AMASE 2009 expedition takes off in the Arctic

August 11, 2009 / Posted by: Aaron Gronstal

The Arctic Mars Analog Svalbard Expedition (AMASE) 2009 is now underway in Svalbard, Norway. AMASE has established Svalbard as a test bed for life-detection technology that will be used on future NASA and ESA ‘Search for Life’ mission to Mars. This year’s expedition includes more than 30 scientists and engineers from a wide range of disciplines, including microbiology, geology and biochemistry. The team will be testing equipment that will eventually fly on future Mars missions while studying extremophiles that live in glacial ice.

Source: [astrobio.net]

AbSciCon 2010 First Announcement

August 7, 2009 / Posted by: Marco Boldt

The Astrobiology Science Conference 2010 will be held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) April 26–29, 2010. Please submit the Indication of Intent form http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2010/iofi/ by October 1, 2009, in order to be added to the mailing list to receive reminders and other pertinent information related to the conference.

          Lunar and Planetary Institute               

Living in a Dying Solar System, Part 2

August 3, 2009 / Written by: Ray Villard

Roughly 5 billion years from now, the Sun will begin to swell as a red giant. But life on Earth will feel the effects of an aging Sun long before then. What can we do to survive?

Source: [astrobio.net]

AbGradCon 2009: A Glimpse into Mixed-Reality Meetings of the Future

July 29, 2009 / Written by: Wendy Dolci

Avatars in a virtual amphitheatre watch and listen to a graduate student presentation streamed from AbGradCon into Second Life.

Weary of catching planes, burning up fossil fuels, and spending lots of time and money to attend meetings? Take heart! Virtual worlds are shaping up as possible venues for online meetings—and astrobiology graduate students are leading the way in exploring their potential. On July 17-18, 2009, early-career astrobiologists met at the University of Washington in Seattle for the 6th annual Astrobiology Graduate Student Conference (AbGradCon), and simultaneously in the virtual world Second Life. Students presented talks that were streamed live into Second Life and participated in a real-world and virtual world “mixed reality” poster session. Social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were also used for sharing information before, during and after the conference.

Because talks and the poster session were taking place at the same time in Seattle and Second Life, the organizers set up visual “portals” to allow participants in both worlds to see each other. In Second Life, live video and audio from the Seattle meeting room presentations were streamed into an amphitheatre (shown in the image above) and during the poster session video was shown overhead on a “JumboTron.” In a similar way, in Seattle images from Second Life were projected on a large screen during the poster session and in the meeting rooms where talks were held. The figures below show the portals in both locations.

Portals between worlds: The photo on the left shows students in Seattle pointing to Second Life. The image on the right is a snapshot taken in Second Life, showing avatars and the overhead JumboTron with with real time video of students in Seattle.

While no one expects virtual world meetings to completely replace in-person gatherings, the AbGradCon experiment offered a glimpse of what might be possible in the years to come. A survey of participants who attended via Second Life indicates that it was a welcome alternative for those who could not travel to Seattle—though most would have preferred to be there in person.

There are significant obstacles to overcome before virtual world meetings become commonplace, chief among them are the need for integrated audio communication amongst avatars and lower learning curves for entering and navigating virtual spaces. Even with current limitations, AbGradCon drew participants from Portugal, Greece, Australia, Uruguay and the US who otherwise would not have been able to experience the meeting at all. The experiment brought a new level of openness to the conference and resulted in many lessons learned and ideas for future meetings.

So, you may not want to retire that roller bag just yet, but odds are that at some point in the not-too-distant future you will find yourself seated at a conference center in a virtual world. Astrobiology students will be there to greet you when you arrive.

Mixed-reality poster session at AbGradCon 2009: On the left, avatars study astrobiology science posters and interact with each other in Second Life. On the right, students in Seattle discuss their work at the in-person poster session.

Related links:
Astrobiology Graduate Student Conference: Everyone Gets to Go!
AbGradCon 2009 website

Living in a Dying Solar System

July 28, 2009 / Written by: Ray Villard

Observations of distant stars tell us about our own future. Roughly 5 billion years from now, the Sun will begin to swell as a red giant, and the solar system will be transformed into a very different place.

Source: [astrobio.net]

Planetary Science Decadal Survey: White Papers Posted for Comment

July 27, 2009 / Posted by: Marco Boldt

Comments are being solicited from members of the astrobiology community on the following paper(s) that will be submitted to the 2009-2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Papers will be revised based on community feedback. Additonal papers will be posted here as they become available.

• Astrobiology Research Priorities for Exoplanets (Last Updated: May 28, 2009)
• Astrobiology Research Priorities for Mercury, Venus, and the Moon (Added: June 8, 2009)
• Astrobiology Research Priorities for Mars (Added: June 10, 2009)
• Astrobiology Research Priorities for the Outer Solar System (Added June 15, 2009)
• Astrobiology Research Priorities for Primitive Asteroids (Added July 22, 2009)
• Limits of Terrestrial Life in Space (Added July 24, 2009)
• An Astrobiological Lens on Planetary System Science (Added July 24, 2009)
• Astrobiology Priorities for Planetary Science Flight Missions (Added July 24, 2009)

Please send comments on the first 5 papers (the last added July 22) to ps_decadal@nx.arc.nasa.gov no later than July 31, 2009. Please send comments on papers posted subsequently to the same address by August 17, 2009.

For more information on the decadal survey, visit: http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ssb/SSEdecadal2011.html

Students Monitor Hydrothermal Features in Lassen Volcanic National Park

July 23, 2009 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice

The Lassen Astrobiology Student Internship Program, a collaboration between NAI’s Ames team, Lassen Volcanic National Park, and Red Bluff High School, will wrap up its first year of activity in August. Nine high school students and their chemistry teacher, with training from NAI scientists and under the supervision of a park ranger, have made eight field trips to various sites within the park throughout the course of the school year. They monitored field sites and made seasonal measurements of temperature, pH, and water chemistry of the hydrothermal features. PBS station KNPB, Reno, NV, interviewed the students while sample collections were underway. A feature presentation about the program was aired in June.

The year culminated in a special event at Red Bluff High School where Ames team PI Dave Des Marais gave a public lecture entitled, “Astrobiology Program: Environment, Life, Lassen, and Students.” The student interns were awarded certificates of achievement and then described their field work in a lively presentation to an audience of 100 parents, school board, and community members. A reporter from Red Bluff’s newspaper, the Daily News, covered this event and a story ran the following day.

The Astrobiology Internship Program will continue next year, expanding to include more frequent communication between the students and their NAI mentors via videoconferencing. The end product of the intern’s research will be an online, relational database including hydrothermal feature physical characteristics: pH, temperature, GPS coordinates, digital photos, and water analysis. This database, as it builds over the years, will be a valuable resource for extreme environment analogue research in support of NASA missions.

Escuela International de Astrobiología

July 14, 2009 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice

The Josep Comas i Solà International Astrobiology Summer School, held annually in Santander, Spain, has become a tradition in the astrobiology community, as this summer marked its seventh year. The week-long program for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows provides lectures from international experts, round-table discussions, student projects, night-sky observations, and a half-day field trip to a nearby site of astrobiological interest.

This summer’s program, held from 22-26 June, was devoted to an understanding of the characteristics and diversity of organisms that inhabit Earth’s extreme environments and the implications for the habitability of environments beyond Earth. About 40 students participated, most from the US and Europe, but including one each from Canada and Mexico. The Directors of both NAI and Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) organize the school, with support to the NAI from former NAI Director Bruce Runnegar at UCLA. This year’s lecturers included noted oceanographer and astrobiologist John Baross of the University of Washington; Michael Madigan of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, principal author of Brock Biology of Microorganisms,and one of the world’s leading experts on anoxygenic photosynthesis; Ricardo Amils of CAB, chemist and microbiologist specializing in the ecology of highly acidic environments such as Spain’s Rio Tinto, an analogue to Mars; Felipe Gómez of CAB, whose research focuses on life in permafrost; and Petra Rettberg, radiation biologist from the German Aerospace Center.

This year’s field trips included examination of fossil-rich cretaceous sedimentary formations on the Magdalena peninsula in Santander and a hike deep into the carbonate-dominated El Soplao cave in the Sierra de Arnero mountains, known for the abundance, quality, and preservation of its mineral formations.

Summer Camp: The Quest for Life

July 13, 2009 / Posted by: Daniella Scalice

This summer, NAI’s new team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) played a major role in hosting the 2009 ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp. The camp is a free, academic program of The Harris Foundation, named for Bernard A. Harris, MD, an accomplished NASA astronaut, physician and entrepreneur, and the first African American to walk in space.

The theme of this year’s camp, held from June 14-26th, was The Quest for Life, and 50 middle school students participated. During the two exciting weeks, students went on several field trips to The Albany Pine Bush, New York State Museum, Herkimer Diamond Mine, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. After hearing about NASA’s upcoming missions to the Moon, the students enjoyed watching together the LRO/LCROSS launch on NASA TV. Students also took many classes and completed many activities dealing with topics such as life, astronomy, space exploration, the cosmic calendar, the Drake Equation, and satellites and geocaching.

The main activity for the students was to propose a mission to search for life on either Mars, Europa, or Titan; there were eight proposals developed in all. The proposal judged to be the best outlined a mission to Europa. The students from that team will be interviewed at WAMC Northeast Public Radio studios in Albany, NY, through which they’ll share their experience with the local community, inspiring others to participate next year.

Source: [Link]

Wanted: Easy-Going Martian Roommates

July 13, 2009 / Written by: Michael Schirber

Mars is not for the finicky. If something does live there, it’s likely going to be similar to the more adaptive life forms on our planet. A group of researchers is studying a particular microbe that they think could be a model for Mars life.

Source: [astrobio.net]