Space Shuttle, the agency will plunk a capsule capable of carrying four astronauts on top and blast it into space. Immediately prior to the liftoff of the crew capsule, NASA will launch another, much larger unmanned rocket carrying fuel, food, and other supplies. This rocket will use both the Shuttle’s huge main engine as well as two solid rocket boosters – the same configuration used to get the Shuttle space-borne. The two ships will rendezvous and dock in low earth orbit and then execute a controlled rocket burn that will blast them toward the moon.

Once in lunar orbit, all four astronauts will descend to the surface leaving an empty crew capsule circling the moon. After a stay of 4-7 days (initially), the crew will ascend to dock with the capsule in lunar orbit and then power back to earth, re-entering the atmosphere using heat shield technology that’s been around since the Mercury program, and end up making a soft landing (on the White House lawn if whoever is President could arrange it, I’m sure.)

There are several interesting aspects to this mission profile that are in its favor. First, we don’t have to invent a lot of stuff. Most of what we will be using is “off the shelf” proven technologies – at least for most of the dangerous aspects of the mission. Since plans call for re-using the capsule up to 10 times, it will have to be made of some pretty durable materials. The solid rocket boosters – redesigned after the Challenger disaster – are reliable and relatively inexpensive. The Shuttle’s main engine will undergo some modifications using some of the technology used on the original moon rocket, the Saturn V. The new configuration will be able to generate up to 6 million pounds of thrust which would be necessary to lift the supplies of food, oxygen, fuel, and the lunar lander into low earth orbit. And while it may seem quaint and old fashioned to use a heat shield, as Griffin pointed out, the physics of the atmosphere hasn’t changed much recently.

The heat shield ablates the tremendous heat that builds up during re-entry by literally falling apart. As the temperatures reach several thousand degrees, the hottest parts of the shield fall off in layers thus keeping the astronauts from burning up. The heat shield will be the only element of the capsule that will need to be replaced for every mission.

Earlier this year, NASA Administrator Griffin proposed an accelerated timetable for the new crew exploration vehicle, moving up the proposed launch of the new system from 2012 to 2010. The first several missions would take place in low earth orbit to test out the system with plans calling for a lunar mission sometime around 2018.

This ambitious timetable is a good goal but would seem to be unrealistic. Every major project undertaken by NASA in the past has taken longer to develop than anticipated and cost more than was originally thought. Why should we think they can suddenly get things right on the new crew exploration vehicle?

Secondly, it is doubtful NASA’s current level of funding will be increased in any meaningful way. This means that in order to achieve the goal of landing on the moon by 2018, NASA will have to devote nearly 2/3 of its budget to a lunar mission. The agency is going to be in hot water with the scientific community who have their own plans for big projects including the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), a hugely important but ruinously expensive scientific instrument. There are also unmanned missions on the board for landers on Mars as well as another Jupiter mission to explore the strange, icy Jovian moon Europa that may have a liquid ocean underneath miles of ice which could harbor life.

These missions as well as others would have to be stretched out or canceled altogether in order for NASA to get back to the moon without a substantial increase in its budget. And given the size of the budget deficit as well as a general resistance on the part of lawmakers to spend extra money on space extravaganzas, it would seem to be a long shot to achieve the goal of a moon landing even by 2020.

Where does this leave NASA in its desire to get back to the moon much less go on to Mars? Interestingly, elements in the new moon program would have direct application for missions to Mars:

These plans give NASA a huge head start in getting to Mars. We will already have the heavy-lift system needed to get there, as well as a versatile crew capsule and propulsion systems that can make use of Martian resources. A lunar outpost just three days away from Earth will give us needed practice of “living off the land” away from our home planet, before making the longer trek to Mars.

The propulsion systems of the lunar craft will be powered by methane. The reason for that relates to one of the more remarkable exercises in citizen lobbying in the history of the United States.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, an engineer formerly with Lockheed-Martin had been an advocate for more than a decade of the “Mars Direct” proposal. He and a group of like minded enthusiasts pushed the notion that a trip to Mars could be done a lot cheaper if we didn’t have to carry fuel for the return flight 48 million miles. Why not launch a factory to Mars to make the fuel before people even got there?

This is possible because of the chemistry of the Martian atmosphere. By sucking in the Martian “air” which is mostly carbon dioxide (CO2), such a factory equipped with a relatively small amount of hydrogen and using technology that’s more than 100 years old, could turn the carbon dioxide into both water (H2O) and methane (CH4). By saving the weight of lifting off from earth with the 200,000 lbs of fuel it would take to return safely from Mars, an enormous cost savings is achieved – around $1,500 per lb.

Zubrin’s book A Case for Mars was a national best seller. It also contained other ideas including the novel approach of holding a contest (with a $5 billion dollar prize) to see which company could develop a Mars rover.

At first, NASA was dismissive of Zubrin’s ideas. But it must have gradually dawned on the bureaucrats that the plans that they had come up with were both extraordinarily expensive and technologically unfeasible. Zubrin and his fellow Mars enthusiasts almost single handedly changed the corporate culture at NASA to include some elements of their Mars Direct proposals.

This opens the question as to why we should go back to the moon in the first place. Why not go to Mars and then straight on till morning?

The Apollo program to the moon was a massive undertaking. It was the largest construction project in human history, dwarfing the cost in money and manpower of the pyramids, the Panama Canal, the Aswan Dam, and the Pentagon combined. It is estimated that nearly 500,000 human hands were laid on the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo capsule, and the service module prior to liftoff. Nearly 25% of all the hours worked on the project were in the form of unpaid overtime. In today’s dollars, the cost of the moon landing would be over $130 billion. These monies were spent over a 7 year period not the 15 years proposed for spending the $104 billion it would take to get back to the moon by 2020.

But if we are going to spend the money, we may as well do it right. There’s no overwhelming national security reason for going to Mars. Let’s face it; Mars isn’t going anywhere. If we can learn things by living and working on the moon, extracting its natural resources, including probably water in the form of subsurface ice deposits, the hazardous trip to Mars would then make sense. In fact, it may prove less expensive in the long run to actually build a ship to Mars on the moon rather than earth. With 1/6 the gravity of earth, a Mars mission taking off from the moon may prove to be cheaper in the long run.

All of this means a tinkers damn unless NASA can get its act together and build a reliable crew exploration vehicle and make the new booster configurations work. If NASA fails in this regard, then humans are probably going to have to rely on consortium’s of government and industry to do the job that NASA at one time was unparalleled in doing; sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth.

NASA has fallen a long way since the heady days of the 1960’s when budgets were fat and it seemed that the space agency could do nothing wrong in the eyes of the American people. Of course, a large part of that was politics. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all found it politically useful to garner some reflected glory from NASA’s towering achievements by being chummy with astronauts. That and naked cold war power politics which turned the space race into an exercise in chest thumping, nationalistic one upsmanship allowed NASA considerable leeway in its budgetary priorities.

Alas, nothing lasts forever and by 1975, NASA had fallen victim in part to its own success. Promising the shuttle miracle – a craft that could not only take off and land but also allow the agency to turn a profit – NASA ended up delivering what was essentially an Edsel. The high expectations NASA engendered for the shuttle turned out to be wildly unrealistic. Instead of flying 30 to 35 times a year as originally planned, that number has now been reduced to 6 or less. And the corporations that were supposed to line up for space on the shuttle to deploy their satellites have mostly found better, cheaper alternatives. NASA now competes with not only American companies to launch payloads, but also the European Space Agency, the Japanese, and soon the Chinese will throw their space helmets into the ring.

What happened?

A major lack of leadership both in the executive branch and at NASA itself is mostly to blame. The agency was allowed to deteriorate from a program that embodied the highest hopes and biggest dreams of the American people into just another ossified government bureaucracy. The Challenger disaster exposed the agency’s weaknesses as well as a callousness that shocked those of us who had followed the program from its inception. And NASA’s most recent catastrophe – the Columbia disaster – revealed the agency to be a rudderless ship, unable to make the necessary changes to both hardware and procedures to get the Shuttle flying again in a timely manner.

Part of the problem is NASA’s budget and the priorities the agency sets every year. The Shuttle should be seen as a vacuum cleaner, sucking money away from programs that actually advance scientific discovery. Flying below the public’s radar are a host of NASA successes that have transformed everything from physics to engineering. NASA missions in the last decade have opened up brand new scientific vistas using space based gamma ray and x-ray telescopes, rovers on Mars, a probe to Saturn’s moon Titan, and most recently, the extraordinary achievement of the Deep Impact probe. This is what NASA does best – build and launch probes that private industry wouldn’t touch.

But the agency’s manned program is a different story. To put it bluntly, it’s just too damned expensive. Yesterday’s launch cost NASA about $10,000 per pound to put the astronauts in low earth orbit. Even with the next generation of reusable launch vehicles (RLV), the agency is shooting to only lower that figure to $1000 per pound and most engineers think that number unattainable. The problem is that human beings need to be kept alive in space which has turned out to be an extraordinarily expensive undertaking.

Some of the difficulties may be overcome by using different kinds of boosters with different ways to propel the craft into space. Hybrid engines currently under development use different propellants than the standard mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. Rockets using nuclear power have been tested successfully but are unlikely to be built due to environmental concerns. The next generation will use a mixed fuel booster with solid propellant rockets used at liftoff. Still expensive but it might halve the cost of putting man in space.

This begs the entire question of why NASA should be putting men in space in the first place. The “Space Station” is another NASA project that promised much and has been both oversold and is now over budget. The Russian contribution has been consistently late and not up to specs. I have to add that Moscow did us a huge favor by ferrying people back and forth to the station using their good old fashioned Soyuz spacecraft. And we’re using their good old fashioned Progress rockets for resupply missions.

For the foreseeable future, NASA is stuck in low earth orbit. Although Congress has just approved initial funding for a planned moon landing in 2015, and a Mars landing a decade or so beyond that, the proof for Congress will be in NASA’s ability to operate efficiently with the funds that are appropriated. Watching NASA’s performance over the last months, I don’t have much confidence in the agency’s ability to convince Congress that it’s wasteful ways have changed.

Scientist James Van Allen who discovered the band of radiation that encircles earth and protects us from cosmic rays thinks that NASA’s time has passed:

My position is that it is high time for a calm debate on more fundamental questions. Does human spaceflight continue to serve a compelling cultural purpose and/or our national interest? Or does human spaceflight simply have a life of its own, without a realistic objective that is remotely commensurate with its costs? Or, indeed, is human spaceflight now obsolete?

I am among the most durable and passionate participants in the scientific exploration of the solar system, and I am a long-time advocate of the application of space technology to civil and military purposes of direct benefit to life on Earth and to our national security. Also, I am an unqualified admirer of the courageous individuals who undertake perilous missions in space and of the highly competent engineers, scientists, and technicians who make such missions possible.

In a dispassionate comparison of the relative values of human and robotic spaceflight, the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure. But only a tiny number of Earth’s six billion inhabitants are direct participants. For the rest of us, the adventure is vicarious and akin to that of watching a science fiction movie. At the end of the day, I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable.

Van Allen is correct in his assessment as far as it goes. Perhaps it is time for governments to get out of the business of putting human beings into space. The aforementioned ISP was supposed to be completed by 2000. Instead, it may not be finished until 2010 at a cost of some $80 billion which is overbudget by a factor of 5. Could such an endeavor be done more cheaply?

The answer is absolutely yes. There are about a dozen corporations that are vying to ferry human beings into space. The suborbital flight last year of Spaceship One is just the first step. Plans are afoot by several companies to develop orbiting spacecraft as well as build their own space station. Originally for the super rich who would be willing to pay the hefty $20 million to go into space, as more companies become involved and competition heats up, that price will come down considerably.

And then there’s the space elevator.

A space elevator is a physical connection from the surface of the Earth, or another planetary body such as Mars, to a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO – In the case of Earth) above the Earth at roughly 35,786 km in altitude.

It is hoped that someday a space elevator would be utilized as a transportation and utility system for moving people, payloads, power, and gases between the surface of the Earth and space. It makes the physical connection from Earth to space in the same way a bridge connects two cities across a body of water.

NASA is looking very seriously at such a project as are a half a dozen private companies. An elevator from earth’s surface to a space hotel for tourists may be a lot closer to realization than some think. The technology is there. All that’s needed is the will and the funding.

The fact is that alternatives to NASA’s manned space program will be commonplace in a decade. I wouldn’t be surprised if when this next generation of RLV’s was retired in 2025, NASA will get out of the business of putting people in space entirely. By then, I have no doubt that spaceflight will be much closer to being available to anyone of a little more than modest means.

UPDATE

No sooner had I finished writing this article than NASA discovered a rather large chunck of insulation had fallen off the booster during liftoff of the orbiter. Thankfully, it didn’t smash into the Shuttle and damage any of the tiles that protect the spacecraft on re-entry. But since this was one problem that NASA thought it had solved, the Shuttle fleet will be grounded until they figure out how to fix the problem.

Officials do not believe the foam hit the shuttle, posing a threat to the seven astronauts when they return to Earth on Aug. 7. But they plan a closer inspection of the spacecraft in the next few days to be sure.

“You have to admit when you’re wrong. We were wrong,” Parsons said. “We need to do some work here, and so we’re telling you right now that the … foam should not have come off. It came off. We’ve got to go do something about that.”

The loss of a chunk of debris, a vexing problem NASA thought had been fixed, represents a tremendous setback to a space program that has spent 2 1/2 years and over $1 billion trying to make the 20-year-old shuttles safe to fly.

“We won’t be able to fly again,” until the hazard is removed, Parsons told reporters in a briefing Wednesday evening.

The forces at work during a Shuttle lift off are simply awesome. The vehicle generates 6 million pounds of thrust when both the solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank are ignited. No matter how well the systems are designed, there are going to be unforseen stresses on different areas of the spacecraft. And travelling at several thousand miles per hour through the atmosphere under a “Max-Q” of nearly 7 G’s also makes trying to predict stress points exactly an almost insurmountable problem.

My guess would be that NASA will spend 6 months in meetings and in typical fashion will declare that the insulation falling off will be “an acceptable flight risk.” Like the “O” Rings that caused the Challenger disaster and a half dozen other problems NASA has examined in the past, when no solution presents itself they simply lower the safety bar. They really have no other choice except to ground the Shuttle altogether. And given the investment the government has in the International Space Station and the Shuttle’s vital role in ferrying supplies and personnel to that boondoggle in the sky, that won’t happen.

Kevin at Wizbang offers this thought:

Much as you wouldn’t keep pouring cash into a clunker automobile, it’s time to admit that the shuttle fleet is end-of-life and start work on a new space vehicle design.

They already have started work. The problem is it won’t be ready for at least 5 years. And unless we want to swallow our pride and admit our incompetence entirely be continuing to depend on Russians to get us poor Americans back and forth from the Space Station, we have no alternative but to continue holding our breath every time the Shuttle launches or re-enters.

UPDATE II

Rand Simberg offers some interesting thoughts:

I think that it’s most likely that they will decide to come home with it as is. And if they do, I also think that they will undergo a great deal of ignorant criticism for this decision, because they’ve “lost their safety culture,” just one flight after they killed all those astronauts, and now they’re recklessly gambling their lives again (disregarding the fact that throwing away a two-billion dollar vehicle, and a third of the remaining fleet, is not a decision to be taken lightly either).

It’s not a question of NASA “losing” their safety culture as much as it is raising the bar of “acceptable risk” which I suspect Rand would agree with. Whether that’s a good thing because of past over cautiousness or whether it’s not a good thing is a moot point. Prior to launch, NASA said that there was a 1 in 100 chance the Shuttle would be destroyed. I don’t think there are too many people who would accept those odds and go into space.

STEM CELLS

The House has passed a bill dramatically increasing the parameters of stem cell research:

The House yesterday passed a bill to ease restrictions on human-embryonic-stem-cell research, but it did not gain enough votes to overcome a promised presidential veto.

The bill, co-sponsored by Reps. Michael N. Castle, Delaware Republican, and Diana DeGette, Colorado Democrat, calls for nearly 400,000 human embryos currently in cold storage to be used for experimentation.

First of all, let’s try to maintain a little perspective here. For that, I think we should listen to a scientist. Here are The Maryhunter’s thought’s from his brand-new blog, TMH Bacon Bits:

This topic has ignited passions on both sides. Some scientists and activists believe that embryonic stem cells hold tremendous promise for cures of everything from spinal cord injury and related paralysis to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer and Parkinson. Others believe that embryonic stem cell research is akin to murder, since in order to harvest human embryonic stem cells, one must destroy a living human embryo. The ES-cell proponents counter with the ethical argument that it is wrong, even immoral, to prevent potential medical breakthroughs by squelching federally-funded research on human embryos that would be discarded anyway — and they parade out senile dementia and paralysis victims to plead their case. The other side then parries by suggesting that, through this logic, we should also do research on death-row inmates, since they too are slated for destruction. Then they introduce us to children who were born as the result of the adoption and implantation of unwanted IVF-clinic embryos that were otherwise slated for destruction.

The media battle, however, is clearly being won by the embryonic stem cell forces, despite the fact that this is the more ethically problematic research route that to date has few if any successes to report. This contrasts dramatically with research on adult stem cells, which has resulted in numerous exciting medical breakthroughs. Sadly, popular debate tends toward the newer, flashier research that promises a new world of medicine lying just around the corner.

Embryonic stem cells could turn into a scientific bonanza. The problem as TMH points out in his article is that no one knows what the potential is. By dramatically expanding research, it should become clear just what advances are possible and which are pipe dreams.

President Bush plans to veto this legislation, a course of action I strongly disagree with. I can understand the pro-life stance and admire the thinking behind it. But government cannot legislate science. Government cannot say that “life begins at conception” because there’s not one shred of scientific proof that this is so. What government can and should do is protect life once it is viable outside the womb. This is why I strongly oppose abortion rights activists on a variety of issues including partial birth abortion and unlimited second trimester abortions.

Embryos slated for destruction can in no rational way be construed as life. I hope the President can be dissuaded from vetoing this important legislation.

STARTLING FACTS ABOUT THE PEOPLING OF AMERICA

A new study of DNA suggests North America was originally settled by just a few dozen people who crossed a land bridge from Asia during the last Ice Age.

About 14,000 years ago, humans crossed the Bering land bridge from Siberia to North America, most experts agree. But just how many intrepid explorers were involved has not been known.

Previous DNA analyses of the New World’s founding looked at just one gene and assumed populations sizes have been constant over time. The new study looked at nine genomic regions to account for variations in single genes, and it assumed that sizes of founding populations change over time. The method favored actual genetic data over estimates used in previous calculations

As few as 70 humans made the trek from Siberia to North America.

The study suggests the peopling of America took place 12,000-14,000 years ago despite recent evidence that shows a much earlier date. Some archaeological sites have suggested that humans may have been here as early as 20,000-22,000 years ago. The evidence is controversial and given this genetic study, will have more problems in trying to sway scientific opinion. In addition, this fascinating theory regarding Europeans coming to America also took a hit. The geneticists found no evidence of Caucasian diaspora from Europe.

ANOTHER VOYAGER MILESTONE

From The New Editor:

After a storied, 28-year odyssey, NASA’s venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft appears to have reached the edge of the solar system, a turbulent zone of near-nothingness where the solar wind begins to give way to interstellar space in a cosmic cataclysm known as “termination shock,” scientists said yesterday.

“This is an historic step in Voyager’s race,” said California Institute of Technology physicist Edward C. Stone, the mission’s chief scientist since Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched in the summer of 1977. “We have a totally new region of space to explore, and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Studying this region of space may be in jeopardy because Congress is thinking of slashing the $4.2 million dollar appropriation that covers Voyager’s explorations.

Don’t worry though, we can always launch another space probe toward the outer reaches of the solar system. Of course, it will only take 30 years or so to reach the point that Voyager is now. And such a mission in today’s dollars would cost a couple of billion dollars. So, we can spend $4.2 million today or a couple of billion tomorrow.

Your government at work.

BLACK HOLES FINALLY GIVING UP SECRETS

Advances in x-ray astronomy are resolving some enduring mysteries about black holes, scientists say. Black holes are places in space where the force of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.

In recent years scientists have learned to find black holes by sweeping the skies with space-based telescopes equipped with x-ray “vision.” X-rays are a high-energy form of light that is invisible to the human eye.

“As [matter] falls down into the black hole, it will heat up, and it gets so hot it emits x-rays,” explained Edward Morgan, an astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

Morgan is an instrument scientist for NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer satellite. Launched in 1995, the satellite allows scientists to study black holes and other objects such as neutron stars.

There are two kinds of black holes. Your garden variety black hole results when a sun approximately 10 times as massive as our own star, approaches the end of its life. As it runs out of hydrogen to burn, it first starts to expand, gradually reaching a size perhaps three times larger than it was during its lifetime. Then, as it runs out of fuel made up of other elements in the periodic table it starts to contract rapidly until its weight becomes so massive that it actually collapses in on itself and disappears from normal space. It’s size is very small – smaller than the earth. But any celestial body unlucky enough to be caught in its gravity well ends up as food for this gravitational monster. As it “eats,” it gives off massive amounts of x-rays that are visible to the space-based x-ray telescopes that we’ve launched in the last decade.

The second type of black hole lies at the center of galaxies and is called a “supermassive black hole.” These beasts consume massive amounts of stellar debris and an interesting correlation has been found between the growth of these monsters and the growth of their home galaxy.

SOME THOUGHTS ON SCIENTIFIC DEBATE

The Commissar has some thoughts on “The Elite Control of Scientific Dialog” and how some ideas have a hard time making it into the mainstream of scientific thought. He takes the serendipitous case of William Alvarez, the physicist who first came up with the theory that dinosaurs may have been wiped out by an asteroid:

In 1980, a physicist named Walter Alvarez observed a surprising layer of iridium laid down about 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs went extinct. From that, he hypothesized that a huge asteroid had collided with the earth, triggering a global catastrophe and causing the mass extinction. The scientific community, including paleontologists and geologists, was very dubious. Here was a physicist intruding on THEIR turf! ...

What happened? Did Alvarez take his ideas to the Kansas Board of Education? Did he wage a PR campaign? Did he sponsor state referenda to push his point of view? Did he demand that high school geology textbooks carry stickers highlighting his views? Did he gnash his teeth publicly and demand to “teach the controversy?”

No. He, and other scientists, both those who agreed with him and those who vehemently disagreed, examined the facts, ran more tests, looked again at old data, etc. They literally dug into the earth, all over the globe, down to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (the so-called K-T layer) to determine how much iridium was there.

The results, as they say, are history. The impact theory for the dinosaur extinction is generally accepted as true.

Parallels with the evolutionists vs. “Intelligent” Design wingnuts? Read the whole thing.

TOP 10 WAYS TO DESTROY THE EARTH

Finally, how about “The Top 10 Ways to Destroy the Earth.” I’ m especially intrigued by #7:

You will need: a light bulb

Slightly possible.

Please don’t try this at home.

PLUTO AND ITS MOON CHARON AS SEEN FROM THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE

NASA is asking for public comment on The New Horizons Mission to the planet Pluto. The reason? NASA will be using a tiny amount of plutonium to power the spacecraft:

The New Horizons mission will use a plutonium-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator for power in deep space, where sunlight isn’t intense enough to run the spacecraft. It’s like the generators that flew in the Cassini probe now at Saturn. In fact, it’s Cassini’s spare.

“RTGs have a proven track record and safety record,” Kurt Lindstrom, NASA’s executive for the mission, said in a press conference today at Kennedy Space Center.

The thermoelectric generator is one of those inventions that you might slap yourself on the head and say “Why didn’t I think of that!” It uses heat generated from the plutonium and turns that heat into electrcity. The atoms in plutonium are so energetic that if you were to hold a clump of the stuff in your hand, you could actually feel the heat.

Then again, if you’re dumb enough to hold the stuff you’d be dead in a couple of days. Plutonium is the most toxic substance known to man. A grain smaller than a pinhead lodged in your lungs would give you cancer and you’d be dead in six months.

That being said, we’ve used similar technology for more than 30 years. The problem isn’t with the technology; it’s with how we get the darn thing up in space in the first place.

Here’s a risk profile for the mission:

There’s a 93.8 percent chance of a successful launch, the statement says; a 5.8 percent chance of an accident with no release of radiological material; and 0.4 percent chance of a mishap with a radiological release

I’m not quite sure how they reached that 0.4% chance of radiological release but given how the environmentalists almost scuttled the Cassini mission over the same issue, you can bet it’s based on pretty good science.

The mission itself sounds fascinating. Pluto is without a doubt the strangest “planet” in the solar system. I put the word planet in quotes because recently, there’s been a rather lively debate about whether or not Pluto can be considered a real planet.

Scientists settled on the idea that since Pluto has been referred to as a planet for so long, it should remain that way. It turns out that thousands of kids wrote to the IAU (International Astronomical Union) and begged the adults to keep Pluto as a planet. Even scientists can’t resist when kids get involved.

That being said, Pluto is weird. It’s very small – less than 1/5 the size of Earth – with gravity that’s 2 1/2 times less than on our moon. Speaking of moons, Pluto’s satelite Charon is half the size of it’s mother planet! The two bodies do a strange gravitational dance around each other that scientists are still scratching their heads trying to figure out.

Pluto’s orbit is highly irregular. It careens around the solar system like a drunken sailor, passing inside the orbit of Neptune (thus for a time making Neptune the most distant planet) as well as orbiting in the opposite direction than the rest of the planets.

Pluto is also the only planet in the solar system we haven’t visited. That will change if NASA gets the go ahead for the New Horizons mission. The plan is to launch next January, get a gravitiy assist from Jupiter which will slingshot the craft towards the outer planets in 2007, and initiate a flyby of Pluto in 2015, coming within 10,000 km of the planet and 50,000 km of Charon. Then the spacecraft will swing out towards the mysterious Kuiper Belt where some of the most bizarre objects in the solar system can be found.

Plans for this extended mission include one to two encounters of Kuiper Belt Objects, ranging from about 25 to 55 miles (40 to 90 kilometers) in diameter. What are these objects? They’re the flotsam and jetsam left over from the creation of the solar system, after the planets formed from our sun’s accretion disk.

If all goes well, just about the time I’m ready to start collecting one of my pensions (I’ve got two!), human beings will get their first look at the surface of this world that its discoverer Clyde Tombaugh named after the God of the Underworld.

NASA may have found a target landing site for the first manned mission to Mars:

Images recently taken by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express spacecraft, which is orbiting Mars, show a frozen body of water, about the size of Earth’s North Sea, beneath the surface of Mars.

“I believe this makes the possibility of the discovery of life on Mars much closer than was previously thought,” said John Murray, a research scientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes in England. Murray led the research group that made the discovery of the frozen sea.

Scientists now say that Mars has been shaped by flowing water, lava, and ice in the recent geological age. The sea formed within the last few million years, as volcanic eruptions or tectonic activity caused the area to flood.

Some gigantic cataclysm opened massive fissures on the surface of Mars some 5 million years ago allowing water from an underground sea to flow over the surface. Judging by the amount of water that gushed forth, scientists believe the underground body of water is about the size of the North Sea.

Finding out whether or not there’s life on Mars may be as simple as walking across the glaciers pictured above (the ice is buried under several inches of dust and volcanic ash) and taking samples. If there is or was life on Mars, the evidence would be in the ice in the form of fossils or, more incredibly, perhaps frozen life forms in the ice itself.

The theory is that water erupted less than five million years ago from the Cerberus Fossae, deep cracks on the Martian surface. These cracks opened up and tapped a huge reservoir of liquid water deep beneath the surface.

Pack ice formed on top of that water. It then broke up, before freezing rigid. A crust of dust and volcanic ash, perhaps just a few centimeters thick, has prevented sublimation, the process by which ice erodes over time into water vapor.

“The fact that they are still occurring today means that we have had huge pockets of liquid water beneath the surface of Mars for thousands of millions of years—plenty of time for life to develop,” Murray said.

If life can develop in these subsurface oceans, as many scientists believe, this frozen sea may be the ideal place to look not just for fossils of past life, but for the actual frozen organisms themselves, Murray said.

Both NASA and the European Space Agency are planning rover missions to reach Mars in 2011. The original NASA mission was to be a sample return mission where a rover would scoop up some Martian soil and return it to Earth for analysis. That mission was set back to 2014 due to a cut in funding.

In light of these recent discoveries, perhaps NASA should rethink that decision.

The above picture is not an artists rendering. It’s an actual stereoscopic photograph of the north pole of Mars. What it shows is some of the most compelling evidence to date that Mars is a much different place than we thought just a short year ago.

The picture shows part of the Martian ice cap. There’s also strong evidence (the darker shaded areas) of relatively recent volcanic activity and what scientists call “fluvial” flows, which could be glacier activity.

What has scientists excited is the fact that the evidence points to volcanic activity on Mars within the last 20 million (and perhaps as recently as 2.5 million) years. That’s a relative blink of the eye in cosmic terms. Previously, it was thought that volcanic activity had ceased on Mars as long as several hundred million years ago.

The volcanic activity triggered a melting that caused water to once again run on Mars, maybe for the last time. The $64,ooo question being asked today is whether or not it’s possible Mars is still geologically active. Such a finding would call into question most assumptions we have about Mars being a “dead” planet.

The image above is Kasei Valles, one of the largest outflow channels on Mars, and contains a lot of evidence for glacial and fluvial activity over much of the planet’s history.

The scour marks in the valley, shown in the image on the left, are most likely due to glacial erosion than by water erosion. This is contrary to what was previously thought.

The glacier that caused this valley was fed by water from the Echus Chasma region, which was driven out from underneath the surface by volcanic activity. Water was released by heating from volcanic activity in the channel floor as relatively recently as 20 million years ago.

What all this adds up to is that Mars is a much more interesting place than scientists could have imagined. Thanks to the two NASA rovers Spirit and Oppotunity as well as the ESA probe Mars Express, our knowledge of the red planet has taken a dramatic leap in the last year and only whets our appetite for further discoveries.

Pictures courtesy of the European Space Agency