Monday, August 27, 2007

Planetary Analogs

Planetary Analogs


Stars Above, Earth Below: Follow Tyler Nordgren's year-long adventure exploring America's National Parks
No place on Earth is a perfect match for any other place in the solar system, most importantly because life on Earth has been found in (and even below) practically every environment. But many partial analogs do exist on our planet where environmental conditions, geologic features, biological attributes, or combinations thereof offer opportunities for comparisons with possible counterparts in the solar system and may offer insight into the evolution of both our world and of other planets as well.

Antarctica is the coldest and driest continent on our planet and is of unique value to Mars analog studies. The Arctic is wetter, but with Haughton Crater, the Arctic's Devon Island offers the only terrestrial impact structure known to lie in a cold, relatively dry, windy, rocky, dusty, ultraviolet (UV) light-drenched (in the summer), and nearly unvegetated polar desert. In 2002, The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla traveled to Haughton Crater as part of a team from NASA Ames Research Center, and she reported what it was like to work in the Canadian high Arctic in the Devon Diaries.

The Canadian high Arctic is also the setting for the unique sulfur springs of Borup Fiord Pass, whose chemistry and glaciology offer parallels to the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. In 2006, The Planetary Society helped fund an expedition to study these springs as a Europa analog site. You can read reports from the 2006 Borup Fiord Expedition here.

In August 2006, The Planetary Society participated in yet another exciting arctic expedition: the Arctic Mars Analogue Svalbard Expedition. We joined forces with a consortium of scientists led by the Carnegie Institution of Washington to test how well spacesuits can protect both the astronauts who wear them and the distant worlds they may explore.

And, in July 2007, The Planetary Society launched Stars Above, Earth Below with astronomer and physics professor Tyler Nordgren, who will journey across the American landscape, visiting twelve National parks in twelve months. From the icy grandeur of Denali National Park to the thermal pools of Yellowstone to the red rocks and steep-walled canyons of Bryce Canyon, he'll examine the themes that link the parks to other landscapes in the solar system. We'll be following Tyler's adventures throughout the year-long journey.
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