NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Is There Microbial Life Under the Martian Surface?

May 10, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Lilia Dergacheva April 25, 2021 (sputniknews.com)

• Scientists diligently searching for signs of microbial life on Mars, or to be more precise – beneath the surface of Mars, studied the chemical composition of Martian meteorites that chipped off from the Red Planet and wound up falling to Earth. They found the Mars rock fragments to be similar to Earth’s rocks in composition. In Earth’s depths, scientists have discovered a vast population of sub-world creatures. Postdoctoral researcher Jesse Tarnas, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that wherever there is groundwater on Mars, chances are that there may be sufficient chemical energy to support subsurface microbial life.

• Due to a severe lack of sunlight, microbial species survive in the sub-surface due to a chemical process known as radiolysis. Radiolysis occurs when radioactive elements within rock come into contact with water in rock pores. This creates the chemical reactions that forms living microbes. The elements required for this process can be found in Martian meteorites. Meteorites formed from crustal rocks more than 3.6 billion years old, known as ‘regolith breccias’, have a high potential to support life.

• Previous research has already revealed an active groundwater system on Mars that could still exist today. A recent study even indicates that there is a hidden underground lake the southern ice cap. This sub-terrain water would provide ample energy to sustain life. Brown University Professor Jack Mustard noted that only a relatively small drill could access the Martian depths to investigate their theory.

• “We don’t know whether life ever got started beneath the surface of Mars,” says Tarnas. “[B]ut if it did, we think there would be ample energy there to sustain it right up to today.”

• [Editor’s Note] What will these heavily-controlled scientists say when they learn the truth, that indigenous life does indeed live underneath the barren surface of Mars? Underground Martian colonies contain fully developed populations insectoid races, reptilian races (not associated with the malevolent Draco reptilians), and ancient humanoid races. In fact, in Dr. Michael Salla’s recent series of videos and articles with French ET-contactee Elena Danaan, Danaan has revealed that the Galactic Federation of Worlds (a human extraterrestrial governing body that oversees this sector of the galaxy) is actively arming these indigenous Mars insectoids and reptilians to fight off the encroaching deep state elite from Earth that is operating over a dozen factory bases on Mars using slave labor, known as the ‘Interplanetary Corporate Conglomerate’ (according to Corey Goode), and the mercenary forces including former Nazi ‘Dark Fleet’ forces stationed on Mars to protect the corporate conglomerate bases.

For more on this, see Dr. Salla’s recent article, “Is Mars in the midst of a Planetary Liberation War?”, and his three previous Danaan articles, “Extraterrestrial Contact & the Galactic Federation”; “Update on Galactic Federation Attacks on Corporate Satellites & Mars Exodus”; and “Overview of Human-looking extraterrestrials & their agendas”.

Scientists suggest that in the search of life on Mars they should go no further than

the Martian subsurface, currently being drilled by NASA’s Perseverance Rover, with the help of its helicopter Ingenuity.

Their latest study on the subject has been published in the journal Astrobiology.

It looked at the chemical composition of Martian meteorites that chipped off from the Red Planet’s surface eventually ending up on Earth, finding the fragments to be similar to Earth’s rocks in composition.

“We don’t know whether life ever got started beneath the surface of Mars but, if it did, we think there would be ample energy there to sustain it right up to today”, said postdoctoral researcher Jesse Tarnas, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

He stressed that wherever there is groundwater on the Red Planet, chances are that there may be sufficient chemical energy to support subsurface microbial life.

As for Earth’s depths, scientists have in recent years discovered that they are home to a vast population of unique, sub-world creatures.

Due to a severe lack of sunlight, the species survive thanks to a chemical process known as radiolysis, which occurs when chemical reactions yield by-products of radioactive elements within rock while contacting with water in rock pores. Likewise on Mars: the Martian meteorites were found to have the same collection of elements needed for radiolysis, while they are also easily permeable to water.

This was particularly typical of regolith breccias, meteorites formed from crustal rocks more than 3.6 billion years old, which appeared to have the highest potential to support life.

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NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s Test Drive on Mars

March 17, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Jesse O’Neill March 5, 2021 (nypost.com)

• On March 4th, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (pictured above) took its first test drive of about 21 feet on Mars. For thirty-three minutes, the rover negotiated turns and backed up into a new parking space at a snail’s pace, officials said. The mobility test is one of many milestones to check off Perseverance’s do-to list, as team members calibrate every system and instrument on the rover. When scientists decide all systems are ‘go’, the rover will begin regularly driving the length of several football fields at a time.

• “When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive,” said Anais Zarifian, Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mobility test bed engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The rover’s six-wheel drive responded superbly. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years.”

• Since the February 18th Mars landing, mission controllers have also completed software updates, deployed Perseverance’s wind sensors and tested the rover’s 7-foot-long robotic arm. The rover is now poised to begin more complicated missions, including finding a launch site for its mini helicopter next month.

• Scientists hope its multi-year mission gathering Mars samples and data will provide insight into the region’s geology and climate history, and determine if life once existed on the planet. Perseverance will ultimately prepare astronauts for human exploration on Mars.

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover took its first test drive on Mars Thursday,

covering about 21 feet of the extraterrestrial landscape, the space agency said.

The mobility test is one of many milestones to check off Perseverance’s do-to list, as team members calibrate every system and instrument on the rover.

When scientists decide all systems are go, it will begin regularly driving the length of several football fields at a time.

“When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive,” said Anais Zarifian, Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mobility test bed engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“This was our first chance to ‘kick the tires’ and take Perseverance out for a spin. The rover’s six-wheel drive responded superbly. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years.”

The drive lasted about 33 minutes, as the rover negotiated turns and backed up into a new parking space at a snail’s pace, officials said.

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NASA, FEMA Prepare for Sept 20 Asteroid Impact on California Coast

August 29, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Shepard Ambellas August 21, 2020 (intellihub.com)

• In 2017, NASA and FEMA initiated a supposed fictitious response scenario for an asteroid hitting southern California on September 20, 2020. But is it just a drill? Or is it actual preparation for a real event while avoiding public panic?

• We have seen past situations when such a “drill” actually went “live”. In July 2017, a bombing drill became the actual London bombing. On September 11, 2001, a ‘military exercise’ became the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings in NYC. Last March, in a White House press conference, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blurted out that the coronavirus pandemic was a “live exercise” playing out. (see video here) In the background, a disgusted President Trump is heard to mutter, “You should have let us know.”

• The ‘exercise’ goes like this: A fictitious asteroid is discovered in the fall of 2016 heading in the direction of the Earth. The asteroid is estimated to be between 300 and 800 feet in size. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory gives it a 2 percent chance of impacting the Earth on September 20, 2020. NASA tracks the asteroid over the following three months using ground-based telescope observations, and the probability of impact climbs to 65 percent. The observations are put on hold for another four months due to the asteroid’s position relative to the Sun. When the observations resume in May 2017, the impact probability jumps to 100 percent. By November 2017, the asteroid’s impact is calculated to hit somewhere in Southern California or just off the coast in the Pacific Ocean.

• However, NASA recently listed a real asteroid, dubbed 2017 SL16 discovered in 2017 (see here), as making a close approach to Earth on September 20, 2020. This raises a major red flag.

• NASA, FEMA, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories, the U.S. Air Force, and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services have all been participating in this four year ‘exercise’. “By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event,” said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate.

• Previous tabletop simulations included a scenario where the asteroid is somehow deflected away from the Earth. But in this scenario, NASA JPL said that “the time to impact was too short for a deflection mission to be feasible”. Instead, they role play the forced mass evacuation of Los Angeles.

• “Scientists from JPL, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and The Aerospace Corporation predicted impact footprint models, population displacement estimates, information on infrastructure that would be affected…” according to the NASA simulation report, “… as well as other data that could realistically be known at various points throughout the exercise scenario.”

• “[U]nlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “It’s not a matter of if – but when – we will deal with such a situation.”

The National Aeronautics Space Administration and FEMA in 2017 devised and initiated a supposed fictitious scenario in which the two agencies would drill down on an asteroid that’s set to impact the Earth in or just off the coast of California on September 20, 2020, but is this so-called “exercise” really just a drill?

NASA claims “the simulation was designed to strengthen the collaboration between the two agencies, which have Administration direction to lead the U.S. response” but could the drill actually go live like so many other drills have in the past? (i.e. the July 7, 2007, London bombing, the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and others)

“It’s not a matter of if–but when–we will deal with such a situation,” Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen said. “But unlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation.”

The exercise was designed to create “a forum for the planetary science community to show how it would collect, analyze and share data about a hypothetical asteroid predicted to impact Earth. Emergency managers discussed how that data would be used to consider some of the unique challenges an asteroid impact would present-for preparedness, response and public warning,” according to NASA.

Representatives from NASA, FEMA, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories, the U.S. Air Force, and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services attended the initial meeting and will be participating throughout the 4 year long exercises which is set to come to a head on Sept 20, 2020.

“It is critical to exercise these kinds of low-probability but high-consequence disaster scenarios,” FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said. “By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event.”

The exercise simulates a possible impact four years from now in which, according to NASA, “a fictitious asteroid imagined to have been discovered this fall with a 2 percent probability of impact with Earth on Sept. 20, 2020. The simulated asteroid was initially estimated to be between 300 and 800 feet (100 and 250 meters) in size, with a possibility of making impact anywhere along a long swath of Earth, including a narrow band of area that crossed the entire United States.”

12:11 minute video on the 11/20/20 asteroid simulation (‘End Times Productions’ YouTube)

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Jacksonville Native’s Work Part of Mission to Mars

August 24, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree August 12, 2020 (myjournalcourier.com)

• When Jacksonville, Illinois native Susan Gorton was in high school, she and her family took a vacation to Houston where she decided she wanted to be a part of NASA. Today she is the manager of the Revolution Vertical Lift Technology Project which helped design the helicopter ‘Ingenuity’ that is now on its way to Mars with the Rover Perseverance. It is scheduled to land on Mars in February.

• Gorton was approached by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a helicopter that could fly in the Mars atmosphere. A helicopter allows more exploration than a rover alone could provide. “The rover can only see ahead like 10 meters, so they wanted something that could act like an aerial scout,” said Gorton. The softball sized helicopter was conceptualized by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and developed and tested by Gorton’s team starting in 2013. In 2018, NASA announced it was moving forward with the project. “I never would have guessed that this is where I’d end up,” said Gorton.

• The Ingenuity helicopter is softball-sized, (four pounds heavy, with twin 4-foot rotor blades). Because no one would be directly in control of its operations, the helicopter needed to have some autonomy to correct its flight patterns and balance. Among the problems the team had to navigate were an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide and temperatures that range from minus 14 degrees to minus 117 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. The helicopter will be able to communicate with the rover and send pictures, which the rover will relay to NASA Mission Control. Mission Control will relay instructions to the helicopter through the rover.

• This demonstration model will prove whether a helicopter can operate on Mars. Another model will be developed if it is functional. “It’s an exciting time — a feeling of ‘boy, I hope this works,’” Gorton said. “We won’t know for sure if we did it until it reaches Mars.” “If it is successful, [it opens] up the landscape of another planet, the ability to explore much more of [a] planet. It’s a leap forward in extraterrestrial exploration.”

• [Editor’s Note] I think that NASA is exaggerating the atmospheric conditions with which the Ingenuity helicopter must contend. A 95% carbon dioxide atmosphere shouldn’t affect the air pressure. But several secret space program whistleblowers have said that the Martian air is breathable, so long as you aren’t running wind sprints. They would typically carry along an small oxygen tank on the surface of the planet for whenever they felt they needed more oxygen. And the Mars sky is blue, which is an indication of an oxygen-rich atmosphere. So Mars likely contains more oxygen than NASA is letting on. Also, whistleblowers do not report that Mars’ temperature never gets above minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature on Mars is much more comfortable than NASA is telling us. For some reason, NASA doesn’t want the public to know just how hospitable Mars really is. Is this a ploy to delay public exploration of Mars for as long as possible? Do they not want us to find out that not only are there over a dozen Interplanetary Corporate Conglomerate (deep state) human work colonies and an allied Nazi ‘Dark Fleet’ Mars Defense Force already established on Mars (below ground), but several indigenous races still living on the planet as well?

As a Routt Catholic High School sophomore on summer vacation with her family in Houston, Susan Gorton found her dream.

She wanted to be a part of NASA.

For the Jacksonville native, seeing the space agency’s visitor center started her along a path that took her to manager of the Revolution Vertical Lift Technology Project.

Now, a softball-size helicopter she helped design and test is making its way through space on its way to Mars.

“I never would have guessed that this is where I’d end up,” Gorton said. “I wouldn’t have guessed something I helped with would be in space.”

Gorton said most people think of just astronauts and space when they think of NASA, but the program is also studying aeronautics, such as airplanes and helicopters.

“We do a lot with research on how to make vehicles better,” Gorton said.

In her department, Gorton focuses on vertical-lift vehicles, making them faster, quieter and safer.

Gorton was approached by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory about a project to fly a helicopter in the Mars atmosphere. The goal is to allow aerial scouting and more exploration than a rover would be able to provide.

“They were developing a rover going to Mars and they were working on how to get something on Mars that can move ahead of the rover,” Gorton said. “The rover can only see ahead like 10 meters, so they wanted something that could act like an aerial scout.”

She and her team helped develop the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity, which launched as a part of the Mars 2020 Rover Perseverance on an Atlas V rocket on July 30. It is scheduled to land on Mars in February.

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NASA to Use a Steam-Powered Robot to Explore Icy Moons that Could Host Alien Life

July 9, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Article by Chris Ciaccia June 30, 2020 (foxnews.com)

• NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory notes on its website that researchers are developing a soccer-ball sized robot known as SPARROW (Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robot for Ocean Worlds) that “would use steam propulsion to hop across the sort of icy terrains found on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.”

• “The terrain on Europa is likely highly complex,” said Gareth Meirion-Griffith, JPL roboticist and the lead researcher of the concept. “It could be porous, it might be riddled with crevasses, there might be meters-high penitentes” – long blades of ice known to form at high latitudes on Earth – “that would stop most robots in their tracks. But SPARROW has total terrain agnosticism; it has complete freedom to travel across an otherwise inhospitable terrain.” By using steam to power the robot, SPARROW could thrive in the “low-gravity environment” of Enceladus and Europa, hopping “many miles over landscapes that other robots would have difficulty navigating.”

• Enceladus and Europa both likely have oceans that exist under a layer of ice crust. In 2019, researchers determined Enceladus’ ocean is likely 1 billion years old. In 2018, researchers acknowledged they had found complex organic molecules, the “building blocks” for life on Enceladus.

• The SPARROW concept is dependent upon a lander to serve as a home base, which would “mine ice and melt it”, later heating it to create the steam necessary to power the SPARROW. It’s possible “many SPARROWs could be sent together, swarming around a specific location or splitting up to explore as much alien terrain as possible,” says NASA.
• In June, NASA announced the latest mission in its New Frontiers program known as Dragonfly, to explore Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which could also potentially host extraterrestrial life. NASA has also confirmed a future mission to Europa.

NASA’s plans to explore the ice moons of the Solar System are getting more detail as the space agency is developing a robot that would use steam to power itself in deep space.

In a post to its website, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory notes researchers are developing a soccer-ball sized robot known as SPARROW (Steam Propelled Autonomous Retrieval Robot for Ocean Worlds) that “would use steam propulsion to hop across the sort of icy terrains found on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.”

“The terrain on Europa is likely highly complex,” said Gareth Meirion-Griffith, JPL roboticist and the lead researcher of the concept, in the statement. “It could be porous, it might be riddled with crevasses, there might be meters-high penitentes” – long blades of ice known to form at high latitudes on Earth – “that would stop most robots in their tracks. But SPARROW has total terrain agnosticism; it has complete freedom to travel across an otherwise inhospitable terrain.”

Both moons have been mentioned as candidates to possibly host life previously, including one study published in December 2019 that suggested they could be “indigenous.”

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Mars Helicopter is Ready for Extraterrestrial Flight

January 14, 2020
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “E221 Mars Helicopter is Ready for Extraterrestrial Flight” on Spreaker.

Article by NASA January 4, 2020 (lakeconews.com)

• When NASA’s next Mars rover sets out for the Red Planet in 2020, it will bring along a Mars Helicopter. It is touted as another “first” for Mars. NASA wants to expand its exploration capabilities to include an aerial dimension, new areas for exploration, faster reconnaissance, and access to terrain not reachable by rovers or astronauts.

• The Mars Helicopter’s unique design is driven by the harsh realities of Mars’ environment. The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin and cold, with only 1 to 2 percent the density of sea-level air. With temperatures down to -130˚ F it resembles Earth’s atmosphere at 100,000 feet – an altitude far beyond the capabilities of regular helicopters.

• Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Langley Research Center and AeroVironment Inc., worked together over several years to develop a viable vehicle design that is part aircraft and part spacecraft. A crucial aspect of the design is to keep the mass as low as possible, but to carry enough power and energy to sustain the helicopter during flight. With two four-foot rotors that spin in opposite directions at approximately 2500 revolutions per minute, the Mars Helicopter weighs only four lbs.

• The Mars Helicopter is designed to operate at a height of 16 feet for only about 90 seconds at a time. Between flights, the helicopter recharges its batteries with an onboard solar panel. The helicopter navigates utilizing a vision-based navigation system, unassisted by humans, GPS or other navigation aids. A 12-megapixel camera takes pictures during flight, which are beamed back to the rover for relay to Earth. During the cold Martian nights, the batteries and sensitive electronics are kept warm inside a heated and insulated fuselage.

• The research team replicated the conditions of the Martian atmosphere in a 25-foot vacuum chamber ‘Space Simulator’ complete with emulated Martian winds. The team performed extensive modeling and simulation, as well as low-density experiments to determine how the helicopter would respond to the thin atmosphere, wind gusts, temperature and radiation. Controlled flight of a test vehicle was achieved in May 2016. The actual Mars Helicopter Flight Model which will be sent to Mars performed its maiden hover flight in early 2019. It will now be integrated with the rover with its next flight over the Red Planet.

• [Editor’s Note] Once again, NASA is depicting the Martian atmosphere as extremely thin, cold and inhospitable. But we know from Mars insiders such as Andrew Basiago, Randy Cramer, Tony Rodrigues, and Corey Goode that the Martian air is breathable. The air isn’t as thin as NASA claims. The planet is cold primarily at the poles, and electric storms pervade the equatorial region.

NASA wants to appear as if it is exploring the surface of Mars without really exploring it, because they don’t want to reveal the extensive presence already on the planet by secret space programs and indigenous beings, mostly underground. But not to worry. This Mars Helicopter only travels in 90-second spurts, 16 feet off of the ground before needing to recharge. How much ‘exploring’ can it accomplish?

The Mars Helicopter is a technology demonstration for the Mars 2020 rover mission, intended to show the feasibility and utility of using helicopters for Mars exploration.

This technology may enable future missions to perform reconnaissance or independent science, and to access terrain not reachable by rovers and astronauts.

When NASA’s next Mars rover sets out for the Red Planet in 2020, it will bring along a passenger. Nestled under the belly of the rover, the Mars Helicopter will be on a mission to notch a “first” for humankind: flying a helicopter on another planet.

By sending the helicopter to Mars as a technology demonstration, NASA aims to expand its exploration capabilities to include an aerial dimension, potentially opening new areas to exploration, and enabling faster reconnaissance for the benefit of future rovers or astronauts.

With a four-foot rotor and a weight of only four lbs, the Mars Helicopter’s unique design is driven by the harsh realities of the Mars environment.

The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin and cold; at only 1 to 2 percent, the density of sea-level air and with temperatures down to -130˚ F, it resembles Earth’s atmosphere at 100,000 feet – an altitude far beyond the capabilities of regular helicopters.

To make the Mars Helicopter a reality, researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Langley Research Center and AeroVironment Inc., worked together over several years to understand the unique challenges of flying on Mars, and to develop a viable vehicle design that is part aircraft and part spacecraft.

A crucial aspect of the design is to keep the mass as low as possible, but to carry enough power and energy to sustain the helicopter during flight. Recent technological advances in areas such as batteries and solar cells, miniaturized sensors and computers, and lightweight materials are key to achieving this goal.

Many components of the Mars Helicopter were developed for the commercial cell phone and drone markets. They were qualified for the Mars Helicopter mission through testing in Mars-like temperatures and by subjecting them to radiation levels that would be experienced in space.

The Mars Helicopter is designed to operate independently on Mars, performing flights of about 90 s in duration at a height of 16 feet. The two rotors spin in opposite directions at approximately 2500 revolutions per minute.

1:22 minute Mars Helicopter demonstration (‘NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’ YouTube)

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Hello From Earth: Australia’s First Interstellar Message

November 22, 2019
ExoNews Editor

Listen to “e172 Hello From Earth: Australia’s First Interstellar Message” on Spreaker.

Article by Wilson da Silva November 13, 2019 (abc.net.au)

• A decade ago, the organizers of Australia’s National Science Week wanted to promote its annual ten day event and they dreamed up the project called ‘Hello From Earth’. The project would be a “Twitter to the stars” where they would collect short personal messages from the public, package them into a single transmission, and send them to the nearest habitable planet beyond our solar system. Now, ten years since the NASA transmission of these goodwill messages, they have passed the halfway mark on their long journey through the cosmos.

• The ‘Hello From Earth’ organizers chose as its communication target a “super-Earth” orbiting the habitable zone of its parent star 20.4 light-years away known as Gliese 581d. The interstellar Tweet was scheduled for August 28, 2009, utilizing three facilities within NASA’s Deep Space Network that together represented the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world. They included a transmission facility near Madrid, Spain, another in Barstow, California, and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia. The transmission was repeated twice over two hours with a combined power of over 300 billion mobile phones at once.

• “[T]here’s no statute covering interstellar messages, and no-one has jurisdiction over transmissions,” said Paul Davies of Arizona State University who also chaired SETI’s Post-Detection Subcommittee. While there is no permission required to transmit an interstellar message, responding to an extraterrestrial signal requires the approval of the SETI Subcommittee. But even the transmission of signals into space will upset some people who consider it unwise and potentially catastrophic to invite an alien invasion. As humans have been inadvertently transmitting signals into space since the 1930s from television broadcasts to military radar, most scientists don’t object to interstellar texting. Technologically advanced extraterrestrials would already know we’re here.

• In 1974, the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico was the first to intentionally broadcast an interstellar message to a star 25,000 light years away. There have been 31 such messages sent out to the cosmos. One was sent in 2008 from the facility outside of Madrid to commemorate the 50th anniversary of NASA. It also happened to be the 40th anniversary of the recording of the Beatles song, “Across the Universe”. Hence it was selected for transmission — with approval from Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, and Apple Records. The song was transmitted to Polaris, “the North Star” 431 light years away.

• NASA approved the ‘Hello from Earth’ proposal just eight days before the start of National Science Week. Organizers quickly built a website and invited people to offer messages for transmission. Australia’s science minister, Kim Carr, submitted the first message: “Hello from Australia on the planet we call Earth. These messages express our people’s dreams for the future. We want to share those dreams with you.” The website was bombarded with visitors from all over the world. In all, 25,880 messages were encoded into a binary signal at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and sent into space. (See a sampling of the messages below)

• NASA insisted on a very high level of decorum in the cosmic messages: nothing remotely suggestive, no risque humor or anything aggressive. When, in 1973, NASA sent a plaque with the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 space probes, it included an illustration of a naked man and woman. NASA received complaints from members of US Congress, and newspapers ran letters objecting to NASA “exporting pornography to the stars”.

• It’s mind-boggling that we sent goodwill messages from a random selection of humans to a potentially habitable planet that might have a technical civilization. The chance that the messages reach an intelligent civilization on the distant exoplanet is highly unlikely, but it’s not zero. If a reply does come, it will arrive decades from now.

• What would you say to an alien civilization on an Earth-like planet far, far away? Here are some of the messages that were sent in August of 2009:

– “Greetings from a girl on Earth who, every so often, looks up at the night sky and waves hello in the hope that someone on another planet is doing the same.” – Sophie of Longmont, Colorado

– “If you come to Earth, look into: music, the beach, ice cream, hugs, family, love, dancing, cheese, trampolines, friendship, books and dreams. Just for a start.” – Tamasin, Richmond, Australia

– “If someone is reading this, I hope that our children will someday have the privilege of meeting one another.” — Tegan Larsen, San Antonio, United States

– “What do you see when you look up into the sky? Do you feel small and lonely, just like us? From now on, I can assure you one thing: you are not alone. Be happy.” – Sergio Camalich, Hermosillo, Mexico

– “Hello Baba, if you are out there I love you and hope you are watching me. I wonder if when you died you went to this planet.” — Liam Oliver, Coogee, Australia

– “All our petty disputes, disagreements and wars fade into insignificance when we consider our tiny world’s place in the cosmos.” — Silvio Zarb, Melbourne, Australia

– “There is only one thing bigger than this vast universe, the desire to discover. I hope I discovered you.” — T.S.M., Skopje, Macedonia

– “My aim of contacting you is to seek your assistance in transferring the sum of thirty-five million US dollars out of Nigeria and into your trusted bank account abroad.” – Hapatikiatwengo, Australia

– “Hi there. Sorry about the Outer Limits; hope you enjoyed I Love Lucy. Have you got all our missing socks? Love, Earth.” — Fred Mason, Roberts Creek, Australia

What would you say to an alien civilisation on an Earth-like planet far, far away?

“Greetings from a girl on Earth who, every so often, looks up at the night sky and waves hello in the hope that someone on another planet is doing the same.”

This message from Sophie of Longmont, Colorado, in the United States, is just one of almost 26,000 sent from Australia to an Earth-like planet 20 light-years away.

It’s been a decade since NASA transmitted these goodwill messages, and this week the transmission passed the halfway mark on its long, lonely journey through the silent cosmos.

The project, called Hello from Earth, began as a science communication campaign to get people excited about Australia’s National Science Week.

Those of us running the annual 10-day event were looking for an idea that would create a buzz on social media.

We decided on a kind of “Twitter to the stars”. We would collect short messages from the public and transmit them to the nearest habitable planet beyond our solar system.

Each message would be short, later packaged into a single transmission and sent using one of NASA’s facilities.

Our target was Gliese 581d, a “super-Earth” orbiting the habitable zone of its parent star.

First detected in 2007, studies in 2009 suggested it could have large oceans.

And since it was 20.4 light-years away, it would help give people a real appreciation of just how big the universe is.

“If you come to Earth, look into: music, the beach, ice cream, hugs, family, love, dancing, cheese, trampolines, friendship, books and dreams. Just for a start.” — Tamasin, Richmond, Australia

‘It might trigger an invasion’

When I suggested the idea, the bureaucrats involved with National Science Week were intrigued, if a little sceptical, but asked me to explore it.

In the months that followed, I had conversations with sometimes quizzical senior CSIRO staff, leading astronomers and US government officials, negotiating terms and agreeing to specifications.

Surprisingly, we didn’t need approval to transmit an interstellar message — but we would have if we wanted to respond to an extraterrestrial signal.

You can understand why: if an extraterrestrial signal is received, you can’t have everyone with a high-gain antenna answering back.

So who speaks for Earth? That turned out to be the SETI Post-Detection Subcommittee, which at the time was chaired by astronomer Paul Davies of Arizona State University, an old friend and former colleague.

“What do you think?” I asked in an overnight phone call after explaining Hello from Earth.

“Will we breach any unwritten rules in the scientific community?”

“Well, there’s no statute covering interstellar messages, and no-one has jurisdiction over transmissions,” Davies said from his home in Tempe, Arizona.

“But it will upset some people.”

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A Glint Of Light And A Hint Of Life: Mars Is Getting Very Interesting Right Now

July 4, 2019
ExoNews Editor

by Ed Mazza June 24, 2019

• On June 16th, as NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover lumbered across the plains of Mars, a glowing object was captured on camera hovering just above the Martian surface (pictured above). Another camera image taken 13 seconds after showed nothing. (see 38-second video below)

• When a similar flash of light made headlines in 2014, Justin Maki of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, “In the thousands of images we’ve received from Curiosity, we see ones with bright spots nearly every week.” Maki wrote them off as cosmic-ray hits or sunlight glinting off of rock surfaces.

• Days later, the rover detected possible microbial life on or inside the planet as indicated by a large spike in methane. While conducting further analysis, NASA said the rover had detected methane in the past and that the planet seems to have seasonal peaks and dips. NASA is coordinating with the scientists working with the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter, which is orbiting Mars, to find the origin of the gas.

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover spotted a strange glowing object that seemed to hover just above the surface of the Red Planet earlier this month.

While the glint on Mars has captured the imagination of folks on social media, it was likely just sunlight, a cosmic ray or a camera artifact. But in an unrelated development days later, the rover detected something else ― and it could be a long-sought signal of possible microbial life on or inside the planet.

The glowing object was captured on camera ― look at the right side of this raw image taken from the NASA website on June 16.

It doesn’t appear on any of the images snapped before or after, taken about 13 seconds apart, so if it was an object of some kind it moved quickly. More likely, however, it was nothing too out of the ordinary.

“In the thousands of images we’ve received from Curiosity, we see ones with bright spots nearly every week,” Justin Maki of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in 2014 when a similar flash of light made headlines. “These can be caused by cosmic-ray hits or sunlight glinting from rock surfaces, as the most likely explanations.”

So, the flash of light was unlikely to be a sign of activity on the planet.

But something else was detected on Mars last week that just might be a sign of life: methane. The New York Times reported that Curiosity detected a spike in methane, which, if confirmed, could hint of microbial life hidden beneath the surface of Mars.

38-second video of light seen hovering over Mars’ surface by Curiosity Rover (‘Amaze Lab’ YouTube)

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End of Days? What Happens if Antarctica’s Giant Cavity-Filled Glacier Melts?

March 1, 2019
ExoNews Editor

February 21, 2019 (sputniknews.com)

• Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have discovered that the 74,000 square mile (192,000 square kilometre) Thwaites Glacier in Western Antarctica is melting and has created a huge ‘glacial cavity’ at the bottom of it containing 14 billion tons of frozen fresh water. And it is still melting at an “explosive” rate.

• This demonstrates that Antarctic ice is not only melting in areas adjacent to oceans, but also from underneath its thick ice sheets. Were the Thwaites Glacier to melt completely, it could cause global sea levels to rise by some two feet. Such a rise would be enough to threaten coastal cities around the globe, flooding island nations and leading to soil erosion. Lucas Zoet, a science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s department of geoscience, fears that the collapse of the Thwaites Glacier “could potentially destabilize the whole region of West Antarctica.” And this doesn’t include the concurrent ice melt from other parts of Antarctica, the Arctic and Greenland.

• Last year, researchers from Germany, Austria and Australia released a study which concluded that with sea levels expected to rise two feet worldwide by the year 2300, low-lying areas of Florida and Bangladesh, and entire nations such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean or Kiribati in the Pacific, would be threatened, with massive coastal urban areas such as Shanghai, London, New York, and New Orleans affected as well.

• The Thwaites ice formation also serves to prevent other nearby glaciers from sliding toward the sea. If that happens and those glaciers melt, sea levels would rise not by two feet, but up to ten feet, affecting areas of human habitation much further inland and causing even more chaos to local ecosystems.

• Researchers from the Antarctic Research Centre at New Zealand’s Victoria University of Willington and McGill University in Canada have recently published an article in Nature which warned that the billions of tons of freshwater melt flowing into the oceans from melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would cause the global oceanic conveyor belt network to diminish, resulting in longer, more extreme hot or cold snaps, wet spells and dry stretches, and greater temperature variance throughout the world.

• According to Dr. Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, “The point is not so much [in] whether or not it’s going to happen… the important thing is how fast is this going to happen.” (see 4:58 minute CBS News video on the Antarctic glacial melt below)

• [Editor’s Note] It appears that, in addition to a much more rapid rate of rising sea levels, the continent of Antarctica might sooner reveal the remnants of a non-human civilization concealed underneath the ice.

The glacial cavity, found at the bottom of a glacier in western Antarctica with the use of ice-penetrating radar and satellites with high-resolution lenses, was discovered by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who called the find “disturbing” and warned that the mysterious cavity, once containing 14 billion tonnes of frozen fresh water, was still growing at an “explosive” rate. The discovery is vital, the scientists said, because it demonstrated that Antarctic ice is melting not only in areas adjacent to oceans, but also from underneath its thick ice sheets.

Rising Sea Levels

The immediate and most obvious concern about the discovery is that if the Thwaites Glacier, which extends some 192,000 square kilometres, or 74,000 square miles, were to melt completely, it could raise global sea levels by some 2 feet (0.6 metres). According to the Smithsonian Institute, such a rise would be enough to threaten coastal cities around the globe, flooding island nations and leading to soil erosion.

Last year, researchers from Germany, Austria and Australia released a studywhich concluded that with sea levels expected to rise two feet worldwide by the year 2300, low-lying areas of Florida and Bangladesh, and entire nations such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean or Kiribati in the Pacific, would be threatened, with massive coastal urban areas such as Shanghai, London, New York, and New Orleans affected as well.

If rising sea levels come to pass sooner than expected thanks to new, previously unknown phenomena, like the Thwaites Glacier cavity, “that’s going to really throw a wrench into the ability for these nations to plan and prepare for the impacts of sea level rise,” Dr. Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre, told USA Today.

Fleets of Dangerous Icebergs?

In addition to its massive store of frozen fresh water, the Thwaites ice formation is thought to serve as an important ‘door stop’, preventing nearby glaciers from sliding toward the sea. If that happens and those glaciers melt, sea levels would rise not by two feet, but up to ten feet (three metres), affecting areas of human habitation much further inland and causing even more chaos to local ecosystems.

In this sense, Thwaites “holds a kind of wildcard for being able to increase the rate of sea-level rise quite rapidly if things unfold a certain way,” Scambos said.

In addition to their possible threat to local wildlife, icebergs breaking off from Antarctica could pose a major threat to human oceanic activities, particularly shipping. In 2018, New Zealand news portal Engineering News warned that Antarctic icebergs were already posing a heightened hazard to southerly shipping routes. A year earlier, the US Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol warned shipping companies that an unusually high number of icebergs were drifting into shipping lanes in northern areas, with the monitoring agency reporting four seasons of “extreme” danger in a row due to bergs drifting through the North Atlantic.

And while Antarctic icebergs are seen as less of a threat than those forming in the Northern Hemisphere and the Arctic, given existing shipping lanes, they still pose a threat, according to scientists.

4:58 minute CBS News video on the unprecedented Antarctica glacial melt

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Martian Water May Have Enough Oxygen to Sustain Life

November 10, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Stephanie Mlot October 23. 2018 (geek.com)

• New research conducted by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and published in the journal Nature Geoscience cites two recent Red Planet discoveries: heavily oxidized rocks and briny water, that could mean the existence of very small Martians. Salty water below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support basic microbial life and even sponges. It was previously assumed that oxygen on Mars was insufficient to sustain even microbial life.

• NASA, however, tends to avoid watery areas for fear of cross-contamination with Earthly bacteria. This means that most Mars rovers, including the upcoming Mars 2020 rover, are left looking for evidence of past life and not current life.

• Earlier in 2018, analysts confirmed the discovery of desiccation cracks in Gale Crater on Mars, which are the result of residue once saturated with water. NASA dates this standing water on the surface of Mars back some 3.5 billion years ago.

• Additional evidence of underground brine reservoirs came this summer, when researchers revealed a 12-mile-wide lake of liquid water below the Martian South Pole.

• [Editor’s Note] The drip drip drip of disclosure… now NASA is admitting to the presence of oxygen on Mars. It is common knowledge among SSP insiders that the Martian atmosphere contains enough oxygen to allow for shallow breathing by humans and indigenous beings on the planet surface.

Salty water below the surface of Mars could hold enough oxygen to support basic microbial life.
New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience cites two recent Red Planet discoveries—heavily oxidized rocks and briny water—that could mean the existence of aliens.

Albeit very simple, very small aliens.

“We found something very surprising,” according to Vlada Stamenkovic, a scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and lead author on the paper.

“Many brines can exist in different places on Mars,” he told Popular Mechanics. “They fully suffice to allow the aerobic breathing for microbes and even sponges, which are the simplest animals.”

That’s great news for researchers and alien hunters looking for any reason to believe there is life on other planets.
Just keep in mind this study does not prove the existence of extraterrestrials.

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The Solar System Has At Least Eight Giant, Secret Oceans Where Alien Life May Exist

June 5, 2018
ExoNews Editor

by Dave Mosher, Skye Gould and Jenny Cheng May 21, 2018 (businessinsider.com)

• Scientists think Europa’s ocean might even be habitable to alien life. Jupiter’s icy moon (about the size of Earth’s moon) is hiding an enormous ocean of saltwater. If all of Earth’s water were combined into one, it would be only half as large as Europa’s liquid reservoir.

• “If there’s life at Europa, it’d almost certainly be an independently evolved form of life,” Bob Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Discovering extraterrestrial life would revolutionize our understanding of biology.”

• This Article compares the volume of water on Earth with the volume of water/ice on these other moons and planetoids in the solar system as a precursor for the possibility of sustaining extraterrestrial life. While Enceladus and Dione hold less water than the Earth, Europa, Pluto, Triton, Callisto, Titan, and Ganymede all hold quite a bit more than the Earth.

• Mimas, a moon of Saturn, and Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, might also have subsurface oceans. But scientists aren’t yet sure how big each one might be, if they exist at all.

• Earth – The Earth harbors about 1.335 ZL of water, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ZL (zettaliters) equals 1 billion cubic kilometers.

• Enceladus – Enceladus is a relatively small moon of Saturn, at just 314 miles in diameter — about as wide as the state of Arizona. It holds 0.04 ZL of water/ice. (Enceladus hold about 3% of the Earth’s volume of water). But its ocean sprays water into space. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft confirmed the ocean’s existence after its arrival in 2004, later detecting and flying through the water plumes to “taste” them.

• Triton – Triton is a moon of Neptune that’s some 2.8 billion miles from Earth. It holds 6.73 ZL of water (mostly ice). (Therefore, the Earth holds only 20% of the volume of water/ice on Triton.) Photos made by Voyager 2 show that Triton has “cryovolcanoes” that spew out water and ammonia.

• Dione – Dione is a small, icy moon of Saturn. Scientists determined in 2016 that — like Enceladus — Dione likely has a subsurface ocean containing 0.47 ZL of water/ice. (This is 35% of the water volume found on Earth.)

• Pluto – Pluto is the famous planet of yesteryear that astronomers agreed to demote to a dwarf planet. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft recently helped determine that Pluto has a liquid ocean packed with ammonia at a volume of 4.3 ZL. (So the Earth holds only 31% of the volume of water/ice that is on Pluto.)

• Europa – Europa is the smallest of the four moons of Jupiter and is about the size of Earth’s moon. It likely has a huge, salty ocean containing 2.91 ZL in volume, and shoots jets of its ocean water into space. (So the Earth contains about 46% of the volume of water on Europa.)

• Callisto – Callisto, the second-largest moon of Jupiter, is covered in ice, and almost certainly has a vast ocean with a volume of 19.3 ZL. (The Earth contains only about 7% of the water on Callisto.) However, Callisto’s crust is about 125 miles thick which makes it very difficult for scientists to discover what’s going on down there.

• Titan – Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest moon in the solar system. Scientists often refer to it as a “proto-Earth” due to its composition and size. A similarly colossal ocean of liquid water may exist below its roughly 60-mile-thick crust of ice, with a total volume of 31.3 ZL. (The Earth’s water volume is only about 4% of the volume of water/ice on Titan.)

• Ganymede – Ganymede is the largest of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, and the biggest moon in the solar system. Its stores of water amount to 52.7 ZL. (So the Earth’s water volume is only 2.5% of that on Ganymede.)

Scientists recently found even more evidence that Jupiter’s icy moon Europa is hiding an enormous ocean of saltwater.

To say Europa’s ocean is vast would be an understatement. If all of Earth’s water — oceans, lakes, rivers, rain, clouds, and more — were combined into one blob, it’d be just half as large as Europa’s liquid reservoir. (And Europa is about the size of Earth’s moon.)

Scientists think Europa’s ocean might even be habitable to alien life.

“If there’s life at Europa, it’d almost certainly be an independently evolved form of life,” Bob Pappalardo, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, previously told Business Insider. “Would it use DNA or RNA? Would it use the same chemistry to store and use energy? Discovering extraterrestrial life would revolutionize our understanding of biology.”

But Europa is just one of many ocean worlds in the solar system, including Enceladus, Pluto, Titan, and Ganymede.

To figure out how much liquid water and ice these worlds have compared to Earth, Business Insider contacted Steve Vance, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Vance closely monitors research about ocean worlds to create estimates of ice thickness, ocean depth, and other parameters.

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Tag: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory