Mission Mars: A Passage from India

Who wants the moon when Indian brainiacs are taking Mars by storm? Cut to a
week before the remote-controlled robotic vehicle Rover ‘Spirit’ went
hurtling along Martian soil. NASA’s key scientist on the Mars Exploration
Rovers Mission Amitabha Ghosh was in India unraveling the deep secrets of Mars
and the Mission, not to mention the 300-million-mile odyssey to the Red Planet.
"That’s the equivalent of 300,000 trips between Delhi and Kolkata,"
Ghosh emphatically pointed out, even as Indian-led companies helped bring Mars
‘firm’ly to Earth. But that’s not all.

Sometime in early January, Govind Vaghashia got a phone call from NASA
telling him that the Spirit Rover, currently exploring the barren surface of
Mars, thanks to the multi-layer rigid flex circuitry boards built by his Graphic
Research company. Vaghashia’s three circuitry boards, which measure from 5-9
inches in length and no more than inch wide, incorporate the most advanced
technology to date. The boards are used essentially used for navigation–to
instruct the vehicle to change course by controllers on Earth.

India-born Kanna Rajan, a senior scientist with NASA’s Ames Research
Center, has led the team of scientists that developed the software behind
‘Spirit’ and ‘Opportunity’—the twin rovers probing the surface of Mars–which
stretched his Natural Language Process and AI programming skills.

Two Indian-led Silicon Valley firms, Touch and Speedera Networks, are key
contractors in the project that has brought back spectacular Mars images live to
millions of Earthlings. Founded by Mumbai IIT-ian Aniruddha Gadre, eTouch
operates the NASA portal, after winning a $6-million government contract last
year. Speedera Networks, founded by IIT-ian Ajit Gupta, helps disseminate the
images worldwide with its network of global contact points.

President Abdul Kalam’s prediction that the Red Planet will soon become a
sought-after planet for human exploration has found its Indian launchpad.

As for water gurgling deep within the veins of the Martian underbelly, NASA’s
Indian techies could divine that too. Look hard enough India: Mars Odyssey
orbiter, in March 2002, was the first to give strong indication that there was
ice on the South Pole. Now it appears India will once again help fuel the
Martian intrigue.

 Team DQ

Mars Mice

What will happen to humans on Mars where the surface gravity is 0.38G? Is
that enough to keep human explorers functioning properly? And, importantly, how
easily will they readapt to 1G, once they return to Earth?

A team of scientists and students from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), the University of Washington, and the University of Queensland,
in Australia, plans to explore these questions. They’re going to do it by
launching mice into orbit.

"What we’re doing," explains Paul Wooster, of MIT, and program
manager of the Mars Gravity Biosatellite project "is developing a
spacecraft that is going to spin to create artificial gravity."

The team hopes to launch the Biosatellite in 2006. The mice will be exposed
to Mars-gravity for about five weeks. Then, says Wooster, they’ll return to
Earth alive and well. The mice will descend by parachute inside a small capsule
reminiscent of NASA’s old Apollo capsules, a NASA release said.

The Biosatellite project is the first probe conducted at this gravity level,
says Wooster. The research will focus on bone loss, changes in bone structure,
on muscle atrophy, and on changes in the inner ear.

As they orbit the earth, the mice, each in its own tiny habitat, will be
painstakingly observed. Each habitat will have a camera, so that researchers can
monitor mouse activity.