Some major discoveries will be announced, including:

Titan has an atmosphere
The Hellas and Argyre basins on Mars are of impact origin.
Mars has large volcanos in the Tharsis region.
Mars has two moons.

Mars has mass.

and despite previous evidence to the contrary ESA actually has an orbiter around Mars.

They have also found that Mars is in solar orbit.

Why such negative humor towards them? Admittedly, Helvick's reply is funny, given the paucity of data they release. But to imply the ESA doesn't accomplish real science at Mars seems unfair and overboard.

Quite unsuitable comments, IMHO. Mars Express has been a fantastic mission and made lots of major discoveries which have led to an impressive portfolio of publications, with many more to come.

Jon

You Guys are fricken Hilarious!

I agree. I have as good a sense of humour as anyone, but Mars Express has contributed a lot of good scientific data (uniquely and only from ME in some cases), including the methane confirmation, the fields of volcanic cones in the northern hemisphere which may be relatively young geologically, the "glacier" crater, more evidence for past water flows and MARSIS, to name a few offhand. I'm sure Jon could add to this. Some of their findings relate to "traces of water" as noted in the ESA's press release; in whatever form that takes it is interesting and important. They might be slower in releasing information, but it is usually worth the wait I think. Ok, time for my evening coffee now...

The joke is about ESA's habit of making confirmations of already pretty well established things sound like major discoveries in thier press releases! Not wanting to speak for the jokers, but I'm sure they all agree with your above statement. Mars Express has been a wonderful mission but there PR office is a joke.

Well I thourght it was funny

James

They accomplish great science. But their press releases, such as the one claiming the discovery of ice at the martian poles, are a hoot, and, on a sad side, a real distraction from the great science Mars Express is doing.

There is ice on the Martian Poles???

Nobody ever tells me anything.

Seriously, the ESA is a day or two late on everything - Including providing the most trivial evidence from Huygens - radar profiles, things like that.

Still - They have been billing this as a major announcement for weeks now - So I am going out on a limb and making a prediction:

They have analysed the degeneracies in the Martian gravity mapping from different altitudes, bumped it up against the odd-ball observations from Titan, and concluded Newtonian physics are only good to the first order...

"Why such negative humor towards them? "

Because they announce rediscoveries or discovery-extensions without proper credit toward people who've been working and publishing on that subject for years. A case in point was last springs widely trumpetd announcement of the discovery of few million year old ice-rafted flood deposits at the equator originating from Cerberus Fossae.

While they had new and better data, and an interesting new interpretation that extends suggestions made earlier, for example in an abstract at the 2002 (I think) Lunar and Planetary Science Conference... they didn't credit ANY of the previous work in their announcements and subsequente massive press coverage.

I won't say it's dishonest or unethical, but I will put a word to it: "Sleazy".

Given the significance of these results from both MARSIS and OMEGA, the "jokes" comments about the press copnference posted earlier are revealed for what they are - silly and inane.

Jon

oh jeez, lighten up people.

I disagree. The manner in which ESA decided to release this information showed a lack of respect for the average world citizen who has an interest in the information.

This forum wouldn't serve your purposes very well, Jon, if it was nearly impossible to read. The ESA press conference was nearly impossible to hear or see for American viewers -- and the fault for that rests squarely with ESA.

ESA's attitude *seems* to be, "If you're not a properly accredited scientist, you have no interest in or use for this information, so we're not going to spend any effort making the information available to you."

And I disagree *strongly* with that attitude.

The results are wonderful -- the means by which ESA chose to present those results to the American viewers was lame. The content of the results does not change that.

-the other Doug

This seems to be a common British/European attitude. Look for a Sci/Tech section in the online newspapers, for instance, and you're likely to be disappointed. My experience in England was also that, if you're away from an established university town, it is awfully hard to find a bookstore; of course that was 20 years ago...

Trust me, it isn't just in England that you can't find a decent bookstore outside of a college town or a major city. And this is in late 2005.

It was a press conference intended for the media present at the site. It was NASA's decision to carry that on NASA-TV. I don't believe it was streamed by ESA or available live in Europe, the only way I saw it (being in Europe) was from NASA-TV.

And I don't think it was much worse than the average NASA press conference either.

I think that the PR of Japan is rather different than European. According to the Hayabusa's experience, the Japanese newspaper is very strong (one of the highest newspaper publication per-capite of the world) and is very agressive. The japanese newsman were able to get as much information from Hayabusa mission as soon and publish them to the public. We learned the fresh news from the Matsuura, 5thStar, etc sooner than JAXA/ISAS goverment agency.

The European case, the newspaper does not seems so agressive or interested to obtain the latest news from space missions since it seems that the average European citizen is not so much interested to be get know of the space updates. On the other hand, I think, the american counterpart average citizen is somewhat more interested on space news since the goverment has already made lots of effort in its 40 years of advertaisment on space program mainly due to the during the war race to Moon.

Rodolfo

I hope nobody minds if I add my two cents to this discussion.

Some of you say the technical problems in ESA broadcasting of the news conference were highly disrespectful for people in the USA. And I would like to say that you don't know how lucky you are by actually having access to that information in real time.

I hate to say this, I don't want to hurt nobody's sensibility, but USA is not the only country in the world. And in lots of other countries, access to this kind of information is a lot, an awful lot harder. Here in South America, for example, broadband Internet access is not common yet. Most of the people can't even afford to have dialup on their homes.

So, instead of complaining about this, I would prefer to be thankful for enjoying so much information about both Mars Express and Huygens, even if you can get it a little later. At least you are able to get it!

Ricardo

Forgive me for saying so but that is quite an arrogant statement. If NASA PAO tried the same excuse they would be excoriated (How dare those arrogant Yanks treat us that way!) around the world by people of all nationalities, the vast majority of whom have no direct stake (i.e., tax payers who fund NASA programs). Missions like MER, Cassini, MGS (MOC), etc. make tons of data available to the rest of the world for "free" on the Web, in most cases before the scientists themselves, who collect the data and are responsible for its analysis, get it, and even when the missions are not under any obligation to do so. ESA doesn't even come close to this. If ESA wants to play in the big leagues, then they and their supporters need to grow some thicker skins and learn to deal with criticism.

Valid critcism yes, not the school yard stuff that has been going on.

Jon

I notice you are new to the group. A lot of the criticism has been due to the fact that ESA's press office has often promoted "discoveries" of long-known information, while ignoring the real discoveries Mars Express is making, which is a spectacular scientific probe. My comments were due to long frustration with this. This latest round is of much better quality.

You're exactly right, Ted. Add to that the fact that, as I recall, ME had been in Mars orbit and taking images for *months* and ESA had released all of five images, or somesuch ridiculously small number.

I don't know how European culture reacts to such things, but when someone in America crows over how wonderfully successful his/her project is, but seems very reticent to show their results to the general public, people regard him/her with mistrust. If this is not true in Europe, I imagine this would explain much about how the ESA press department operates.

But... can you *imagine* how much fuel the Moon Hoaxers would have had for their cause had NASA decided to delete the TV cameras from Apollo (something they came very close to doing), not share the live air-to-ground communications of the landing and other mission milestones, and release only five or six pictures from the flight in the first six months after Apollo 11 returned to Earth? And, on top of that, only allowed "qualified scientists" to see results of the analyses of the moon rocks returned?

All I'm saying is that if you treat the results of space exploration as material that can *only* be discussed "properly" in approved scientific journals, if you believe that the *only* worthwhile means of making public the results of such explorations are through abstracts and articles in scientific journals with circulations in the low thousands, then you'll *never* reach the people you really need to reach -- those common folk who are dying inside for want of something that excites their sense of wonder.

I guess it all comes down to one basic question -- are we exploring the Solar System for the professional satisfaction of a few thousand scientists, or for the deep-soul satisfaction of the human race?

I know what *my* answer is.

-the other Doug

other Doug:

There's a way to see the real cost of ESA's PR/outreach failings, and it requires no grand appeal to the manifest destiny of humanity, or whatever. It's simply this: compare the strict scientific results from a NASA/ESA project which has excellent outreach, and and from an ESA/NASA project which suffers from bad outreach. The two projects? Why, SOHO - with an alliance of round-the clock, international, web-based observers, many of whom are amateur and, of course, dear ol' Mars Express, with (none of the above).

OK, I'm grandstanding, but it says something to me that one Mission Director lives at GSFC, and the other at Darmstadt!

As an EU taxpayer, I'm not a happy bunny. I'm glad the USA has got it right (and, to their credit, JAXA!).

Bob Shaw

Rather than griping in a cybernetic vacuum, has anyone addressed these issues directly to someone in charge at the ESA? Despite how it may seem, I am sure they want feedback.

Just what does being "new to the group" have to do with the content of Jon's message? Being "new to the group" doesn't mean squat.

BTW, here is Jon's bio, for your information: http://aca.mq.edu.au/People/jclarke.htm

Actually, being 'new' to this place w.r.t. our lambasting of ESA is a valid point. It's something of an in-joke between the regulars here ( myself included ) that ESA's press efforts are, from time to time, about as accurate as Ford saying they just discovered the wheel. If you arrived here and just read this thread out of the 18 months + of context that our opinion of ESA press releases had - you could get it very wrong. This place has a very active and healthy sense of humour.

Doug

Several us us recently joined this forum from space.com forums. We have lambasted ESA in our fora too, with a similar sense of humor. For example, my running joke is that Andy Warhol colorizes their photos they release to the public (I think they used to do a bad job of distinguishing between false color and realisitc colors in the photos they have released to the media).

The ESA is...ESA. 'Nuff said!

Indeed, my comments about being new to the group were not an attack on anyone - rather, I was bringing up the point that this was a continuation of a previous discussion.

I may be new, but I have been reading here for quite some time and active on other sites. I am well aware of this attitude I am critcising here and it is very widespread.

You say this is all in good humour, but I suggest that at times under this humour is a not too well concealed hostility to ESA. I am not pointing the finger here at anyone in particular, but commenting on a general attitude. A joke may well be a joke, but it can also serve as a cover for less savory things.

People are taking these press release statements far too seriously. They are designed for the general media, most of which probably has forgotten that ME still exists. Those of us who have an attention span and an interest that extends between press releases may be frustrated by this, but they aren't designed for us

NASA press releases are often highly misleading also. How many times are we told that evidence has been found for water on Mars? That a new comet or asteroid mission will unlock the orign of the solar system? That a new telescope will reveal the how the universe formed? How every shuttle mission advances exploration of space? If we are going to mock press releases, let's be consistent and mock all of them.

Jon

I actually don't remember seeing too much ESA bashing there. If I had, I would have roasted it.

Jon

Well, I can only speak for myself, but, if you look at my track record of postings considering ESA, I definitely don't harbor any hostility towards it, save perhaps their press office. I agree that NASA, and any other agency, have their shortcomings in this area, but ESA's have been particularly bad, as, if you have been reading this forum long, has been much to the consternation of just about everyone here. I think it press release hype and distortions (of which NASA is guilty too) coupled with unusually slow release of real results.

They are press officers for goodness sake! What do you expect? The fact this that in this thread (71 posts so far), supposedly about these very significant results, less than half have actually discussed the findings. Almost a third have been snide and silly comments about ESA's press releases.

I find it interesting that you have yet to comment on the findings, and are focusing mainly on attacking the press office. Yet it is the findings that matter, the rest is ephemeral. This does show hostility, IHMO.

So does complaining about the "slow" release of data. This is not the fault of the press office, it is policy. the citicism is unjustified. Since when does raw data releases every 6 months count as slow? Since when does more than 20 major publications and over 100 conference abstracts in two years count as slow?

I suggest we consider the subject closed and focus on science, not trivia. And next time, we should all show some more respect to the hard work that has gone into these and all other missions.

Jon

Raw data is released every 6 months. It is relatively very slow. Improve the policy for that. It is one of the most complained of points of ESA's PR. What are the reasons for releasing these data after a so long time?
The rest sounds fine but I am not aware of these new major publications and conference abstracts. Maybe it is of my blame since I didn't search well for these new novelties.

Rodolfo

It is hard to focus on science, when so little that is science or hard engineering, has been released. I'm working on health management packages for future flights, and I would like to know how the instruments preformed: What types of sensors performed as expected, and which ones are suspect?

The batteries clearly out-lived expectations, is this because they outperformed prototypes, or was the probe warmer-than-expected during the descent? Is there lag time in the sensors relative to the clock times? Why are the radar charts so muddled?

When is the report on the channel A screw-up going to be released? Do you have any recommendations we can build into our systems that will prevent these types of events in the future?

Time is money, this was a joint venture: Those of us who built the systems that got Huygens there would like to know what-and-how we can improve on the systems we are designing and proposing today. For months it was evident Huygens teams were not even sharing data with each other. Seesh!

I think the partly validly, partly invalidly described "ESA Bashing" can mostly be resolved into two things: General Press Office bashing and general bashing of a perceived combination of amateurishness, bureaucratization, and euro-scientific-establishment-elitism.

Press office bashing is nothing new. For two or more decades, I've grumbled that a fair fraction of the people in press offices simply wouldn't be able to hack it outside of (what are perceived to be) protected civil service positions. I have recurring (mostly silent) screaming fits at the terminal incompetence of whoever is in charge of the NASA TV schedule postings. Sometimes events that have been known to be scheduled have had their actual broadcast scheduled the morning of the day of the event. I've suspected sometimes the schedule was posted after it happened. As of yesterday, they have coverage of a February spacewalk posted, but not the prelaunch events for the New Horizons mission launch. Somewhere, somebody MUST know what programs are queued for the overnight Gallery showings on NASA TV, but do they deign to give us that information? Nah...

The other bashing of amateurishness etc, is more specifically pointed at ESA and it's sometimes bumbling and lame public presentation. There was abundant conversation here about the amateurish handling of the Huygens coverage. The same applies to the recent briefing. Even if it had been broadcast in HiDef instead of horribly low-bandwidth webcam video, it was amateurish, even though the science was spectacular.

Bureaucratization: Has anybody here tried to listen to the pompous organizationally-self-congratulating speaches by the program officials at the beginning of these briefings and events? Has anybody here been able to read any of the ESA planning documents that regularly show up on SpaceRef? The levels of high-minded generalities and windy blather are beyond stupefying. When you've finished reading one of those documents, you know what they were talking about, but they've said nothing that contains any information!

Complaints of intellectual elitism are widespread and there are constant reports in Science magazine of calls for reform in the German, French, Italian and other scientific establishments. I cannot vouch for it in person, but you somtimes get a feel for what's there, especially in the way they deal with the public. The ESA bragged and bragged about the revolutionary science to come from the miniaturized new tech instrumets orbiting the Moon on Smart-1, but I think we are decidedly underimpressed with what seems to be coming out of this mission, other than the entirely successful engineering development and testing.

It's not that we're anti-ESA and anti-European.... It's more that we're frustrated at what we see are obvious continuing problems that they seemingly can't recognize in themselves and can't fix. Certainly, in the US, we've got our on different but equivalent problems, and difficulties in seeing then and fixing them, but we bash ourselves plenty, too.

So, in other words, any joke or criticism is hostility. It isn't, but you are not going to be convinced otherwise. We are showing plenty of respect.

The is getting way too personal and acrimonious. As a community, we are better than this. Please all take a deep breath and calm down.

Chris

ESA does amazing things. We know that. MEX is great, Huygens was great, Rosetta will be great etc etc etc

BUT

Their press and outreach efforts are a disgrace and data release is not much better. Fact. The Hugyens coverage was terrible, MEX press releases are often missleading, intentionally - remember MEX 'discovering' water at the pole. It was pathetic, missleading, and BANG out of order to over sell the discoveries MEX has made. What's happening to Smart-1 at the moment. Dunno - they dont bother telling us any more - it's been in orbit around the moon for months and months - and what press info have we had? Half a dozen pictures. That's it. It will have taken thousands, if not tens of thousands by now.

Yes - MEX data gets released at the same schedule as MGS data - but have you SEEN it? HRSC data is in one, processed format that's basically unworkable. Where's the MEX version of the workbook, where's the software to use the data, where's the pdf's covering the calibration and processing? Where's the Smart 1 data?

Occasionally - ESA pulls a blinder, such as the Photoshop plugins for FIT's imagery - some of the work people have done using that with that, and DSS2 / HST data etc is just utterly utterly astonishing ( eg http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fit...emartin_12.html ) - but they COULD do the same for MEX, for Smart 1 - let us at it, show us the goods in a way that is useable....but they dont.

Let me repeat - the efforts of the scientists and engineers who are doing these missions is superb. I don't lay much of this criticism at their door. The disgrace is the outreach and press efforts of ESA which are often embarrasing. I CRINGE when I see a new Mars Express press release, worrying what they'll claim MEX has 'discovered' this time. It's a culture within ESA that the 'public' are an at-arms-reach body that wouldnt understand what they're doing anyway. It started with the chronic Giotto imagery and it's been the same ever since.

Basically, consider MER. The workbook, the raw JPG's, Steve's blog, the Pancam website, the Director Updates, the route maps, Podcasts, weekly updates, the genuine discoveries being trumpeted, and the context of previous missions into which they fall being credited.

Now consider Smart 1 or MEX. The difference is night and day, black and white, it is the difference between the right way of doing things, and the wrong way.

Criticism of ESA on this point is valid, warrented, justified and appropriate and the discussion is NOT closed until the situation improves.

Doug

(PS - yes - I agree, too much of this particular discussion - I'm going to move it to an appropriate thread elsewhere - we have one on this exact topic)

home for some moved posts from the MEX/Huygens thread

Good move, but it kinda killed the topic - nice summation.

I have a minor complaint with the Nature articles: The data in many of the charts is smoothed, and sometimes lacks essential axis information. For example, the pressure table is cleansed of dynamics, and lacks a time axis. I was hoping they would provide a better, less ambiguous, representation of the radar altimeter data. Some error bars would be nice - I guess I won't be completely happy until the complete release of the all the raw data.

On the whole though, it is fun, informative, tantalizing reading and demonstrates we need to go back and do it again...soon.

Overview of ESA communication activities in 2006 relevant to the media

Press conferences, exhibitions, launches, and much more. Here is the list of the
main communication activities ESA will be involved in this year. Pencil them in
into your diaries.

More at:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM28P8A9HE_index_0.html

ESA's Director General meets the press

ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain met the Press at ESA Headquarters this
morning to take stock of ESA's 2005 activities and announce the main events for
the upcoming year.

Full story:

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM12CMZCIE_index_0.html

NASA and ESA: a parting of ways?
---

NASA and ESA have shared a long, if sometimes rocky, history of
cooperation in space ventures. Taylor Dinerman reports that this
cooperation may be endangered as the two space agencies are pulled in
different directions by their respective governments.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/539/1

Tuesday, 24-Jan-2006 - Latest from ESA Science and Technology web site

COSMIC VISION

Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 is the roadmap by which the ESA Science
Directorate is planing its future missions. In the first of four articles one of
the key themes is presented.

+ COSMIC VISION 2015- 2025: PLANETS AND LIFE

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38646


=====================================================
SOLAR SYSTEM MISSIONS

Updated mission status reports are available for the Venus Express and
SMART-1 missions.

+ START OF SECOND PAYLOAD POINTING CAMPAIGN

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38648

+ ONGOING LUNAR OPERATIONS

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38649

Thanks for those links ljk4-1

O.K. for some ESA activities but members of the Press ( even Free-lancers ) are always invited to ESA events !
Moreover let's not forget that ESA published the FREE magazine ' ESA Bulletin ' which is excellent ! ( Large high quality magazine on 96 glossy pages )
Also ESO ( ESA Southern Observatory ) publishes a FREE magazine ' The Messenger ' with 70 pages on average ...
So ESA isn't doing bad after all !

Just too clarify, ESO stands for European Southern Observatory and is not related to ESA in any way, so that doesn't count.

The ESA Bulletin is very good though, worth pointing out.

James

LATEST NEWS

COSMIC VISION 2015-2025 PART 2 - THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The search for the origins of life set out in the first of the four
themes for Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 must begin in our own Solar System.
Understanding how the Sun behaves over a range of timescales, how the
planets can be shielded from its radiative and plasma output, why the
nine Solar System planets are so different from one another, and what
the small bodies such as comets and asteroids can tell us about our
origins - these are only a few aspects of the question.

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38656

MARS EXPRESS IMAGE OF CLARITAS FOSSAE REGION

A further high resolution image of the Claritas Fossae region on Mars.
Claritas Fossae is located on the Tharsis rise, south of the three
large volcanoes known as the Tharsis Montes, and extends roughly north
to south for approximately 1800 kilometres.

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38700

=====================================================
MISSION STATUS REPORTS

VENUS EXPRESS - Report for Period 20 January - 26 January 2006

During the reporting period the last part of the payloads pointing
scenario has been completed
and the in-flight thermal characterisation has started. During this
characterisation all cold faces
of the spacecraft are exposed to a certain time to the Sun in order to
fully validate the thermal
model. This first part has seen the exposure of the spacecraft side
walls (+/-Y faces) and will be
followed in the next reporting period by the cryo face (-X) and by the
Main Engine face (-Z).

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38680


ROSETTA - Report for Period 6 January - 27 January 2006

The reporting period covers three weeks of passive cruise, with
monitoring and minor maintenance activities.

On the subsystems side, the TC link timeout was returned to its normal
value of 9 days on 12 January. The TM mode was temporarily changed to
'bi-weekly' between 12 and 19 January, to cope with possible reduction
of coverage when new Norcia was supporting Mars Express contingency
operations.

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38679

====================================================
FEATURE ON ISO

ONLINE DVD -Â ISO 10 YEAR CELEBRATION

2005 represented 10 years since the launch of the ISO - the Infrared
Space Observatory. A special DVD was compiled presenting a review of
the mission and launch activities.

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38622

PUBLICATION - ISO SCIENCE LEGACY

http://sci.esa.int/jump.cfm?oid=38683

=====================================================
KEEP IN TOUCH

+ SCITECH RSS

Subscribe to SciTech's RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to get the
latest updates delivered directly to your desktop.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=37599

+ SCITECH SCREENSAVER

Don't forget to download the SciTech Screensaver a multi-facetted application
that allows you to keep abreast of status reports, news and announcements of
events taking place at ESA Science.

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/in...fobjectid=34651

Thanks for the posts, ljk4-1. I don't know where you find the time to firehose these posts across the web, but more power to you. In fact, you're such a prolific poster here that we should lobby Doug to give you your own category or sub-forum