Fw: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine

[LARRY KLAES]

----- Original Message ----- From: Astrobiology Magazine To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 5:33 AM Subject: Latest News from the Astrobiology Magazine Sounding Out Mars http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1464.html After a year's delay, the MARSIS instrument on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter will soon be deployed. In this interview, Jeffrey Plaut of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory describes how the radar instrument could uncover how much, if any, liquid water lies hidden below the surface of Mars. Robots Join Rat Race http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1463.html Rat pups learn by exploration but their journey may be less random and more convolutated that a robot can mimic. But experiments with sensors on the snout of a mobile robot shows that robots may be less random explorers than one might first suppose. Forming the Canyon on Mars http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1462.html How does an arid and bone-dry landscape form the largest canyon in the solar system? The question on Mars maps to the Valles Marineris, a crack in the planet so large as to dwarf the Grand Canyon and a primary imaging target for the Mars Express spacecraft. The Ancient Splice of Life http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1461.html One of the key motivations for revisiting the probability of life elsewhere in the universe is the surprising proclivity of life in hostile places on Earth. New findings suggest that modern organisms may have useless DNA fragments today that once saved their ancestors lives in extreme environments. Monday, February 28 ------------------------ For more astrobiology news, visit http://www.astrobio.net To unsubscribe, send subject UNSUBSCRIBE to [EMAIL PROTECTED]