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Newsletter #7 - February 12th, 2004

Mars Gravity Biosatellite will provide the first data on the adaptation of the mammalian body to the partial gravity of 0.38g found on the surface of Mars. It will help provide answers to one of the critical outstanding questions in the planning of future human expeditions to the Red Planet. Mars Gravity is led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Washington (UW) and the University of Queensland (UQ).

In this edition:
1. WATCH THIS SPACE - Mars Gravity Notices
2. EVENT HORIZON - News and Views on Events
3. TECH LIFE - Science and Engineering Updates
4. LIL' BIT OF SOL - Team Member News

1. WATCH THIS SPACE
Mars Gravity Notices

UW TO CELEBRATE YURI'S NIGHT IN STYLE

On 12 April 2004, members of the international Mars Gravity team will help celebrate the 43rd anniversary of the first human space flight, by Yuri Gagarin, and the 23rd anniversary of the first Space Shuttle flight. The UW crew will party in style atop the famous Seattle Space Needle. Yuri's Night (http://www.yurisnight.net) features parties all around the world during a single Earth night, kicking off in Brisbane. Everyone's invited, so watch this space!

MARS GRAVITY INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

The program is developing internship opportunities for university students and recent graduates, with the first intern group planned for the northern hemisphere summer of 2004. If you're interested in receiving information about future opportunities and how to apply, please email mailto:mg-intern-subscribe@lists.marsgravity.org to subscribe to an information-request email list.

GIVING TO MARS GRAVITY

Mars Gravity is at the cutting edge of the grand challenge of the Century: Human exploration of Mars. Help this exciting endeavor! The Mars Gravity Biosatellite Program is enabling the human Mars program, conducting groundbreaking scientific research, teaching and inspiring a vital new generation - all of which your tax-deductible contribution helps us to accomplish. Please donate generously online at http://www.marsgravity.org/sponsors/donation.php or by mail to:

Mars Gravity Program MIT Room 41-116 77 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

You can also email us at mailto:info@marsgravity.org for more information or to discuss how you might help promote the program in your local area.

DID YOU KNOW? If the Sun were a 2 m (79 in) ball located where you are sitting right now, the Earth would be a marble sized 18 mm (0.72 in) in diameter, some 215 m (705 ft) away. Mars, half the diameter of the Earth, would be 327 m (1,074 ft) away. But the next nearest star to us, Alpha Centauri, would be 58,000 km (36,000 mi) away, or about 1.5 times around the Earth! And we haven't even got out of the Milky Way Galaxy yet!

2. EVENT HORIZON
News and Views on Events

NASA SPACE GRANT AWARDS $40K FOR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

A joint proposal by the Massachusetts and Washington Space Grant Consortia has been approved with $40,000 in funding from NASA Space Grant to support student involvement and technical reviews. The grant will be used at MIT and UW to help develop the science and engineering workforce of tomorrow. Leaders of the aerospace industry have expressed concern at skill shortages expected in coming years resulting from a wave of retirements. The Mars Gravity program is doing its part to address this issue, having involved close to 300 students to date.

MARS GRAVITY IN THE NEWS

With the arrival of the Mars Exploration Rovers at the Red Planet, and following an MIT press release and article in Science@NASA (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/20jan_marsmice.htm), Mars Gravity received a wave of internet and world-wide media attention, including numerous TV and radio interviews and features on the NASA homepage and SlashDot. In fact, coinciding with the launch of our new website, we have received over 10,000 unique visitors to our site in January alone!

MATHWORKS BECOMES A SPONSOR

The MathWorks, makers of industry-standard software Matlab and Simulink, have joined Mars Gravity as a program sponsor. Deputy Program Manager Audrey Schaffer welcomed the initiative, saying "MathWorks is interested in learning how student-driven projects such as Mars Gravity utilize software tools. They will engage with us to help in the development of their future products and we look forward to that cooperation." Look for the Mars Gravity user story on the MathWorks site http://www.mathworks.com in coming months...

SPIRIT AND OPPORTUNITY LAND

The most capable robots ever to explore Mars are now on its surface. Both Spirit and Opportunity have been activated and are now communicating as expected with mission control, although - following an initial sojourn - Spirit encountered what is believed to have been a software fault, causing its computer to reboot several times a day. This malfunction has been repaired and Spirit is now shattering records on the Martian surface. For the latest on the Mars Exploration Rovers see:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

PRESIDENT OPENS WAY FOR MARS

On 14 January, President Bush announced a new vision for the US space program. This includes a new mandate for NASA to pursue activities leading to human exploration beyond low Earth orbit, including completion of the Space Station, retirement of the Space Shuttle around 2010, and human moon missions as early as 2015 to prepare for the human exploration of Mars.

The Mars Gravity team is very excited by this new initiative and the possibilities it opens up. We are also happy to be working towards providing data that will be extremely important for this endeavor.

The Presidential Directive can be viewed at:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/space/renewed_spirit.html

DID YOU KNOW? If the whole 4.6 billion-year history of our Earth is represented by a single year starting 1 January, it would be early March before the planet's crust formed. Around the same time, atmospheric water begins to condense into vast oceans. The first microbes appear in late March. It is 3 September before multi-cellular organisms appear. On 18 November the Cambrian explosion of hard-bodied life occurs, with the sudden emergence of vision. Ten days later, millipedes become the first land animals... (continued below)

3. TECH LIFE
Science and Engineering Updates

AEROJET PIZZA AND A PAPER

The Bus group recently presented the spacecraft's propulsion design to engineers at Aerojet, in Redmond, WA. A division of GenCorp Inc, Aerojet is one of the world's leading aerospace propulsion companies, involved in more than half of all space missions flown today. At least 40 people attended this lunchtime event, offering encouraging feedback and many substantive suggestions for developing the design. Thanks to Roger Myers and Melanie Mott at Aerojet for organizing the event, and congratulations to the propulsion team - especially team leads John Osborne and Josh Revenaugh - for a job well done!

QUESTIONS TO info@marsgravity.org

Q: Why not send a 50/50 gender ratio? To me, it would seem this would provide direct comparison results for one gender to another.

A: We are bound by a mathematical concept called statistical power, which basically says that for a given change in a variable of interest, you need a certain number of samples in order to "see" that change. To put it another way, with too few animals, a small change in bone density or muscle mass might be masked by the variability between animals of different genders.

Given the limited resources of a small spacecraft and the fact that male and female animals have subtle differences, we simply can't fly enough of each gender to gain the statistical power we feel we need to do good science. In fact, most space flights have faced the same difficulty, and you'll find that they also focused their resources in one place in order to get the most coherent portrait of the questions at hand.

We have chosen to focus on female mice in part because their smaller size leads to a decrease in our overall payload mass, and of course any future low-gravity gestation experiments would involve female mice. In this way, our data should provide a consistent baseline for comparison with future experiments.

DID YOU KNOW?
(continued from above)
.It is 8 December before the first reptiles and winged insects appear. Eight days later on 16 December, mammals first emerge. On 26 December, the dinosaurs are wiped out. On 30 December at 9.48 am, the first chimpanzee and hominid lines evolve. By 4.21 pm on New Years Eve, early humans begin to walk upright, and at 11.59:19 they write the first words in what is now Iraq. At 11.59:46 the Roman Empire emerges and lasts three seconds, before the Wright Brothers make the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk at 11.59:59. The 20th century has passed in the blink of an eye!

4. LIL' BIT OF SOL
Team Member News

FAREWELL KOSTA!

We say goodbye to Kosta Tsioris, a German exchange student who has made a terrific contribution to the team. Kosta has worked at MIT for five months in the payload group, significantly advancing CAD models for the spacecraft whilst helping develop a prototype of the atmospheric system. All of us would like to thank him for all his hard work, and we wish him the very best for the future.

INS AND OUTS

UQ team member and space activist Aaron Tan is currently visiting the folks at MIT. This follows the return from down under to MIT of Rachel Lee. Rachel worked with the UQ EDLS group to improve collaborative links, and she provided a welcome cross-flow of creative energy regarding outreach and development activities. Oh, and she went to find the Crocodile Hunter but alas returned only with a sunburn!

MEET THE BOARD

In this edition, we are pleased to introduce you to a member of the Mars Gravity Board. The Board provides overall direction, oversight, guidance, facilitation, and support for the program.

Dr. David W. Miller, Director of the MIT Space Systems Laboratory: Professor Miller is an active researcher with a focus on dynamics, controls and systems engineering as applied to distributed satellite systems, precision optical telescopes, and formation flying satellites. He obtained his doctorate in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1988 and is currently serving as an Associate Professor and Director of the Space Systems Laboratory in the same Department. Dr. Miller has developed a series of ground-testbed and Shuttle-flight facilities for research into dynamic modeling and control synthesis for precision optical systems. He was a co-principal investigator for MACE II, the first hands-on experiment to fly aboard the International Space Station. His newest payload, SPHERES formation flying microsatellites, is nearing its turn on the ISS. Dr. Miller is also a world leader in space-based interferometry and has worked extensively with NASA and the Air Force to develop systems utilizing that technology. He has also spearheaded the creation and instruction of the innovative three-semester Space Product Development course at MIT where students gain hands-on experience by designing, building, and operating a novel space system.

All dollar amounts in this newsletter are in US dollars.