Mars

The search for life on other worlds can be boiled down to a simple maxim: Follow the water. Life, at least the carbonaceous form we are familiar with, loves water. For the first time, NASA is about to land a spacecraft in a place on another planet where scientists are confident that water exists. The Phoenix lander is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral early tomorrow for a journey to near the Martian north pole. Once there, it will extend a 7-foot-long robotic arm to dig to a layer of ice thought to lie just beneath the surface.

December arrives today. The daylight is fading, but Mars brightens each evening in the northeast. Average daily highs slip from 51 degrees to 42. The records are 77 degrees (1998) and minus-3 (1880). The average snow total at BWI is just 1.7 inches, and four of the last 10 Decembers yielded just a trace, or none. But more than 9 inches fell in 2002 and 2003. The winter solstice occurs early on the 22nd. The moon is full, and Mars is at its brightest, on Christmas Eve.

1992: "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus"1994: Million-plus minivans sold in U.S.1998: FDA approves Viagra

Scientists at Brown University said yesterday that they had found tantalizing evidence that the northern lowlands of Mars once bore a wide ocean that, until it dried up, had waves, hidden depths and long beaches.The findings, reported in today's issue of the journal Science, were hailed for making the best case yet for the existence of a sea on primordial Mars. Although the findings bore no direct evidence of alien life on the planet, the large amounts of water would indicate that life might once have thrived.

Meet Vince CarterVince Carter of the Toronto Raptors is a gravity-defying sensation. Vince draws ooohhhs from fans and opponents because of the way he flies above the rim and slams the ball through the hoop.Vince had an amazing rookie season in 1998. He led his team in scoring (18.3 points per game) and field goal percentage (45 percent). He was voted Rookie of the Year by a landslide.Vince loves to soar and score. He is continuing his high-flying heroics in the 1999 season. Vince is averaging 23.3 points per game and is leading his team in scoring and steals.

LOS ANGELES -- In the 21st century Earth people may send manned expeditions to Mars. After all, we made it to the moon in this century so, obviously, Mars is next. Then, after Mars is ours, we soar into distant space, cavorting among alien worlds like bold freebooters of old. Right?"Wrong," says Don Kephart. "We have been bedazzled by science fiction and Hollywood fantasy. A manned safari even to our nearest star is at least 1,000 times more complex and difficult than going to Mars, and even Mars is no pushover -- we will be lucky if we get there in the 21st century."

SCENE 1: A brutally cold, red-desert planet rises to our left. The camera pans right, to another world set deep within a suffocating shroud of hot, poisonous clouds.Overhead, an ancient space station drifts across a starry sky. Its three nearly forgotten crewmen struggle to keep their decrepit outpost alive.Suddenly, a laser-like beam of light streaks toward us from a fleet of robot moons that patrol our own turbulent home in the galaxy.Sounds cool, huh? And you don't even have to buy a ticket to "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace."

With the failures of two costly Mars spacecraft still painfully fresh, NASA is gearing up to tackle two more chancy missions. And this time the glare of public scrutiny will shift from NASA's Mars teams in California to Maryland.At the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, scientists are waiting out more delays in a space shuttle mission to replace failed gyroscopes that have idled the Hubble orbiting observatory. "I think we're aware we need to do well. NASA needs a winner," said the institute's director, Steven V. W. Beckwith.

The planet Mars assumes a new prominence in the evening sky this month.On Sunday, Mars passed its closest approach to the Earth since 1990 -- 54 million miles. It appears as a bright, yellow-orange "star" about 25 degrees above the eastern horizon an hour or two after sunset. It will be prominent, but fading all month.Such close passes occur every 26 months as the Earth passes between the sun and the red planet.A closer encounter with Mars is slated for 2003.

From a musical instrument store with a performance stage to a fabric store where skilled employees help customers make their own creations, retailers hoping to set the next trend in category-killer superstores are rushing to build throughout the Baltimore region.The new round of stores, all attempts to come up with new superstore categories, shares a common goal with forerunners such as Office Depot and Toys R Us: to shake up the more traditional competition with lower prices, a wider selection, and increasingly, blends of shopping and entertainment that add up to much more than just a trip to the store.

Ever wake up and wish you could just stay in bed and still get paid? This may be your best shot. NASA scientists are looking for 34 people (including 10 women) willing to spend 60 days in bed for science - and $13,800. And they do mean STAY in bed. Subjects must spend every minute of those two months in a bed, with the head tilted down 6 degrees. You can have your laptop, books, visitors and TV. But you'll have to eat, sleep, shower and give, um, "specimens" as required, all lying down.

Baltimore area grocer Mars Super Markets has agreed to pay $275,000 and change its hiring practices to settle a sex discrimination lawsuit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Tuesday. In a class action suit filed last September, the federal agency accused the 16-store chain of discriminating by failing to hire women as meat cutters. Mars refused to hire part-time deli clerk Gail Brown as an apprentice meat cutter at its Wise Avenue store because she is a woman, the lawsuit said.

Mars? We have enough problems at home American narcissism has no limits. When the government has a deficit so staggering that the human mind has trouble wrapping itself around the amount, and when the homelessness, joblessness and hunger in this country are reaching record proportions, to propose that we increase that deficit to send men to Mars and ignore these and other dire problems is narcissistic insanity that only the delusional can embrace ("Destination...

When Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar lander and became the first human to set foot on the surface of the moon 40 years ago this week, it was, as he announced, "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." In those heady times it was widely assumed humanity had arrived on the verge of a new era of space exploration that would shortly lead travelers to Mars and beyond. That did not happen, however: The race to the moon, which grew out of the Cold War military competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, had outlived its political usefulness by the time of the last Apollo landing in 1972.

NASA recently snatched headlines with the news of Charles Bolden's nomination as NASA's new administrator and the Atlantis shuttle crew's final upgrade of the Hubble telescope. Next, there will be numerous TV documentaries as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of man's first moon landing on July 20. Yet the news for NASA now is a pale comparison to 1969, when two Americans first stepped on the moon. Forty years later, we have to ask: What happened to man and woman on Mars and Venus? By now we thought we'd even be on the outer reaches of the solar system, to Pluto.

Wiretaps limited only inside U.S., court rules WASHINGTON: The government does not need a search warrant when it taps the phones or checks the e-mails of suspected terrorists who are outside the U.S., even if Americans might be overheard on these calls, a special intelligence court ruled in an opinion released yesterday. The decision confirms what Bush administration officials and some legal experts have long said: While the Constitution protects privacy rights of Americans against "unreasonable searches and seizures," this principle does not bar U.S. spy agencies from conducting surveillance aimed at foreign targets abroad.

Awards * Mars Supermarkets of Maryland received a 2008 Telethon Incentive Award from the Muscular Dystrophy Association for its support of the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon. * The Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation announced that Annapolis-based Frank Gumpert Printing was the winner of the 2008 Premier Print Awards competition. New business * Jason Scheimreif, a disabled Air Force Veteran, has started TALON Office Products. The new company, headquartered on Cromwell Park Drive in Glen Burnie, will service federal government and private industry offices nationwide.

A satellite orbiting Mars has found widespread deposits of clay - mineralogical evidence that very early in its history, the red planet was a watery place with broad lakes and flowing rivers. While the findings provide no direct evidence that life ever thrived in those Martian waters, clay on Earth is very good at preserving traces of organic matter. The deposits identified and mapped by a Maryland-built instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are already influencing the selection of landing sites for the space agency's next Mars lander, which will search for evidence of past or present life.

When it lands tomorrow, NASA's Phoenix spacecraft will begin three months of digging in the Martian soil, looking for clues that might tell whether the Red Planet has ever seen oceans, rivers or even microbial life. But first, Phoenix will have to survive a nerve-racking seven-minute descent that begins with a 12,000-mph plunge through the Martian atmosphere and ends with a three-point landing that will require 26 separate mechanical steps, including release of a parachute, jettisoning of a heat shield and the firing of thrusters to slow down the craft.

If the clouds part enough this evening to reveal some stars, Marylanders can watch as the moon drifts past Mars in the western sky. Go out about 10 p.m., and you'll see the near-first-quarter moon almost halfway up the sky. The steady, faintly reddish "star" to its lower right is Mars, where NASA's Phoenix spacecraft will land May 25 in a search for water ice in the Martian arctic. To Mars' right are the twin bright stars of Gemini-Pollux and Castor.