Mineral points to Martian water suitable for life

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Mineral evidence for a water environment capable of supporting life has been discovered on Mars, scientists said Thursday.

Deposits of carbonate, formed in neutral or alkaline water, were spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the scientists told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

"Obviously this is very exciting," said John Mustard of Brown University in Rhode Island. "It's white -- it's a bulbous, crusty material."

Carbonate is formed when water and carbon dioxide mix with calcium, iron or magnesium. It dissolves quickly in acid, so its discovery counters the theory that all water on Mars was at one time acidic.

"It would have been a pretty clement, benign environment for early Martian life," said Bethany Ehlmann, a graduate student at Brown University who led the study published in the journal Science.

"It preserves a record of a particular type of habitat, a neutral to alkaline water environment."

Carbonates on Earth like chalk or limestone sometimes preserve organic material, but scientists have found no such evidence on Mars.

The 3.6 billion-year-old carbonate was discovered in bedrock at the edge of a 930-mile-wide (1,490-km-wide) crater.

Carbonate previously had been found in minuscule amounts in soil samples provided by the Phoenix Mars Lander, Martian dust and Martian meteorites on Earth. But this is the first time scientists have found a site where carbonate formed.

The deposits are about the size of football fields and are visible in images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The deposits appear to be limited, but the neutral or alkaline water environment may once have been more widespread, said Scott Murchie, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Phyllosilicates, which form under similar conditions to carbonate but do not dissolve in acidic environments, are abundant on Mars.

"There were these different water environments in early Mars history, (which) increases the possibilities that life started," said Richard Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Xavier Briand)

By Clare Baldwin: Reuters.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter - TIME's Best Inventions of 2008

TIME publish Best Inventions of 2008: From a genetic testing service to an invisibility cloak to an ingenious public bike system to the world's first moving skyscraper — here are TIME's picks for the top innovations of 2008.

It may have been a long time since the U.S. built the world's best cars, but nobody can touch us when it comes to spacecraft. nasa is about to prove that again with the planned launch in February 2009 of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (lro). Our first unmanned moonship in 11 years, the lro will study the things lunar orbiters always study — gravity, temperature — but it will also look for signs of water ice, a vital resource for any future lunar base, and compile detailed 3-D lunar maps, including all six Apollo landing sites. Wingnuts, be warned: yes, we really went there.

Goce gravity flight slips to 2009

Europe's gravity mission has been bumped to next year because of ongoing technical problems with its launcher.

The arrow-shaped Goce satellite will map tiny variations in the pull of gravity experienced across the world. The information will give scientists a clearer insight into how the oceans move, and provide a universal reference to measure height anywhere on Earth.But concerns about the reliability of its Russian rocket mean a lift-off is now unlikely before February.

On picture: Goce has fins to keep it stable as it flies through whisps of air.

It is a frustrating delay for the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce). The satellite was already two years behind schedule when it was sent to the launch pad because engineers had to work through immense technical difficulties in building it. The super-sleek spacecraft was due to go into orbit on a modified intercontinental ballistic missile, known at the Rockot, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north-west Russia in the spring. It was held on the ground while an investigation was undertaken into the performance of a different, failed rocket system that shared key components.

By Jonathan Amos http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7592689.stm

Web Video and the Net's Creaking Backbone

By Jack M. Germain
TechNewsWorld
07/26/08 4:00 AM PT

Video has quickly found a welcome home on the Web. Sites like YouTube have achieved near ubiquity in short order. TV networks have taken to putting entire prime-time shows online, and outfits like Amazon and iTunes are selling whole movies in high-definition downloads. What's the burden on the Net's infrastructure? There's room for build-up, but it won't be cheap.

Two weeks ago, Apple and AT&T outlets opened their doors to massive lines of fans eager to buy the new iPhone 3G. The stores were stocked and ready to sell, but the network -- shouldered with the burden of activating so many new phones -- was quickly overwhelmed, and the process slowed to a crawl. Demand quickly outpaced the ability of the system to provide for it, and as a result, it failed. Most users were told to go home and activate their new phones from there.

Is this sort of pile-on some sort of preview of what hides around the corner with the surge of video downloads on the Internet at large? Is the Web's infrastructure Rackspace now offers green hosting solutions at the same cost without sacrificing performance. Make the eco-friendly choice. inching toward collapse?

Stories of users overwhelming individual Web servers is nothing new. In the above example, some iPhone buyers had to leave without having their phones activated because the servers were clogged. A few weeks ago, anxious downloaders toppled the Mozilla Latest News about Mozilla Foundation Web site 15 minutes ahead of its scheduled release of Firefox 3.0. A couple of months ago, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) Latest News about Amazon.com experienced sporadic outages, perhaps costing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales Double your sales close rates with SalesView. Click to learn how.. And woe unto any smallish Web site or blog that gets a hot pickup on a popular news aggregator like Fark.com.

Even more serious is the potential impact of video's popularity on the Internet. Video is developing a "friend or foe" relationship with online companies. Online collaboration tools -- such as video conferencing, Web training and webinar participation -- are fast becoming a happy alternative to expensive corporate travel.

"Recent data shows that while the Internet traffic is still growing, it's growing at a manageable rate of increase. Video makes up a significant component of overall traffic, but the backbone and peering interconnect systems can still be easily managed upwards in capacity," James Crow, vice president of technology for digital media distribution firm ON Networks, told TechNewsWorld.
Disaster Prognosis

Despite the Chicken Littles' assertions that the Internet sky is about to fall, those pushing for the increased use of video on the Web deny the end is near. Others warn that some retooling of the Web's infrastructure will soon be needed to prevent widespread traffic snarls.

Just as uses for the Internet are not static, product producers are not standing still with the technologies they use for their services. Still, increasing video use on the Web will not be free of charge or challenge.

"Video isn't a challenge on the Internet yet. It is not being overly used. But there are challenges with video ahead," Iain Molland, the North American CEO of the video streaming firm Vividas, told TechNewsWorld.
Content Delivery

Video players on the Internet are developing several technologies to mitigate the increasing consumer bandwidth needs and network responsiveness, Crow said. For instance, most video providers, of both streaming and downloading varieties, leverage edge-based content distribution networks (CDN).

These systems optimize traffic away from the backbone and isolate it to the distributed, last hop/last mile networks. These last-mile systems do represent a potential constriction point, but current technology projects like DOCSIS 3.0 and the FTTN/FTTC initiatives are directly targeting this problem, he explained.

"A company can deliver video very easily from a small server using CDN. This puts thousands of servers within the Internet infrastructure," Molland added.

CDN uses local servers as part of the process. It pushes video content to standard Web page servers while the content is stored at the edge, he explained.
Faster Networks

Internet users are being increasingly drawn to video in the form of full-length, prime-time TV shows posted online by the networks that produce them. ABC, Fox, ABC, CBS and the CW channel make some of their shows available for free on the Web through various outlets. Prime Time Rewind has a unique approach to preventing Internet overload. It links prime-time shows, but directs users back to the original network's site within a cube frame that viewers navigate to find their desired show.

This method allows Prime Time Rewind to serve as a video gateway without having to host its own online player and store all the video files locally. Instead, the content owner has to deal with bandwidth along with contributing to page views, ad revenue, etc.

Nortel, a provider of bandwidth-expanding technology, arms Internet video providers with more bandwidth to ensure that high-definition (HD) video and expanding Web services do not "break" the Web. Using its optical technology, Nortel can deliver both 40G and 100G network capacity, enabling four times the network throughput.

This new technology provides carriers with the capability to keep pace with dramatically increasing demand from heavy bandwidth applications like IPTV (Internet protocol TV), Internet video, HD programming and mobile video phones. Nortel's Adaptive Optical Engine uses enables both 40G and 100G transmission through fiber-optic cables.
Other Methods

Internet service providers often claim that a great deal of the excess traffic on their networks is due to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, with the implication that users illegally trading in copyrighted movies and videos are to blame. However, some P2P developers are bringing new technology to Web video distribution. Take, for instance, BitTorrent, a free, open source file-sharing protocol that effectively distributes very large software and media files. While applications using BitTorrent are popular tools among pirates, the technology is also being used to maximize the ability of the Web to handle all kinds of traffic.

"Our traffic is half of that on the Web. Web creators were sound in their architecture. Video is the latest scaling of that technology," Eric Klinker, CTO of BitTorrent, told TechNewsWorld.

From his view, people reporting that the Web is in danger of collapse are misinformed. Slow spots have always been and will continue to be a fact of life on the Internet, he believes.

"The Network is constantly being upgraded. Constant shifts occur with the backbone," he said. "We consume bandwidth in about the five to six megabyte range. This is about the bandwidth taken by a single audio track. We focus on transport only, not searching or cataloging," he explained, noting that BitTorrent is not a file-sharing operation but a transfer of files in what amounts to a separate network.
Movie Moving Alternatives

Vividas' technology streams video across HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). This harnesses the power for existing bandwidth, according to Molland, who adds that this approach is much more scalable.

"Use of video requires additional Flash server capacity. Issues have been related to not having enough equipment. This is very expensive," he said.

Because the Internet is scaled for delivery of Web pages rather than video, as video use increases it will become a bandwidth problem, he warned. An alternative measure is for video suppliers to start with CDN and switch to P2P as usage increases.
Corrective Measures

Another factor to consider about the growing use of video on the Web is its impact on Web site performance. Officials at AlertSite, which offers a Web site performance and management service, said they do not really see a breaking point for the Internet as a whole.

"But major problems are happening now and in the future with page load times, broken rich Internet applications, and as a result unhappy customers of companies whose Web sites feel the pinch from video slowing Web sites and Internet performance down," Ken Godskind, Web performance evangelist for AlertSite, told TechNewsWorld.

To deal with the bandwidth concerns, enterprise Web users should measure their Web site's performance, he said. For instance, AlertSite's product sets a dynamic base line -- online commerce sites can then use this baseline to monitor overall Web site performance under different circumstances.

"Companies should step back and ask questions. Is their network's poor performance a network problem? Can the ISP help the customer share traffic better? You may find that the bandwidth is maxed out. This will help with capacity planning techniques," he suggested.

www.technewsworld.com

NASA Briefings and TV Coverage Schedule for Phoenix Mars Landing

NASA news briefings, live commentary and updates before and after the scheduled Sunday, May 25 arrival of the agency's Phoenix Mars Lander will be available on NASA Television and on the Web.

In image: Artist concept of Phoenix landing on Mars.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Entry, descent and landing begins at 4:46 p.m. PDT on May 25, when the flight team listens for radio signals indicating that Phoenix has entered the top of the Martian atmosphere. The spacecraft must perform a series of challenging transformations and activities during the seven minutes after it enters the atmosphere to slow it from 12,000 mph to 5 mph and a soft touchdown. The Phoenix team will be watching for radio signals confirming the landing at 4:53 p.m. More than half of previous international attempts to land on Mars have been unsuccessful. For a detailed schedule and landing timeline, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

The deadline for U.S. journalists to request media credentials to cover the Phoenix mission from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is Tuesday, May 20. Foreign journalists requesting credentials must apply by Friday, May 16. Requests for media credentials must be made online at:

https://eis.jpl.nasa.gov/media/index.html

Media wishing to cover the mission from the University of Arizona in Tucson, must apply online at:

http://uanews.org/marsmedia

Briefings on mission goals, challenges, status and final trajectory adjustments will originate from JPL on Thursday, May 22, at 11:30 a.m. and on Saturday and Sunday, May 25-26, at noon.

On landing day, May 25, live landing commentary will air on NASA TV. A telecast of mission control – without roll-in videos and interviews -- will run on NASA TV's Media Channel beginning at 3 p.m. Another telecast with commentary, interviews and videos will begin at 3:30 p.m. on NASA TV's Public Channel. For more information on NASA TV and this coverage schedule, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Breaking.html

Both telecasts will continue through landing and will resume at 6:30 p.m. during the period after landing when engineers anticipate the receipt of data and possible images confirming that Phoenix has opened its solar panels successfully.

A news briefing at JPL will be held Sunday, May 25 at 9 p.m., following landing and the first possible downlink of images. Briefing updates at JPL also are scheduled on Monday, May 26 at 11 a.m. and on Tuesday, May 27 at 11 a.m.

Daily news briefings will continue at 11 a.m. for several days following a successful landing. Mission control and the site for news briefings will then shift to the University of Arizona in Tucson after a determination that the spacecraft is in a safe condition for conducting science operations. The earliest possibility for moving the host site for mission news briefings to the University of Arizona's Space Operations Center is Wednesday, May 28. Mission briefings from Pasadena and Tucson will be carried on NASA TV unless preempted by other NASA events.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules, and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

From: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/