European Space Agency scientists think that there was and could even still be life on Mars and want a new European mission to the red planet to take samples, a conference heard in Noordwijk, The Netherlands heard on Friday, February 25, 2005.

MOSCOW | Thu Mar 14, 2013 3:37pm EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Europe and Russia signed a deal on Thursday for a joint Mars mission which will bore beneath the Red Planet's surface for soil samples they hope will solve the mystery of whether there is life beyond Earth.

Europe's space agency had hoped to work with NASA on the two-spacecraft ExoMars mission but turned to the Russians after the U.S. agency pulled out due to budget shortfalls.

The announcement comes amid heightened excitement over the search for life on the planet in our solar system most like Earth after scientists said analysis from NASA's own mission rover, Curiosity, showed Mars had the right ingredients for life.

European scientists say the two-stage mission, with the two craft to be launched in 2016 and 2018, will pave the way for what NASA has described as the "Holy Grail" of Mars exploration: a separate mission to return dirt samples from the Red Planet.

"Curiosity learnt us a little bit, ExoMars will bring us a step further, but bringing back those samples to Earth you can do 10 to 100 times more analysis," Rolf de Groot, head of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Robotic Exploration Coordination Office, told Reuters.

"That is a goal of everybody who works on Mars exploration."

The Europe-Russia mission hopes to take scientists beyond NASA's finding that the surface of Earth's neighboring planet had the right mix of elements to sustain life, by drilling 2 meters (6 feet) below its radiation-hit surface for samples.

"NASA is also drilling, but two centimeters deep," de Groot said, referring to the ongoing Curiosity mission. "It's a completely different story."

"ExoMars, by drilling 2 meters into the ground, might hope to identify really the big molecules because that would be a direct indication of the presence of life or that life once existed on Mars."

He said the ESA's Mars rover would also be equipped with a much more advanced laboratory than Curiosity has, so would be able to carry out more detailed analysis.

RUSSIAN ROCKETS

Russian Space Agency Roskosmos will provide the rockets to launch the ExoMars - short for Exobiology on Mars - mission and will also design the descent module and surface platform.

Europe turned to Russia after NASA left the $1.3 billion project in February 2012, citing a budget crunch. The ESA and Roskosmos agreed to cooperate last April, but talks to work out the details dragged on for nearly a year.

"This event was a long time in the making and took a great deal of collaboration," Roskosmos head Vladimir Popovkin said after signing the deal with ESA Director Jean-Jacques Dordain in Paris.

Russia's involvement in the ambitious mission could boost the status of its once-pioneering space agency after a litany of costly and embarrassing failures.

The delays in agreeing the mission hinged on the extent of Russia's participation, according to Russian space experts who said Moscow had seemed to reach its goal of full partnership.

"The agreement implies that Russian scientists and engineers will become full-fledged participants in all the international scientific and technical groups," Roskosmos said in a statement.

What was to be Russia's first deep space mission in more than two decades - the Phobos-Grunt mission to scoop up soil samples from Mars - was among five botched launches that damaged Moscow's reputation as a reliable launch partner.

European governments have so far committed 850 million euros to the mission. The funding cap has been set at 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) but delays and changes to the scientific aspects of the project are expected to drive up the price tag.

Even though NASA pulled out, it will still provide radio communications equipment, an important organics experiment and engineering and mission support.

The United States also plans to follow up its Curiosity rover with an identical probe, to launch in 2020. It has not yet decided if it will cache samples for a future return to Earth.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2011 ranked a Mars sample return mission as its top priority in planetary science for the next decade. The long-term goal of the U.S. human space program is to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s.

(Additional reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Pravin Char)

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1 of 12. Newly elected Pope Francis I, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, meets cardinals in the Clementine Hall in a picture released by Osservatore Romano at the Vatican March 15, 2013.

VATICAN CITY | Fri Mar 15, 2013 7:57pm EDT

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Friday urged leaders of a Roman Catholic Church riven by scandal and crisis never to give in to discouragement, bitterness or pessimism but to keep focused on their mission.

Since his election on Wednesday as the first non-European pope in nearly 1,300 years, Francis has signaled a sharp change of style from his predecessor, Benedict, and has laid out a clear moral path for the 1.2-billion-member Church, which is beset by scandals, intrigue and strife.

"Let us never give in to the pessimism, to that bitterness, that the devil places before us every day. Let us not give into pessimism and discouragement," he told the cardinals who chose him.

The Vatican on Friday strongly denied accusations by some critics in Argentina that Francis stayed silent during systematic human rights abuses by the former military dictatorship in his home country.

Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters the accusations "must be clearly and firmly denied".

Critics of Jorge Bergoglio, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, allege he failed to protect priests who challenged the dictatorship earlier in his career, during the 1976-1983 "dirty war", and that he has said too little about the complicity of the Church during military rule.

Setting out a clear and forceful moral tone in the early days of his papacy, Francis on Thursday told the cardinals they must stick to the faith's Gospel roots and shun modern temptations, otherwise the Church risked becoming just another charitable group without its divine mission.

Francis has given clear signs already that he will bring a new broom to the crisis-hit papacy, favoring humility and simplicity over pomp and grandeur.

OFF THE CUFF

On Friday he spoke to the cardinals in Italian from a prepared text but often added off-the-cuff comments in what has already become the hallmark of a style in sharp contrast to the stiffer, more formal Benedict.

Francis called the princes of the church "brother cardinals" instead of "lord cardinals" as Benedict did. Lombardi said Francis was still taking his meals with other prelates in the Vatican residence where the cardinals stayed during the conclave. "He just sits down at any table where there is a free spot, with a great sense of ease."

Another notable difference from the formal Benedict is the new pope's outgoing nature and sense of humor.

On Friday, he hugged cardinals, slapped them on the back, broke into animated laughter and blessed religious objects one cardinal pulled out of a plastic shopping bag.

In the afternoon, he slipped out of the Vatican for the second straight day, this time to visit a fellow Argentine, 90-year-old Cardinal Jorg Mejia, who had suffered a heart attack.

On Thursday morning, the day after his election, he left quietly to pray at a Rome basilica and to pay his bill at a residence where he had been staying before the conclave.

Earlier in the Sistine Chapel, in another sign of humility, Francis stopped cardinals who tried to kneel before him.

But his message was serious. The role of Church elders, including himself, was to set an example and pass on faith and values to younger people without being distracted by the temptations of wordliness.

"We are in old age. Old age is the seat of wisdom," he said, speaking slowly. "Like good wine that becomes better with age, let us pass on to young people the wisdom of life," he said.

TRIBUTE TO BENEDICT

He made a point of paying tribute to Benedict, who shocked the Church last month by becoming the first pontiff in some 600 years to resign instead of ruling for life, saying he had "lit a flame in the depths of our hearts" with his courage and example.

Morale among the faithful has been hit by a widespread child sex abuse scandal involving Catholic priests and in-fighting in the Church government or Curia, which many prelates believe needs radical reform.

Francis is seen as having a common touch and the communication skills that the aloof Benedict lacked.

Whereas Benedict delivered his first homily in Latin, laying out his broad vision for the Church, Francis adopted the tone of parish priest, focusing on faith.

"When we walk without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we proclaim Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly," he told the massed ranks of cardinals clad in gold-colored vestments.

"We may be bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, all of this, but we are not disciples of the Lord (if we don't follow Jesus)," he added, speaking slowly in Italian.

The new pope signaled immediately his intentions for the papacy when he adopted the name of St. Francis of Assisi, who gave up a life of privilege in the 12th century to follow a vocation of poverty.

He urged Argentines not to make costly trips to Rome for his inauguration next week but to give money to the poor instead.

No Vatican watchers had expected the conservative Argentinian to get the nod, and some of the background to the surprise vote has already trickled out, confirming that cardinals wanted a pastoral figure to revitalize the global Church but also someone who would get the dysfunctional Vatican bureaucracy in order.

French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard told reporters: "We were looking for a pope who was spiritual, a shepherd. I think with Cardinal Bergoglio, we have this kind of person. He is also a man of great intellectual character who I believe is also a man of governance."

After more than a millennium of European leadership, the cardinals who chose Francis looked to Latin America, where 42 percent of the world's Catholics live. The continent is more focused on poverty and the rise of evangelical churches than questions of materialism, rising secularism and priestly sexual abuse, which dominate in the West.

Francis' inaugural Mass will be held next Tuesday, with many world leaders expected to attend.

(Editing by Barry Moody and Giles Elgood)

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:43pm EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA plans to crash a pair of small robotic science probes into the moon next week after a successful year-long mission to learn what lies beneath the lunar surface, officials said on Thursday.

The twin Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft will make suicidal plunges on Monday into a mountain near the moon's north pole, a site selected to avoid the chance of hitting any of the Apollo or other lunar relics.

The impacts, which are not expected to be visible from Earth, will take place about 20 seconds apart at 5:28 p.m. EST (2228 GMT) on Monday.

"They're going to be completely blown apart," GRAIL project manager David Lehman, with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters on a conference call.

Almost out of fuel and currently flying just 7 miles above the lunar surface, the probes will make a final steering maneuver on Friday and shut down their science instruments in preparation for Monday's crash.

The two spacecraft, each about the size of a small washing machine, have been flying in close formation around the moon for nearly a year to map the lunar gravity.

Scientists precisely measure the distance between the two, a figure that slightly changes as they fly over denser regions of the moon. The gravitational pull of the additional mass causes first the leading probe and then the following one to speed up, altering the gap between them.

Gravity maps from the first part of the mission, collected between March and May 2012 when the spacecraft were about 34 miles above the lunar surface, revealed the moon has a shallower and much more fractured crust than expected - the result of asteroid and comet impacts billions of years ago.

"We know that the moon had been bombarded by impacts but what we found is just how broken up and fractured the crust of the moon is," said lead scientist Maria Zuber, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Similar bombardments happened on all the solid bodies of the inner solar system though the evidence on Earth has been erased by erosion, plate tectonics and other phenomena.

"With Mars, there's a questions about where did the water that we think was on the surface go," Zuber said. "These fractures provide a pathway deep inside the planet and it's very easy to envision now how a possible ocean on the surface could have found its way deep into the crust."

Scientists also discovered lava-filled subterranean cracks inside the moon, evidence that the body expanded early in its history.

In addition to planetary science, the gravity maps, along with detailed images of the lunar surface, should help engineers pick landing sites for future robotic and human expeditions to the moon, Zuber said.

"In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined that this mission would have gone any better than it has," she said, adding that NASA will be getting $8 million or $9 million back from the mission's $471 million budget.

The spacecraft will hit the surface at about 3,760 miles per hour. No pictures are expected because the region will be dark at the time of impact, but a sister spacecraft circling the moon, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, will attempt to survey the crash site.

"These are two small spacecraft with empty fuel tanks, so we're not expecting a flash that is visible from Earth," Zuber said.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Mohammad Zargham)

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Actor and director Ben Affleck speaks at a news conference to promote the film 'Argo' during the 37th Toronto International Film Festival, September 8, 2012.

NEW YORK | Fri Oct 12, 2012 12:25pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Antonio "Tony" Mendez is the rarest of creatures: A former spy who has come out of the woodwork.

His story is the subject of Ben Affleck's new film, "Argo," released in the United States Friday, and tipped to feature in Hollywood's awards season.

"Argo" is based on one of Mendez's most remarkable missions, rescuing six Americans from Iran during the height of the 1979 hostage crisis and helping them pose as a Canadian film crew making a fictitious film called "Argo." It follows Mendez's memoir of the same name, released in September.

Mendez, 72, who was named in 1997 one of the CIA's top 50 officers of its first 50 years, talked to Reuters about "Argo" the movie, the real CIA operation and current events in the Middle East.

Q: "Argo" the film depicts the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy and hostage crisis. How do you compare that to riots in the region in more recent times?

A: "Seeing those crowds surging in front of multiple U.S. embassies and consulates does indeed bring back memories. Security has been beefed up in many ways, but these events show that perhaps they should be beefed up even more."

Q: Why recall the story of the rescue operation now?

A: "I wanted to set the details down on paper for the record and call out my colleagues, who were involved in the planning, even if many were in alias. I wanted to pass on the lessons learned to the public and to my former work mates, something that the CIA does not often do."

Q: Decades later, what perspective do you bring?

A: "Before, Argo was an unorthodox operation, designed out of frustration, a form of risk taking that would probably not be approved in today's political environment. Today, the impact lingers on. A presidency was lost, America's relationship with Iran was severed, and radical Islam had struck its first blow."

Q: Some aspects remain classified, how did those kinds of restrictions impact your writing of the book?

A: "It caused us to mask the true identity of certain individuals and intelligence entities that worked with us. We had to be cautious in describing methods and techniques, but it didn't impede the telling of the story. Not much was lost."

Q: When the story first became public, the CIA asked you to be open to the media. How did it feel to vocalize your participation and who outside the CIA knew about it?

A: "It went against every instinct I had when the CIA first asked me to tell this story, but eventually I lost my inhibition. Only the Canadian government and some elements in Hollywood knew the story at the time. I believe that both are glad to see credit given."

Q: Was there anything that surprised you or complicated things as the Argo rescue unfolded?

A: "Trying to leave Iran, there were mechanical problems with Swiss Air, which was a surprise. A journalist discovered the ruse."

Q: How did this operation compare to the others?

A: "Argo was wildly different from most other exfiltrations I have been involved in. At the CIA we used to say innovation is born out of necessity, sometimes out of desperation. Argo had an operational necessity that demanded out-of-the-box thinking, and this kind of unorthodox planning probably won't be replicated until another occasion when traditional solutions won't work. Necessity drives imagination."

Q: You worked at the CIA through critical periods of transition. What changes did you see?

A: "Don't really want to go there. The agency continually improves its abilities, trains its officers in the state-of-the-art, and then advances that very state-of-the-art. I don't need to be there to know that their ability in documents and disguise is still unparalleled."

Q: What do you make of the situation in Iran now?

A: "Iran is still a pariah, caught up between the radical elements of Islam and the Arab spring. Hostage taking has become common, and as long as the West needs oil they will be able to threaten their neighbors and the rest of the world. A powerful argument for transitioning to renewable energy can be made here."

Q: There's a certain irony to Argo becoming a real movie. What are your thoughts on it?

A: ""Argo" is a magnificent movie. Ben Affleck did a great job. We worked closely with the screenwriter and it has been a very personal experience for me, one I will always treasure."

Q: Any favorite spy movies?

A: "Almost anything that John LeCarre does, and the Bond series. Those don't reflect real espionage, but they are certainly entertaining."

(Editing by Christine Kearney and Bernadette Baum)

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COPENHAGEN | Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:12pm EDT

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark will dispatch a scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean at the end of the month to gather data before it submits a formal claim to a vast tract north of Greenland that includes the North Pole.

Such a claim would be made under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), setting up a possible clash of interests with fellow Arctic coastal states Russia and Canada that are making their own claims.

"We need the data that we plan to acquire on this cruise," said Christian Marcussen, the expedition's chief scientist from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. "But ... we are quite confident that we will be able to make a submission."

Denmark admits it is interested in staking a claim to a part of the planet believed to be rich in untapped oil and gas, but rules out a unilateral "land grab" or being drawn into confrontation over competing claims.

"I reject the confrontation scenarios that have been presented in the media and academic circles," Klaus Holm, Denmark's Arctic ambassador, said.

"If there is any area where every party has an interest in cooperating, it is the Arctic. The challenge is so huge and the areas are so vast."

The expedition will sail from Svalbard off northern Norway on July 31 aboard the Swedish icebreaker "Oden" and will gather seismic and depth data to substantiate a future possible claim, for which the deadline for Denmark is November 2014.

DANISH FLAG AT POLE?

Denmark has identified five potential claim areas off the Faroe Islands and Greenland - both parts of the Kingdom of Denmark.

Copenhagen has already submitted claims for areas north and south of the Faroes and for two areas south of Greenland to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) which assesses the scientific validity of such claims.

Any dispute would, however, need to be resolved through negotiations between states, and not by the CLCS.

The other area Denmark has identified - likely to be the most sensitive part of any future claim - is roughly 150,000 square kilometers (58,000 sq miles) extending north from Greenland and including the North Pole.

For that claim to be credible, much depends on whether the expedition is able to gather data to prove that the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater formation spanning 1,800 kilometers (1,118 miles) across the pole, is an extension of Greenland's land mass.

Russian scientists claim that the ridge is an extension of Russia's land mass, but that does not exclude that it could also be an extension of Greenland and Canada, Marcussen said.

Under the U.N. convention, a country can extend its 200- nautical-mile economic zone if it can prove that the continental shelf is a natural extension of its land mass.

Russia caused controversy in 2007 when a mini-submarine took the Russian flag to the seabed at the North Pole, sparking accusations of imperialism.

Marcussen said he didn't rule out stopping at the pole to plant a Danish flag on the ice, as his team did in 2009, if it happened to be on the icebreaker's route.

But he said that was not the goal of the 45-day expedition and that any flag would be removed after such a ceremony.

(Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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NEW DELHI | Fri Aug 3, 2012 9:29am EDT

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India plans to send a satellite via an unmanned spacecraft to orbit Mars next year, joining a small group of nations already exploring the red planet, a government scientist said on Friday.

A rocket will blast off from the southeastern coast of India, dropping the satellite into deep space, which will then travel onto Mars to achieve orbit, the senior scientist said, asking not to be named because the project is awaiting final approval.

A spokesman for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) based in the southern city of Bangalore would not confirm the mission, but commented generally on the ambitions of India's space program.

"After the Moon, worldwide attention is now focused on finding out if there (are) habitable spots on Mars," ISRO's Deviprasad Karnik said.

ISRO scientists expect the satellite to orbit at less than 100 km (62 miles) above Mars.

India's federal cabinet is expected soon to clear the mission, according to media reports this week that said the program will cost about $80 million.

The plan has drawn criticism in a country suffering from high levels of malnutrition and power shortages. But India has long argued that technology developed in its space program has practical applications to everyday life.

India's space exploration program began in 1962. Four years ago, its Chandrayaan satellite found evidence of water on the moon. India is now looking at landing a wheeled rover on the Moon in 2014.

Separately, the United States expects to land NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory vehicle at 1:31 a.m. EDT on Monday (0031 EDT) next to a mountain that may harbor life-friendly environments.

Last year, a Chinese Russian probe failed in a bid to send a satellite to Mars.

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Ed Lane)

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