Mars Society Special Bulletin
Nov. 23, 2004
For further information, visit our website at
www.marssociety.org

In this issue:
*Moon-Mars funding passes
*Methane confirmed on Mars- is life the cause?
*Shop for Mars!

Moon Mars Funding Passes
Early Saturday morning, a House-Senate conference
committee agreed to fully fund $16.2 billion for
NASA's FY05 budget. This is the full amount that
President Bush had requested to fund shuttle return to
flight, ISS resupply, and seed money for the Crew
Exploration Vehicle, Project Prometheus and initial
spending for the Moon-Mars Space Exploration Vision!

In July 2004, The Mars Society, along with members of
the Space Exploration Alliance, participated in the
Moon-Mars Blitz with the sole purpose of getting the
initial funding for the Space Exploration Initiative.
At The Mars Society 2004 Conference in Chicago, over
468 letters were sent out by members urging the
President and Congress to pass the initial funding.
Thank you to all who helped in this effort!!!!

The next step is to assure that the Space Exploration
Vision doesn't get moon-stuck. Again, Mars Society
members will be asked to visit/write Congress and the
President to assure that this doesn't happen. The
Political Task Force will have more information and
what action is needed when Congress reconvenes in
January.

Until then, the PTF urges everyone to write or email
their Senators and Representative a "thank you for
supporting the NASA 05 budget" letter. Information on
how to contact Congress is available on the PTF
website at
http://home.marssociety.org/outreach/political/usa/
Click on "Making
Contact with Congress and the White House". After you
have written your letter, please take a minute to
report it to the PTF at
http://home.marssociety.org/outreach/political/usa/capitolwatch/report
.html

For more on the story see:
http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/spacestoryN1121NASA.htm
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/custom/space/orl-
asecnbudget21112104nov2
1,0,1030318.story?coll=orl-home-headlines
http://www.spacetoday.net/

Methane confirmed on Mars- Is life the cause?
Evidence is pouring in confirming earlier findings of
trace methane in the Martian atmopshere. While
geothermal formation of methane is possible, the
amounts found are difficult to explain as orginating
from non-biologic sources. Subsurface microbes are a
significant source of methane on Earth, and liquid
groundwater environments capable of supporting such
microbes are believed to exist on Mars.

If human explorers were to go to Mars, drilling rigs
could be set up to reach and sample such groundwater.
Examining it could answer the central riddles
concerning life: Is life unique to the Earth? If not,
is Earth life the pattern for life elsewhere, or are
other biochemistries possible? The search for truth in
this matter provides a compelling science-driven
reason for human space exploration.

The confirmation of the methane discovery received
major coverage in today's New York Times. Excerpts
from the article follow;

Methane in Martian Air Suggests Life Beneath the
Surface

November 23, 2004
By KENNETH CHANG

A third team of scientists has now reported a
seemingly simple discovery on Mars: its atmosphere
contains methane.

But that finding has potentially profound
implications, including the possibility of present-day
microbes living on Mars.

Speaking this month at the American Astronomical
Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in
Louisville, Ky., Dr. Michael Mumma, a senior scientist
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md., reported three years of observations had provided
strong evidence for methane.

"We are 99 percent confident," Dr. Mumma said. "It
surprised all of us, actually. We really are still
scrambling to understand what it means."

Methane, the simplest of hydrocarbon molecules with
one carbon and four hydrogen atoms, is fragile in air
and easily broken apart when hit by ultraviolet light.
Calculations indicate that any methane in the Martian
air must have been put there within the past 300
years.

That then raises the question: What is putting methane
into the Martian air?

There seem to be only two plausible explanations. One
is geothermal chemical reactions involving water and
heat like those that occur on Earth in the hot springs
of Yellowstone or at hydrothermal vents on the bottoms
of oceans.

That would intrigue planetary geologists. Although
frozen water is known to exist, there are no signs
that any volcanism has occurred there for millions of
years. Also, an instrument aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey
looked for warm spots on Mars' surface and did not
find any.

The other, more intriguing, is life. On Earth, a class
of bacteria known as methanogens breathes out methane
as a waste product. The discovery, if confirmed,
suggests that perhaps Martian life arose on a
presumably more hospitable Mars billions of years ago
and survives to this day underground, beneath the
cold, dry landscape.

Dr. Vladimir Krasnopolsky of Catholic University in
Washington, the leader of one of the teams, said he
believed bacteria to be the "most plausible source."

Others are more cautious. "Three difficult detections,
or marginal detections, don't equate to one really
strong one," said Dr. Philip R. Christensen, a
professor of geological sciences at Arizona State
University.

Dr. Krasnopolsky's findings, relying on observations
from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii,
were first reported at a conference in Europe this
year and will be published in the journal Icarus.

In January, scientists working on the European Space
Agency's Mars Express mission also reported the
detection of the methane. A few months later, that
group, led by Dr. Vittorio Formisano of the Institute
of Physics and Interplanetary Science in Rome reported
that the methane appeared to be more plentiful in
regions where frozen water is known to exist
underground.

All three teams of astronomers looked for methane
molecules in the Martian air by examining the rainbow
of light reflected by the planet. Different molecules
absorb different, very specific colors, producing a
bar-code-like series of black lines blotting out part
of the rainbow spectrum. The widths of the lines tell
the quantity. Dr. Krasnopolsky and Dr. Formisano based
their claims on a single dark line.

...
Dr. Mumma said his ground-based observations from
Hawaii and Chile spotted two separate dark lines
corresponding to methane and performed other checks.
"Mike's a really careful guy," said Dr. Steven W.
Squyres, principal investigator for the rovers now on
Mars, who attended Dr. Mumma's talk. "It was to me, by
a significant margin, the most compelling argument
that I've seen."

There is a new wrinkle in Dr. Mumma's findings: some
regions of Mars near the equator possess surprisingly
high levels of methane, up to 250 parts per billion,
while areas near the poles had 20 to 60 parts per
billion. Earth air, by comparison, contains about
1,700 parts per billion of methane. Dr. Mumma's
readings are considerably higher than those reported
by the other two groups.

Scientists have generally thought that methane, if
present, would quickly distribute evenly through the
atmosphere, so the clumps of high concentration
suggest that not only are there sources emitting
methane, but perhaps some process is also destroying
methane over the poles.

The methane findings on current-day Mars come as
planetary scientists are again rethinking their ideas
about long-ago Mars. Geological carvings on the
surface, from ones that look like meandering river
channels to gigantic canyons, gave rise to the notion
that Mars had been a tropical paradise, perhaps warmed
by a thick heat-trapping blanket of carbon dioxide in
its atmosphere.

...
Even Dr. James F. Kasting, a climatologist at Penn
State whose models helped convince people that Mars
had not been warm, has changed his mind. Dr. Kasting
is now investigating methane, a more potent greenhouse
gas than carbon dioxide, as a cause of warming. ... "I
think the evidence keeps mounting that it was warm. I
think it has to be stably warm."

...

The complete NY Times article can be found at;

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/23/science/space/23mars.html?
ex=1102215245&ei=1&en=b3587b8a1e187850

Shop for Mars!
Buy your Christmas gifts through the "Buy it at the
Mars Society" link at www.marssociety.com. Dozens of
brand name merchants are represented there, and at no
extra cost to you, part of every purchase will go to
support the work of the Mars Society.

For further information about the Mars Society, visit
our website at
www.marssociety.org.



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