Moon lights the way for Santa tonight

The first full moon on Christmas Eve since 1977

The next such event is not until 2034

MERRY

CHRISTMAS

from The Intrepid Reporter 

Is there life on Mars?

 Image credit: NASA

PUSHING the boundaries... no, it's not another Olympics blog post, although it cannot be denied that the likes of Usain Bolt did exactly that at London 2012.

But, among other bits of news you may have missed while the great Olympic jamboree was on, NASA has successfully landed an extraordinary craft on Mars.

Curiosity is its name. It is a rather apt name, too - for, sometimes, great discoveries have only been made as a result of curious beings.

It is refreshing that humankind remains curious to know the extent to which the boundaries of our endeavour can be pushed.

After all, three years ago - on the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing - I wrote a piece in which the last man on the lunar surface Eugene Cernan lamented a perceived lack of progress in the sphere of space exploration. 

I also wrote: "It would undoubtedly be [an] attractive proposition to see another space race, say between the United States and budding fellow superpower China, to land the first man or woman on Mars. Much more attractive, for instance, than stockpiling nuclear arms."

But, instead, there was talk earlier this year of US government funding being slashed. Basically, NASA had to get this right.

Consequently, there was huge relief at 06:32 BST on Monday 6 August when mission control in Pasadena, California heard the two vital words: "Touchdown confirmed."

There were wild celebrations and, at the press conference which followed, NASA administrator Charles Bolden gave a hearty victory speech.

He said: "Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover in history, is now on the surface of the Red Planet where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed there... or if the planet can sustain life in the future." 

The jubilant reaction of the science world was entirely justified: this was a really tough mission which would effectively succeed or fail in what NASA called "seven minutes of terror".

Seven minutes was the length of time which it took the rover - encased inside a protective capsule - from entering the atmosphere of Mars to landing on the surface of the planet.

In this time, its velocity reduced from over 20,000km/h to less than one metre per second and, as the capsule slowed, cords lowered Curiosity gently to the ground.

Curiosity defied the odds. Roughly two-thirds of all spacecraft destined for Mars have failed without completing their missions and US President Barack Obama was a relieved figure at hearing of the success of the landing.

Indeed, his tone was positively encouraging in light of the aforementioned budget cuts.

He said: "Really what makes us best as a species is this curiosity that we have and this yearning to discover more and more, and to push the boundaries of knowledge, and you are a perfect example of that."

Mr Obama added that the team was "laying the groundwork for an even more audacious undertaking in the future, and that is a human mission to the red planet".

But who knows exactly when it will happen? I rather hope it will be before the end of my lifetime.

Certainly, until it does happen, there will remain an insatiable fascination among humankind with our  red-coloured neighbour in the solar system... it will not go away before we do.

*The progress of Curiosity on Mars - can be followed on the NASA Mars homepage or on the rover's very own regularly updated Twitter page @MarsCuriosity.

---

Meanwhile, on Tyneside, the landing of Curiosity on Mars has coincided with a major art installation at the historic Grade II-listed Spanish City building in Whitley Bay.

Canadian artist Kelly Richardson's Mariner 9 is a 20-minute long, 12-metre wide panoramic video wall depicting the landscape of the red planet in a century or two.

Scattered across Richardson's landscape are spacecraft from both real and imagined future missions. Now little more than rusting remains, some are still half-working, still forlornly trying to find signs of life and send messages back to Earth, possibly to no-one.

The artist, now based in North Tyneside, explains: "Mariner 9 alludes to our relationship to landscape and nature at a particularly critical time in human history, as we face a future which is predicted to bring about environmental disaster on a grand scale.

"It focuses on the contradiction of our beautiful endeavour to find life beyond Earth, to know that we're not alone in the universe, while simultaneously pointing to our incredibly destructive nature as a species, which continues to destroy life we know to exist at an extraordinary rate."

Admission is free and the exhibition runs until Sunday - further information can be found here.

25 years on, Chernobyl continues to cast its shadow

UKRAINE President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday commemorated the 25th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident alongside his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

The Chernobyl disaster occurred when an explosion and a fire at one of the plant's reactors sent a plume of radiation across Europe, potentially causing the deaths of thousands of people.

Of course, the anniversary is all the more poignant after last month's earthquake and tsunami at the Fukushima plant in Japan became only the second level seven event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

Chernobyl was the first and, even now, its effect still lingers in social attitudes towards nuclear power.

'Nuclear' is perhaps the dirtiest word in science. The first widespread use of the word referred to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent arms race in the Cold War between the USA and USSR.

Even when scientists attempted to use nuclear fission for peaceful means, as an alternative to fossil fuels to create power, a series of accidents meant it could not shrug off its poor reputation.

It is no coincidence that the creators of The Simpsons decided to employ their bumbling protagonist Homer as an operator at the local plant. No one demonstrates the risk of leaving nuclear power in human hands better than him.

Now, the stricken Fukushima plant has brought the debate over nuclear power back to the forefront.

In France, which is hugely reliant on nuclear power for its electricity production, a poll after the Fukushima accident found that 57% of the respondents were opposed to its use.

And, in Germany, public opinion was even more strongly against and a reported quarter of a million marched under the slogan "Heed Fukushima - shut off all nuclear plants".

Surprisingly, the German government under Chancellor Angela Merkel partly heeded the call of the protesters by shutting down all seven of the reactors opened before 1981, leaving just 10 open.

But many scientists fear that the incident at the Fukushima plant was badly reported and that news organisations acted as scaremongers by preying on the reputation of nuclear power.

Certainly, here in the UK, it was noticeable how quickly the story moved away from the devastating earthquake and tsunami, and towards the seemingly impending atomic doom.

Indeed, at times, it seemed as if the BBC and Sky had completely forgotten that it was the magnitude-9.0 quake and tsunami which has killed more than 10,000 people - and not radiation from the nuclear power plant which has so far killed no one.

Thankfully, retrospective views have been less reactionary and this BBC website page suggests that, though Chernobyl and Fukushima were both rated as level seven accidents, the leak in 1986 was much worse.

The truth is that if the UK is going to reduce its carbon footprint in line with international targets, then a greater use of nuclear power must be part of the solution in the medium-term at least.

It is an uncomfortable truth for some, and other people or groups who are more stridently opposed will undoubtedly continue to bury their heads in the sand and not accept it.

But, as the Independent newspaper reported in 2009, even some leading environmental figures have performed U-turns by recognising nuclear power as the way to reduce carbon emissions.

That was pre-Fukushima, of course - but it is difficult to see how the events in Japan have made the argument in favour of nuclear power weaker.

The fact is that, despite one of the strongest earthquakes ever and an tsunami which breached the 18ft concrete wall defences, the amounts of radioactive materials released from the site are unlikely to cause any detectable long-term health problems.

Thankfully, the UK is not on a major fault line caused by the shifting tectonic plates and new technology actually means that reactors can shutdown and cool themselves without power or human intervention.

Dealing with nuclear waste is, admittedly, a contentious issue as it is normally buried deep underground and can remain dangerous for millions of years.

However, scientists are constantly looking at ways of avoiding this and it is now accepted that far more used nuclear fuel should be reprocessed to be re-used.

It seems to me that a greater number of nuclear plants would go a long way to easing Britain's energy concerns and carbon footprint.

And so it is unfortunate and actually unhelpful that the bad reputation of nuclear power precedes it and the Chernobyl scars still run so deep.

A Moon landing event for a new generation

In just a few hours from now, at 3:56 BST to be precise, it will be exactly 40 years since Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon.

It was a truly wondrous moment that is now etched in history.

This greatest achievement of mankind came courtesy of Mr Armstrong with his fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin, who was second on the Moon, and Michael Collins, who remained in the Apollo 11 craft.

Back on earth, it was a brilliant piece of living history followed by 450 million people out of a total world population of 3.6 billion.

In fact, many of those people - especially Americans - had been following the mission well before it launched.

They had been promised that man would be on the Moon "before this decade is out" back in May 1961 by President John F Kennedy.

Stung by the Soviet success in April '61 when Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, the Americans became obsessed with landing a man on the Moon.

But it was a good obsession and the rivalry with the Soviets in the space race, at the height of Cold War troubles, was entirely progressive.

Mr Armstrong said today: "It was the ultimate peaceful competition: USA vs USSR.

"I'll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, nevertheless it was a diversion.

"Eventually, it provided a mechanism for engendering co-operation between former adversaries. In that sense, among others, it was an exceptional national investment for both sides."

Mr Armstrong was speaking at a rare public reunion of the Apollo 11 crew but it was Mr Aldrin who came up with the more salient point, in my opinion.

"The best way to honour and remember all those who were part of the Apollo programme is to follow in our footsteps; to boldly go again on a new mission of exploration," he said.

Since the lunar landings, and despite huge amounts of investment in NASA, there has been no earth-shattering, jaw-dropping, 'wow' event for this generation.

Politically, of course, there is far less of an onus.

But it would undoubtedly be a much more attractive proposition to see another space race, say between the United States and budding fellow superpower China, to land the first man or woman on Mars.

Much more attractive, for instance, than stockpiling nuclear arms.

I'm not the only one frustrated by the lack of progress. Eugene Cernan, who was the last man to leave the Moon in 1972, said: "My glass has been half empty for three decades at least.

"Hopefully, we can turn that around because what we did then is do-able again."

It may cost a lot of money in these troublesome times but billions of dollars are going to be spent either way.

And even if the program span wildly out of budget, as these things tend do, it would still be worth continuing.

After all, in decades to come, it would probably be seen as a progressive investment.

It's about time we had another historical event in space - another giant leap for mankind - to celebrate.

*For the BBC story on which this blog post was based, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8158519.stm