Looking for Life on Mars

Published: 2007 - March/April, Dossier

The Italian Space Agency is the pride of Made in Italy research. Thanks to a strong collaboration with NASA, ISA is working fervently on preparations for a new mission August 26, with the Italian astronaut Paolo Angelo Nespoli on board, one of a team of seven on an eleven-day flight toward the International Space Station.
Illustrating the nature of the mission and the Agency’s future objectives is Simonetta Di Pippo, director of the Observation of the Universe office who has recently been appointed as head coordinator of Italian involvement in the shuttle mission, to take off this coming summer.

Doctor Di Pippo, what are the objectives of this mission?

 “The shuttle mission’s objective is assembly of the orbiting space station, given that a fundamental element, Nodo 2, will be carried on board. Nodo 2 is an interconnecting element, a pressurized module to be attached to the station to then connect other elements. Sort of an enormous cylinder the size of a small bus, the module was built in the ex-Alenia facilities, now Alcatel Alenia Space Italia (Finmeccanica Group – AB) of Turin, as an integral part of the instrumentation to be used for space exploration.”

Will this mission again see Italy involved in a project of international importance?

“Certainly beyond the fact that this August mission has a strong Italian connection, ISA participates in the International Space Station via ESA (European Space Agency) and a bilateral agreement with NASA. Italy is the third country, after Russia and the U.S., to launch a module directed toward the ISS. Thus we have a principal role, and Nodo 2, as I mentioned, constitutes a key element in the space station’s extension system.”

Let’s go back to the shuttle mission with Italian astronaut Nespoli on board: could you give us a breakdown of his work in orbit?

“This is considered one of the most difficult missions in terms of complexity. To clarify, Node 2 represents a further extension of space station construction which happens, specifically, module after module via successive interconnections. Without Node 2 the European module, that is, Columbus, or even the Japanese module, Kibo, cannot hook up.”

Where does this Italian leadership in space come from?

“The Italian Space Agency boasts a long tradition in the pressurized module sector but also in solar system exploration. As we speak, we are obtaining important scientific results thanks to the Cassini-Huygens space mission developed in collaboration between NASA, ESA and ISA. This project studies Saturn, its system of rings and its moons. It’s a trilateral mission in which the Italian contribution is also fundamental from the engineering point of view. In particular, we Italians have provided the four-meter communications antenna and cooperated in the development of several key on-board systems.”

Not only Saturn, but your projects always include the moon. At which point are we with lunar discoveries?

“There are three principal threads. One is studying the moon, to understand it better from a scientific point of view. The second study is dedicated to the science of the moon. Considering the moon, therefore, as an observatory in space for astrophysics and cosmology activities. To give you an example, we could place a big telescope on the moon to carry out observations. The third is dedicated to observing Earth from the moon. In this specific case, we’re evaluating the scientific use of the moon as an observation platform for our planet. Based on these scientific results, combined with technological studies we’re conducting, the Agency will produce a sort of “road map” by the end of 2007, which the leaders of ISA will use to select future missions. This is a very interesting program and we are already receiving numerous expressions of interest from other European countries, for example Great Britain and Germany, asking to discuss a possible collaboration, but the U.S., China and Japan have also expressed interest.”

The world is also watching Mars and the discoveries that could come from it. What is ISA’s involvement with respect to the “red planet”?

“ISA is present in a significant way in Mars exploration for ESA via Mars Express, and we are making many interesting discoveries. With our instrumentation we have identified methane levels in the atmosphere and to this discovery can presumably be linked the presence of ice on the first layers of the surface. One of the main open problems of Mars is trying to understand if in the past there has ever been water in liquid form on the surface. If the answer is yes, we could define Mars as much more similar to Earth than we have thought up until now, seeing that the images that we’re obtaining at the moment appear to show a rather arid planet. From our studies, instead, it is becoming more and more evident that there has been water present in the past and that water still exists, probably captured within the first surface layers. For this reason we have developed, as an Agency, an all-Italian strategy looking for water on Mars via the development of subsurface radar which penetrates the first layers of the Martian cap. The first of these radars, called Marsis, has boarded Mars Express, the ESA mission launched in 2003, and is able to perforate the surface up to 5 kilometers in depth. The system was developed in collaboration with NASA. On the basis of preliminary results, we have been able to develop a second radar which performs with better analytical precision. This second recording device was placed on board in an entirely American mission that flew on August 12, 2005, arriving in September close to Mars. This second radar allowed us, for example, to understand already how much water ice, to distinguish from dry ice, is present at the Martian poles. So, we have already in a very few weeks been able to solve a problem that has interested scientists for a long time, that is, beginning to understand the quantity of water ice present on the planet.”

And which other conclusions have you reached from the analyses of the surface of Mars?

“For example, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere. We have measured higher concentrations in some areas of Mars and studied it via an Italian instrument on board Mars Express (the PFS). To explain: methane tends to become uniform in the Martian atmosphere within 400 years; if there are different concentrations from one area to another it means that it hasn’t made itself uniform yet and that the production of methane is recent, that is, it cannot belong to many thousands of years ago but is traceable back to more recent years.”

What does this mean?

“That there is a relationship between the presence of methane in some areas and the presence of water that could even lead to the discovery of life forms. This is a qualified statement, because it would depend on sources of methane production that we are not yet aware of. One of the possibilities is the existence of life forms potentially different from how we are used to imagining them.”

While waiting to understand more about life forms on Mars, what are ISA’s next missions?

“A mission to Jupiter, called JNO, should take off in 2011 with the goal of understanding how the planet was born and formed, an initiative that, combined with the information we are obtaining from the Cassini-Huygens mission on Saturn, will help us understand better the origins of the solar system. Because the theory that Jupiter and Saturn are the two gigantic planets that formed first is gaining more and more credit in the scientific community.”