io9: Space

NASA Engineers Prep for Phoenix Lander Rendezvous with Martian Arctic

Ed Grabianowski — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:20:00 PDT

The Phoenix Mars Lander will touch down on the Martian surface on May 25, where it will probe the soil for signs of past life and touch Martian water (in the form of subsurface ice) for the first time in human history. At a press conference I attended this morning, NASA's engineers explained how they are rocking it old-school, using tech from some of the scrapped Mars missions earlier in this decade and dropping to the surface with thrusters and landing legs instead of air bags. Phoenix gives new meaning to the term "retro rockets."

In the wake of the failure of the Mars Polar Lander in 2001, all Mars missions on NASA's docket were canceled. Engineers went over the lander tech from the canceled mission piece by piece, fixing all known problems. The Phoenix Lander is a rejuvenated form of that technology, something Mars Program Director Doug McCuistion characterized as, "reusing money that NASA and the American taxpayers already invested in this mission." The landing site is farther north than any previous Martian lander mission - it's roughly analogous to landing in the Canadian north. It won't land on the actual polar ice of Mars, but nearby, where scans have revealed the soil is made of 30-60 percent permanent ice.

Once in place, the lander will extend a 6-foot robot arm to dig down a foot and a half into the Martian soil. It can analyze samples with a microscope or an oven that will reveal the chemical and mineral makeup of the material. The form that the subsurface ice takes will reveal if a warmer Martian climate in the past allowed for liquid surface water. And if the retro thruster method of landing works, it could pave the way for larger, heavier landers in the future. It represents an updates pulse thrust version of the thruster technology last used on the Viking landers of the 1970s. Image by: NASA.

Will Barack Obama Destroy the U.S. Space Program?

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:37:03 PDT

As the race for U.S. President starts to heat up, Barack Obama has continued to polish his image as the youthful candidate promising a hopeful future. And yet he's also on record saying "[U.S. Space Agency] NASA is no longer associated with inspiration." He's proposing cutting NASA's budget in order to fund early-education programs for kids under 5. It's hard to fault his desire to educate kids, but why sacrifice space programs to do it? If elected, is it possible that Obama, the "hopeful" candidate, will destroy our hopes for space exploration and colonization?

Obama has said he'll take money away from NASA's Constellation program, which focuses on flights to the Moon and Mars. A space exploration advocate, Greg Zsidisen, questioned Obama about his plans for the program a couple of months ago and got a vague answer. According to the Chicago Tribune:

"I grew up on Star Trek," Obama said. "I believe in the final frontier."

But Obama said he does not agree with the way the space program is now being run and thinks funding should be trimmed until the mission is clearer.

"NASA has lost focus and is no longer associated with inspiration," he said. "I don't think our kids are watching the space shuttle launches. It used to be a remarkable thing. It doesn't even pass for news anymore."

Zsidisen, the advocate who asked Obama about the space program, has an interesting article on Obama's views about space travel, as well as Hilary Clinton and John McCain's maddenly vague views, at The Space Review. You can also hear him talk about these issues on The Space Show podcast, where he's joined by Buzz Aldrin a couple of times to discuss government space policy. Really interesting stuff.

Will Phoenix Mars Rover Disappear Like the Last Mars Polar Lander?

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:26:17 PDT

What happened to Polar Lander, the last Mars rover that NASA tried to land in the Martian polar region, where it hopes that the Phoenix rover will touch down on May 25? The mysterious fate of the lander that simply disappeared moments before reaching Mars has been the subject of both scientific and UFO-logy debates. Was it shot down by angry Martians dwelling at the pole? Did it encounter some strange magnetic phenomenon that disabled it? Or did it just malfunction? We may soon find out.

Phoenix, an even more badass version of the current Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, will hit the Martian north pole. (Sadly, it can't look for the dead Polar Lander, because that rover was headed for the South Pole.) If all goes as planned, it will immediately dig into the icy tundra and take samples to see what the deal is with all that ice. Could it be turned into potable water for future colonists?

To make sure nothing goes wrong with the landing — or at least to see what the hell happened if it does — three Earth-controlled satellites orbiting Mars will be watching Phoenix's descent into the ice. According to Discovery News:

Mars Odyssey will relay the descent and landing live, or what passes for live when the action takes place 171.5 million miles away. At that distance, radio signals traveling at the speed of light take 15.3 minutes to reach Earth. By the time flight controllers know if Phoenix began the descent through the planet's atmosphere, it should have already landed.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Europe's Mars Express are the backups. They will record signals from Phoenix during the descent and landing which can be relayed to Earth for later analysis.

You will be able to watch live satellite feeds from the Mars landing at the NASA website — well, what passes for live given the time lag. So frakkin cool.

Mars Probe Entourage Poised to Welcome Phoenix [Discovery News]

For Those About To Grok

Ed Grabianowski — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:00:00 PDT

"I'm your superluminal lover, baby, emission beamed into the night. Check out my relativistic jet, my love's faster than the speed of light." Ok, so Alan Marscher, Professor of Astronomy at Boston University, isn't exactly Bob Dylan. Or even LL Cool J. But he does write dope lyrics about astrophysics, and really, how many people can you say that about?" The latin rhythms of "Superluminal Love" are not all that the multi-talented Professor Marscher has to offer.

Prof. Marscher is an astrophysicist with a sense of humor and a guitar. He's written a series of songs about physics, some of which he performs during the classes he teaches at BU. He even put a bunch of them on his website - you can go check out all his lyrics, plus listen to mp3s of the tunes as performed by the Professor himself.

Here are some choice examples of these mad rhymes:

Relatively Weird
Is it energy or mass? Well, E = mc2.
And if it goes really fast, put a gamma in there.
Superluminal Lover
Full of twisting magnetism, feeling hot inside.
Bursting forth with energy, ready for a high-speed ride.
Acceleration growing, focusing my beam.
The jet starts flowing, plasma shoots downstream.

Stars By the Colors
Red dwarf stars, a common sort, have low luminosity,
Living for hundreds of billion years in cool anonymity.
Luminous red giants are middle-aged, fat but not so hot,
With core collapsed to Earth-like size, hydrogen fuel is shot.

Another Planet
On Mercury we'd roast all day & during the night we'd freeze.
We'd gasp for air to no avail with no atmosphere to breathe.
On Venus we would suffocate from CO2 gas so dense,
The greenhouse effect would bake our hide, the heat would be so intense.

Professor Marscher, we salute you. Photo by: NASA.

Songs with Science Themes by Prof. Alan Marscher. [Prof. Alan Marscher]

Alien Plants of Many Colors

Ed Grabianowski — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:00:00 PDT

The first extraterrestrial life we spot will probably be plant life, but what will it look like? There's a good chance it will be blue, purple, red or even black. A team of scientists examined what makes Earth plants green, then modeled the evolution of plants on worlds with different kinds of stars or atmospheres. The answers they came up with could help astronomers detect planets beyond our solar system with flora.

Plants use chlorophyll instead of some other pigment to drive photosynthesis because it is more efficient to absorb red and blue photons, based on the output of our sun and the light filtering attributes of our atmosphere. When they took these variables into account, the researchers found that planets around Class F and Class K stars, which are somewhat similar to our sun (Class G), would tend to have plants with either blue or red pigment, depending on the intensity of the starlight. Class M stars, aka red dwarfs, are cool stars that don't give off any ultraviolet radiation late in their lives. The relatively small amount of light available could result in black plants that try to absorb all the photons they can.

When advanced telescopes look at distant planets seeking life, they will need to know what colors to look for. If the planet has insufficient landmass, or all plants there live in the oceans, they will need to study the composition of the atmosphere with spectroscopy to determine if plant life may be present. Image by: Kenn Brown and Scientific American.

The Color of Plants on Other Worlds. [Scientific American]

On the International Space Station, You Can Watch Star Wars But Not Star Trek

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:20:00 PDT

In a stroke of weird genius, the people at GovernmentAttic.org issued a FOIA (freedom of information act) request to the US government to reveal the contents of the multimedia library on the International Space Station. Probably happy that they weren't being asked about the Patriot Act, the government happily complied, supplying us with a 13-page document containing the titles of every book, movie, and TV show in the ISS library. Not surprisingly there's a lot of science fiction in the mix, plus (of course) The Right Stuff. But there are some shocking choices in terms of what got put in — and what got left out.

Imagine if you will that you are on the ISS for a tour of duty. You can only bring a few things with you, so you're relying on the ISS library to keep you entertained. And you arrive only to discover there is ABSOLUTELY NO STAR TREK. That's right: you can watch every single Star Wars movie, every single Matrix movie (including Animatrix), every Lost episode, all the X-Men, tons of Stargate episodes, and even The Princess Bride (yay!). But no Star Trek movies. No Star Trek TV shows. WHAT THE HELL, people? Why does the government hate Star Trek?!

I really couldn't tell you, but I can tell you that the book selections are a little less mind-boggling. There's a heaping dose of Analog and Asimov's SF magazines, the Foundation books from Asimov, some Greg Bear, some Kim Stanley Robinson, lots of Jules Verne, and an incredibly large amount of Lois McMaster Bujold's novels. (Somebody at NASA must be a fan.) There's also an inexplicably large number of the Xanth books by Piers Anthony, in case you need to jumpstart your 13-year-old humor glands while in orbit.

But I'm still reeling over the Trek miscalculation. What is happening to the U.S. government? And by extension, to the INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY on board the ISS? Really, I am in shock. I hope the guys over at TrekMovie can explain this because I can't. (Thanks, David!)

Check out the full list of goodies you can read and watch on the ISS, via GovernmentAttic. [PDF]

The Ninteenth Century Madman Who Invented Martians

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:46:52 PDT

He was the man who launched a thousand imaginary rocketships to Mars — in the nineteenth century, before anybody knew the word "Martian" and War of the Worlds hadn't been written yet. Percival Lowell, a wealthy Bostonian, spent his youth traveling Japan and Korea before having a nervous breakdown and recovering by falling in love with Mars. He built the Lowell Observatory in Arizona just so he could get a better look at the planet, and spent months staring at it every night, taking notes and writing books about how it might be possible that other creatures lived there. A mesmerizing speaker, Lowell gave lectures and readings all over the country, popularizing the idea that the Martian "canals" might be signs of Martian civilization. With the new Phoenix Mars Lander about to plop down on the Red Planet, the Boston Globe's Nancy Zaroulis has published an amazing and timely article about Lowell's life.

Apparently, Lowell's unconventional thinking went beyond his desire to convince the public that Mars was inhabited. He broke off a marriage to a proper Boston lady, and wound up marrying a middle-class woman many deemed "beneath" him. He wrote several books about Japan and Korea, including the first book for Westerners that included photographs of Korea.

But his books about Mars (the first one called simply Mars), filled with pictures he drew based on all those nights in the observatory (you can see one above), were the most popular. Zaroulis writes:

The appearance of Lowell's book about Mars in 1895 came at a time of canal-building on earth. The Suez had recently been constructed; the Panama was in the works. For both Lowell and his adoring public, the prospect of canals on a neighboring planet was too captivating to dismiss. Let the stuffy academic scientists and astronomers carp and criticize, let them proclaim that there could not possibly be life on Mars because the Martian atmosphere was too thin, its gravity too weak. Lowell knew what he knew. He envisioned Mars society as a kind of utopia, with a place for every man and every man in his place. On Mars, there was no nonsense about workers' rights or labor unions or Progressivism or Socialism or any of the other discontents in the America of his time.

Later in his life, Lowell became convinced there was a ninth planet in the solar system, which he dubbed Planet X. Nobody believed him, but years after his death Pluto was discovered and became the controversial ninth planet (some still say the tiny chunk of icy rock is really just an asteroid at best).

The article is a great read — check it out.

The Man Who Invented Mars [Boston Globe Magazine]

Japan to Scan Venus, Find King Ghidora

Ed Grabianowski — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:00:00 PDT

The Japanese space agency, JAXA, is sending an orbiter to Venus in a few years to scan the surface of our nearest planetary neighbor. The PLANET C orbiter (it even sounds like a secret weapon straight out of a Godzilla movie) will use million-pixel cameras to peer through the dense cloudcover and see what lies on Venus' surface. Of course, kaiju fans know what they're likely to find with their super-advanced UV and infrared digital cameras - a giant, three-headed, lightning spewing dragon named King Ghidora.

In the Godzilla mythos, King Ghidora was an alien creature that came to Earth from Venus, where it had wiped out all civilization. This was only the latest of many civilizations destroyed by the space dragon, who would go on to become Godzilla's arch-nemesis and Annalee's avatar. But even if the PLANET C orbiter fails to find any kaiju, it will still be a landmark mission that will teach us a great deal about Venus' weather and surface.

By using several cameras and measuring the temperature in the atmosphere, the orbiter will be able to differentiate clouds from surface features, resulting in accurate photos of the planet below. If you speak Japanese and happen to have a planetary probe gathering dust in your garage, you can even apply to send a microprobe piggy-backed onto the PLANET C mission. Image by: JAXA.

Developing a high-performance detector for seeing through the real surface of Venus. [JAXA]

1970s Soviet Alien Architecture

LISA KATAYAMA — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:40:00 PDT

French photojournalist Frederic Chaubin likes to take photographs of science-fictiony Soviet architecture from the 1970s and 80s. During that era, the Soviets erected several formidable buildings that look like cities you'd see on an alien world. Pictured here is a strangely organic-looking wedding palace which is located in Georgia. More U.S.S.R. spaceportecture below.

This is a holiday center in the Ukraine.

This government building in Georgia was inspired by a sketch of an imaginary city. Images by Frederic Chaubin

Frederic Chaubin main page via PingMag

The Empty Universe vs. Zillions of Aliens Debate

Ed Grabianowski — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:00:00 PDT

It's a big, dumb, empty universe, according to a new formula that estimates our chances of meeting non-human intelligent life. The odds have been estimated before, most famously by the Drake Equation, but now a British scientist has tried to throw a wet blanket over exobiologists and scifi writers by claiming that intelligent life is vanishingly rare. Here's why he's wrong.

The Drake Equation is a series of decreasing fractional probabilities that end up estimating the chance that there are other intelligent civilizations somewhere in the universe. The enormous scale of the universe virtually guarantees that a decent probability will come out of that equation. Professor Andrew Watson of the University of East Anglia has recalculated the odds, factoring in the age of the Earth. He claims that Earth is in the latter stages of its life as a planet, meaning that it took a long time for intelligent life to develop here. Therefore, such life doesn't happen easily, and must be quite rare.

I say bollocks. Watson fails to take into account a number of factors. For one thing, not every solar system follows the same life pattern as ours. Other planets may have far longer habitable periods than Earth, increasing the odds of intelligent life developing there. He also fails to consider that different environments could lead to very different evolutionary rates.

In the end, it comes back to the scale of the universe (how many galaxies can you spot in the Hubble image above?). It doesn't matter how improbable the odds of intelligent life evolving are. We know for a fact it happened once. It is almost inconceivable to think that among the unfathomable numbers of stars and planets scattered across the universe, it happened only once. Photo by: ESA and NASA.

Is there anybody out there? [University of East Anglia]

Moonflowers Grow On Lunar Surface With Bacterial Boost

Ed Grabianowski — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:00:00 PDT

The first lunar colonists will grow their own vegetables directly in the soil of the moon, while Earthbound romantics will order moonroses for their sweethearts. Researchers now claim that instead of carting tons of Earth soil to the moon for agriculture, moonfarms will use the dirt, rock and dust already present. The secret to growing plants on the seemingly infertile lunar surface? Just add bacteria.

Scientists with the European Space Agency experimented with marigolds grown in crushed anorthosite, an Earth-rock that is a close analogue to the lunar surface. Just potting the flowers in anorthosite was not effective. They didn't grow. But adding certain bacteria made a huge difference. The marigolds didn't exactly flourish in the faux moondirt, but they did grow and even blossomed. The bacteria facilitated the transfer of nutrients from the anorthosite to the plants.

Of course, the area where the plants were grown would need to be domed (they still need air) and watered, but they could be part of a water filtration system or even provide food for a self-sustaining lunar colony. While the ESA has no actual plans to go to the moon anytime soon, some scientists think we could send a robot to plant lunar veggies before the first colonists arrive. Photo by: BBC.

Plants 'thrive' on Moon rock diet [BBC]

Mars in the Nineteenth Century

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Using telescopes, astronomers have been mapping the surface of Mars in surprising detail for over 100 years. This map of the entire Martian globe, showing everything from Mare Australe to Mare Boreum, was made in 1890. Now you can check a satellite photo to see how accurate it really was.

Here's a recent satellite photo of the same area of Mars, taken by NASA in 1998.

And here's another, more colorful depiction of the same area, created in the late 1870s.

Channelling Martian Maps [BilbliOdyssey]

Happy Soviets Dance on the Moon, 1961

Lynn Peril — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:08:38 PDT

Three cartoon cosmonauts (one of them a woman) celebrate their lunar landing in this Soviet-era postcard. The fact that the Russkis have yet to walk on the moon makes it all the more adorable. Click through for a closer look.

You can view more Soviet graphics pertaining to lunar conquest here, including a swell bunch of xmas cards.

Stop-Motion Dinosaurs on Another Planet

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:05:44 PDT

You can never get enough dinosaurs in space, and that's why indie filmmaker Larry Arpin spent the last several years filming his dinotastic space opera Galactic Raiders in the deepest California desert. The whole flick is done old-school, from the Ray Harryhausen-style, stop-motion dinos, to the retro Mitchell camera he filmed with. And the plot is pure pulp. Rymir zooms to a distant planet (full of dinos, whom he fights in this clip) to rescue his girlfriend from the evil Acastus.

Arpin follows in the tradition of the great Arch Hall, Sr., director of caveman drive-in flick Eegah! by casting his son in the film. Though Arpin's kid doesn't get the starring role like Arch Hall, Jr. In fact, Arpin says of son Joseph:

To my surprise and delight, he did a great job and memorized his lines quickly and efficiently.

Wow, thanks dad. Might want to stick to stop-motion dinosaur fights and stay away from the "compliments" department for a while.

My point is: It's dinosaurs — in space! And I want it now — on DVD!

Galactic Raiders [official site] (Thanks, excellent giant monster fan averyguerra!)

Getting Ready for the Final Battle

Kevin Kelly — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:45:00 PDT

This looks like the poster for an awesome science fiction film that we'd like to see: a girl in a giant hulking exoskeletal suit of armor with her comic-effect tiny little robotic pal perched on her shoulder. You've got evil signified by the pouring lava on the left hand side of the background, while fighters triumphantly scream past a proud city on the right. Whatever is happening here, we want to know more.

Sadly, it's not a movie poster. It's the personal creation of visual artist Yanick Dusseault, who provided concept art on GATTACA, 3D work on Titan AE, and painted matte paintings on everything from Star Wars to The Island. Somehow, he also manages to find time to work on an impressive array of his own personal artwork (like this piece), which can be seen at his website.

It's X -- In Space!

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:08:45 PDT

We all know the key to making something science fiction: Just take any old thing and stick it in space. It works every time! Got a bunch of dinosaur drawings but have to make a scifi cartoon show? Just put the dinosaurs in space! Or hey, how about race cars — but in space! Now you've got Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It's time to celebrate every tale spawned by a pitch meeting that included the phrase "It's X — but in space!" We've got ten of the most memorable and unlikely right here for you.

Dinosaurs . . . in space!
Dinosaucers, a cartoon show from the 1980s, was all about a bunch of nice dinosaur aliens called Dinosaucers who come from a planet in "counter-orbit" to the Earth where dinosaurs became intelligent. (See the amazing "extended theme" from Dinosaucers above.) They team up with a band of nice human teenagers to fight some evil intelligent dinosaurs — and meet some unintelligent Earth dinosaurs in the process. One of the Dinosaucers special powers is that they can de-evolve into giant-sized dinosaurs to fight. The three of you who saw the Super Mario Bros. movie will recognize this plot device. Special fun fact: Coke owns the rights to Dinosaucers, but apparently has never used this for the powers of evil.

Hell . . . in space!
Hellraiser Bloodline, one of many less-than-stellar sequels to the original (and amazing) Clive Barker flick, takes our familiar hell minions (you guessed it) into space! Set in the future, the movie poses the all-important question of what would happen if you opened a hell dimension portal — while on a spacehip!

Orcs . . . in space!
Warhammer is a miniatures game, a comic book, and a phenomenon. Basically the premise is that all your favorite D&D monster classes have been transported into space. Swordfights — in space! Orcs — with spaceships! Nothing could go wrong.

Lesbians . . . in space!
One of my favorite randomly-generated films from the brain of John Carpenter is Ghosts of Mars, starring Natasha "Species" Henstridge, Ice Cube, and Pam Grier. The plot is simple enough. A future Martian colony discovers an ancient Martian hoozit that turns everybody into Burning Man zombies. The Martian police force is called in to investigate, and that's when we find out that Mars is a matriarchal society run by lesbians. I love that you can have lesbians in space, but that's not even the main point of the movie. Instead, it's all about shooting the shit out of those zombies. Go, Ice Cube!

Evil clowns . . . in space!
The title pretty much says it all: Killer Klowns from Outer Space. This flick from the late 1980s was clearly the result of a coke-fueled pitch meeting where some studio exec literally did scream, "Wait, wait, let's do scary clowns . . . BUT FROM SPACE!!!" Then somebody did another line and said, "That's craaazy!" And that line, my friends, became the tagline on the poster. Guess what the plot is? Aliens who look like clowns kill a bunch of people.

Fantasy Island . . . in space!
Oh Ron Moore, beloved creator of the new Battlestar Galactica, what possessed you to pitch a show that is basically Fantasy Island in space? FOX just greenlit Virtuality, Moore's post-BSG TV project, for fall. The plot? A bunch of astronauts zooming through space for a long time need to stay focused and not go nuts, so NASA provides them with cyber-holo-pods where they can jack in and live out any fantasy they want. I predict that every week, we will get a new fantasy and a lesson. Sadly, there will be no dwarves yelling, "Da spaceship holopod! Da spaceship holopod!" before each fantasy starts.

Civil War reenactments . . . in space!
Look, I love space-western TV series Firefly, but I have to admit the show is one giant Civil War reenactment. They talk in funny frontier talk, steal cattle, and visit frontier planets that look like Scarlet O'Hara's bum. And of course several of our main characters fought in a civil war against the Man and lost. So yeah, it's the Civil War . . . in space!

Hello Kitty . . . in space!
Every kid always dreamed of sending Hello Kitty's perky little whiskered face into the wide reaches of the cosmos, and that's why anime Tamala 2010 is so satisfying for everybody. Especially because Tamala, the Hello Kitty-esque hero, is a punk rock weirdo who winds up hanging out with gay hustlers in a bar on another planet.

Vampires . . . in space!
Lifeforce is one of those movies that brings all the goodness into one place: The bad guy is a naked lady alien space vampire who wanders around sucking the "lifeforce" out of anyone who gets in the way of her lithe undressed limbs. I think there might be some kind of deeper message about fear of aging, but really it's all about the naked vampire alien making out with science dudes until they wrinkle up into freaky husks. It's directed by Tobe Hooper, who brought you the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, so it's gotta be good.

Pregnant men . . . in space!
Oprah never saw Enemy Mine, which is why she was so shocked to meet real-life pregnant man Thomas Beattie. If she'd seen the Dennis Quaid-meets-pregnant-alien-dude flick Enemy Mine back in the 1980s, she would have known that sometimes a guy just has to give birth. Actually, the alien in Enemy Mine comes from a race of non-gendered lizardy people, but since we've thought of the character as a guy up until the time he becomes pregant, there's definitely a shock when he pats his belly and starts crooning to the unborn fetus.

(Thanks, Erin, for the funny line!)

We Will Land on Mars and We Will Sell Them Shoes

Lynn Peril — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:30:00 PDT

Capitalism triumphs again in this cartoon from a novelty ink blotter dating to the 1950s. Ink blotters, by the way, were absorbent cards used to soak up excess ink from your fountain pen. Thanks to the invention of the ballpoint, they were a dying technology when this one, celebrating future technology, was printed.

Almost Earth 2: Small Rocky Planet is Closest Yet

Michael Reilly — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:30:45 PDT

Okay, so it's not G889 that humans colonized in the TV series, but it's the closest astronomers have found yet. Weighing in at around 5 Earth masses and 1.5 times Earthly diameter, GJ 436c (which orbits the star GJ 436) is the smallest rocky exoplanet ever discovered. It still has many of the wonky traits of other exos like a 3-week long day and a 5.2 day-long year, but preliminary calculations suggest the toasty planet could be nice and balmy at the poles — perfect for an extended beach vacation in the Leo constellation.

Most of the 280 or so exoplanets discovered so far have been searing gas giants that orbit their stars closer than Mercury is to the Sun. But GJ 436c is the latest in a growing class of rocky exoplanets called 'super-Earths' that are getting smaller by the day, thanks to a new method planet-hunting astronomers are using to measure stars' gravitational wobble:

Ignasi Ribas, lead author of the study from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC), says: "After final confirmation, the new exoplanet will be the smallest found to date. It is the first one to be identified from the perturbations exerted on another planet of the system. Because of this, the study opens a new path that should lead to the discovery of even smaller planets in the near future, with the goal of eventually finding worlds more and more similar to the Earth."

Source: University College London, via Science Blog

Photo: Wikipedia

Earthlings' Next Home: Phobos?

Michael Reilly — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:40:00 PDT

NASA scientists have been arguing for years that Martian moons Phobos and Deimos may be the best place to in the solar system for humans to colonize. Some would argue even better than our own Moon. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera snapped two awesome color shots of what might be humanity's next home during a flyby on March 23rd. Why do NASA geeks think the Martian moons might be the best real estate investment of the 21st century?

The reasoning's simple — all missions to the Moon or Mars spend most of their fuel lifting off and landing. Fuel is expensive to burn and expensive to carry, so the less you need the better. Phobos and Deimos have very little gravity of their own (about 1/1000th that of Earth), and a convenient Martian atmosphere to slow your spaceship down in. Earth's Moon's the opposite, so despite the distance, it turns out you need about the same amount of fuel to land on the Martian moons as you to for a safe touchdown much closer by.

Can you picture yourself in a crater-side apartment complex? 9-km wide Stickney crater is the largest feature on Phobos, and with a view of Mars 80 times as big as the full Moon seen from Earth it's bound to be prime property some day.

Not A Bad Place To Crash a Spaceship

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:40:00 PDT

It's not clear if the two travelers in this concept art have crashed into this glowing cavern, or if that's simply their parking place. Maybe there's a swarm of flesh-peeling mites just out of view, but it looks like a good place for an adventure to us.

French artist Mathias Verhasselt works as a concept artist at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine California, although his art tends to lean more towards science fiction than it does World of Warcraft. Maybe he's working on some of the designs for the much anticipated Starcraft 2. If you want see a lot more (and we mean a lot more) of his designs, check out his website, which is basically one giant gallery of images so be warned when you click on the link. He's tossed everything from steampunk tankbots to alien species in there, and most of it is very impressive.

Magnetic Structures Larger Than the Sun

Ed Grabianowski — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:40:00 PDT

We've long seen the results of solar flares on Earth, but haven't been able to predict when they'll strike next. New research released last week has given us a better understanding of solar weather. The massive, looping jets of superheated gas that erupt from the sun are driven by giant magnetic structures that extend out beyond the sun itself.

Using the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph mounted on the Hinode spacecraft, astronomers pinpointed the pressure fluctuations in the immense magnetic fields that send the gases spewing out into the sun's corona. In a press release, Dr. Michelle Murray of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London had this to say:

When a new section of magnetic field pushes through the solar surface it generates a continual cycle of fountains, but new magnetic fields are constantly emerging across the whole of the solar surface and so our results can explain a whole multitude of fountains that have been observed with Hinode.

Understanding solar weather patterns will be vital when more humans are living in space, since that will give us a shot at predicting the solar flares and fountains that give off dangerous amounts of radiation.Photo by Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory.

New Views On The Sun's Startling Magnetic Fountains. [Science Daily]

Science of Astrobiology Reading List

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:20:00 PDT

Mike Brotherton, author of the novel Spider Star released last month from Tor, proudly calls himself a hard science fiction writer. And now he's sharing the secret of his hardness with you. Brotherton just posted a really interesting, provocative list of general-audience books about space and astrobiology that he consults before writing anything. He lists everything from the well-regarded astrobiology book Life Everywhere, to the lesser-known classic Sex in Space. If you're interested in the real science behind aliens and space travel, you'll want to check out Brotherton's bookshelf. [Mike Brotherton via Biology in Science Fiction]

The Hazards of Cocktails in Space, 1955

Lynn Peril — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:41:00 PDT

In 1952, Major Alexander P. de Seversky described a luxury cruise to Mars that included full bar service. Artificial gravity kept both booze and imbibers in place on that trip, but what if the equipment failed? This clip, from Walt Disney's television show three years later, answers the question. The episode, "Man in Space," explored the both the history and future of rocketry and the space race — and more importantly addressed the effect of weightlessness on cocktail hour. Hey, what good is manned spaceflight without a Manhattan or two?

Build Your Home In TunnelSpace!

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:00:00 PDT

NASA churned out a lot of concept art in the 1970s while the agency was exploring ways to build colonies in space. NASA concept artists created trippy pieces like the Cynlidrical Colony above, and Torodial and Bernal Sphere colonies as well. We'd like to imagine that you could low-grav the whole thing, and just leap from one side of the colony to the other. Of course, it's not quite clear what would happen if you ran into one of those giant window sections. Hopefully they're made out of some synthetic diamond material to keep accidents from happening.

Don Davis, who painted this piece, has worked at NASA for years, and he's responsible for concept art on everything ranging from these space colonies, to the Voyager program. He's worked at the Ames Research Center, which is the mecca for speculative science fiction/faction at NASA, located in California. When he wasn't working on art like this, he was also collaborating with Carl Sagan, and contributed to Cosmos, for which he won an Emmy. You can check out more of Don's retro-futurist paintings at his website, where he also has an impressive number of Burning Man trip reports as well.

How Should We Fund Space Exploration?

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:30:00 PDT

Even though NASA's budget actually increased in 2008, the government space agency faces an uncertain future as it transitions from the Space Shuttle to the Constellation Project, and it's been plagued for years by claims of inefficiency and lack of creativity. Is it time to look at a new way to pay for the exploration and exploitation of space?

The New Age of Commercial Space Travel

Ed Grabianowski — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:40:00 PDT

NASA plans to retire the Space Shuttle program in 2010 and have a replacement, the Constellation, ready for launch in 2015. But the budget-starved space agency set the odds of making that deadline at only 65 percent in a report to Congress this week. Even if it meets the deadline, the Constellation's launch will come at the end of the longest gap between crewed U.S. space missions since the end of the Apollo Program and the development of the Space Shuttle. Sounds bad, but it could mean the beginning of the true Space Age.

With more than 8,000 NASA employees looking for jobs when the Shuttle Program wraps up, the private sector space industry could get a serious brain injection.

NASA will continue sending up rockets to launch new satellites between 2010 and 2015, the market for crewed missions to conduct repairs on existing satellites or other sensitive missions isn't likely to shrink. With all those aerospace engineers looking for something to do with their degrees, I predict we will see a burst of private space industry startups. The demand is there. The expertise is there. The real question — will the money be there? Image by NASA. [Information Week]

Massive Half-Life 2 Drydock Needs Defense and Some Paint

Kevin Kelly — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:00:55 PDT

This is a drydock in HullBreach, a complete conversion for the Half-Life 2 video game. The team has an ambitious goal of creating 100% new content for the game, and they've been hard at work on it for several years. The game is set 2,000 years in our future, and involves a bloody world war that threatens to engulf the planet. So the upshot is, even 2,000 years from now, we won't be getting along.

According to the developers, the game is "realism-based. So no swooshy laser weapons or impossible Star Trek/Star Wars science. We're keeping it gritty, intense and war-like. So it's a bit like Halo, if we'd never gone to war with the Covenant and instead just started fighting with each other. You can check out more concept art, see the futuristic weapon designs, and even listen to the theme song they've composed for the game at their MySpace page. They have over 20 people working on this thing (supposedly), and it's almost been three years since they began working on it, so hopefully we'll start seeing more soon.

European Space Agency Ready to Make Beer Runs to the International Space Station

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:40:00 PDT

The European Space Agency successfully completed a major test of the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) on Monday, moving within 11 meters of the International Space Station. Tomorrow, in a final test, it will reach the ISS dock. The Jules Verne ATV, seen here from the ISS, is an amazing multi-purpose vehicle that will take over the cargo-ferrying duties of the Soviet Progress vessels and the American Space Shuttle, schlepping critical supplies to astronauts on-board the ISS. It's essentially a beta version of the kinds of vehicles that will bring beer and donuts to moon bases for hungry lunar tourists.

The ESA's ATV is fully automated. When it gets close to the ISS, the entire docking procedure is handled by computers using GPS, optical sensors and an off-board laser range-finder. Once it is docked, astronauts can enter the cargo bay directly from the main ISS modules and retrieve supplies without ever putting on a space suit. It will remain docked for several months, during which time it will be emptied of supplies and then gradually filled with waste and garbage (liquid and solid).

When it's time for another cargo vehicle to dock with the ISS, the Jules Verne will undock and head into a steep re-entry over the Pacific Ocean, burning up when it hits the atmosphere. The ESA has plans for another six expendable cargo vehicles - it would be cool if they named them all after classic sci-fi authors. The Jules Verne carried two rare manuscripts by the groundbreaking writer, which will be kept on the ISS. Photo by: ESA.

Impressive dress-rehearsal for Jules Verne ATV. [ESA]

Stoned Housewife Visits the Future and Steals Its Resources, 1964

Lynn Peril — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:15:49 PDT

A dreamy (drugged?) housewife contemplates the best ways of pillaging natural resources from space, sea, and earth in this clip from "Out of This World," a 1964 promotional film for Frigidaire. How do I know she's a housewife? Because when she's done riding through General Motors Futurama exhibit at the New York's 1964 World's Fair, she starts sashaying through ultramodern Frigidaire-appliance-stocked kitchens in a bizarre array of various "ethnic" costumes. View the whole film at the Prelinger Archives.

Riverside Views in a Thriving Halo World

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:00:00 PDT

You can see the entire grand sweep of the curving cities, which occupy one small space in the habitat ring around the planet Abalakin. What's great about this image from concept designer Alexander Preuss is the way he manages to capture the vast distances and strange, bulging infrastructure that would be part of a beautiful, riverside view if you lived in the halo world.

Preuss, who is currently designing book covers for science fiction novels by Gene Wolf and others, says that this picture of the inner life of a halo world is actually a sequel to an image he created of the outside of the halo world a few years ago. He writes:

This time I wanted to show you how this giant ringworld could look from the inside and how a civilisation would live there.

Alexander Preuss Concept Art [Astrona]

A Spaceship On Fire Off The Shoulder Of Orion

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:54:56 PDT

Actually, we aren't sure if this is Orion, but we just couldn't pass up a nice Blade Runner reference. This spaceship or space station looks like it's been attacked and is about to fall victim to the gravity of the planet below, and it couldn't be more beautiful.

John Berkey is one of those old-school concept artists whose work doesn't look hyper-realistic like Photoshop on steroids. He uses an old school smeary oils approach that look both futuristic and retro at the same time. Berkey has done numerous pieces of freelance futuristic artwork featuring ships in battle above our world and others, and also did some of the original concept and poster artwork for Star Wars.

A Vector Map of the Unnamed Methane Sea on Titan

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Peter Minton is a California teacher who loves to make vector maps in his spare time. His favorite places to map are islands and coastlines, and so when the Cassini-Huygens probe sent back images from Saturn's moon Titan he was happy to discover the geographical features he loves most. There, on the pole of Titan, was a sea full of islands. An unnamed methane sea, but still mappable using vectoring software. This is the map he created, with longitude and latitude lines.

Minton, who already created vector maps of the islands in this sea, writes:

I went ahead and digitized the shoreline of the unnamed methane sea . . . It is one of the largest bodies of liquid known to exist on this moon of Saturn. This body of liquid methane, ethane and nitrogen is about the size of Lake Superior.

The intrepid map afficionado at Strange Maps blog adds:

The orange opacity of Titan's atmosphere makes the moon appear bigger than it actually is - astronomers have since distinguished between permanent cloud cover and surface, and downgraded it from the first- to the second-largest moon in our system, after Jupiter's satellite Ganymede.
Not until the flyby, in 2004, of the Cassini-Huygens mission could scientists confirm the speculation, first ignited by both Voyager missions and then heightened by Hubble observations, that Titan is the only heavenly body (save Earth) to contain large liquid surfaces - or seas, as non-astronomers would call them. For they seem a bit too small to be labelled oceans.

These seas, or lakes, most probably consisting of methane or another hydrocarbon, can be seen on this page of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

This sea is one of the few unnamed large bodies of liquid in the solar system. What should we name it?

EVS-Islands [via Strange Maps]

This Just in: Mars Rovers Will Not Be Shut Down

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:42:52 PDT

NASA has announced that the Mars rover Spirit will not be shut down. This is a great relief to us, and to all of the io9ers who cried out in pain when NASA suggested it would have to kill Spirit in order to make a $4 million budget cut requested by the US government. [AP via Yahoo! News]

Suspended Animation Now Possible -- Using Sewer Gas

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:40:01 PDT

Scientists have unlocked the secret of suspended animation, a state of "undeath" where the body's metabolism shuts down but all major organs continue to function. Hydrogen sulfide, also known as sewer gas, may be the miracle substance that finally allows humans to stay alive in a frozen, non-aging state. In science fiction, of course, suspended animation is used by astronauts to travel across great distances in space by putting their bodies into suspend mode. Suspended animation could also be induced in dramatically injured people to prevent them from dying while being rushed to the hospital. What's truly amazing is how simple it turns out to be.

According to a release about the study, which will be published in the April issue of the journal Anaethesiology, the researchers are convinced that they've hit on something that's very close to the scifi idea of suspended animation.

"Hydrogen sulfide is the stinky gas that can kill workers who encounter it in sewers; but when adminstered to mice in small, controlled doses, within minutes it produces what appears to be totally reversible metabolic suppression," says Warren Zapol, MD, chief of Anesthesia and Critical Care at MGH and senior author of the Anesthesiology study. "This is as close to instant suspended animation as you can get, and the preservation of cardiac contraction, blood pressure and organ perfusion is remarkable."

The researchers measured factors such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration and physical activity in normal mice exposed to low-dose (80 ppm) hydrogen sulfide for several hours. They analyzed cardiac function with electrocardiograms and echocardiography and measured blood gas levels. While some mice were studied at room temperature, others were kept in a warm environment - about 98º F - to prevent their body temperatures from dropping.

In all the mice, metabolic measurements such as consumption of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide dropped in as little as 10 minutes after they began inhaling hydrogen sulfide, remained low as long as the gas was administered, and returned to normal within 30 minutes of the resumption of a normal air supply. The animals' heart rate dropped nearly 50 percent during hydrogen sulfide adminstration, but there was no significant change in blood pressure or the strength of the heart beat. While respiration rate also decreased, there were no changes in blood oxygen levels, suggesting that vital organs were not at risk of oxygen starvation.

The mice kept at room temperature had the same drop in body temperature seen in earlier studies, but those in the warm environment maintained normal body temperatures. The same metabolic and cardiovascular changes were seen in both groups, indicating that they did not depend on the reduced body temperature, and analyzing the timing of those changes showed that metabolic reduction actually began before body temperature dropped.

"Producing a reversible hypometabolic state could allow organ function to be preserved when oxygen supply is limited, such as after a traumatic injury," says Gian Paolo Volpato, MD, MGH Anesthesiology research fellow and lead author of the study. "We don't know yet if these results will be transferable to humans, so our next step will be to study the use of hydrogen sulfide in larger mammals."

If this turns out to work in humans, it's obvious that keeping people alive "when oxygen supply is limited" could apply to space travel as much as to post-traumatic injury situations.

Sewer-gas induced suspended animation is rapid and reversible [Eurekalert]

Spirit, the Mars Rover, Left to Die Before Its Time

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:00:19 PDT

The brave, unflagging Mars rover Spirit, who has lived on the Red Planet for almost four years, has been given a death sentence by the U.S. government. Right now, the little robot is resting on a sunny slope, waiting out the winter and preparing to do more tests on the Martian atmosphere. But now it looks like Spirit has rolled on its six wheels and done science experiments for the very last time. The U.S. government has forced NASA, this country's national space agency, to cut its budget by 4 million dollars. And that means only one rover, Opportunity, will survive. To say that this is a tragedy is an understatement.

The Mars rovers have been one of NASA's most proud achievements, and the information they gather today can help future planetary colonists tomorrow. While NASA is planning to land another rover on Mars within the next year, it's a shame to shut down a perfectly serviceable rover that could be supplementing what the new rover will learn.

With the Earth population skyrocketing, and urban overcrowding only likely to get far worse over the coming decades, preparing to colonize other plants should be more of a priority than ever. And every time we shut down a NASA program like the rovers, we step backward, away from the goal of leaving Earth. We also hinder our search for knowledge beyond this planet.

If I thought that money being cut from NASA's budget were going to developing renewable energy or bettering urban environments, I wouldn't be quite so pissed off. At least in that case, the money would be going toward building a better future Earthside. But it's not. Instead it's being used to bail out Bear Stearns.

Why doesn't a philanthropist like Bill Gates or Paul Allen step forward and write a check to save Spirit?

Spirit is an awesome robot, with awesome developers and operators at NASA, who braved the elements and mechanical problems to help advance our understanding of Martian geochemistry and atmosphere. The U.S. government should be ashamed that it has effectively killed fifty percent of its only science lab on another planet.

Above, you can see a picture Spirit took of its own tracks in the dust.

Kthxbai, Spirit, kthxbai.

UPDATE: NASA has just confirmed that the rovers will NOT be shut down! Hooray! [AP via Yahoo! News]

NASA Cut Means No More Roving for Mars Rover [AP via PhysOrg]

20 Things You Can Put on Your To-Do List Now to Change the World in 100 Years

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:22:55 PDT

To-do lists are a great way to plan your week, and it turns out they're also not a bad tool for futurists either. We've put together 20 to-do list items that anyone can use to stop environmental disaster, speed the invention of artificial intelligence, jumpstart a moon colony, and help everyone become posthuman. Usually it seems like ordinary people can't contribute to massive projects that require scientific minds as well as philosophers and other specialists. But there are actually a lot of things you can do. Over the past week we've posted four separate to-do lists for futurists, and now we bring them all together so you can print them out, tuck them in your pocket, and start checking items off to change the world.

To-Do Lists for Futurists:

1. Five ways to build an ecotopia, an urban space that exists in harmony with nature
Sure, recycling helps, but so does repurposing an old machine.

2. Five ways to contribute to the creation of artificial intelligence
You can help bring about machines with the ability to reason just by surfing the web.

3. Five ways to start planning for a future moon colony in your bedroom
From growing plants with LEDs to participating in a space elevator contest, there are a lot of things you can do to make that moon vacation in 2030 a reality.

4. Five ways to become posthuman by this time next year
A software download that makes your computer search for proteins that cure cancer while you sleep, and a tiny device that will make your body machine-readable tomorrow.

Meet the First Realistic Martian Woman

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 14:04:37 PDT

What would we have to do to our bodies if we wanted to live on Mars? io9 consulted scientists, our imaginations, and a designer, and came up with the most realistic-possible portrait of a Martian colonist who might truly exist on the Red Planet in 100 years. She's really tall, doesn't have to wear a bra, and has some pretty awesome photosynthesis and water-reclaiming implants in her exosuit. It's time to meet the first Martian woman. Click through for full frontal.

Here is our Martian woman's spec:

First, our woman is tall, a little pear-shaped, with really thick legs. This shape compensates for the reduced gravity.

She has a very lightweight exoskeleton covering her whole body. The exoskeleton has to keep her warm, keep her pressurized, shield her from solar wind, and absorb lots of sunlight. So it can be thin, but laced with heated mesh. It should have a nanofabric outer shell laced with lead to repel x-rays and other cosmic rays. And the upper half should have super bendy, ultra-thin solar cells that are constantly sucking up solar energy.

In her boots and strapped to her thighs, she has water drilling/processing packs. A cannulated drill can extend out of it, go deep under martian crust, suck up water, run it through a filter to get the salt and acid out, and then store it close to her body to keep it liquid so she can sip from it.

She also has a photosynthesis rig on her back. This is a light, thin backpack that converts the C02 from the atmosphere and some of the water from her leg pack into sugars and oxygen for our Martian. So it's a combination breathing apparatus and feeder.

Image by Stephanie Fox. Additional reporting by Nivair Gabriel.

Google Takes Initiative to Find Extraterrestrials by 2012

LISA KATAYAMA — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:20:29 PDT

MIT's teaming up with Google to design the first satellite that can really, truly search the sky for planets similar to Earth in size and terrain, taking us a giant step closer to making contact with extraterrestrials. Google is funding the development of a six high-res, wide-field digital cameras with a 192-megapixel resolution for TESS—the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. That's enough resolution to gauge the brightness of two million stars. MIT scientists are currently hard at work with the design of TESS' observatory.

Up until now, the only planets outside of our solar system that we've successfully detected are way bigger than earth. This is because most satellites detect planets by observing the pull their gravity exerts on the stars they orbit, so it's easier to find large planets orbiting close to their stars. TESS does things a little bit differently: it'll search for planets by measuring the amount of starlight it obscures, allowing astronomers to see a lot more planets of different calibers all at once. Examining the spectrum of a planet's star as it passes through its planet's atmosphere also lets researchers gauge the planet's size, temperature, and atmospheric chemistry much more accurately.

If all goes as planned, TESS could launch in 2012, and we could be making friends with aliens by 2013. Image by Tess Team

MIT aims to search for Earth-like planets with Google's help [MIT News]

Blown Glass Spaceships Scatter Seeds to the Stars

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:00:54 PDT

Made of glass and recycled metals, these spaceships look like they were torn from the pages of rocket magazines in the 1930s. They're the battered but delicate stars of Rik Allen's show "Innersphere" at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, which runs through April 27. Allen, a master glass blower, said he wanted to pay homage to the science fiction he loved as a kid. Here are another two of his pieces, below.

Allen added that the pieces are supposed to look like they might have lightning powering them, and that the yellow globes inside the rocket on the right are seeds that the ship is taking to spread life among the stars.

Rik Allen [Traver Gallery] (Thanks, Nick C!)

Buy the Pen That Helped Save The Apollo 11 Space Mission

Lynn Peril — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:30:28 PDT

Engineered by Paul Fisher in 1965, the Space Pen's sealed, pressurized cartridge allowed ink to flow to its roller ball at any angle or in zero gravity. Astronauts carried Fisher's AG-7 Space Pen with them starting with Apollo 7 in 1968. In 1969, the AG-7 was on board when Buzz Aldrin used a pen to activate a broken circuit breaker that helped control the main engines for lifting off the moon's surface. American consumers in the grip of space fever could buy the pen that wrote upside down for $3.95 (about $22.00 today), an excellent deal given its advertised 100-year shelf life. Today, that promise is gone and the pen costs $30.00, perhaps a small price for its place in history. Too bad Buzz Aldrin later described the heroic pen as "felt-tipped."