Planetary

For "The Koppel Report: News From Earth" to have ignored the primary source of planetary despair--human overpopulation--is mind-boggling and irresponsible. SuSu Levy, Encino

Don't cut planetary science funding, members of Congress urged NASA on Friday. In a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), urged the space agency to maintain funding levels for missions to Mars and the outer planets that were allocated by Congress this spring -- and not to react to budget pressures by making disproportionate cuts to the science budget. "While we fully understand that the funding levels ... are subject to change to reflect across-the-board and sequester cuts, we expect that the balance among programs will remain consistent with the structure directed by Congress," they wrote.

Peter M. Goldreich of Caltech is one of eight scientists to receive this year's National Medal of Science. Goldreich was praised for "his profound and lasting contributions to planetary sciences and astrophysics, providing fundamental theoretical insights for understanding the rotation of planets, the dynamics of planetary rings, pulsars, astrophysical masers, the spiral arms of galaxies and the oscillations of the sun." Other winners include Roger Shepard of Stanford University, Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado, Hans Dehmelt of the University of Washington, Hermann Haus and Alexander Rich of MIT, Isabella Karle of the Naval Research Laboratory and Louis Nirenberg of New York University.

WATERTON CANYON, Colo. - The concrete-floored room looks, at first glance, like little more than a garage. There is a red tool chest, its drawers labeled: "Hacksaws. " "Allen wrenches. " There are stepladders and vise grips. There is also, at one end of the room, a half-built spaceship, and everyone is wearing toe-to-fingertip protective suits. "Don't. Touch. Anything. " Bruce Jakosky says the words politely but tautly, like a protective father - which, effectively, he is. Jakosky is the principal investigator behind NASA's next mission to Mars, putting him in the vanguard of an arcane niche of science: planetary protection - the science of exploring space without messing it up. PHOTOS: Stunning images of Earth at night As NASA pursues the search for life in the solar system, the cleanliness of robotic explorers is crucial to avoid contaminating other worlds.

Thanks to Mary S. Rauch for her delightful tribute to Henry Ford's incomparable Model T ("The Model That Suited America's Auto Tastes to a T," Other Views, May 31). I have always regretted my failure to buy an excellent T roadster for $35 back in 1946, fearing that I would be unable to master its unorthodox "planetary" transmission. In addition to being the subject of endless levity, the tin lizzie spawned a plethora of lore and legend. When the planetary forward bands began to wear out, knowledgeable owners would brake with the reverse band until the entire transmission gave up the ghost and could be replaced as a unit.

Media reports of El Nino lack the one, most critical component--its cause, global warming. Treated as a weather story, we are deprived of the awareness that those who insist on selling us every last drop of oil on the planet are culpable in the various disasters global warming is expected to produce. Our president has responded by helping to move more manufacturing jobs to the Third World, where his proposals would allow greater production of greenhouse gases. Local leaders tell us to prepare, but nowhere do I hear politicians address the real problem; our planetary life-support system is being destroyed in the quest for profits.

I have yet to hear an intellectually persuasive argument supporting the United States' militaristic, non-negotiating posture. Why couldn't we accept the fact that Saddam Hussein got Kuwait (in the same way that we "got" much of our land) and that he will not give it up for nothing? Some of our best friends are murderous megalomaniacs, and our adoption of a posture of moral superiority reflects a capacity for hypocrisy that sends chills down my spine. May no more die, and may our planetary nervous system, the mass media, carry the message of those who have come out with unprecedented numbers and speed and who feel the need to scream to make themselves heard over the quiet aggression of the "suits."

Speaking of the 2,500 American "detainees," President Bush said, "Anything that compels individuals to do something against their will would, of course, concern me." I have to laugh and then cry. It never seems to bother Bush when he wants to compel several million women to be "detained" by a fetus. If we had a sane planetary population policy, we would not need to be in the Persian Gulf. What we are watching is the start of the real wars, not for politics or ideology, but for real things--food and energy, natural resources and living space.

The scientific discovery that the universe is continuing to "bang" outward gives artists the fits just like every other mortal who senses his own demise as more than just an abstraction. "Unstable Universe," a current group show, addresses that abstraction and gives it a vivid pictorial grounding. The exhibit uses paintings by several artists to create a kind of cosmic womb-to-tomb experience. To walk around the gallery is to snatch a series of ideas that leap time and space in carefully choreographed rapid bounds.

When Neil Armstrong stepped on the lunar surface and announced, "We came in peace for all mankind," it marked a fundamental break with the long history of human exploration. From the great Age of Discovery forward, men had claimed territories previously unknown for their guilds, companies and nations. The race to the moon was born of the brutal competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for preeminence in every field of endeavor, but the moment of victory transformed America's vision of its heroic triumph.

What should the future of our space program be? The National Research Council had unpleasant medicine for NASA in its just-released report on the vision and direction of the agency. A panel of 12 independent experts concluded, among other things, that the program lacks clear direction from the White House and Congress about what its goals should be, and that NASA cannot do everything it aims to without more money. More cash is an unlikely prospect in the current economic climate, the panel also said.

A new theory is pouring some cold - actually, some really hot - water on the idea that Mars could have been habitable in the past. Planetary scientists searching the Red Planet for places that could have contained the building blocks for life look for clues in clays, which can offer some indication that water must have flowed on or just under Mars' surface. But a new study suggests that, at least in some cases, those clays might be a red herring. A paper published online Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience argues that such clays might have been formed in hot Martian magma rich in water.

Bake sales at high schools to raise money for trips to Washington, D.C., football uniforms, art supplies and the like are commonplace in these tough budgetary times. But a bake sale for NASA planetary science? On Saturday, scientists from Caltech and UCLA will be out in force at La Canada High School, with chocolate chip cookies and brownies on hand, as part of a nationwide Planetary Bake Sale that is intended to raise awareness of proposed cuts to the NASA science budget.

A group of 21st-century private space entrepreneurs is expected to unveil an ambitious new venture to mine the surface of near-Earth asteroids in search of precious metals and rare metallic elements. The plan may seem like it was torn from a science fiction novel, and critics say the idea may be far-fetched and difficult for a small company to accomplish. But the company, Planetary Resources Inc., has already drawn an A-list of investors and advisors. The backers include Google Inc. Chief Executive Larry Page and Chairman Eric Schmidt, "Avatar" director James Cameron and Microsoft Corp.'s former chief software architect Charles Simonyi.

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tucked into the hills above Los Angeles, these are heady days: The robot dubbed Curiosity is hurtling toward Mars and is expected to put scientists on their strongest footing yet to determine whether the Red Planet is or ever has been hospitable to life. More than 1,000 of JPL's scientists, engineers and technicians — a full fifth of the lab's workforce — have put in time on the mission. But a dark development has tempered the euphoria. President Obama's $17.7-billion budget request for NASA for the 2013 fiscal year includes a $300-million cut to planetary science, the very work JPL specializes in. That could mean a 20% reduction in NASA's planetary science budget and, at JPL, job losses in the hundreds.

Lean financial times are prompting belt-tightening far and wide — and now that extends to Mars and the rest of the solar system. President Obama's proposed budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for fiscal year 2013 would eliminate $300 million from the agency's planetary sciences division, a 20% cut from the $1.5 billion it received for 2012. Though the budget plan, released this week, would preserve funding for high-profile projects like the James Webb Space Telescope and manned space missions, scientists were alarmed by the size of the hit to relatively inexpensive programs that explore the solar system with high-tech robots.

Planet-hunting scientists were dealt a major blow Wednesday when NASA officials announced that a crucial wheel on the Kepler space telescope had ceased to function and that the craft had been placed in safe mode. Even as NASA officials raised the possibility that they could get the telescope back up and running, scientists began mourning the potential loss of a spacecraft that they said had fundamentally altered our understanding of alien planets in the Milky Way - and Earth's place in an increasingly crowded galaxy.

The New West Symphony will present its season premiere concerts this weekend in Thousand Oaks and Oxnard, featuring Holst's "The Planets." Gordon Cooper, one of the original team of seven U.S. astronauts, will serve as presenter and narrator of a one-hour space documentary, with live orchestral accompaniment and high-resolution images of the planets and special-effects computer animation. Also on the program, Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" and his cello concerto.

Scientists have confirmed the existence of two Earth-sized, rocky planets orbiting a star called Kepler-20, 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. The planets are the smallest ever confirmed orbiting a sun-like star, and their discovery, reported Tuesday, is an important milestone for NASA's Kepler mission, which faces the technically daunting task of finding small, Earth-like worlds in faraway solar systems that may — or may not — have been able to sustain life in the past.

How I Killed Pluto And Why It Had It Coming Mike Brown Spiegel & Grau: 267 pp., $25 Moon A Brief History Bernd Brunner Yale University Press: 290 pp., $25 Pluto. Poor little guy. He never wanted much. The others could be bigger, they could be better-looking or brag about themselves ("I'm burning hot!" or "I have rings!" or "I support life!"). He didn't care. All he wanted was to be part of the planet club. And for about 75 years, that tiny frozen world billions of miles from the sun was a card-carrying member.