PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 46/2003 - 23 May 2003
"The injection from space of evolved microorganisms that
have well-attested terrestrial affinities raises the possibility
that pathogenic bacteria and viruses might also be introduced.
The annals of medical history detail many examples of plagues and
pestilences that can be attributed to space incident microbes in
this way... With respect to the SARS outbreak, a prima facie case
for a possible space incidence can already be made."
--Chandra Wickramasinghe, Milton Wainwright, Jayant Narlikar, The
Lancet, 24 May 2003
"The virus believed to cause Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (Sars) may have come to Earth from outer space,
according to scientists writing in a leading British medical
journal. However, a number of Sars experts believe the theory
itself seems to have come from another planet."
--Richard Black, BBC News Online, 23 May 2003
"Why does anyone go to horror movies anymore? A week's worth
of news seems scary enough. SARS, which can kill you, is a
household word. So is mad-cow disease. Also this week the
government started flying the Code Orange terror warning again.
Al Qaeda is back, blowing up buildings and people in Saudi
Arabia, and suicide bombers are again killing civilians in
Israel. And of course North Korea, having contracted mad-man
disease, may be loading nuclear bombs onto ballistic
missiles."
--Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2003
(1) "SARS FROM STARS"
BBC News Online, 23 May 2003
(2) SARS - A CLUE TO ITS ORIGINS?
The Lancet, 24 May 2003
(3) "SARS FROM OUTER SPACE"
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(4) DID SARS COME FROM OUTER SPACE?
UPI, 22 May 2003
(5) WHO NEEDS HORROR SHOWS? THE FABULOUS WORLD OF FACT, FACTOID
AND SARS
The Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2003
(6) ORDER OUT OF CHAOS: THE CATASTROPHIC ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR
SYSTEM
Planetary Science Reseach Discoveries, 21 May
2003
(7) NEW ROSETTA WORRIES: COMET CHASER COSTS RISE
BBC News Online, 20 May 2003
(8) DEEPER IMPACT
Tech Central Station, 22 May 2003
(9) AND FINALLY: "PUTIN WILL SPRAY RAIN CLOUDS TO GUARANTEE
SUNSHINE FOR CELEBRATIONS"
Ananova, 21 May 2003
========
(1) "SARS FROM STARS"
BBC News Online, 23 May 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2931246.stm
By Richard Black
BBC science correspondent
The virus believed to cause Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
(Sars) may have come to Earth from outer space, according to
scientists writing in a leading British medical journal.
In a letter to The Lancet, the scientists, led by Professor
Chandra Wickramasinghe of Britain's Cardiff University, say the
Sars coronavirus is so unlike other viruses that an
extra-terrestrial origin is logical.
However, a number of Sars experts believe the theory itself seems
to have come from another planet.
The idea that Sars comes from the stars relates to a theory
called panspermia. This says that life itself evolved somewhere
out in the cosmos, and is carried from one planet to another on
comets.
Professor Wickramasinghe, who is a leading panspermia enthusiast,
says the Sars coronavirus is so unusual that it could not have
arisen on Earth.
"The particular genetic sequences of this Sars virus appears
to be dramatically different from all the other known
coronaviruses; and that has suggested an independent evolution of
that virus to be required."
Flawed evidence?
In other words, the virus evolved somewhere else, perhaps on
another planet, before coming to Earth.
Professor Wickramasinghe admits there is no hard evidence for his
theory; and researchers who have been working on Sars reacted
with a mixture of disbelief and ridicule.
There is nothing strange about the Sars coronavirus, they said;
it certainly evolved from other known viruses.
One leading expert said Professor Wickramasinghe's letter
"must be a joke"; another said it is simply ridiculous.
And a spokesman for the World Health Organization re-assured me
that they have no plans to send Sars inspection teams into outer
space just yet.
Copyright 2003, BBC
=========
(2) SARS - A CLUE TO ITS ORIGINS?
The Lancet, 24 May 2003
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol361/iss9371/full/llan.361.9371.correspondence.25778.1
Sir--We detected large quantities of viable microorganisms in
samples of stratospheric air at an altitude of 41 km.1,2. We
collected the samples in specially designed sterile cryosamplers
carried aboard a balloon launched from the Indian Space Research
Organisation/ Tata Institute Balloon Facility in Hyderabad,
India, on Jan 21, 2001. Although the recovered biomaterial
contained many microorganisms, as assessed with standard
microbiological tests, we were able to culture only two types;
both similar to known terrestrial species.2 Our findings lend
support to the view that microbial material falling from space
is, in a Darwinian sense, highly evolved, with an evolutionary
history closely related to life that exists on Earth.
We estimate that a tonne of bacterial material falls to Earth
from space daily, which translates into some 10^19 bacteria, or
20 000 bacteria per square metre of the Earth's surface. Most of
this material simply adds to the unculturable or uncultured
microbial flora present on Earth.
The injection from space of evolved microorganisms that have
well-attested terrestrial affinities raises the possibility that
pathogenic bacteria and viruses might also be introduced. The
annals of medical history detail many examples of plagues and
pestilences that can be attributed to space incident microbes in
this way. New epidemic diseases have a record of abrupt entrances
from time to time, and equally abrupt retreats. The patterns of
spread of these diseases, as charted by historians, are often
difficult to explain simply on the basis of endemic infective
agents. Historical epidemics such as the plague of Athens and the
plague of Justinian come to mind.
In more recent times the influenza pandemic of 1917-19 bears all
the hallmarks of a space incident component: "The influenza
pandemic of 1918 occurred in three waves. The first appeared in
the winter and spring of 1917-1918 . . . The lethal second wave .
. . involved almost the entire world over a very short time . . .
Its epidemiologic behaviour was most unusual. Although
person-to-person spread occurred in local areas, the disease
appeared on the same day in widely separated parts of the world
on the one hand, but, on the other, took days to weeks to spread
relatively short distances."3
Also well documented is that, in the winter of 1918, the disease
appeared suddenly in the frozen wastes of Alaska, in villages
that had been isolated for several months. Mathematical modelling
of epidemics such as the one described invariably involves the ad
hoc introduction of many unproven hypotheses--for example, that
of the superspreader. In situations where proven infectivity is
limited only to close contacts, a superspreader is someone who
can, on occasion, simultaneously infect a large number of
susceptible individuals, thus causing the sporadic emergence of
new clusters of disease. The recognition of a possible vertical
input of external origin is conspicuously missing in such
explanations.4,5
With respect to the SARS outbreak, a prima facie case for a
possible space incidence can already be made. First, the virus is
unexpectedly novel, and appeared without warning in mainland
China. A small amount of the culprit virus introduced into the
stratosphere could make a first tentative fall out East of the
great mountain range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is
thinnest, followed by sporadic deposits in neighbouring areas. If
the virus is only minimally infective, as it seems to be, the
subsequent course of its global progress will depend on
stratospheric transport and mixing, leading to a fall out
continuing seasonally over a few years. Although all reasonable
attempts to contain the infective spread of SARS should be
continued, we should remain vigilant for the appearance of new
foci (unconnected with infective contacts or with China) almost
anywhere on the planet. New cases might continue to appear until
the stratospheric supply of the causative agent becomes
exhausted.
*Chandra Wickramasinghe, Milton Wainwright, Jayant Narlikar
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, Cardiff University, Cardiff
CF10 3DY, UK (CW); Department of Molecular Biology and
Biotechnology, Sheffield University, Sheffield, UK (MW); and
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune,
India (JN)
(e-mail: wickramasinghe@cf.ac.uk
)
1 Harris MJ, Wickramasinghe NC, Lloyd D, et al. The detection of
living cells in stratospheric samples. Proc. SPIE
Conference 2002; 4495: 192-98. [PubMed]
2 Wainwright M, Wickramsinghe NC, Narlikar JV, Rajaratnam P.
Microorganisms cultured from stratospheric air samples obtained
at 41 km . FEMS Microbiol Lett 2003; 218: 161-65. [PubMed]
3 Weinstein L. Influenza: 1918, a revisit? N Engl J
Med 1976; 6: 1058-60. [PubMed]
4 Hoyle F, Wickramasinghe NC. Diseases from Space. London: JM
Dent, 1979.
5 Wickramasinghe C. Cosmic dragons: life and death on our planet.
London: Souvenir Press, 2001.
Copyright 2003, The Lancet
===========
(3) "SARS FROM OUTER SPACE"
Andrew Yee < ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca
>
The Lancet
London, U.K.
Contact:
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe
Director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology
Cardiff University, UK
Tel. +44 (0)2920 752146
Fax +44 (0)2920 753173
Email: xdw20@dial.pipex.com
Richard Lane
The Lancet
+44 (0) 20 7424 4949
richard.lane@lancet.com
Embargo until 23 May 2003 00:01 GMT
SARS From Outer Space?
An alternative theory to the origin of severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) is proposed by scientists in a letter in this
week's issue of THE LANCET -- that the disease may have
originated in outer space.
Chandra Wickramasinghe from Cardiff University, UK, and
colleagues describe how around a tonne of bacteria is deposited
on the earth every day, and propose that pathogenic bacteria and
viruses could have origins in outer space. They comment on the
unusual nature of major epidemics such as the plague of Athens
and the 'flu epidemic of 1917-19' where infection rates and
deaths are not easily explained by epidemiological modelling.
He comments: "With respect to the SARS outbreak, a prima
facie case for a possible space incidence can already be made.
First, the virus is unexpectedly novel, and appeared without
warning in mainland China. A small amount of the culprit virus
introduced into the stratosphere could make a first tentative
fall out east of the great mountain range of the Himalayas, where
the stratosphere is thinnest, followed by sporadic deposits in
neighbouring areas. If the virus is only minimally infective, as
it seems to be, the subsequent course of its global progress will
depend on stratospheric transport and mixing, leading to a fall
out continuing seasonally over a few years. Although all
reasonable attempts to contain the infective spread of SARS
should be continued, we should remain vigilant for the appearance
of new foci (unconnected with
infective contacts or with China) almost anywhere on the planet.
New cases might continue to appear until the stratospheric supply
of the causative agent becomes exhausted."
Peer reviewed publication and references:
THE LANCET Issue 24 May 2003
============
(4) DID SARS COME FROM OUTER SPACE?
UPI, 22 May 2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030522-053904-8405r
CARDIFF, England, May 22 (UPI) -- A group of British scientists
proposed Thursday the organism that causes severe acute
respiratory syndrome might have originated in outer space.
This extraordinary theory, appearing in a letter to the May 24
issue of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, suggests,
"if these bugs are coming from space, a scheme to monitor
the stratosphere could be important," astronomer Chandra
Wickramasinghe, director of the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology,
told United Press International.
Other scientists with expertise in either exobiology -- the study
of possible alien life forms -- or SARS remained skeptical about
Wickramasinghe's bold suggestion.
"It is absurd and unnecessary," biologist John Rummel,
NASA's planetary protection officer in Washington, D.C., told
UPI. "The chance that anything microbial that is alive can
persist in space above the atmosphere, without shielding, is
vanishingly small."
More than 8,000 cases and 682 deaths from SARS have been reported
in 28 countries since the disease was first recognized last
February. Fever, aches and coughing are common symptoms and 10 to
20 percent of patients require mechanical ventilation. About 8
percent die.
A virus related to ones behind the common cold causes the
disease, and is thought to be spread by close, lengthy personal
contact. "There are lots of things about SARS that raise
questions," Wickramasinghe said. It appeared suddenly and
"it's only weakly infective, but swept across the whole of
China," he explained.
Wickramasinghe and colleagues report that over the past year,
they have collected vast amounts of bacteria at heights of more
than 25 miles via balloons. They estimate more than a ton of
microbes fall to Earth from space daily.
Citing the unexpected appearance and unusual pattern of spread of
the virus, Wickramasinghe and colleagues write, "a small
amount of the culprit virus introduced into the stratosphere
could make a first tentative fall out east of the great mountain
range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is thinnest,
followed by sporadic deposits in neighboring areas."
They also theorize that a number of major epidemics, such as the
plague of Athens and the great worldwide flu of 1917 to 1919, are
unusual in how their infection rates and deaths are not readily
explained by current scientific models.
"Life on Earth, including humans, is still profoundly
influenced by an extraterrestrial cosmic system of life. It also
then gives an extra impetus to the theory known as panspermia,
which asserts that life did not start here on the Earth, but came
from space via comets," Wickramasinghe added. "If so,
the process must continue even to the present day."
However, SARS researcher Edison Liu, executive director of the
Genome Institute of Singapore, found "so much of this
hypothesis is without scientific basis. In addition, the authors
display a seeming lack of basic microbiology and
epidemiology."
For instance, Liu noted, "viruses do not survive well
outside their host organisms, especially since a potent method of
inactivating a virus is by ultraviolet light, of which there are
significant levels at high altitudes."
Rummel noted the bacteria that Wickramasinghe and his team
collected are well-known on Earth. He added "there are
plenty of precedents for viral mutation and for human association
with other species and their viruses leading to epidemic diseases
in our populations without recourse to 'a space incidence' of the
virus."
Most SARS researchers suspect the virus jumped to humans from
animals. Regarding the flu, Liu said major epidemics were caused
in part by animal flu strains. "It does not require an
'X-Files' explanation for their occurrence," he said,
referring to the popular television series. "Reports like
this raise paranoia unnecessarily."
The bacteria Wickramasinghe's team collected and cultured
"are (completely identical) to Bacillus simplex and (99.9
percent identical) to Staphylococcus pasteuri, common terrestrial
bacteria," Rummel said. In addition, a fungus was isolated
and identified as Engyodontium album, a known terrestrial fungus.
Although the authors "suggest that the most likely source of
these organisms is from space ... they do not address the most
likely source -- that they were carried aloft from the ground or
lower atmosphere by the balloon itself."
(Reported by Charles Choi, UPI Science News, in New York)
Copyright © 2001-2003 United Press International
===========
(5) WHO NEEDS HORROR SHOWS? THE FABULOUS WORLD OF FACT, FACTOID
AND SARS
The Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2003
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110003534
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Why does anyone go to horror movies anymore? A week's worth of
news seems scary enough. SARS, which can kill you, is a household
word. So is mad-cow disease. Also this week the government
started flying the Code Orange terror warning again. Al Qaeda is
back, blowing up buildings and people in Saudi Arabia, and
suicide bombers are again killing civilians in Israel. And of
course North Korea, having contracted mad-man disease, may be
loading nuclear bombs onto ballistic missiles.
On Wednesday, President Bush denounced Europe for fostering fear
of genetically modified food, calling their nightmares over
Frankenfoods "scientifically unfounded." But probably a
lot of people in Europe, home of Grimm's fairy tales, really are
afraid, because they have read, or their public leaders have
said, that its safety remains "unproven." Who can you
trust? Similarly in the U.S., irradiating foods such as chicken
and hamburger, which kills often dangerous bacteria, is harmless
and would save lives, but many people are still unsettled by the
unfortunate name; so a good technology is kept off the market.
It seems to be the case now more than at any time in memory that
the real risks in life and the phony ones have congealed into an
undifferentiated glob of uncertainty. On Tuesday, the same day
the government issued the orange alert, an early-afternoon
announcement in New York City's crowded Penn Station said no
trains would enter or leave the station because of a "police
investigation." The armed soldiers in the station started
moving around, and some fire engines pulled up outside. The Saudi
bombings had occurred just days before. But inside Penn Station
virtually no one budged. Neither did I.
What was my calculation of risk inside Penn Station based on?
Pretty much nothing. The Office of Homeland Security swears its
warnings are based on "signals" or something, but
absent anything resembling facts, who knows?
One might argue that this attitude simply reflects a healthy
skepticism, but I think it reflects something less benign. It
suggests that most people today live in a state of perpetual,
low-grade confusion about much that goes on in the world. In
terms of knowing what to believe and what not to believe, what's
real and what's only sort of real, these are very strange times.
My impression is that most people find the story about Jayson
Blair and the New York Times startling, but it doesn't shock
them. It may be that after 25 years of post-modern history and
humanities instruction, most people really do believe that events
and news are mostly just a "narrative." From Michel
Foucault to Jayson Blair to wherever this logic was headed--the
Iraqi information minister?
Still, there are hold-outs. When I give talks, someone almost
always asks, "Where do you get your facts?" This isn't
a challenge; it's a request to learn where they can get access to
a simple set of unadulterated facts about what is happening
around them.
Who can blame them? In the world of media, at least, it's a rare
fact that is allowed to stand on its own short legs anymore;
instead, the little factling has to be poked, pinched and shaken
until it gives up its "meaning." Much cable news
consists almost wholly of earnest anchormenschen asking a
never-ending stream of experts what something that we just saw
with our own eyes really means, or better yet, what it's going to
mean. "Whaddaya think's gonna happen here, Jim?" People
who watch fortunetellers every night are likely to believe, or
not believe, anything.
Even most newspaper stories across the U.S. today are an
increasingly odd amalgam of fact, hypothesis and prediction, and
it's a little hard to see how anyone in the news business could
be surprised that the day would finally arrive when a Jayson
Blair, product of an era in which facts came to be known as
factoids, would decide he might just as well sit home and connect
the fact-dots however he pleased. One commentator suggested that
even if Blair got a lot of facts wrong, his take on many events
was essentially "true." Spin wins.
Until SARS. This deadly new virus may be forcing the pendulum of
public knowledge away from opinion masquerading as something else
and back toward an interest in harder stuff. Like the HIV virus,
which at first had a tough time convincing people that some
behavior was in fact dangerous, SARS is showing itself to be
quite impatient with a world more willing to esteem political
propriety than hard data. Unlike almost any other issue in the
news nowadays, SARS looks immune to spin, moralizing and the
delights of demagoguery.
SARS scientists are tunneling into this problem with the most
exacting and precise questions about the nature of the virus. It
matters greatly if SARS came from an animal virus or derives from
a human coronavirus. Much of the reporting and commentary on SARS
has been careful and one might even say humble in the face of
what it is possible to know, a k a the facts.
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Drs. Richard P.
Wenzel and Michael B. Edmond said: "We simply do not know
where we are on the epidemic curve. Some fear is rational, but
the 4.9% mortality rate is in fact similar to that seen generally
with community-acquired pneumonia in the United States." But
the precision of the analysis really does matter, insofar as many
people may die if we get it wrong. No one who flew through
college on the imaginary wings of grade inflation need apply to
work on this project.
SARS, like a lot else now, may be scary, but on this one at
least, were managing to scare ourselves in the right way.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's
editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on
OpinionJournal.com.
Copyright 2003, The Wall Street Journal
=============
(6) ORDER OUT OF CHAOS: THE CATASTROPHIC ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR
SYSTEM
Planetary Science Reseach Discoveries, 21 May 2003
http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/May03/SolarSystemTrigger.html
Triggering the Formation of the Solar System
--- New data from meteorites indicates that formation of the
Solar System was triggered by a supernova.
Written by G. Jeffrey Taylor
Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
One of the most amazing discoveries in space science is the
unambiguous evidence from meteorites that the solar nebula (the
cloud of gas and dust in which the Sun and planets formed)
contained radioactive isotopes with half-lives so short that they
no longer exist. These include isotopes with very short
half-lives, such as calcium-41, 41Ca, (100,000 years) and
aluminum-26, 26Al, (740,000 years), and those with longer
half-lives such as plutonium-244, 244Pu, (81 million years). The
short-lived isotopes are particularly interesting. If they formed
in an exploding star, that explosion might have triggered the
collapse of the huge interstellar cloud in which the Sun formed.
On the other hand, if they formed in the solar nebula by intense
radiation close to the Sun, then it would prove some hypotheses
about the young Sun and jets of radiation from it.
As synthesized and lucidly explained by Ernst Zinner (Washington
University in St. Louis), recent data from ancient objects in
meteorites point strongly to the supernova trigger idea. K. K.
Marhas and J. N. Goswami (Physical Research Laboratory,
Ahmedabad, India), and A. M. Davis (University of Chicago) found
clear evidence in meteorites that beryllium-10 (10Be), the one
isotope that everybody agrees can be produced by solar radiation,
is not accompanied by other short-lived isotopes as it would be
if they were all produced by radiation flowing from the young
Sun. (10Be can also be made by galactic cosmic rays in the
interstellar molecular cloud from which the solar system formed.)
Two other research groups reported at the Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference (March, 2003) that unmetamorphosed ordinary
chondrites contained iron-60 (60Fe), an extinct isotope with a
half-life of 1.5 million years. 60Fe cannot be produced by
intense, energetic solar radiation, so it must have been made
before the Solar System began to form. The best bet is that much
of it was made during the supernova explosion that triggered the
formation of the Solar System.
References:
Zinner, Ernst (2003) An isotopic view of the early solar system.
Science, v. 300, p. 265-267.
Marhas, K. K., Goswami, J. M., and Davis, A. M. (2002)
Short-lived nuclides in hibonite grains from Murchison: Evidence
for solar system evolution. Science, v. 298, p. 2182-2185.
Mostefaoui, S., Lugmair, G. W., Hoppe, P., and El Goresy, A.
(2003) Evidence for live Iron-60 in Semarkona dn Chervony Kut: A
nanosims study. Lunar and Planetary Science XXXIV, abstract
#1585.
Tachibana, S. and Huss, G. R. (2003) Iron-60 in troilites from an
unequilibrated ordinary chondrite and the initial Fe-60/Fe-56 in
the early solar system. Lunar and Planetary Science XXXIV,
abstract # 1737.
FULL ARTICLE at http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/May03/SolarSystemTrigger.html
===========
(7) NEW ROSETTA WORRIES: COMET CHASER COSTS RISE
BBC News Online, 20 May 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3043937.stm
By Jonathan Amos
BBC News Online science staff
The postponement of the audacious Rosetta mission to chase down
and land on a comet has put a 70-million-euro (£50m) hole in the
European space budget for this year.
Officials must now juggle their funds to pay for a new flight for
the probe early in 2004.
Rosetta is currently being stored in a "clean" facility
at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.
Scientists have confirmed they want to send the spacecraft to
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko now that the original target,
Comet Wirtanen, is no longer reachable in the desired timeframe.
The opportunity to go to Wirtanen was lost when all European
rockets were grounded following an accident at Kourou in
December.
The new quarry will require some slight modifications to the
lander craft and the way scientists plan to get it on to the
surface of the icy body.
'Worth doing'
Rosetta, a flagship mission for European space science that has
been more than 10 years in development, has already cost in the
region of a billion euros (£700m).
Now, Professor David Southwood, the European Space Agency's (Esa)
director of science, says he has the headache of finding the
extra funds to prepare Rosetta for a second launch attempt.
"I have a small funding crisis right now - nothing
serious," he told BBC News Online. "I will have to sign
the contracts soon to prepare the spacecraft and I will need to
borrow forward some money from succeeding years.
"But we're in pretty good shape. We have all the technical
clearances we need - we have a new target, everybody believes
it's a safe target and everybody thinks it is scientifically
worth doing."
Rosetta is a remarkable mission. The probe will pursue the comet
at breakneck speed and then attempt to put a lander on its
surface - a first.
The complex series of space manoeuvres required in getting the
probe in the right place and with a high enough speed to tag the
comet means the outward part of the journey will take the best
part of a decade.
Stiffer legs
A detailed assessment of Churyumov-Gerasimenko has been
undertaken by researchers to determine whether the body is a
suitable target for Rosetta.
And last week, based on that assessment, senior Esa scientists
formally approved the proposal to modify the mission to go after
the new comet.
Its greater mass than Wirtanen - it is just under two kilometres
wide compared with Wirtanen's 0.6-km diameter - will mean the
lander's legs will need to be stiffened to withstand the impact.
Scientists think they can also change the way they approach the
comet to reduce the speed with which the lander has to touch
down.
Dr Ian Wright, from the UK's Open University and a lander
scientist, said: "I think people have now convinced
themselves that it's all entirely doable, provided the density of
the target is not above a certain amount.
"There is still some nervousness about the exact
measurement, but it's a bit of a Catch-22 - one of the reasons
we're going to a comet is to understand what the density of these
objects is.
"This comet is also more active than Wirtanen and
scientifically that's more interesting. From a mission risk point
of view, that does give you more to worry about - but I'm
confident we'll get down and do some good science."
Full tank
The mission's problems began in December last year when Europe's
new super rocket, a beefed-up version of the Ariane 5, exploded
over the Atlantic on its maiden flight.
Although Rosetta was scheduled to fly on a standard version of
the launcher, the post-accident investigation ordered a thorough
review of systems on all the rocket variants.
The delay while this was carried out pushed Rosetta beyond the
launch window necessary to get it into position to catch
Wirtanen.
Preparation for a February 2004 blast-off from Kourou will
probably begin around September/October. Most of the Rosetta
spacecraft is still in its launch-ready state - it still has its
fuel on board.
"Corrosion takes place when you expose something to oxygen
so it may be the fuel is best left in the spacecraft - that's our
view at the moment," Professor Southwood said.
"The Americans defuelled the Galileo spacecraft and ended up
having to purchase a new tank because of corrosion."
Copyright 2003, BBC
==============
(8) DEEPER IMPACT
Tech Central Station, 22 May 2003
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-052203C
By Kenneth Silber
In his excellent 1999 book "Deep Time: How Humanity
Communicates Across Millennia," Gregory Benford, a
physicist, author and TCS contributor, wrote about two ways of
transmitting information to the future. One is what Benford
called "High Church"; it involved efforts to convey the
best of current culture through monuments and the like. Benford
called the other mode "Kilroy was Here," after a
somewhat mysterious graffiti message that emerged around the time
of World War II.
Kilroy messages are those aimed at leaving some kind of mark,
with little regard for content or quality. Benford described how
a project to place a marker aboard the Cassini space probe to
Saturn degenerated from High Church to Kilroy. The original plan
called for a diamond disk with images and symbols indicating
humanity's place in space and time, for the benefit of whatever
beings might visit Saturn's orbit in the far future. What ended
up being sent was a CD-ROM with some 600,000 scanned signatures,
plus a few baby footprints and pet paw prints.
I reviewed Benford's book for the now-defunct webzine
IntellectualCapital.com. (As best I can tell, my review is no
longer online, which is vaguely ironic given the topic. I would
not be surprised if no physical or electronic copy of my review
now exists.) At the time, I was receptive to Benford's negative
appraisal of Kilroy messages. I am far less so now (although some
of his examples, such as tourists carving their names into
ancient monuments are, I agree, reprehensible). What causes me to
rethink my position is another NASA project that involves sending
names into space.
A spacecraft called Deep Impact, scheduled for launch in December
2004, has the mission of rendezvousing with Comet Tempel 1 on
July 4, 2005. Deep Impact will release an "impactor,"
weighing more than 800 pounds, which will crash into the comet
and create a crater that may be as wide as a football stadium and
over 10 stories deep. The resulting data and images will allow
new insights into the composition of comets, the history of the
solar system, and the implications of a collision between Earth
and a comet.
Project managers at NASA and the University of Maryland recently
announced that people could have their names added to a disc that
will be placed aboard the impactor. If you're interested, go to
this website. It's free of charge. (You've paid for the $280
million mission with your tax dollars. Deep Impact is part of
NASA's Discovery Program, which performs relatively low-cost
missions.) The project will stop taking names in January 2004.
Sending your name to a comet is, in a sense, the ultimate Kilroy
message. Far from transmitting high culture to posterity, the
mini-CD containing the names will certainly be destroyed in the
collision with Comet Tempel 1. Nonetheless, the name disc is a
worthwhile effort, for several reasons. It will get a broader
range of people interested in the Deep Impact mission; as such,
it will be an antidote of sorts to the insularity scientists
sometimes show toward the public that pays many of their bills.
The disc will contribute to science education, providing an
avenue for students to learn more about the mission's serious
scientific objectives.
The disc will allow people with a strong interest in science and
space to convey, in a small but symbolic way, a sense of the
importance that they attach to these subjects. In addition, the
disc underscores that space technology is not solely about
science but has relevance to various social and individual
objectives, including adventure and recreation.
The Deep Impact mission, incidentally, provides a more
substantial way for the public to participate. Amateur
astronomers have played a valuable role in monitoring Comet
Tempel 1, sharing their observations under the project's Small
Telescope Science Program. The impactor's collision with the
comet is expected to be visible through small telescopes from
some parts of the Earth. The Fourth of July in 2005 should have
some unusual fireworks.
Copyright 2003, Tech Central Station
===========
(9) AND FINALLY: "PUTIN WILL SPRAY RAIN CLOUDS TO GUARANTEE
SUNSHINE FOR CELEBRATIONS"
Ananova, 21 May 2003
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_783584.html?menu=
Russian President Vladimir Putin says he can guarantee sunshine
for the St. Petersburg's 300th birthday celebrations by ordering
the Russian air force to spray chemicals on rain clouds.
Ten planes will be kept ready for action in case rain clouds
accumulate around the city, the Defence Ministry in Moscow
confirmed.
The planes will then spray the undisclosed chemicals on the
clouds to make them rain outside the city and spare the
celebrations from disruption.
More than 50 world leaders including Tony Blair and President
Bush are expected to attend the event that commemorates the
founding of the city by Tsar Peter the Great in 1703.
Meanwhile, scores of gardeners in St Petersburg are said to be
taking legal action after their allotments were scorched and
gardening sheds burnt down to clean up the city before the VIPs
arrive.
The plots were all on municipal land along Peterburgskoye Shosse,
which runs past the new presidential residence at the
Konstantinovsky Palace, in the Petrodvortsovy area, the St.
Petersburg Times reported.
Gennady Lebedev, head of the Maintenance Committee of the Strelna
Municipal Administration criticised local officials in the
Petrodvortsovy District.
He said: "They basically ran ahead of the locomotive with
what they did. We'd have to burn down half of Russia if we
followed this reasoning."
Copyright 2003, Ananova
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