Projects: Space Information
The Planetary Report
Volume XXI, Number 1, January/February 2001
Credit: NASA / JPL / Malin Space Science Systems |
On the Cover
The plucky Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera
(MOC) zoomed in to get a closer look at erosion processes exposing hundreds
of layers of similar thickness, texture, and pattern in an impact crater
64 kilometers (40 miles) wide in western Arabia Terra. In this MOC image,
dark, windblown sand enhances the appearance of the layers. These layers
provide a record of repeated, episodic changes that took place sometime
in the Martian past. Layers toward the center of the crater are nearly
horizontal, but those closer to or draping over the crater walls are tilted
toward the basin center. Such relationships suggest the sediments creating
these layers were deposited from above -- perhaps settling out of the
Martian atmosphere or else out of water that might have occupied the crater
as a lake.
From The Editor
Mars has definitely been the planet in the news these past two months, and
two events have triggered larger-than-normal reverberations in the Society.
First, on November 22, Gerald Soffen
died. He served as project scientist on the
epic Viking missions to Mars in the late
1970s, and to those of us who remember
back that far, Gerry was someone who
commanded both respect and affection. In
recent years he had undertaken the possibly
even more monumental task of nurturing
the future generation of space scientists.
Through his work with the NASA Academy,
he brought young people into Society
projects, most memorably at our Planetfest
'97. We will miss him greatly.
Then, on December 4, while we were
wrapping up this issue, Mike Malin and Ken
Edgett announced their latest news-making
discovery -- this time of sedimentary layers
on the Martian surface. While we had no
time to prepare a major feature, we were
able to insert a few images into our Mars
Express feature.
As you might remember from last issue,
we announced the winners of the Red
Rover Goes to Mars Student Scientist
Team. Now these nine young people are on
their way to work with Mike and Ken to select
a landing site for some future Mars
mission.
So the symmetry is fixed: one Mars scientist
and educator leaves us, and the current
generation passes the torch to the next. We
at the Society are grateful to have played a
role in making that happen.
— Charlene M. Anderson
Features
Opinion: Systems Engineering -- A Personal Memoir
One of the unsung
spin-offs of the space program may be the rise of the field known as
systems engineering. Without this sort of skill, which enabled all parts
of a Saturn V (each stage
built by a different contractor) to work flawlessly together to rocket
humanity to the Moon, the
accomplishments of the past four decades would have been impossible. The
recent losses of
several spacecraft refocused attention on systems engineering, and a long-time
practitioner of
the art (and Technical Editor of The Planetary Report), Jim
Burke, ruminates
on lessons still to be learned.
Odd Asteroids and Closet Comets: The Distinction Blurs
Don Yeomans is an old friend of The Planetary Society, having written
many articles for our
magazine over the years. He is also a distinguished scientist, so when
he published a piece in
the prestigious science journal Nature about our changing views of
comets and asteroids, we
were after him immediately to adapt it for The Planetary
Report. Here you'll
read how our
definitions of small objects in our solar system may need substantial reworking.
The Express to Mars
NASA and the United States are not the only players
in Earth's exploration of its
neighboring world. The Japanese Nozomi mission is on its way to the Red
Planet, and a
consortium of European nations is planning an ambitious mission to Mars
to launch in
2003: Mars Express. We asked Robert Burnham, eminent science writer
and former editor
of Astronomy magazine, to take a close look at the plans and report
to Society members.
Hunting the Elusive "Wow"
In the Search for Extraterrestrial
Intelligence (SETI), there is only one possible signal
from another civilization that has entered the realm of legend: the "Wow"
signal detected at
the Ohio State Radio Observatory in 1977. As tantalizing as it was, this
signal failed the most
important test of authenticity -- it did not repeat. The Planetary Society
recently supported an
attempt to redetect "Wow," and here we offer members an account
of the results.
DEPARTMENTS
Members’ Dialogue
World Watch
Questions and Answers
Society News
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