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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/school-bus-size-asteroid-to-safely-zoom-past-earth

School Bus-Size Asteroid to Safely Zoom Past Earth

Roughly 15 to 30 feet wide, the object will make its closest approach on Sept. 24.

A small near-Earth asteroid (or NEA) will briefly visit Earth's neighborhood on Thursday, Sept. 24, zooming past at a distance of about 13,000 miles (22,000 kilometers) above our planet's surface. The asteroid will make its close approach below the ring of geostationary satellites orbiting about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) away from Earth.Based on its brightness, scientists estimate that 2020 SW is roughly 15 to 30 feet (5 to 10 meters) wide - or about the size of a small school bus. Although it's not on an impact trajectory with Earth, if it were, the space rock would almost certainly break up high in the atmosphere, becoming a bright meteorknown as a fireball."There are a large number of tiny asteroids like this one, and several of them approach our planet as close as this several times every year," said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "In fact, asteroids of this size impact our atmosphere at an average rate of about once every year or two."After asteroid 2020 SW was discovered on Sept. 18 by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, follow-up observations confirmed its orbital trajectory with high precision, ruling out any chance of impact. CNEOS scientists determined that it will make its closest approach at 4:12 a.m. PDT (7:12 a.m. EDT) on Sept. 24 over the Southeastern Pacific Ocean. After Thursday's close approach, the asteroid will continue its journey around the Sun, not returning to Earth's vicinity until 2041, when it will make a much more distant flyby.Your browser cannot play the provided video file(s).This animation from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies depicts asteroid 2020 SW's trajectory as it safely passes Earth on Sept. 24, 2020. Also shown is the location of a typical geosynchronous satellite (labeled "GEOSAT"), orbiting 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth's equator.Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechIn 2005, Congress assigned NASA the goal of finding 90% of the near-Earth asteroids that are about 460 feet (140 meters) or larger in size. These larger asteroids pose a much greater threat if they were to impact, and they can be detected much farther away from Earth, because they're simply much brighter than the small ones. It is thought that there are over 100 million small asteroids like 2020 SW, but they are hard to discover unless they get very close to Earth."The detection capabilities of NASA's asteroid surveys are continually improving, and we should now expect to find asteroids of this size a couple days before they come near our planet," added Chodas.A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL hosts CNEOS for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program in NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. More information about CNEOS, asteroids, and near-Earth objects can be found at:https://cneos.jpl.nasa.govFor more information about NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit:https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefenseFor asteroid and comet news and updates, follow @AsteroidWatch on Twitter:https://twitter.com/AsteroidWatch

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/soil-sutures-and-climate-modeling-among-investigations-riding-spacex-crs-25-dragon-to-international-space-station

Soil, Sutures, and Climate Modeling Among Investigations Riding SpaceX CRS-25 Dragon to International Space Station

EMIT, a mission developed at JPL to measure the composition of minerals that become airborne dust, is among the investigations launching to the space station next month.

The 25thSpaceXcargo resupply services mission (SpaceX CRS-25) carrying scientific research and technology demonstrations to theInternational Space Stationis scheduled forlaunchJune 9 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Experiments aboard the Dragon capsule include studies of the immune system, wound healing, soil communities, and cell-free biomarkers, along with mapping the composition of Earth’s dust and testing an alternative to concrete.Download high-resolutionphotos and videosof the research mentioned in this article.Here are more details on some of the research launching to the space station:Mapping Earth’s DustThe Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT), developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, employsNASA imaging spectroscopytechnology to measure the mineral composition of dust in Earth’s arid regions. Mineral dust blown into the air can travel significant distances and haveimpactEarth’s climate, weather, vegetation, and more. For example, dust containing dark minerals that absorb sunlight can warm an area, while light-colored mineral dust can cool it. Blowing dust also affects air quality, surface conditions such as rate of snow melt, and phytoplankton health in the ocean. The investigation collects images for one year to generate maps of the mineral composition in the regions on Earth that produce dust. Such mapping could advance our understanding of the effects of mineral dust on human populations now and in the future.Dust from northwest Africa blows over the Canary Islands in this image captured by the NOAA-20 satellite on Jan. 14. An upcoming NASA mission, the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT), will help scientists better understand the role of airborne dust in heating and cooling the atmosphere.Credit: NASA Earth ObservatorySpeedier Immune System AgingAging is associated with changes in the immune response known as immunosenescence. Microgravity causes changes in human immune cells that resemble this condition but happen faster than the actual process of aging on Earth. TheImmunosenescenceinvestigation, sponsored by ISS National Lab, uses tissue chips to study how microgravity affects immune function during flight and whether immune cells recover post-flight.Tissue chipsare small devices that contain human cells in a 3D structure, allowing scientists to test how those cells respond to stresses, drugs, and genetic changes.“Immune aging impacts tissue stem cells and their ability to repair tissues and organs,” says principal investigator Sonja Schrepfer, professor of surgery at University of California, San Francisco. “Our studies aim to understand critical pathways to prevent and to reverse aging of immune cells.”“Spaceflight conditions enable the study of immune aging that would not be feasible in the lab,” says co-investigator Tobias Deuse, professor of surgery at UCSF. This work could support development of treatments for immune system aging on Earth. The investigation also could support development of methods to protect astronauts during future long-duration spaceflight.The 25th SpaceX cargo resupply services mission (SpaceX CRS-25) carrying scientific research and technology demonstrations to the International Space Station is scheduled for launch June 9 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Credit: NASASew Me Up, ScottyAs we travel farther from Earth, humans need to be prepared to deal with medical emergencies, including wounds, without hospitals and other medical support. Wound healing is a complex process, and scientists are not sure why wounds often heal imperfectly or create scars.Suture In Space, an investigation from ESA (European Space Agency), examines the behavior of sutures and wound healing in microgravity. A better understanding of the role of mechanical forces (such as tension, stretching, and compression) in the healing of sutured wounds could help determine requirements for suturing materials and techniques suitable for future space missions to the Moon and Mars.During preparation for the investigation, researchers developed a new technique for improving and extending the survival of tissue cultures. For future space travel, this invention could promote wound healing and regeneration processes, improving response to emergencies. On Earth, the technique could aid laboratory studies on transplants, cell regeneration, and surgical techniques and improve the ability to preserve tissues for use in emergency situations, such as for burn and vascular surgeries and tissue and organ transplants. Better preservation of manufactured tissues also could contribute to improvements in 3D bioprinting of tissues and organs.Get the Latest JPL NewsSUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTERSoil in SpaceOn Earth, complex communities of microorganisms carry out key functions in soil, including cycling of carbon and other nutrients and supporting plant growth.DynaMoSexamines how microgravity affects metabolic interactions in communities of soil microbes. This research focuses on microbe communities that decompose chitin, a natural carbon polymer on Earth.“Soil microorganisms carry out beneficial functions that are essential for life on our planet,” says principal investigator Janet K. Jansson, chief scientist and laboratory fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “To harness these beneficial activities for future space missions, we need to understand more about how conditions in space, like microgravity and radiation, influence these microbes and the beneficial functions that they provide. Perhaps in the future, we will use beneficial soil microbes to enhance growth of crops on the lunar surface.”Improved understanding of the function of soil microorganism communities also could reveal ways to optimize these communities to support agricultural production on Earth.Genes, No CellsCell-free technology is a platform for producing protein without specialized equipment of living cells that need to be cultured.Genes in Space-9, sponsored by the ISS National Lab, demonstrates cell-free production of protein in microgravity and evaluates two cell-free biosensors that can detect specific target molecules. This technology could provide a simple, portable, and low-cost tool for medical diagnostics, on-demand production of medicine and vaccines, and environmental monitoring on future space missions.“Biosensors are a class of synthetic biology tools with immense potential for spaceflight applications in contaminant detection, environmental monitoring, and point-of-care diagnostics,” said Selin Kocalar, student winner of Genes in Space 2021. “This investigation seeks to validate their use aboard the space station. If it is successful, Genes in Space-9 will lay the foundation for downstream applications of biosensors for space exploration and resource-limited settings on Earth.”Genes in Space, an annual research competition, challenges students in grades 7 through 12 to design DNA experiments to be conducted on the space station. The program has launched eight investigations so far, and some have resulted in publications furthering our knowledge on genetics experiments through space-based research, including the first experiment to useCRISPR technologyin microgravity in 2019.Better ConcreteBiopolymer Research for In-Situ Capabilitieslooks at how microgravity affects the process of creating a concrete alternative made with an organic material and on-site materials such as lunar or Martian dust, known as a biopolymer soil composite (BPC). Using resources available where construction takes place makes it possible to increase the mass of the construction material and, therefore, the amount of shielding.“Astronauts on the Moon and Mars will need habitats that provide radiation shielding, but transporting large amounts of conventional construction materials from Earth is logistically and financially infeasible,” said team member Laywood Fayne. “Our student team, led by Michael Lepech from the Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford University, is studying a way to convert regolith in these environments into a concrete-like material by mixing in water and a protein known as bovine serum albumin.”This material hardens as the water evaporates, a process affected by gravity, explains team co-lead James Wall. “Our project consists of making six bricks in microgravity to compare to bricks made on Earth at 1 g and less than 1 g,” Wall says. “We will investigate the number and orientations of protein bridges, compressive strength, and porosity. Our conclusions could help determine how these bricks might form on the Moon and Mars.”BPCs also could offer an environmentally friendly concrete alternative for making structures on Earth. In 2018, concrete production represented 8% of global carbon emissions. BPC material has zero carbon emissions and can be made from local, readily available resources, which also simplifies supply chains. This experiment is a part of NASA’s Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science (SPOCS) program, which provides students enrolled in institutions of higher learning the opportunity to design and build an experiment to fly to and return from the International Space Station.NASA’s EMIT Will Map Tiny Dust Particles to Study Big Climate ImpactsNASA’s EMIT Mission Media Reel

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/earth-the-movie

Earth: The Movie

Image-processing scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have used digital animation techniques to produce three-dimensional, whirlwind tour of Earth, flying the viewer over, under and through the cloudtops in the atmosphere of our planet.

Image-processing scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have used digital animation techniques to produce three-dimensional, whirlwind tour of Earth, flying the viewer over, under and through the cloudtops in the atmosphere of our planet.The production, called "Earth: The Movie," was constructed from satellite data and digital elevation maps of Earth to show how clouds form and influence weather as they move across the planet's surface. From vantage point made possible only by computer, "Earth: The Movie" also allows the viewer to see Earth's cloudtops in three dimensions -- all over the world.The data visualization techniques developed to produce "Earth: The Movie" represent powerful new tools that scientists will use to study the complex relationships between Earth's topography, atmosphere, ocean, and biosphere."Earth: The Movie" was created by Jeffrey R. Hall, Kevin J. Hussey and Robert A. Mortensen of the Digital Image Animation Lab (DIAL) of JPL's Image Processing Laboratory, in cooperation with atmospheric scientists Dr. Moustafa Chahine of JPL and Dr. Joel Susskind of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.The data displayed in the production were derived from the High-Resolution Infrared Sounder-2 and Microwave Sounding Unit on NASA's Nimbus 7, an Earth-observing satellite launched on Oct. 24, 1978. The data show the monthly average cloud cover for December 1978 and the daily cloud cover from Dec. 31, 1978 to Feb. 4, 1979.The production represents 9 gigabytes (9 billion bytes) of information. Cyber 205 supercomputer at the Goddard Space Flight Center was used to preprocess the data. The data were then processed at JPL by two mainframe computers executing 4 million instructions per second over 18.4 days."Earth: The Movie" was produced by JPL for the Office of Space Science and Applications.##### 8/26/88 #1205MBM PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011 NARRATION:"EARTH: THE MOVIE"A study of the Earth's climate must take into account the crucial role played by clouds. Besides delivering life-giving rain to the land, clouds help maintain proper balance in the global climate. The following digital animation combines satellite cloud data and Earth elevation data from maps to demonstrate how atmospheric scientists and visualization specialists team up to perform climatic research. The clouds were derived from infrared and microwave satellite instrument data using supercomputer. Part One: Rectangular projection of Earth's surface and clouds.At first glance, clouds may appear chaotic, but closer observation reveals semblance of order. Recognizable patterns show how air moves up and down while circulating around the globe. The varied features of the Earth's surface (portrayed here by color) as well as prevailing winds, have distinct effects on the formation and distribution of clouds. Computer animation to visualize clouds provides unique insight into the structure and dynamics of global weather systems. Part Two: Three-dimensional flight over the world.Now, as we add the third dimension to both the Earth's surface and the clouds, we can see the relationship between cloud-tops and the Earth's topography. The cloudtop elevations were also derived from satellite data. The vertical dimensions have been exaggerated twenty times to enhance comparison. - Our flight takes us along the west coast of Africa. - Flying north of Scandinavia, we see Europe, then quickly cross the North Atlantic and drop below the cloud-tops off the eastern United States. - We look west into the Amazon basin of South America. - We circle Cape Horn and view the Andes mountains up close. - Central America passes below as we view North America. - Diving below the clouds in the mid-Atlantic, we fly over the Mediterranean. - Turkey passes to our right as we fly across the Caspian Sea into the southern Soviet Union. - China, and now Japan, are below us. - Southeast Asia and Australia are seen as we head for the Himalayas and Indian subcontinent. - The Middle East and Africa complete our journey. Part Three: Spherical projection of Earth showing daily cloud activity over the Pacific Ocean.The atmosphere can be considered gigantic solar powered engine which controls our daily weather. The Pacific Ocean, shown here, covers nearly half the Earth. It is themajor storehouse of energy and source of water vapor for the planet.This is the winter season in the northern hemisphere and we can observe the course of numerous storms, one after the other, approaching North America from the Gulf of Alaska. Part Four: Spherical projection of Earth showing daily cloud activity over the Atlantic Ocean.Note the belt of clouds near the equator as we rotate the Earth to observe the opposite hemisphere. This belt provides the moisture necessary to sustain the equatorial rain forests of the Congo basin in Central Africa and the Amazon in South America.North Africa, dominated by the Sahara, is characterized by its lack of clouds. Near the top of this hemisphere we can also observe winter storms move with regularity across the North Atlantic and Europe. ConclusionThe data visualization techniques developed to produce "Earth: The Movie" represent powerful new tools that scientists will use to study our complex global environment.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasaisro-image-shows-irenes-winds-before-landfall

NASA/ISRO Image Shows Irene's Winds Before Landfall

Hurricane Irene's wind speeds and wind directions are shown in a new satellite image taken shortly before landfall in North Carolina on Aug. 27.

Hurricane Irene made landfall early Saturday morning, Aug. 27, just west of Cape Lookout, NC, as a category one hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (75 knots). It is currently over eastern North Carolina and is forecast to gradually weaken as it moves northward along the East Coast of the United States over the next two days.This satellite image of Hurricane Irene, showing the storm's ocean-surface wind speed and direction, was acquired at 1:07 a.m. EDT on Aug. 27, approximately six hours before it hit the North Carolina coast. The data are provided courtesy of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) from the OSCAT instrument on ISRO's OceanSat 2 spacecraft, launched in September 2009. Wind vector data processing was performed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The OSCAT winds are obtained at 15-by-15-mile (25-by-25-kilometer) resolution and do not resolve the hurricane's maximum wind speeds, which occur at much finer scales.Since NASA's QuikScat ocean wind satellite ceased nominal operations in November 2009, scientists and engineers from NASA, JPL, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have collaborated with ISRO in ongoing efforts to calibrate and validate OSCAT measurements in order to ensure continuous coverage of ocean vector winds for use by the global weather forecasting and climate community.More on NASA's hurricane research and Irene is online at NASA's hurricanes/tropical cyclones website:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/main/index.htmland the JPL TC-IDEAS hurricane website:http://hurricanes.jpl.nasa.gov.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-there-is-no-asteroid-threatening-earth

NASA: There is No Asteroid Threatening Earth

NASA scientists provide real science to debunk wild Internet rumors about an alleged September asteroid impact.

Numerous recent blogs and web postings are erroneously claiming that an asteroid will impact Earth, sometime between Sept. 15 and 28, 2015. On one of those dates, as rumors go, there will be an impact -- "evidently" near Puerto Rico -- causing wanton destruction to the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States and Mexico, as well as Central and South America.That's the rumor that has gone viral -- now here are the facts."There is no scientific basis -- not one shred of evidence -- that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.In fact, NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program says there have been no asteroids or comets observed that would impact Earth anytime in the foreseeable future. All known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids have less than a 0.01% chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years.The Near-Earth Object office at JPL is a key group involved with the international collaboration of astronomers and scientists who keep watch on the sky with their telescopes, looking for asteroids that could do harm to our planet and predicting their paths through space for the foreseeable future. If there were any observations on anything headed our way, Chodas and his colleagues would know about it."If there were any object large enough to do that type of destruction in September, we would have seen something of it by now," he stated.Another thing Chodas and his team do know -- this isn't the first time a wild, unsubstantiated claim of a celestial object about to impact Earth has been made, and unfortunately, it probably won't be the last. It seems to be a perennial favorite of the World Wide Web.In 2011 there were rumors about the so-called "doomsday" comet Elenin, which never posed any danger of harming Earth and broke up into a stream of small debris out in space. Then there were Internet assertions surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar on Dec. 21, 2012, insisting the world would end with a large asteroid impact. And just this year, asteroids 2004 BL86 and 2014 YB35 were said to be on dangerous near-Earth trajectories, but their flybys of our planet in January and March went without incident -- just as NASA said they would."Again, there is no existing evidence that an asteroid or any other celestial object is on a trajectory that will impact Earth," said Chodas. "In fact, not a single one of the known objects has any credible chance of hitting our planet over the next century."NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing 30 million miles of Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes the physical nature of a subset of them, and predicts their paths to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet. There are no known credible impact threats to date -- only the continuous and harmless infall of meteoroids, tiny asteroids that burn up in the atmosphere.JPL hosts the office for Near-Earth Object orbit analysis for NASA's Near Earth Object Observations Program of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at:http://neo.jpl.nasa.govhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch,and on Twitter: @asteroidwatch

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/journey-to-a-metal-rich-world-nasas-psyche-is-ready-to-launch

Journey to a Metal-Rich World: NASA’s Psyche Is Ready to Launch

The spacecraft is targeting an Oct. 13 liftoff atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. Its destination, a metal-rich asteroid, may tell us more about how planets form.

In less than 24 hours,NASA’s Psychespacecraft is slated to launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With its sights set on a mysterious asteroid of the same name, Psyche is NASA’s first scientific mission to be launched on aSpaceX Falcon Heavyrocket.Launch is set for 10:19 a.m. EDT on Friday, Oct. 13, with additional opportunities identified each day through Oct. 25. Each opportunity is instantaneous, meaning there is only one exact time per day when launch can occur.“The team has worked tirelessly to prepare the spacecraft for its journey to a one-of-a-kind asteroid,” said Henry Stone, Psyche’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “All spacecraft systems, science instruments, and software have been integrated and extensively tested, and the spacecraft is fully configured for flight. We look forward to the launch and – more importantly – to accomplishing the mission’s objectives, marking yet another historic voyage of scientific discovery.”Get the Psyche press kitThe orbiter’s solar arrays are folded and stowed for launch. All systems have been tested and re-tested many times, along with the payload of three science instruments. Loaded with 2,392 pounds (1,085 kilograms) of the neutral gas xenon – the propellant that will get Psyche to the asteroid belt – the spacecraft sits inside the launch vehicle’s cone-shaped payload fairing, which protects it from aerodynamic pressure and heat during launch. The spacecraft and fairing have been mated to the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, which is poised for takeoff from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Launch Complex 39A.Integrated onto the spacecraft is a technology demonstration called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC). DSOC will testhigh-data-rate laser communications– which could be used by future NASA missions – beyond the Moon for the first time. The tech demo will not relay Psyche mission data.Launch SequencesThe rocket has two stages and two side boosters. After the side boosters separate and return to land, the core stage will be expended into the Atlantic Ocean. Then the second stage of the rocket, which will help Psyche escape Earth’s gravity, will fire its engine.Once the rocket is out of Earth’s atmosphere, about four minutes after launch, the fairing will separate from its ride and split into two halves, which are jettisoned back to Earth. The spacecraft will then separate from the upper stage about an hour after launch. Soon after, it will deploy its twin solar arrays, one at a time, and direct them at the Sun. At this point, the spacecraft is in a planned “safe mode” (a precautionary standby status), with the Sun illuminating the deployed solar panels, and will begin to direct the low-gain antenna toward Earth for communications.Get the Latest JPL NewsSubscribe to the NewsletterIt could take up to two hours after separation from the rocket before the first signal is received.Once stable communications have been established, mission controllers will begin to reconfigure the spacecraft into its planned operating mode. The ensuing three months of initial checkout include a commissioning phase to confirm that all hardware and software is operating as expected, including the electric thrusters. Starting about five months after launch, the thrusters will fire, one at a time, during long stretches of the trajectory to get to the asteroid.Psyche’s efficientsolar electric propulsionsystem works by accelerating and expelling charged atoms, or ions, of the neutral gas xenon – creating a thrust that will gently push the spacecraft on a journey of nearly six years and about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) to the asteroid Psyche in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.Along the way, in May 2026, the spacecraft will fly by Mars and use the Red Planet’s gravity to slingshot itself toward Psyche, saving propellant while gaining speed and changing direction.After the spacecraft reaches the asteroid in 2029, it will spend about 26 months in orbit, gathering images and other data.Scientists believe Psyche could be part of the core of a planetesimal – an early planetary building block – and composed of a mixture of rock and iron-nickel metal. The metal will not be mined; it will be studied to give researchers a better idea of what makes up Earth’s core and how rocky planets formed in our solar system. Humans can’t bore a path to our planet’s core – or the cores of the other rocky planets – so visiting Psyche could provide a one-of-a-kind window into the violent history of collisions and accumulation of matter that created planets like our own.More About the MissionArizona State University leads the Psyche mission. A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL is responsible for the mission’s overall management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, provided the high-power solar electric propulsion spacecraft chassis.JPL manages DSOC for the Technology Demonstration Missions program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and the Space Communications and Navigation program within the Space Operations Mission Directorate.NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center, is responsible for the insight and approval of the launch vehicle and manages the launch service for the Psyche mission. LSP certified the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for use with the agency’s most complex and highest priority missions in early 2023 at the conclusion of a 2 ½-year effort.Psyche is the 14th mission selected as part ofNASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.For more information about NASA’s Psyche mission go to:http://www.nasa.gov/psycheTeachable Moment: NASA’s Psyche Asteroid MissionPsyche classroom activities

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-tv-coverage-of-european-mission-comet-touchdown

NASA TV Coverage of European Mission Comet Touchdown

NASA TV and the agency's website will air the conclusion of ESA's Rosetta mission early Friday morning, Sept. 30, with NASA commentary, interviews and analysis of the successful mission.

NASA Television and the agency's website will air the conclusion of ESA's (European Space Agency's) Rosetta mission from 3:15 to 5 a.m PDT (6:15 to 8 a.m. EDT) Friday, Sept. 30, with NASA commentary, interviews and analysis of the successful mission. The Rosetta mission will end with the controlled descent of the spacecraft onto the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at around 4:20 a.m. PDT (7:20 a.m. EDT).Rosetta was launched in 2004 carrying 11 science instruments, with several contributions from NASA including: the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO); the Alice spectrograph; the Ion and Electron Sensor (IES); and the Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer (DFMS) electronics package for the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion Neutral Analysis (ROSINA). NASA's Deep Space Network supports ESA's Ground Station Network for spacecraft tracking and navigation.The spacecraft arrived at its destination comet on Aug. 6, 2014, becoming the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet and escort it as it orbits the sun. About two months later, the small Philae lander deployed from Rosetta touched down on the comet and bounced several times before alighting on the surface. Philae obtained the first images ever taken from the surface of a comet, and sent back valuable scientific data for several days. ESA is ending the mission because the spacecraft's ever-increasing distance from the sun has resulted in significantly reduced solar power to operate the spacecraft and its instruments.Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the sun and its planets formed. Rosetta is the first spacecraft to witness up close how a comet changes as it is subjected to the increasing intensity of the sun's radiation. Observations will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and the role comets may have played in the formation of planets.In addition to NASA's contribution, Rosetta's Philae lander was provided by a consortium led by the German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, French National Space Agency, and Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the U.S. contributions to the Rosetta mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL also built the MIRO and hosts its principal investigator, Mark Hofstadter. The Southwest Research Institute developed Rosetta's IES and Alice instruments and hosts their principal investigators, James Burch for IES and Alan Stern for the Alice instrument.NASA TV streaming video, downlink and updated scheduling information is at:http://www.nasa.gov/nasatvThe landing coverage will also be streamed live at:http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit:http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/lightning-sparking-more-boreal-forest-fires

Lightning Sparking More Boreal Forest Fires

A new study finds lightning storms were the main driver of recent massive fire years in Alaska and northern Canada, with the storms likely to migrate north as climate warms.

A new NASA-funded study finds that lightning storms were the main driver of recent massive fire years in Alaska and northern Canada, and that these storms are likely to move farther north with climate warming, potentially altering northern landscapes.The study, led by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of California, Irvine, examined the cause of the fires, which have been increasing in number in recent years. There was a record number of lightning-ignited fires in the Canadian Northwest Territories in 2014 and in Alaska in 2015. The team found increases of between two and five percent a year in the number of lightning-ignited fires since 1975.To study the fires, the team analyzed data from NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and from ground-based lightning networks.Lead author Sander Veraverbeke of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who conducted the work while at UC Irvine, said that while the drivers of large fire years in the high north are still poorly understood, the observed trends are consistent with climate change."We found that it is not just a matter of more burning with higher temperatures. The reality is more complex: higher temperatures also spur more thunderstorms. Lightning from these thunderstorms is what has been igniting many more fires in these recent extreme events," Veraverbeke said.Study co-author Brendan Rogers at Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said these trends are likely to continue. "We expect an increasing number of thunderstorms, and hence fires, across the high latitudes in the coming decades as a result of climate change." This is confirmed in the study by different climate model outputs.Study co-author Charles Miller of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said while data from the lightning networks were critical to this study, it is challenging to use these data for trend detection because of continuing network upgrades. "A spaceborne sensor that provides high northern latitude lightning data that can be linked with fire dynamics would be a major step forward," he said.The researchers found that the fires are creeping farther north, near the transition from boreal forests to Arctic tundra. "In these high-latitude ecosystems, permafrost soils store large amounts of carbon that become vulnerable after fires pass through," said co-author James Randerson of the University of California, Irvine. "Exposed mineral soils after tundra fires also provide favorable seedbeds for trees migrating north under a warmer climate.""Taken together, we discovered a complex feedback loop between climate, lightning, fires, carbon and forests that may quickly alter northern landscapes," Veraverbeke concluded. "A better understanding of these relationships is critical to better predict future influences from climate on fires, and from fires on climate."The study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The Alaska Fire Science Consortium at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, also participated in the study.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-finds-jupiters-winds-penetrate-in-cylindrical-layers

NASA’s Juno Finds Jupiter’s Winds Penetrate in Cylindrical Layers

The finding offers deeper insights into the long-debated internal structure of the gas giant.

Gravity data collected by NASA’s Juno mission indicates Jupiter’s atmospheric winds penetrate the planet in a cylindrical manner, parallel to its spin axis. A paper on the findings was recently published in the journalNature Astronomy.The violent nature of Jupiter’s roiling atmosphere has long been a source of fascination for astronomers and planetary scientists, and Juno has had a ringside seat to the goings-onsince it entered orbit in 2016. During each of the spacecraft’s 55 to date, a suite of science instruments has peered below Jupiter’s turbulent cloud deck to uncover how the gas giant works from the inside out.One way the Juno mission learns about the planet’s interior is via radio science. UsingNASA’s Deep Space Networkantennas, scientists track the spacecraft’s radio signal as Juno flies past Jupiter at speeds near 130,000 mph (209,000 kph), measuring tiny changes in its velocity – as small as 0.01 millimeter per second. Those changes are caused by variations in the planet’s gravity field, and by measuring them, the mission can essentially see into Jupiter’s atmosphere.Such measurements have led to numerous discoveries, including the existence of a dilute core deep within Jupiter and thedepth of the planet’s zones and belts, which extend from the cloud tops down approximately 1,860 miles (3,000 kilometers).Doing the MathTo determine the location and cylindrical nature of the winds, the study’s authors applied a mathematical technique that models gravitational variations and surface elevations of rocky planets like Earth. At Jupiter, the technique can be used to accurately map winds at depth. Using the high-precision Juno data, the authors were able to generate a four-fold increase in the resolution over previous models created with data from NASA’s trailblazing Jovian explorers Voyager and Galileo.This illustration depicts findings that Jupiter’s atmospheric winds penetrate the planet in a cylindrical manner and parallel to its spin axis. The most dominant jet recorded by NASA’s Juno is shown in the cutout: The jet is at 21 degrees north latitude at cloud level, but 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) below that, it’s at 13 degrees north latitude.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/SWRI/MSSS/ASI/ INAF/JIRAM/Björn Jónsson CC BY 3.0Full Image Details“We applied a constraining technique developed for sparse data sets on terrestrial planets to process the Juno data,” said Ryan Park, a Juno scientist and lead of the mission’s gravity science investigation from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “This is the first time such a technique has been applied to an outer planet.”The measurements of the gravity field matched a two-decade-old model that determined Jupiter’s powerful east-west zonal flows extend from the cloud-level white and red zones and belts inward. But the measurements also revealed that rather than extending in every direction like a radiating sphere, the zonal flows go inward, cylindrically, and are oriented along the direction of Jupiter’s rotation axis. How Jupiter’s deep atmospheric winds are structured has been in debated since the 1970s, and the Juno mission has now settled the debate.Get the Latest JPL NewsSUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER“All 40 gravity coefficients measured by Juno matched our previous calculations of what we expect the gravity field to be if the winds penetrate inward on cylinders,” said Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, the study’s lead author and a Juno co-investigator. “When we realized all 40 numbers exactly match our calculations, it felt like winning the lottery.”Along with bettering the current understanding of Jupiter’s internal structure and origin, the new gravity model application could be used to gain more insight into other planetary atmospheres.Find out where Juno is right now with NASA’s interactiveEyes on the Solar System. With its blades stretching out some 66 feet (20 meters), the spacecraft is a dynamic engineering marvel, spinning to keep itself stable as it orbits Jupiter and flies by some of the planet’s moons. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechJuno is currently in an extended mission. Along with flybys of Jupiter, the solar-powered spacecraft has completed a series of flybys of the planet’s icy moons Ganymede and Europa and is in the midst of several close flybys of Io. The Dec. 30 flyby of Io will be the closest to date, coming within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of its volcano-festooned surface.“As Juno’s journey progresses, we’re achieving scientific outcomes that truly define a new Jupiter and that likely are relevant for all giant planets, both within our solar system and beyond,” said Scott Bolton, the principal investigator of the Juno mission at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The resolution of the newly determined gravity field is remarkably similar to the accuracy we estimated 20 years ago. It is great to see such agreement between our prediction and our results.”More About the MissionNASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.More information about Juno is available at:https://www.nasa.gov/juno

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-finds-extremely-hot-planet-makes-first-exoplanet-weather-map

NASA Finds Extremely Hot Planet, Makes First Exoplanet Weather Map

Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have learned what the weather is like on two distant, exotic worlds.

Pasadena, Calif. – Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have learned what the weather is like on two distant, exotic worlds. One team of astronomers used the infrared telescope to map temperature variations over the surface of a giant, gas planet, HD 189733b, revealing it likely is whipped by roaring winds. Another team determined that the gas planet HD 149026b is the hottest yet discovered. Both findings appear May 9 in Nature."We have mapped the temperature variations across the entire surface of a planet that is so far away, its light takes 60 years to reach us," said Heather Knutson of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., lead author of the paper describing HD 189733b.The two planets are "hot Jupiters" - sizzling, gas giant planets that zip closely around their stars. Roughly 50 of the more than 200 known planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets, are hot Jupiters. Visible-light telescopes can detect these strange worlds and determine certain characteristics, such as their sizes and orbits, but not much is known about their atmospheres or what they look like.Since 2005, Spitzer has been revolutionizing the study of exoplanets' atmospheres by examining their infrared light, or heat. In one of the new studies, Spitzer set its infrared eyes on HD 189733b, located 60 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. HD 189733b is the closest known transiting planet, which means that it crosses in front and behind its star when viewed from Earth. It races around its star every 2.2 days.Spitzer measured the infrared light coming from the planet as it circled around its star, revealing its different faces. These infrared measurements, comprising about a quarter of a million data points, were then assembled into pole-to-pole strips, and, ultimately, used to map the temperature of the entire surface of the cloudy, giant planet.The observations reveal that temperatures on this balmy world are fairly even, ranging from 650 degrees Celsius (1,200 Fahrenheit) on the dark side to 930 degrees Celsius (1,700 Fahrenheit) on the sunlit side. HD 189733b, and all other hot Jupiters, are believed to be tidally locked like our moon, so one side of the planet always faces the star. Since the planet's overall temperature variation is mild, scientists believe winds must be spreading the heat from its permanently sunlit side around to its dark side. Such winds might rage across the surface at up to 9600 kilometers per hour (6,000 miles per hour). The jet streams on Earth travel at 322 kilometers per hour (200 miles per hour)."These hot Jupiter exoplanets are blasted by 20,000 times more energy per second than Jupiter," said co-author David Charbonneau, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Now we can see how these planets deal with all that energy."Also, HD 189733b has a warm spot 30 degrees east of "high noon," or the point directly below the star. In other words, if the high-noon point were in Seattle, the warm spot would be in Chicago. Assuming the planet is tidally locked to its parent star, this implies that fierce winds are blowing eastward.In the second Spitzer study, astronomers led by Joseph Harrington of the University of Central Florida in Orlando discovered that HD 149026b is a scorching 2,038 degrees Celsius (3,700 Fahrenheit), even hotter than some low-mass stars. Spitzer was able to calculate the temperature of this transiting planet by observing the drop in infrared light that occurs as it dips behind its star."This planet is like a chunk of hot coal in space," said Harrington. "Because this planet is so hot, we believe its heat is not being spread around. The day side is very hot, and the night side is probably much colder."HD 149026b is located 256 light-years away in the constellation Hercules. It is the smallest and densest known transiting planet, with a size similar to Saturn's and a core suspected to be 70 to 90 times the mass of Earth. It speeds around its star every 2.9 days.According to Harrington and his team, the oddball planet probably reflects almost no starlight, instead absorbing all of the heat into its fiery body. That means HD 149026b might be the blackest planet known, in addition to the hottest."This planet is off the temperature scale that we expect for planets," said Drake Deming, a co-author of the paper, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena.For more information about the Spitzer Space Telescope, visitwww.spitzer.caltech.eduorhttp://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-scientists-find-evidence-of-water-in-meteorite-reviving-debate-over-life-on-mars

NASA Scientists Find Evidence of Water in Meteorite, Reviving Debate Over Life on Mars

Scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and JPL have found evidence of past water movement throughout a Martian meteorite, reviving debate over life on Mars.

A team of scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has found evidence of past water movement throughout a Martian meteorite, reviving debate in the scientific community over life on Mars.In 1996, a group of scientists at Johnson led by David McKay, Everett Gibson and Kathie Thomas-Keprta published an article in Science announcing the discovery of biogenic evidence in the Allan Hills 84001(ALH84001) meteorite. In this new study, Gibson and his colleagues focused on structures deep within a 30-pound (13.7-kilogram) Martian meteorite known as Yamato 000593 (Y000593). The team reports that newly discovered different structures and compositional features within the larger Yamato meteorite suggest biological processes might have been at work on Mars hundreds of millions of years ago.The team's findings have been published in the February issue of the journal Astrobiology. The lead author, Lauren White, is based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Co-authors are Gibson, Thomas-Keprta, Simon Clemett and McKay, all based at Johnson. McKay, who led the team that studied the ALH84001 meteorite, died a year ago."While robotic missions to Mars continue to shed light on the planet's history, the only samples from Mars available for study on Earth are Martian meteorites," said White. "On Earth, we can utilize multiple analytical techniques to take a more in-depth look into meteorites and shed light on the history of Mars. These samples offer clues to the past habitability of this planet. As more Martian meteorites are discovered, continued research focusing on these samples collectively will offer deeper insight into attributes which are indigenous to ancient Mars. Furthermore, as these meteorite studies are compared to present day robotic observations on Mars, the mysteries of the planet's seemingly wetter past will be revealed."Analyses found that the rock was formed about 1.3 billion years ago from a lava flow on Mars. Around 12 million years ago, an impact occurred on Mars which ejected the meteorite from the surface of Mars. The meteorite traveled through space until it fell in Antarctica about 50,000 years ago.The rock was found on the Yamato Glacier in Antarctica by the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition in 2000. The meteorite was classified as a nakhlite, a subgroup of Martian meteorites. Martian meteoritic material is distinguished from other meteorites and materials from Earth and the moon by the composition of the oxygen atoms within the silicate minerals and trapped Martian atmospheric gases.The team found two distinctive sets of features associated with Martian-derived clay. They found tunnel and micro-tunnel structures that thread their way throughout Yamato 000593. The observed micro-tunnels display curved, undulating shapes consistent with bio-alteration textures observed in terrestrial basaltic glasses, previously reported by researchers who study interactions of bacteria with basaltic materials on Earth.The second set of features consists of nanometer- to-micrometer-sized spherules that are sandwiched between layers within the rock and are distinct from carbonate and the underlying silicate layer. Similar spherical features have been previously seen in the Martian meteorite Nakhla that fell in 1911 in Egypt. Composition measurements of the Y000593 spherules show that they are significantly enriched in carbon compared to the nearby surrounding iddingsite layers.A striking observation is that these two sets of features in Y000593, recovered from Antarctica after about 50,000 years residence time, are similar to features found in Nakhla, an observed fall collected shortly after landing.The authors note that they cannot exclude the possibility that the carbon-rich regions in both sets of features may be the product of abiotic mechanisms: however, textural and compositional similarities to features in terrestrial samples, which have been interpreted as biogenic, imply the intriguing possibility that the Martian features were formed by biotic activity."The unique features displayed within the Martian meteorite Yamato 000593 are evidence of aqueous alterations as seen in the clay minerals and the presence of carbonaceous matter associated with the clay phases which show that Mars has been a very active body in its past," said Gibson. "The planet is revealing the presence of an active water reservoir that may also have a significant carbon component."The nature and distribution of Martian carbon is one of the major goals of the Mars Exploration Program. Since we have found indigenous carbon in several Mars meteorites, we cannot overstate the importance of having Martian samples available to study in earth-based laboratories. Furthermore, the small sizes of the carbonaceous features within the Yamato 000593 meteorite present major challenges to any analyses attempted by remote techniques on Mars," Gibson added."This is no smoking gun," said JPL's White. "We can never eliminate the possibility of contamination in any meteorite. But these features are nonetheless interesting and show that further studies of these meteorites should continue."

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-orbiters-spectrometer-shows-oort-comets-coma

Mars Orbiter's Spectrometer Shows Oort Comet's Coma

The imaging spectrometer on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided an image of the coma surrounding a comet that flew near Mars this week.

The Compact Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) observed comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring as the comet sped close to Mars on Oct. 19. CRISM recorded imaging data in 107 different wavelengths, showing the inner part of the cloud of dust, called the coma, surrounding the comet's nucleus.Two images from CRISM presenting three of the recorded wavelengths are online at:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA15291Comet Siding Spring -- an Oort Cloud comet that may contain material from the formation of the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago -- was making its first voyage through the inner solar system. CRISM and many other instruments and spacecraft combined forces to provide an unprecedented data set for an Oort Cloud comet.The appearance of color variations in the CRISM observations of the inner coma could be due to the properties of the comet's dust, possibly dust grain size or composition. The full spectra will be analyzed to better understand the reason for the color variations.The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, provided and operates CRISM. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the orbiter.For more about CRISM, visit:http://crism.jhuapl.edu/For more about Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit:http://mars.nasa.gov/mro/For more about comet Siding Spring, including other images of the comet, visit:http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/comets/sidingspring/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/100-days-and-counting-to-nasas-curiosity-mars-rover-landing

100 Days and Counting to NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Landing

At 10:31 p.m. PDT today, April 27, (1:31 p.m. EDT), NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, carrying the one-ton Curiosity rover, will be within 100 days from the Martian surface.

At 10:31 p.m. PDT today, April 27, (1:31 a.m. EDT, April 28), NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, carrying the one-ton Curiosity rover, will be within 100 days from its appointment with the Martian surface. At that moment, the mission has about 119 million miles (191 million kilometers) to go and is closing at a speed of 13,000 mph (21,000 kilometers per hour)."Every day is one day closer to the most challenging part of this mission," said Pete Theisinger, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.  "Landing an SUV-sized vehicle next to the side of a mountain 85 million miles from home is always stimulating. Our engineering and science teams continue their preparations for that big day and the surface operations to follow."On Sunday, April 22, a week-long operational readiness test concluded at JPL. The test simulated aspects of the mission's early surface operations. Mission planners and engineers sent some of the same commands they will send to the real Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars to a test rover used at JPL."Our test rover has a central computer identical to Curiosity's currently on its way to Mars," said Eric Aguilar, the mission's engineering test lead at JPL. "We ran all our commands through it and watched to make sure it drove, took pictures and collected samples as expected by the mission planners. It was a great test and gave us a lot of confidence moving forward."The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, launched Nov. 26, 2011, will deliver Curiosity to the surface of Mars on the evening of Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (early on Aug. 6, Universal Time and EDT) to begin a two-year prime mission.  Curiosity's landing site is near the base of a mountain inside Gale Crater, near the Martian equator. Researchers plan to use Curiosity to study layers in the mountain that hold evidence about wet environments of early Mars.JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More information about Curiosity is online athttp://www.nasa.gov/mslandhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.You can follow the mission on Facebook at:http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosityand on Twitter at:http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-demonstrates-novel-ocean-powered-underwater-vehicle

NASA Demonstrates Novel Ocean-Powered Underwater Vehicle

NASA, U.S. Navy and university researchers have successfully demonstrated the first robotic underwater vehicle to be powered entirely by natural, renewable, ocean thermal energy.

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA, U.S. Navy and university researchers have successfully demonstrated the first robotic underwater vehicle to be powered entirely by natural, renewable, ocean thermal energy.The Sounding Oceanographic Lagrangrian Observer Thermal RECharging (SOLO-TREC) autonomous underwater vehicle uses a novel thermal recharging engine powered by the natural temperature differences found at different ocean depths. Scalable for use on most robotic oceanographic vehicles, this technology breakthrough could usher in a new generation of autonomous underwater vehicles capable of virtually indefinite ocean monitoring for climate and marine animal studies, exploration and surveillance.Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, completed the first three months of an ocean endurance test of the prototype vehicle off the coast of Hawaii in March."People have long dreamed of a machine that produces more energy than it consumes and runs indefinitely," said Jack Jones, a JPL principal engineer and SOLO-TREC co-principal investigator. "While not a true perpetual motion machine, since we actually consume some environmental energy, the prototype system demonstrated by JPL and its partners can continuously monitor the ocean without a limit on its lifetime imposed by energy supply.""Most of Earth is covered by ocean, yet we know less about the ocean than we do about the surface of some planets," said Yi Chao, a JPL principal scientist and SOLO-TREC principal investigator. "This technology to harvest energy from the ocean will have huge implications for how we can measure and monitor the ocean and its influence on climate."SOLO-TREC draws upon the ocean's thermal energy as it alternately encounters warm surface water and colder conditions at depth. Key to its operation are the carefully selected waxy substances known as phase-change materials that are contained in 10 external tubes, which house enough material to allow net power generation. As the float surfaces and encounters warm temperatures, the material melts and expands; when it dives and enters cooler waters, the material solidifies and contracts. The expansion of the wax pressurizes oil stored inside the float. This oil periodically drives a hydraulic motor that generates electricity and recharges the vehicle's batteries. Energy from the rechargeable batteries powers the float's hydraulic system, which changes the float's volume (and hence buoyancy), allowing it to move vertically.So far, SOLO-TREC has completed more than 300 dives from the ocean surface to a depth of 500 meters (1,640 feet). Its thermal recharging engine produced about 1.7 watt-hours, or 6,100 joules, of energy per dive, enough electricity to operate the vehicle's science instruments, GPS receiver, communications device and buoyancy-control pump.The SOLO-TREC demonstration culminates five years of research and technology development by JPL and Scripps and is funded by the Office of Naval Research. JPL developed the thermal recharging engine, building on the buoyancy engine developed for the Slocum glider by Teledyne Webb Research, Falmouth, Mass. Scripps redesigned the SOLO profiling float and performed the integration. The 84-kilogram (183-pound) SOLO-TREC prototype was tested and deployed by the JPL/Scripps team on Nov. 30, 2009, about 161 kilometers (100 miles) southwest of Honolulu.The performance of underwater robotic vehicles has traditionally been limited by power considerations. "Energy harvesting from the natural environment opens the door for a tremendous expansion in the use of autonomous systems for naval and civilian applications," said Thomas Swean, the Office of Naval Research program manager for SOLO-TREC. "This is particularly true for systems that spend most of their time submerged below the sea surface, where mechanisms for converting energy are not as readily available. The JPL/Scripps concept is unique in that its stored energy gets renewed naturally as the platform traverses ocean thermal gradients, so, in theory, the system has unlimited range and endurance. This is a very significant advance."SOLO-TREC is now in an extended mission. The JPL/Scripps team plans to operate SOLO-TREC for many more months, if not years. "The present thermal engine shows the great promise in harvesting ocean thermal energy," said Russ Davis, a Scripps oceanographer. "With further engineering refinement, SOLO-TREC has the potential to augment ocean monitoring currently done by the 3,200 battery-powered Argo floats." The international Argo array, supported in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, measures temperature, salinity and velocity across the world's ocean. NASA and the U.S. Navy also plan to apply this thermal recharging technology to the next generation of submersible vehicles.To learn more about SOLO-TREC, visithttp://solo-trec.jpl.nasa.gov.For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:http://www.nasa.gov.JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/rosetta-closing-in-on-comet

Rosetta Closing in on Comet

The Rosetta spacecraft is beginning observations and sending science data back to Earth. It will become the first craft to orbit a comet and land a probe on its nucleus.

Less than half the distance between Earth and moon separates Rosetta from its destination, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The European Space Agency's (ESA) spacecraft will become the first to orbit a comet and land a probe on its nucleus. It is beginning observations and sending science data back to Earth.Recent images from Rosetta's Onboard Scientific Imaging System (OSIRIS) indicate that the comet is currently at rest -- no longer showing signs of an extended dust coma surrounding its nucleus. At the end of April, OSIRIS images revealed the comet was active -- spewing out enough gas and dust to create an extended coma. Upcoming images will offer even more information, as the comet is quickly covering more space in OSIRIS' field of view. Currently, comet 67P scales to about one pixel."It will still take a few weeks before we can discern a detailed shape," said OSIRIS Project Manager Carsten Güttler from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottigen, Germany. "But we are now no longer restricted to studying the brightness of the nucleus."Launched in March 2004, Rosetta was reactivated in January 2014 after a record 957 days in hibernation. Composed of an orbiter and lander, Rosetta's objectives upon arrival at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August are to study the celestial object up close in unprecedented detail, prepare for landing a probe on the comet's nucleus in November, and track its changes as it sweeps past the sun.Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the sun and its planets formed. Rosetta's lander will obtain the first images taken from a comet's surface and will provide the first analysis of a comet's composition by drilling into the surface. Rosetta also will be the first spacecraft to witness at close proximity how a comet changes as it is subjected to the increasing intensity of the sun's radiation. Observations will help scientists learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and the role comets may have played in seeding Earth with water, and perhaps even life.Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA. Rosetta's Philae lander is provided by a consortium led by the German Aerospace Center, Cologne; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen; French National Space Agency, Paris; and the Italian Space Agency, Rome. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the U.S. participation in the Rosetta mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit:http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.govMore information about Rosetta is available at:http://www.esa.int/rosetta

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-in-final-preparations-for-nov-8-asteroid-flyby

NASA in Final Preparations for Nov. 8 Asteroid Flyby

NASA scientists will be tracking asteroid 2005 YU55 with antennas of the agency's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., as the space rock safely flies past Earth slightly closer than the moon's orbit on Nov. 8.

NASA scientists will be tracking asteroid 2005 YU55 with antennas of the agency's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., as the space rock safely flies past Earth slightly closer than the moon's orbit on Nov. 8. Scientists are treating the flyby of the 1,300-foot-wide (400-meter) asteroid as a science target of opportunity - allowing instruments on "spacecraft Earth" to scan it during the close pass.Tracking of the aircraft carrier-sized asteroid will begin at 9:30 a.m. local time (PDT) on Nov. 4, using the massive 70-meter (230-foot) Deep Space Network antenna, and last for about two hours. The asteroid will continue to be tracked by Goldstone for at least four hours each day from Nov. 6 through Nov. 10. Radar observations from the Arecibo Planetary Radar Facility in Puerto Rico will begin on Nov. 8, the same day the asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth at 3:28 p.m. PST.The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood. At the point of closest approach, it will be no closer than 201,900 miles (324,900 kilometers). The gravitational influence of the asteroid will have no detectable effect on anything here on Earth, including our planet's tides or tectonic plates. Although 2005 YU55 is in an orbit that regularly brings it to the vicinity of Earth (and Venus and Mars), the 2011 encounter with Earth is the closest this space rock has come for at least the last 200 years.During tracking, scientists will use the Goldstone and Arecibo antennas to bounce radio waves off the space rock. Radar echoes returned from 2005 YU55 will be collected and analyzed. NASA scientists hope to obtain images of the asteroid from Goldstone as fine as about 7 feet (2 meters) per pixel. This should reveal a wealth of detail about the asteroid's surface features, shape, dimensions and other physical properties (see "Radar Love" -http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2006-00a).Arecibo radar observations of asteroid 2005 YU55 made in 2010 show it to be approximately spherical in shape. It is slowly spinning, with a rotation period of about 18 hours. The asteroid's surface is darker than charcoal at optical wavelengths. Amateur astronomers who want to get a glimpse at YU55 will need a telescope with an aperture of 6 inches (15 centimeters) or larger.The last time a space rock as big came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time. The next known approach of an asteroid this large will be in 2028.NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch.More information about asteroid radar research is at:http://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/.More information about the Deep Space Network is at:http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-science-laboratory-in-good-health

Mars Science Laboratory in Good Health

Engineers have received data from NASA's Mars Science Laboratory showing that all systems are operating normally. The approximately eight-month journey to Mars is underway.

Latest Updates:- Engineers have received data from NASA's Mars Science Laboratory showing that all systems are operating normally. The approximately eight-month journey to Mars is underway.- NASA's Mars Science Laboratory has separated from the rocket that boosted it toward Mars and has sent a signal to Earth.- NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and its rocket are coasting in orbit around Earth before heading to Mars.- NASA's Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover have blasted off on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.Mars Science Laboratory Launch Milestones - November 23, 2011PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is tucked inside its Atlas V rocket, ready for launch on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Nov. 26 launch window extends from 7:02 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. PST (10:02 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. EST). The launch period for the mission extends through Dec. 18.The spacecraft, which will arrive at Mars in August 2012, is equipped with the most advanced rover ever to land on another planet. Named Curiosity, the rover will investigate whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life, and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.On Nov. 26, NASA Television coverage of the launch will begin at 4:30 a.m. PST (7:30 a.m. EST). Live launch coverage will be carried on all NASA Television channels. For NASA Television downlink information, schedule information and streaming video, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. The launch coverage will also be streamed live on Ustream athttp://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl.If the spacecraft lifts off at the start of the launch window on Nov. 26, the following milestones are anticipated. Times would vary for other launch times and dates.Launch--The rocket's first-stage common core booster, and the four solid rocket boosters, will ignite before liftoff. Launch, or "T Zero", actually occurs before the rocket leaves the ground. The four solid rocket boosters jettison at launch plus one minute and 52 seconds.Fairing Separation--The nose cone, or fairing, carrying Mars Science Laboratory will open like a clamshell and fall away at about three minutes and 25 seconds after launch. After this, the rocket's first stage will cut off and then drop into the Atlantic Ocean.Parking Orbit--The rocket's second stage, a Centaur engine, is started for the first time at about four minutes and 38 seconds after launch. After it completes its first burn of about 7 minutes, the rocket will be in a parking orbit around Earth at an altitude that varies from 102 miles (165 kilometers) to 201 miles (324 kilometers). It will remain there from 14 to 30 minutes, depending on the launch date and time. If launch occurs at the beginning of the launch Nov. 26 launch window, this stage will last about 21 minutes.On the Way to Mars-- The second Centaur burn, continuing for nearly 8 minutes (for a launch at the opening of the Nov. 26 launch window), lofts the spacecraft out of Earth orbit and sends it toward Mars.Spacecraft Separation--Mars Science Laboratory will separate from the rocket that boosted it toward Mars at about 44 minutes after launch, if launch occurs at the opening of the Nov. 26 window. Shortly after that, the separated Centaur performs its last task, an avoidance maneuver taking itself out of the spacecraft's flight path to avoid hitting either the spacecraft or Mars.Sending a Message of Good Health--Once the spacecraft is in its cruise stage toward Mars, it can begin communicating with Earth via an antenna station in Canberra, Australia, part of NASA's Deep Space Network. Engineers expect to hear first contact from the spacecraft at about 55 minutes after launch and assess the spacecraft's health during the subsequent 30 minutes. The spacecraft will arrive at the Red Planet Aug. 6, 2012, Universal Time (evening of Aug. 5, 2012, PDT).NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Launch management is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Atlas V launch service is provided by United Launch Alliance, Denver.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/seal-takes-ocean-heat-transport-data-to-new-depths

Seal Takes Ocean Heat Transport Data to New Depths

An elephant seal helps scientists understand how the ocean transports heat between its upper and lower layers - important for estimating how much heat the ocean can absorb.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current flows in a loop around Antarctica, connecting the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. It is one of the most significant ocean currents in our climate system because it facilitates the exchange of heat and other properties among the oceans it links.But how the current transfers heat, particularly vertically from the top layer of the ocean to the bottom layers and vice versa, is still not fully understood. This current is very turbulent, producing eddies - swirling vortices of water similar to storms in the atmosphere - between 30 to 125 miles (50 to 200 kilometers) in diameter. It also spans some 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometers) through an especially remote and inhospitable part of the world, making it one of the most difficult currents for scientists - as least those of the human variety - to observe and measure.Luckily for Lia Siegelman, a visiting scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the rough seas posed no challenge for her scientific sidekick: a tagged southern elephant seal.Equipped with a specialized sensor reminiscent of a small hat, the seal swam more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) on a three-month voyage, much of it through the turbulent, eddy-rich waters of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The seal made around 80 dives at depths ranging from 550 to 1,090 yards (500 to 1,000 meters) per day during this time. All the while, it collected a continuous stream of data that has provided new insight into how heat moves vertically between ocean layers in this volatile region - insight that brings us one step closer to understanding how much heat from the Sun the ocean there is able to absorb.For a new paper published recently in Nature Geoscience, Siegelman and her co-authors combined the seal's data with satellite altimetry data. The satellite data of the ocean surface showed where the swirling eddies were within the current and which eddies the seal was swimming through. Analyzing the combined dataset, the scientists paid particular attention to the role smaller ocean features played in vertical heat transport. Siegelman was surprised by the results."These medium-sized eddies are known to drive the production of small-scale fronts - sudden changes in water density similar to cold and warm fronts in the atmosphere," she said. "We found that these fronts were evident some 500 meters [550 yards] into the ocean interior, not just in the surface layer like many studies suggest, and that they played an active role in vertical heat transport."According to Siegelman, their analysis showed that these fronts act like ducts that carry a lot of heat from the ocean interior back to the surface. "Most current modeling studies indicate that the heat would move from the surface to the ocean interior in these cases, but with the new observational data provided by the seal, we found that that's not the case," she said.Why It MattersThe ocean surface layer can absorb only a finite amount of heat before natural processes, like evaporation and precipitation, kick in to cool it down. When deep ocean fronts send heat to the surface, that heat warms the surface layer and pushes it closer to its heat threshold. So essentially, in the areas where this dynamic is present, the ocean isn't able to absorb as much heat from the Sun as it otherwise could.Current climate models and those used to estimate Earth's heat budget don't factor in the effects of these small-scale ocean fronts, but the paper's authors argue that they should."Inaccurate representation of these small-scale fronts could considerably underestimate the amount of heat transferred from the ocean interior back to the surface and, as a consequence, potentially overestimate the amount of heat the ocean can absorb," Siegelman said. "This could be an important implication for our climate and the ocean's role in offsetting the effects of global warming by absorbing most of the heat."The scientists say this phenomenon is also likely present in other turbulent areas of the ocean where eddies are common, including the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean and the Kuroshio Extension in the North Pacific Ocean.Although their results are significant, Siegelman says more research is needed to fully understand and quantify the long-term effects these fronts may have on the global ocean and our climate system. For example, the study is based on observations in the late spring and early summer. Results may be more pronounced during winter months, when these small-scale fronts tend to be stronger. This body of research will also benefit from additional studies in other locations.For more information on how the elephant seal data were acquired, see:https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2871/data-with-flippers-studying-the-ocean-from-a-seals-point-of-view/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/us-european-mission-launches-to-monitor-the-worlds-oceans

US-European Mission Launches to Monitor the World's Oceans

Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, the world's latest sea level satellite, is in orbit and ready to begin taking critical ocean measurements for the next five-and-a-half years.

A joint U.S.-European satellite built to monitor global sea levels lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California Saturday at 9:17 a.m. PST (12:17 p.m. EST).About the size of a small pickup truck,Sentinel-6 Michael Freilichwill extend a nearly 30-year continuous dataset on sea level collected by an ongoing collaboration of U.S. and European satellites while enhancing weather forecasts and providing detailed information on large-scale ocean currents to support ship navigation near coastlines.The ocean-observing Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 21, 2020 at 12:17 p.m. EST (9:17 a.m. PST, 5:17 p.m. UTC).Credit: NASA-JPL/CaltechThe ocean-observing Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 21, 2020 at 12:17 p.m. EST (9:17 a.m. PST, 5:17 p.m. UTC). Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech"The Earth is changing, and this satellite will help deepen our understanding of how," said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA's Earth Science Division. "The changing Earth processes are affecting sea level globally, but the impact on local communities varies widely. International collaboration is critical to both understanding these changes and informing coastal communities around the world."After arriving in orbit, the spacecraft separated from the rocket's second stage and unfolded its twin sets of solar arrays. Ground controllers successfully acquired the satellite's signal, and initial telemetry reports showed the spacecraft in good health. Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will now undergo a series of exhaustive checks and calibrations before it starts collecting science data in a few months' time.Get the Latest JPL NewsSubscribe to the NewsletterContinuing the LegacyThe spacecraft is named in honor ofMichael Freilich, the former director of NASA's Earth Science Division, who was a leading figure in advancing ocean observations from space. Freilich passed away Aug. 5, 2020. His close family and friends attended the launch of the satellite that now carries his name."Michael was a tireless force in Earth sciences. Climate change and sea level rise know no national borders, and he championed international collaboration to confront the challenge," said ESA (European Space Agency) Director of Earth Observation Programmes Josef Aschbacher. "It's fitting that a satellite in his name will continue the 'gold standard' of sea level measurements for the next half-decade. This European-U.S. cooperation is exemplary and will pave the way for more cooperation opportunities in Earth observation.""Mike helped ensure NASA was a steadfast partner with scientists and space agencies worldwide, and his love of oceanography and Earth science helped us improve understanding of our beautiful planet," added Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science at the agency's headquarters. "This satellite so graciously named for him by our European partners will carry out the critical work Mike so believed in - adding to a legacy of crucial data about our oceans and paying it forward for the benefit of future generations."Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will continue the sea level record that began in 1992 with theTOPEX/Poseidonsatellite and continued withJason-1(2001),OSTM/Jason-2(2008), and eventuallyJason-3, which has been observing the oceans since 2016. Together, these satellites have provided a nearly 30-year record ofprecise measurements of sea level height while tracking the rate at which our oceans are rising in response to our warming climate. Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will pass the baton to its twin, Sentinel-6B, in 2025, extending the current climate record at least another 10 years between the two satellites.Global Science ImpactThis latest mission marks the first international involvement in Copernicus, the European Union's Earth Observation Programme. Along with measuring sea levels for almost the entire globe, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich's suite of scientific instruments will also make atmospheric measurements that can be used to complement climate models and help meteorologists make better weather forecasts."NASA is but one of several partners involved in Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, but this satellite speaks to the very core of our mission," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "Whether 800 miles above Earth with this remarkable spacecraft or traveling to Mars to look for signs of life, whether providing farmers with agricultural data or aiding first responders with ourDisasters program, we are tirelessly committed not just to learning and exploring, but to having an impact where it's needed."The initial orbit of Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich is about 12.5 miles (20.1 kilometers) lower than its ultimate operational orbit of 830 miles (1,336 kilometers). In less than a month, the satellite will receive commands to raise its orbit, trailing Jason-3 by about 30 seconds. Mission scientists and engineers will then spend about a year cross-calibrating data collected by the two satellites to ensure the continuity of sea level measurements from one satellite to the next. Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will then take over as the primary sea level satellite and Jason-3 will provide a supporting role until the end of its mission."This mission is the very essence of partnership, precision, and incredible long-term focus," said Michael Watkins, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. "Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich not only provides a critical measurement,it is essential for continuing this historic multi-decadal sea level record."Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich and Sentinel-6B compose the Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission developed in partnership with ESA. ESA is developing the new Sentinel family of missions to support the operational needs of the Copernicus program, managed by the European Commission. Other partners include the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with funding support from the European Commission and technical support from France's National Centre for Space Studies."The data from this satellite, which is so critical for climate monitoring and weather forecasting, will be of unprecedented accuracy," said EUMETSAT Director-General Alain Ratier. "These data, which can only be obtained by measurements from space, will bring a wide range of benefits to people around the globe, from safer ocean travel to more precise prediction of hurricane paths, from greater understanding of sea level rise to more accurate seasonal weather forecasts, and so much more."JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, is contributing three science instruments to each Sentinel-6 satellite: the Advanced Microwave Radiometer for Climate, the Global Navigation Satellite System - Radio Occultation, and the Laser Retroreflector Array. NASA is also contributing launch services, ground systems supporting operation of the NASA science instruments, the science data processors for two of these instruments, and support for the U.S. component of the international Ocean Surface Topography Science Team. The launch is managed by NASA's Launch Services Program, based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Read the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich press kit:https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/sentinel-6/To learn more about Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, visit:https://www.nasa.gov/sentinel-6https://www.esa.int/Sentinel-6https://edefis.eu/CopernicusFactsheetshttps://www.eumetsat.int/website/home/Copernicus/copernicus-sentinel-6/index.html

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/artificial-intelligence-nasa-data-used-to-discover-eighth-planet-circling-distant-star

Artificial Intelligence, NASA Data Used to Discover Eighth Planet Circling Distant Star

Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the discovery of an eighth planet circling a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth.

Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.The newly-discovered Kepler-90i - a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days - was found using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers "learn." In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded changes in starlight caused by planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets.Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.NASA will host aReddit Ask Me Anythingat noon PST (3 p.m. EST) today on this discovery."Just as we expected, there are exciting discoveries lurking in our archived Kepler data, waiting for the right tool or technology to unearth them," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington. "This finding shows that our data will be a treasure trove available to innovative researchers for years to come."The discovery came about after researchers Christopher Shallue and Andrew Vanderburg trained a computer to learn how to identify exoplanets in the light readings recorded by Kepler - the miniscule change in brightness captured when a planet passed in front of, or transited, a star. Inspired by the way neurons connect in the human brain, this artificial "neural network" sifted through Kepler data and found weak transit signals from a previously-missed eighth planet orbiting Kepler-90, in the constellation Draco.Machine learning has previously been used in searches of the Kepler database, and this continuing research demonstrates that neural networks are a promising tool in finding some of the weakest signals of distant worlds.Other planetary systems probably hold more promise for life than Kepler-90. About 30 percent larger than Earth, Kepler-90i is so close to its star that its average surface temperature is believed to exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit, on par with Mercury. Its outermost planet, Kepler-90h, orbits at a similar distance to its star as Earth does to the Sun."The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system. You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer," said Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin.Shallue, a senior software engineer with Google's research team Google AI, came up with the idea to apply a neural network to Kepler data. He became interested in exoplanet discovery after learning that astronomy, like other branches of science, is rapidly being inundated with data as the technology for data collection from space advances."In my spare time, I started Googling for 'finding exoplanets with large data sets' and found out about the Kepler mission and the huge data set available," said Shallue. "Machine learning really shines in situations where there is so much data that humans can't search it for themselves."Kepler's four-year dataset consists of 35,000 possible planetary signals. Automated tests, and sometimes human eyes, are used to verify the most promising signals in the data. However, the weakest signals often are missed using these methods. Shallue and Vanderburg thought there could be more interesting exoplanet discoveries faintly lurking in the data.First, they trained the neural network to identify transiting exoplanets using a set of 15,000 previously vetted signals from the Kepler exoplanet catalogue. In the test set, the neural network correctly identified true planets and false positives 96 percent of the time. Then, with the neural network having "learned" to detect the pattern of a transiting exoplanet, the researchers directed their model to search for weaker signals in 670 star systems that already had multiple known planets. Their assumption was that multiple-planet systems would be the best places to look for more exoplanets."We got lots of false positives of planets, but also potentially more real planets," said Vanderburg. "It's like sifting through rocks to find jewels. If you have a finer sieve then you will catch more rocks but you might catch more jewels, as well."Kepler-90i wasn't the only jewel this neural network sifted out. In the Kepler-80 system, they found a sixth planet. This one, the Earth-sized Kepler-80g, and four of its neighboring planets form what is called a resonant chain - where planets are locked by their mutual gravity in a rhythmic orbital dance. The result is an extremely stable system, similar to the seven planets in theTRAPPIST-1 system.Theirresearch paperreporting these findings has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. Shallue and Vanderburg plan to apply their neural network to Kepler's full set of more than 150,000 stars.Kepler has produced an unprecedented data set for exoplanet hunting. After gazing at one patch of space for four years, the spacecraft now is operating on an extended mission and switches its field of view every 80 days."These results demonstrate the enduring value of Kepler's mission," said Jessie Dotson, Kepler's project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "New ways of looking at the data - such as this early-stage research to apply machine learning algorithms - promise to continue to yield significant advances in our understanding of planetary systems around other stars. I'm sure there are more firsts in the data waiting for people to find them."Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. This work was performed through the Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship Program executed by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute.For more information on this announcement, visit:https://www.nasa.gov/mediaresourcesFor more information about the Kepler mission, visit:https://www.nasa.gov/kepler

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/the-anatomy-of-glacial-ice-loss

The Anatomy of Glacial Ice Loss

A warming climate is taking its toll on Greenland and Antarctica glaciers, melting them from above and below the surface. The more they melt, the higher sea levels rise.

When an ice cube is exposed to a heat source, like warm water or air, it melts. So, it's no surprise that a warming climate is causing our glaciers and ice sheets to melt. However, predicting just how much the glaciers and ice sheets will melt and how quickly - key components of sea level rise - is not nearly as straightforward.Greenland and Antarctica are home to most of the world's glacial ice - including its only two ice sheets - making them areas of particular interest to scientists. Combined, the two regions also contain enough ice, that if it were to melt all at once, would raise sea levels by nearly 215 feet (65 meters) - making the study and understanding of them not just interesting, but crucial to our near-term adaptability and our long term survival in a changing world.Credit: NASAGlaciers and ice sheets are far more complex structures than ice cubes. They form when snow accumulates and is compressed into ice by new snow over many years. As they grow, they begin to move slowly under the pressure of their own weight, dragging smaller rocks and debris across the land with them. Glacial ice that extends to cover large landmasses, as it does in Antarctica and Greenland, is considered an ice sheet.The processes that cause glaciers and ice sheets to lose mass are also more complex. An ice cube's surface melts when it's exposed to ambient (warm) air. And while warm air certainly melts the surface of glaciers and ice sheets, they're also significantly affected by other factors, including the ocean water that surrounds them, the terrain (both land and ocean) over which they move, and even their own meltwater.Get the Latest JPL NewsSubscribe to the NewsletterGreenland and Antarctica are home to most of the world's glacial ice, including its only two ice sheets. These thick slabs of ice - some 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) and 15,000 feet (4,500 meters) thick, respectively - contain most of the freshwater stored on Earth, making them of particular interest to scientists. Combined, the two regions also contain enough ice, that if it were to melt all at once, would raise sea levels by nearly 215 feet (65 meters) - making the study and understanding of them not just interesting, but crucial to our near-term adaptability and our long-term survival in a changing world.Ice Loss in GreenlandA glacier is considered in balance when the amount of snow that falls and accumulates at its surface (the accumulation zone) is equal to the amount of ice lost through melting, evaporation, calving, and other processes.But with annual air temperatures in the Arctic increasing faster than anywhere else in the world, thatbalance is no longer achievable in Greenland. Warmer ocean waters surrounding the island's tidewater glaciers are also problematic."It's basically like pointing a hairdryer at an ice cube while the ice cube is also sitting in a warm pot of water," said Josh Willis, principal investigator of NASA'sOcean's Melting Greenland (OMG), a project that is investigating the effects of ocean water temperature on melting ice in the region. "The glaciers are being melted by heat from above and below simultaneously."Although the warm air and the warm water contribute to melting individually, the interplay between the meltwater from the glacier and the warm ocean water also plays a significant role.When warm summer air melts the surface of a glacier, the meltwater bores holes down through the ice. It makes its way all the way down to the bottom of the glacier where it runs between the ice and the glacier bed, and eventually shoots out in a plume at the glacier base and into the surrounding ocean. The meltwater plume is lighter than the surrounding ocean water because it doesn't contain salt. So it rises toward the surface, mixing the warm ocean water upward in the process. The warm water then rubs up against the bottom of the glacier, causing even more of the glacier to melt. This often leads to calving - ice cracking and breaking off into large ice chunks (icebergs) - at the front end, or terminus of the glacier.Credit: NASAWhen warm summer air melts the surface of a glacier, the meltwater bores holes down through the ice. It makes its way all the way down to the bottom of the glacier where it runs between the ice and the glacier bed, and eventually shoots out in a plume at the glacier base and into the surrounding ocean.The meltwater plume is lighter than the surrounding ocean water because it doesn't contain salt. So it rises toward the surface, mixing the warm ocean water upward in the process. The warm water then rubs up against the bottom of the glacier, causing even more of the glacier to melt. This often leads to calving - ice cracking and breaking off into large ice chunks (icebergs) - at the front end, or terminus of the glacier.The complicatedshape of the sea floorsurrounding Greenland influences how readily this warm water melt can occur. It provides a barrier in some areas - preventing the deep, warmer water from the Atlantic Ocean from reaching glacier fronts. However, the underwater terrain, much like the terrain above water, includes other features like deep canyons. The canyons cut into the continental shelf, allowing the Atlantic waters in. Glaciers sitting in these waters will melt faster than those where the warm water is blocked by underwater ridges or sills.Ice Loss in AntarcticaIn Antarctica, where similar surface and ocean melting processes occur, the topography and bedrock on which the ice sheet sits significantly influence the ice sheet's stability and its contribution to sea level rise.Researchers separate Antarctica intotwo regionsbased on the relationship between the ice and the bedrock beneath it. East Antarctica, the area east of the Transantarctic Mountains, is extremely high in elevation and has the thickest ice on the planet. The bedrock underneath the ice sheet is also mostly above sea level. These features help to keep the east side relatively stable. West Antarctica, on the other hand, is lower in elevation and most of the ice sheet there is thinner. Unlike the east, the ice sheet in West Antarctica sits on bedrock that is below sea level."In West Antarctica, we have these glaciers resting on bedrock that is under water. Like in Greenland, there is a layer of warmer ocean water below the cold surface layer. So this warm water is able to flow onto the continental shelf, and then all the way underneath the ice shelves - the floating ice that extends from glaciers and the ice sheet," said NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Helene Seroussi. "The water melts the ice shelves from below which can cause them to thin and break off."The visualization shows how ocean currents flow around and under Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica. As the water makes its way underneath the ice shelf, it erodes the ice shelf from the bottom causing it to become thinner. The visualization was produced using the "Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean" (ECCO) V3 ocean circulation model, the 100 meter "Reference Elevation Model of Antarctica" (REMA) surface elevation and the 450 meter bed topography and ice thickness BedMachine Antarctica V1 datasets. The surface is mapped with scenes from NASA's LandSat 8 satellite. Exaggeration factors of 4 and 15 - above and below sea level respectively - were used for clarity.Credit: NASA / Cindy StarrThat matters because the ice shelves act like corks. They hold the ice that is flowing from upstream back, slowing its approach to the ocean, where it raises sea level. When the ice shelves calve, the cork is essentially removed, allowing more inland ice to flow freely into the ocean. Furthermore, this leads to retreat of the grounding zone - the area where the ice separates from the bedrock and begins to float."The grounding zone delineates floating ice, which is already accounted for in the sea level budget from grounded ice which is not accounted for in the budget," saidICESat-2scientist Kelly Brunt of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the University of Maryland. "Floating ice is like an ice cube floating in a glass. It doesn't overflow the glass when it melts. But when non-floating ice is added to the ocean, it's like adding more ice cubes to the glass, which will cause the water level to rise."The bedrock in West Antarctica is also reverse sloping - meaning it is higher at the edges and gradually becomes deeper further inland. So each time the grounding zone retreats inland, thicker ice is exposed to the ocean water and the glacier or ice sheet becomes grounded in deeper water. This allows even more ice to flow from upstream into the ocean."It's concerning in West Antarctica because as we push the grounding zones back, the downward, reverse slope means that there's really no backstop, nothing to interrupt this cycle of melting and retreat," said Brunt. "Our maps of the bedrock under the ice sheet are not as comprehensive as they are in Greenland, in part because Antarctica is far less accessible. Because of that, we really don't know if there are any little bumps or peaks down there that might help to slow the retreat."West Antarctic glaciers likeThwaites and Pine Islandare already retreating faster than they were in the past. This is problematic because they provide a main pathway for ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to enter the Amundsen Sea and raise sea levels.Overall, melting and ice loss have accelerated at both poles in recent years. The more we learn about the processes and interactions that cause it, some of which were discussed here, the better we'll be able to accurately and precisely predict sea level rise far into the future.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/strike-slip-faults-found-on-mars-and-jupiters-satellites

Strike-Slip Faults Found on Mars and Jupiter's Satellites

Strike-slip earthquake faults, which are prevalent on Earth in several varieties, have been found on Mars and on two of Jupiter's Galilean satellites, Europa and Ganymede, according to a planetary geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Strike-slip earthquake faults, which are prevalent on Earth in several varieties, have been found on Mars and on two of Jupiter's Galilean satellites, Europa and Ganymede, according to a planetary geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.Dr. Matthew P. Golombek of JPL's Earth and Space Sciences Division is a co-convener of a symposium on the discoveries at the Geological Society of America's 1991 annual meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 23 at the San Diego Convention Center. The title of the symposium will be "Strike-Slip Faulting: Geological and Geophysical Perspectives."A strike-slip fault refers to a geological process whereby motion occurs parallel to the surface expression of the fault."Strike-slip faults are relatively uncommon tectonic features in our solar system. No other planet or satellite has nearly the number or variety of strike-slip faults found on Earth," said Golombek, a structural geologist who specializes in Earth and planetary tectonics.However, studies of planetary images from spacecraft reveal that strike-slip faults exist on Mars, Europa and Ganymede. The faults on Europa and Ganymede suggest that a thin mechanical lithosphere existed on those bodies in the past, Golombek said.The lithosphere is the strong outer layer of the planets and satellites that includes the crust and the outer part of the mantle.The faults are not active on Mars, Europa or Ganymede at present. But on Europa, the faults indicate that quake activity probably took place there "about a hundred million years ago," Golombek said.Meanwhile, on Mars and Ganymede, the faults show that strike-slip faulting occurred on those bodies "a few billion years ago," he added. In contrast, the strike-slip faults on Earth remain active today.On Mars, about 10 strike-slip faults have been sighted. The faults are about 10 to 20 kilometers (6.2 to 12.4 miles) long and show a slippage (or displacement) of less than 1 kilometer (0.62 mile).But the faults on Europa, the second Galilean satellite around Jupiter, and Ganymede, the third Galilean satellite and the largest satellite in the solar system, are significantly larger and more numerous.On Europa, about 100 strike-slip faults have been spotted. The faults are about 50 to 100 kilometers (31 to 62 miles) long and show a slippage of 5 to 10 kilometers (3.1 to 6.2 miles).On Ganymede, about 100 such faults have been found. They are about 100 kilometers (62 miles) in length, showing a slippage of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles)."By studying these features," Golombek said, "planetary geologists can get a better understanding of the physical processes involved in the strike-slip faulting of Earth."818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/you-can-help-train-nasas-rovers-to-better-explore-mars

You Can Help Train NASA’s Rovers to Better Explore Mars

Members of the public can now help teach an artificial intelligence algorithm to recognize scientific features in images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has enormous potential to change the way NASA’s spacecraft study the universe. But because all machine learning algorithms require training from humans, a recent project asks members of the public to label features of scientific interest in imagery taken by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.CalledAI4Mars, the project is the continuation of one launched last year that relied on imagery from NASA’s Curiosity rover. Participants in the earlier stage of that project labeled nearly half a million images, using a tool to outline features like sand and rock that rover drivers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory typically watch out for when planning routes on the Red Planet. The end result was an algorithm, called SPOC (Soil Property and Object Classification), that could identify these features correctly nearly 98% of the time.Teach a Mars Rover to Classify Martian TerrainSPOC is still in development, and researchers hope it can someday be sent to Mars aboard a future spacecraft that could perform even more autonomous driving than Perseverance’sAutoNavtechnology allows.Images from Perseverance will further improve SPOC by expanding the kinds of identifying labels that can be applied to features on the Martian surface. AI4Mars now provides labels to identify more refined details, allowing people to choose options like float rocks (“islands” of rocks) or nodules (BB-size balls, often formed by water, of minerals that have been cemented together).The goal is to hone an algorithm that could help a future rover pick out needles from the haystack of data sent from Mars. Equipped with19 cameras, Perseverance sends anywhere from dozens to hundreds of images to Earth each day for scientists and engineers to comb through for specific geological features. But time is tight: After those images travel millions of miles from Mars to Earth, the team members have a matter of hours to develop the next set of instructions, based on what they see in those images, to send to Perseverance.With AI4Mars, users outline rock and landscape features in images from NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. The project helps train an artificial intelligence algorithm for improved rover capabilities on Mars.Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechParts of Perseverance are visible beside an area outlined in AI4Mars. The project already used images from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover and help from the public to train an artificial intelligence algorithm; now the project is using images from Perseverance.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech“It’s not possible for any one scientist to look at all the downlinked images with scrutiny in such a short amount of time, every single day,” said Vivian Sun, a JPL scientist who helps coordinate Perseverance’s daily operations and consulted on the AI4Mars project. “It would save us time if there was an algorithm that could say, ‘I think I saw rock veins or nodules over here,’ and then the science team can look at those areas with more detail.”Especially during this developmental stage, SPOC requires lots of validation from scientists to ensure it’s labeling accurately. But even when it improves, the algorithm is not intended to replace more complex analyses by human scientists.It’s All About the DataKey to any successful algorithm is a good dataset, said Hiro Ono, the JPL AI researcher who led the development of AI4Mars. The more individual pieces of data available, the more an algorithm learns.“Machine learning is very different from normal software,” Ono said. “This isn’t like making something from scratch. Think of it as starting with a new brain. More of the effort here is getting a good dataset to teach that brain and massaging the data so it will be better learned.”AI researchers can train their Earth-bound algorithms on tens of thousands of images of, say, houses, flowers, or kittens. But no such data archive existed for the Martian surface before the AI4Mars project. The team would be content with 20,000 or so images in their repository, each with a variety of features labeled.Get the Latest JPL NewsSUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTERThe Mars-data repository could serve several purposes, noted JPL’s Annie Didier, who worked on the Perseverance version of AI4Mars. “With this algorithm, the rover could automatically select science targets to drive to,” she said. It could also store a variety of images onboard the rover, then send back just images of specific features that scientists are interested in, she said.That’s on the horizon; scientists may not have to wait that long for the algorithm to benefit them, however. Before the algorithm ever makes it to space, it could be used to scan NASA’s vast public archive of Mars data, allowing researchers to find surface features in those images more easily.Ono noted it’s important to the AI4Mars team to make their own dataset publicly available so that the entire data science community can benefit.“If someone outside JPL creates an algorithm that works better than ours using our dataset, that’s great, too,” he said. “It just makes it easier to make more discoveries.”More About the MissionA key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars isastrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includesArtemismissions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.For more about Perseverance:mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/nasa.gov/perseverance

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-cubesats-steer-toward-mars

NASA CubeSats Steer Toward Mars

NASA has achieved a first for the class of tiny spacecraft known as CubeSats, which are opening new access to space.

NASA has achieved a first for the class of tiny spacecraft known as CubeSats, which are opening new access to space.Over the past week, two CubeSats called MarCO-A and MarCO-B have been firing their propulsion systems to guide themselves toward Mars. This process, called a trajectory correction maneuver, allows a spacecraft to refine its path to Mars following launch. Both CubeSats successfully completed this maneuver; NASA's InSight spacecraft justcompleted the same processon May 22.The pair of CubeSats that make up the Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission both launched on May 5, along with the InSight lander, which is headed toward a Nov. 26 touchdown on the Red Planet. They were designed to trail InSight on the way to Mars, aiming to relay back data about InSight as it enters the planet's atmosphere and attempts to land. The MarCOs were never intended to collect any science data; instead, they are a test of miniaturized communication and navigation technology that can blaze a path for future CubeSats sent to other planets.Both MarCO-A and B successfully completed a set of communications tests in the past couple of weeks, said John Baker, program manager for planetary SmallSats at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. JPL built both MarCO CubeSats and leads the mission."Our broadest goal was to demonstrate how low-cost CubeSat technology can be used in deep space for the first time," Baker said. "With both MarCOs on their way to Mars, we've already traveled farther than any CubeSat before them."While MarCO-A corrected its course to Mars relatively smoothly, MarCO-B faced some unexpected challenges. Its maneuver was smaller due to a leaky thruster valve that engineers have been monitoring for the past several weeks. The leak creates small trajectory changes on its own. Engineers have factored in these nudges so that MarCO-B can still perform a trajectory correction maneuver. It will take several more weeks of tracking to refine these nudges so that MarCO-B can follow InSight on its cruise through space."We're cautiously optimistic that MarCO-B can follow MarCO-A," said Joel Krajewski of JPL, MarCO's project manager. "But we wanted to take more time to understand the underlying issues before attempting the next course-correction maneuver."Once the MarCO team has analyzed data, they'll know the size of follow-on maneuvers. Several more course corrections will be needed to reach the Red Planet.Should the CubeSats make it all the way to Mars, they will attempt to relay data to Earth about InSight's landing. InSight won't rely on either CubeSat for that data relay, however; that job will fall to NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.Find more information about MarCO here:https://go.nasa.gov/marco_launch

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-wins-4-webbys-4-peoples-voice-awards

NASA Wins 4 Webbys, 4 People's Voice Awards

Winners include the JPL-managed "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign, NASA's Global Climate Change website, Solar System Interactive.

NASA today received four 2020 Webby awards, highlighting the agency's diverse digital offerings in websites, social media and apps across its broad programs."We are very pleased that these awards show the diversity of our digital communications," said Bettina Inclán, NASA's associate administrator for communication. "We won for websites, social media, videos and apps. With awards going to NASA Headquarters and three field centers, they also show the whole agency's commitment to effective digital communication."NASA's four Webby Award winners are:NASA Moon Tunes- NASA's Johnson Space Center solicited songs for a playlist to accompany astronauts on their three-day trip to the Moon during the Artemis program, winning for Social Media in Culture & Lifestyle. More than 1 million submissions helped build thefinal playlist. Moon Tunes also won the People's Voice award in its category.Send Your Name to Mars- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory invited members of the public to send their names to Mars aboard the Perseverance rover; a record 10.9 million people did. The campaign won for Best Social Community Building and Engagement. "Send Your Name to Mars" also won the People's Voice award in its category.NASA'ssocial media, managed by NASA's Office of Communications, won its second straight Webby for Best Overall Social Presence. NASA's flagship accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have tens of millions of followers, and the social media team regularly answers questions from the public via its#AskNASA video seriesand Reddit "Ask Me Anything" programs."NASA Explorers: Cryosphere"- The "NASA Explorers" digital series from the Goddard Space Flight Center highlights NASA's scientific research around the world. The of "NASA Explorers" focused on research into the cryosphere, Earth's icy reaches. The series has 1.5 million views, and Claire Parkinson, one of the featured scientists, is now afinalist for a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America award.Two other digital efforts were voted the People's Voice winner: NASA's Climate Change website and Solar System Interactive, which allows users to view the solar system from a variety of perspectives, including spacecraft.NASA's Global Climate Change(website nominee for Green) - This JPL-managed site tracks real-time data about how Earth's climate is changing. The site has received six nominations, winning two Webbys and two People's Voice awards.Solar System Interactive- Also from JPL, this site shows the current relative location of planets and other bodies, including spacecraft. It was nominated in the Education & Reference category of Apps, Mobile and Voice."Our goal is to set the standard for innovation by creating digital experiences that engage, educate and inspire," said Michael Greene, director of Communications and Education at JPL. "We are honored that these efforts are being recognized by the Webby and the People's Voice awards."NASA received 12 nominations this year, a record for the agency. Its other nominees included:NASA Astronaut Reaction GIFs(Best Photograpy and Graphics) - NASA's Johnson Space Center created a series of reaction GIFs with an astronaut for public use.Rolling Stones on Mars(Best Influencer Endorsement) - NASA named a rock that appeared to have been moved by the thrusters of NASA's Mars InSight lander as it settled onto Mars. The campaign received 19 million social engagements.NASA's Exoplanet Exploration(website nominee for Weird and Science) - The site lets internet users explore planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets. It won a People's Voice Award in 2018.NASA Home and City(Government and Civil Innovation) - The new, upgraded interactive website lets users explore how NASA technology is in their home and around the world. A previous version of the site won a Webby in the Government category in 2010.The"Down to Earth"video series, in which astronauts talk about their perspective on Earth from space, was nominated in the Science & Education video category.NASA had three honorees in addition to the nominees:How the Visually Impaired Experience Hubble Images(Video) - The book "Touch the Universe" by Noreen Grice features some of Hubble's most well-known photographs, but all of these photos were specially made to include everyone.NASA JPL-edu Teachable Moments- Teachable Moments harness the latest space missions and discoveries from NASA to help educators engage students in STEM with educational explainers, lessons and activities.NASA.gov(Government and Civil Innovation) - NASA's home page has previously received three Webby Awards and 11 People's Voice awards.Established in 1996,The Webby Awardsare presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. In 2019, there were more than 13,000 entries, and more than 3 million votes were cast for the People's Voice awards.See thefull list of NASA Webby Award winners and nominees.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-finds-polar-ice-adding-more-to-rising-seas

NASA Finds Polar Ice Adding More to Rising Seas

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study.

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study -- the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass -- suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.The nearly 20-year study reveals that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for mass loss in mountain glaciers and ice caps are available from a separate study conducted using other methods, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes a year on average. That's enough to raise global sea level by an average of 1.3 millimeters (.05 inches) a year. (A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds.)The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets."That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising -- they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers," said lead author Eric Rignot, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine. "What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007. Our study helps reduce uncertainties in near-term projections of sea level rise."Rignot's team combined nearly two decades (1992-2009) of monthly satellite measurements with advanced regional atmospheric climate model data to examine changes in ice sheet mass and trends in acceleration of ice loss.The study compared two independent measurement techniques. The first characterized the difference between two sets of data: interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from European, Canadian and Japanese satellites and radio echo soundings, which were used to measure ice exiting the ice sheets; and regional atmospheric climate model data from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, used to quantify ice being added to the ice sheets. The other technique used eight years of data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) satellites, which track minute changes in Earth's gravity field due to changes in Earth's mass distribution, including ice movement.The team reconciled the differences between techniques and found them to be in agreement, both for total amount and rate of mass loss, over their data sets' eight-year overlapping period. This validated the data sets, establishing a consistent record of ice mass changes since 1992.The team found that for each year over the 18-year study, the Greenland ice sheet lost mass faster than it did the year before, by an average of 21.9 gigatonnes a year. In Antarctica, the year-over-year speedup in ice mass lost averaged 14.5 gigatonnes."These are two totally independent techniques, so it is a major achievement that the results agree so well," said co-author Isabella Velicogna, also jointly with JPL and UC Irvine. "It demonstrates the tremendous progress that's being made in estimating how much ice the ice sheets are gaining and losing, and in analyzing Grace's time-variable gravity data."The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches). While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration.Study results are published this month in Geophysical Research Letters. Other participating institutions include the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, Utrecht University, The Netherlands; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.JPL developed Grace and manages the mission for NASA. The University of Texas Center for Space Research in Austin has overall mission responsibility. GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), Potsdam, Germany, is responsible for German mission elements.More on Grace is online athttp://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/andhttp://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/.JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-voyager-statement-about-competing-models-to-explain-recent-spacecraft-data

NASA Voyager Statement about Competing Models to Explain Recent Spacecraft Data

NASA's Voyager Project Scientist Ed Stone comments on competing models of Voyager 1's position relative to interstellar space.

A newly published paper argues that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has already entered interstellar space. The model described in the paper is new and different from other models used so far to explain the data the spacecraft has been sending back from more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from our sun.NASA's Voyager project scientist, Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, explains:"Details of a new model have just been published that lead the scientists who created the model to argue that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft data can be consistent with entering interstellar space in 2012. In describing on a fine scale how magnetic field lines from the sun and magnetic field lines from interstellar space can connect to each other, they conclude Voyager 1 has been detecting the interstellar magnetic field since July 27, 2012. Their model would mean that the interstellar magnetic field direction is the same as that which originates from our sun.Other models envision the interstellar magnetic field draped around our solar bubble and predict that the direction of the interstellar magnetic field is different from the solar magnetic field inside. By that interpretation, Voyager 1 would still be inside our solar bubble.The fine-scale magnetic connection model will become part of the discussion among scientists as they try to reconcile what may be happening on a fine scale with what happens on a larger scale.The Voyager 1 spacecraft is exploring a region no spacecraft has ever been to before. We will continue to look for any further developments over the coming months and years as Voyager explores an uncharted frontier."The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.For more information about Voyager, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/voyagerandhttp://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/new-object-moves-like-a-comet-but-looks-like-an-asteroid

New Object Moves Like a Comet but Looks Like an Asteroid

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), have discovered a unique and baffling object that may be either an unusual asteroid or an extinct comet.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), have discovered a unique and baffling object that may be either an unusual asteroid or an extinct comet.The object, designated 1996 PW, was detected by astronomers using data from the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program that employs a JPL-developed camera mounted on a U.S. Air Force telescope atop Mt. Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii.Puzzled scientists are still striving to understand exactly what object 1996 is and where it came from. "This is a misfit in the grand scheme of things," according to Eleanor Helin, a planetary astronomer at JPL and the NEAT principal investigator.At first look, the object, which has a diameter of about 8 to 16 kilometers (about 5 to 10 miles), appears to be an asteroid, a chunk of rock that orbits the sun, said Helin. However, unlike most typical asteroids, which inhabit orbits no farther out than Jupiter, 1996 PW has a highly elongated, comet- like orbit that stretches into the vast outer reaches of the solar system, far beyond Neptune and Pluto. Its orbit has a period currently estimated at 5,000 years, according to JPL research scientist Dr. Michael Keesey.Although 1996 PW is in an orbit resembling that of a long- period comet, no gaseous emissions or other comet-like activity, such as a dust come, has been observed, even during its current closest approach to the Sun, Helin said.Helin and other astronomers studying the object believe that this raises the possibility that it was once an active comet, but is now inert, either because its ice and gases have been stripped away or because it is covered and insulated by non-volatile materials.This puzzling object was discovered through a combination of high-tech telescopes, sophisticated software and human detective work. The NEAT program at Haleakala, carried out under the direction of Helin and task manager Dr. Steven Pravdo, also of JPL, is the world's first fully autonomous near-Earth object imaging system. It consists of a computer controller and a highly sensitive CCD camera sensor mounted on a telescope. The system is designed to discover and track asteroids and comets as they approach Earth from deep space.The NEAT system is mounted on the U.S. Air Force's Ground- Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System's one-meter telescope at the Maui facility.Observational data from NEAT on the night of August 9 recorded the appearance of 1996 PW, along with similar observations of 150 more typical asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. More observations were made three nights later. While computer-processing the data at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gareth Williams noticed the object had an unusual apparent motion.Due to the current position in space of 1996 PW, scientists will have an excellent window of opportunity to study the object more thoroughly over the next six months.Further observations were made at Haleakala by NEAT and by an Italian amateur astronomer, who learned of the object from the Minor Planet Center's World Wide Web site. JPL's David Rabinovitz provided positional and color information on the discovery. Vital operational work on the incoming data was handled by JPL's Ken Lawrence, with results reviewed by team members.The NEAT camera was installed at the Air Force's Maui facility in December 1995 to conduct a systematic search for asteroids and comets that come near Earth. With its short exposure time and fast electronics, NEAT is able to achieve wide- sky coverage. It can also detect objects much fainter than was possible with the photographic Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory in Southern California, which Helin used to conduct asteroid searches for 20 years.NEAT was built and is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.The electronic image that led to the discovery of 1996 PW is available on the NEAT Program's Internet Home Page at:http://huey.jpl.nasa.gov/~spravdo/neat.html818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasaforest-service-maps-aid-fire-recovery

NASA/Forest Service Maps Aid Fire Recovery

New maps of two recent California megafires that combine unique data sets from the U.S. Forest Service and JPL are answering some of the urgent questions that follow a huge wildfire.

Fast Facts:› New maps of burn areas from two California megafires are so detailed, they can show individual trees.› The maps are being used in rehabilitating the burn areas and protecting wildlife.New maps of two recent California megafires that combine unique data sets from the U.S. Forest Service and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are answering some of the urgent questions that follow a huge wildfire: In all the acres of blackened landscape, where are the live trees to provide seed and regrow the forest? Which dead trees could endanger workers rebuilding roads and trails? What habitats have been created for fire-dependent wildlife species?The maps, so detailed that they show individual trees, cover the areas of two California megafires -- the 2013 Rim fire, which burned more than 250,000 acres (1,000 square kilometers) near and in Yosemite National Park, and 2014's very intense King fire near Lake Tahoe -- before, during and after the active burns. As the Forest Service directs ongoing recovery and restoration projects in the two areas, it is using the maps to target its efforts toward important goals such as reducing soil erosion and protecting wildlife.The maps include observations from three instruments: JPL's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS), which collects images in visible light; JPL's MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER), which observes in thermal infrared -- in other words, it "sees" heat; and lidar data showing terrain and canopy with such high resolution that individual trees are outlined.Carlos Ramirez, program manager of the USFS's Remote Sensing Laboratory, McClellan, California, described three ways the Forest Service is currently using the maps:-- "In some areas of the King fire, you don't see any green for miles and miles," said Ramirez. "It's likely there are not going to be any viable seed sources where the fire was that intense. With the AVIRIS data set, we get an inventory of living vegetation and the condition of it. That gives people in charge of putting together restoration plans an idea of where to focus their attention."-- Wildfires increase erosion by burning off plants that stabilize soil and diffuse rain. Intense burns often create a water-resistant layer atop the soil so that rain runs off instead of soaking in, cutting deep channels and increasing flood and landslide danger downstream. The maps identify where trees and plants are still alive and erosion control is not needed.-- Ramirez is working with the University of California, Davis, and nongovernmental organizations to manage the goals of simultaneously clearing hazardous burned timber and preserving habitats for as many species as possible. "Some of these high-severity burn patches are highly desirable habitats," he said. The maps allow the team to better assess habitat quality for species such as the black-backed woodpecker, which thrives on beetles that live in dead trees.The NASA observations were acquired in the development of a satellite mission called the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI), which will study Earth's ecosystems and provide critical information on natural disasters. HyspIRI is many years from launch and not yet under construction, but AVIRIS and MASTER are airborne prototypes of its two instruments, developed so that scientists can work out scientific and technological issues in advance. Natasha Stavros of JPL recognized the potential value of the Rim fire observations and began collaborating with Ramirez to assemble the maps. When the King fire broke out, the scientists received additional NASA funding to document that fire and its aftermath as well. They hope to create another set of maps if another California megafire breaks out in 2015.Scientist Janice Coen of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, is using the MASTER maps of the King fire in independent research with theCoupled Atmosphere - Wildland Fire Environmentmodel, which simulates the interactions of weather and fires. She hopes to gain insight into why the fire grew so quickly. Fires that intense usually are fanned by high winds, but weather stations around the King fire recorded very little wind when it started. "If you're using the standard tools, you can't explain the rapid fire growth," she said. "The evolution of this fire seems to depend very much on winds the fire itself generated as it burned, and those winds in turn depend on the characteristics of the vegetation the fire had for fuel. It's a good case study, because the new data sets can distinguish between vegetation characteristics that other data sets don't distinguish."A database of detailed maps is online at:http://wildfire.jpl.nasa.gov/data

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/the-two-faces-of-tempel-1

The Two Faces of Tempel 1

Whichever part of comet Tempel 1 is facing toward Stardust when the spacecraft zips by the comet tonight should provide some great new science.

Just one year before its Feb. 14 encounter with comet Tempel 1, NASA's Stardust spacecraft performed the largest rocket burn of its extended life. With the spacecraft on the opposite side of the solar system and beyond the orbit of Mars, the comet hunter's rockets fired for 22 minutes and 53 seconds, changing the spacecraft's speed by 24 meters per second (54 mph). The burn was a result of an international effort to determine something that could very well be indeterminate -- which face of Tempel 1 will be facing the sun when Stardust hurtles by tonight, Feb. 14, the evening of Valentine's Day in the United States."Our goal is to re-visit a comet to look for changes that occurred since NASA's Deep Impact mission took a look five-and-a-half years ago," said Tim Larson, Stardust-NExT project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.  "We may also see the crater that Deep Impact created in 2005, but because of Tempel 1's rotation, there is no guarantee. At the end of the day, whatever we see there should provide some great new science."While comets have been observed and postulated on for centuries, cometary science acquired literally "on the fly" is a relatively new field. Since 1984, there have been spacecraft flybys of six comets. Of these, none involved the ability to look for changes that may have occurred as a result of the comet’s orbit around the sun. That is, until Stardust-NExT and Tempel 1 meet tonight."You could argue that comet Tempel 1 is the most unique icy dirtball in our solar system," said Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Not only does it have many intriguing physical characteristics that fascinate the scientific community, it also has been analyzed and scrutinized time and again from the ground and space."In January 2007, NASA chose Veverka's plan to revisit comet Tempel 1 with NASA’s already in-flight Stardust spacecraft. Stardust had just completed the mission it was designed for – flying to comet Wild 2, collecting samples of the coma as it hurtled by, and then flying back to Earth to drop off a sample return capsule so scientists could study pieces of comet in their labs.Ask any spacecraft project manager -- re-tasking a spacecraft designed for a completely different mission is a challenge. To be in the right place at the right time to see changes in surface features on a small celestial body that seemingly changes its rotation rate on a whim and is out of view from observers for most of its five-and-a-half-year orbit about the sun -- that’s something else entirely. But that was the assignment given to Stardust-NExT team members Mike Belton, Steve Chesley and Karen Meech."As comets sweep though the inner solar system, they come alive," said Belton, a Stardust-NExT co-investigator from Belton Space Initiatives in Tucson, Ariz. "They belch gas and dust, and this outgassing can not only change their orbits, it can also change their rotation rate."Determining the comet's rotation rate and which side will be illuminated when is tricky, because the comet had only been seen up close for a short time in July 2005 during the Deep Impact encounter.  From then on, the comet nucleus, about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide, appeared to observers to be little more than a point of light in the sky for even the best telescopes -- including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. (Tempel 1's orbit takes it as far out as Jupiter's orbit and almost as close as Mars’ orbit.)  But even points of light can bear scientific fruit for astronomers and space scientists. The flattened, oblong Tempel 1 nucleus was no exception."Its shape is central to what we could learn about its rotation," said Belton. "A comet reflects the sun's light. When one of its two broad regions is facing us, it gives off more light. When one of its skinnier sides is pointed toward the telescope, it gives off less light. So we felt we could develop an accurate model for the comet's rotation."The plan was for Belton and Chesley to generate comet rotation models independently. What both needed was data (and a lot of it) on the amount of sunlight Tempel reflected and when. Both knew the source for that information: fellow Stardust-NExT co-investigator Karen Meech. Meech, an astronomer from the University of Hawaii, reached out to her network of fellow astronomers around the world."They came through (in spades)," said Meech.  "In total, 25 telescopes at 14 observatories around the world allocated about 450 whole or partial nights to this project. With telescope time at a premium, it was a massive effort on their parts."With the Tempel 1 light curve data acquired by Meech in hand, Belton and Chesley independently worked on determining the rotation rate for Tempel 1.  As it turned out, the data revealed it was not so easy."The comet doesn't just rotate at a specific rate -- it speeds up and slows down its rotation depending on what part of its surface is heated by the sun," said Steve Chesley, Stardust-NExT co-investigator from JPL. "Overall, the comet’s spin is speeding up over time. We expect its average rotation rate to go up progressively as it continues its orbits around the sun, but it is hard to define just how much."In January 2010, after almost a year of analysis, Belton and Chesley compared notes. Their two independently generated rotational models for Tempel 1 were remarkably similar. But were they right?"NASA looked at the data and decided that they were actionable," said Tim Larson. "Our Feb. 17 burn last year set us up for a flyby when the comet rotation model suggests the face of Tempel 1 that contains the Deep Impact crater is facing the sun."If that is the case, Stardust's camera should be able to see the crater."When Stardust completed its prime mission in 2006, it was in an orbit that could possibly reach only two comet targets in the future," said Veverka. "One of those two was Tempel 1. I chose it because it is a fascinating place. If we see the Deep Impact crater, that's great. If we see the other face of the comet, we will provide science with the most complete picture of any comet surface to date. Either way, we win."The wait to find out which face Tempel 1 decides to put forward is almost over. Tonight, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST), the Stardust spacecraft is expected to fly within 200 kilometers (124 miles) of comet Tempel 1. During the encounter, the spacecraft's navigation camera will take 72 images. The first one should be down on the ground soon after midnight at JPL."Some people have asked me where I will be when those first images come down," said Chesley. "I know exactly where I will be. I'll be on the edge of my seat."Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that will expand the investigation of comet Tempel 1 initiated by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Stardust-NExT for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. Joe Veverka of Cornell University is the mission's principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.For a press kit and other information about Stardust-NExT, please visit:http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov.For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.The live coverage and news conference will also be carried on one of JPL's Ustream channels. During events, viewers can take part in a real-time chat and submit questions to the Stardust-NExT team at:http://www.ustream.tv/user/NASAJPL2.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/dr-yeates-settles-controversial-astronomical-theories

Dr. Yeates Settles Controversial Astronomical Theories

Dr. Clayne Yeates, scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has apparently confirmed one of the decade's most controversial astronomical theories -- that millions of small water-bearing comets strike the Earth's atmosphere every year.

Dr. Clayne Yeates, scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has apparently confirmed one of the decade's most controversial astronomical theories -- that millions of small water-bearing comets strike the Earth's atmosphere every year.However, Yeates said, analysis is continuing in order to rule out other possible explanations for his observations.The theory was first proposed by Dr. Louis Frank, physicist at the University of Iowa, in 1986. His theory, based on observations of water vapor high up in the atmosphere, stated the cometesimals may have been bombarding Earth since it was formed and may have brought enough water to fill the Earth's oceans.Frank's evidence was gathered on ultraviolet images made by the Dynamics Explorer satellite from 1981 to 1986. Frank said the frequency of the spots matched the rate at which bright meteors are known to enter the atmosphere.He concluded the spots were small comets being torn apart by gravity about 1000 miles above Earth, and vaporized by sunlight into water vapor.Frank's theory and his inferential data were immediately controversial and stimulated considerable research within the scientific community.Yeates proposed to find out if the cometesimals were directly observable, but he needed telescope with sufficient sensitivity to detect the small comets -- the 36- inch Spacewatch Telescope at Kitt Peak, Ariz.Yeates, deputy project scientist and science manager of the Galileo Project at JPL, said his calculations showed it would be difficult, but possible, to confirm the presence of the cometesimals by using an observation scheme designed precisely for these objects.Frank had said the bodies have only about two percent reflectivity of light, about as dark as charcoal, and enter the atmosphere at nine to 10 kilometers per second, or about 22,000 miles per hour. They vary in size but are on average about 10 meters in diameter.Yeates said the detection rates of the small, dark, fast-moving objects would be impossibly low using standard photographic plates, but the Kitt Peak telescope uses the far more sensitive charged coupled detector, CCD.Yeates conducted observations during three-month- long period from November of last year through February this year. Streaks on the images have characteristics and frequency of occurance which agrees with predictions based on Frank's theory.Yeates said he was deeply indebted to Dr. Tom Gehrels, planetary astronomer at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, who permitted use of the telescope while he was abroad on other business.Among other scientists who also explored the theory were Thomas Donahue and colleagues at the Space Physics Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan.They used little-known set of data produced by the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it began its journey to the outer planets in 1977.The Voyager's ultraviolet spectrometer gathered evidence of hydrogen atoms released from water vapor -- known as Lyman alpha emissions. Donahue said he thought the data would show the emissions were no greater than background levels in the interstellar medium near the Earth.But the data showed the emissions were much higher than the expected background levels and that large number of small comets were losing their ice as they passed through the inner solar system.Still, the Michigan team arrived at much lower number of cometesimals striking the atmosphere than the number hypothesized by Frank or calculated by Yeates in his supporting study. The number calculated by Yeates is one- billion times the Mighigan team's number.Yeates said the analysis is still preliminary and final results would be published in about month.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/closest-planetary-system-hosts-two-asteroid-belts

Closest Planetary System Hosts Two Asteroid Belts

New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the nearest planetary system to our own has two asteroid belts. Our own solar system has just one.

New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the nearest planetary system to our own has two asteroid belts. Our own solar system has just one.The star at the center of the nearby system, called Epsilon Eridani, is a younger, slightly cooler and fainter version of the sun. Previously, astronomers had uncovered evidence for two possible planets in the system, and for a broad, outer ring of icy comets similar to our own Kuiper Belt.Now, Spitzer has discovered that the system also has dual asteroid belts. One sits at approximately the same position as the one in our solar system. The second, denser belt, most likely also populated by asteroids, lies between the first belt and the comet ring. The presence of the asteroid belts implies additional planets in the Epsilon Eridani system."This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth," said Dana Backman, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, Calif., and outreach director for NASA's Sofia mission. "The main difference we know of so far is that it has an additional ring of leftover planet construction material." Backman is lead author of a paper about the findings to appear Jan. 10 in the Astrophysical Journal.Asteroid belts are rocky and metallic debris left over from the early stages of planet formation. Their presence around other stars signals that rocky planets like Earth could be orbiting in the system's inner regions, with massive gas planets circling near the belts' rims. In our own solar system, for example, there is evidence that Jupiter, which lies just beyond our asteroid belt, caused the asteroid belt to form long ago by stirring up material that would have otherwise coalesced into a planet. Nowadays, Jupiter helps keep our asteroid belt confined to a ring.Astronomers have detected stars with signs of multiple belts of material before, but Epsilon Eridani is closer to Earth and more like our sun overall. It is 10 light-years away, slightly less massive than the sun, and roughly 800 million years old, or one-fifth the age of the sun.Because the star is so close and similar to the sun, it is a popular locale in science fiction. The television series Star Trek and Babylon 5 referenced Epsilon Eridani, and it has been featured in novels by Issac Asimov and Frank Herbert, among others.The popular star was also one of the first to be searched for signs of advanced alien civilizations using radio telescopes in 1960. At that time, astronomers did not know of the star's young age.Spitzer observed Epsilon Eridani with both of its infrared cameras and its infrared spectrometer. When asteroid and comets collide or evaporate, they release tiny particles of dust that give off heat, which Spitzer can see. "Because the system is so close to us, Spitzer can really pick out details in the dust, giving us a good look at the system's architecture," said co-author Karl Stapelfeldt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.The asteroid belts detected by Spitzer orbit at distances of approximately 3 and 20 astronomical units from the star (an astronomical unit is the average distance between Earth and the sun). For reference, our own asteroid belt lies at about 3 astronomical units from the sun, and Uranus is roughly 19 astronomical units away.One of the two possible planets previously identified around Epsilon Eridani, called Epsilon Eridani b, was discovered in 2000. The planet is thought to orbit at an average distance of 3.4 astronomical units from the star -- just outside the innermost asteroid belt identified by Spitzer. This is the first time that an asteroid belt and a planet beyond our solar system have been found in a similar arrangement as our asteroid belt and Jupiter.Some researchers had reported that Epsilon Eridani b orbits in an exaggerated ellipse ranging between 1 and 5 astronomical units, but this means the planet would cross, and quickly disrupt, the newfound asteroid belt. Instead, Backman and colleagues argue that this planet must have a more circular orbit that keeps it just outside the belt.The other candidate planet was first proposed in 1998 to explain lumpiness observed in the star's outer comet ring. It is thought to lie near the inner edge of the ring, which orbits between 35 and 90 astronomical units from Epsilon Eridani.The intermediate belt detected by Spitzer suggests that a third planet could be responsible for creating and shepherding its material. This planet would orbit at approximately 20 astronomical units and lie between the other two planets. "Detailed studies of the dust belts in other planetary systems are telling us a great deal about their complex structure," said Michael Werner, co-author of the study and project scientist for Spitzer at JPL. "It seems that no two planetary systems are alike."JPL manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information about Spitzer is atwww.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzerandhttp://www.nasa.gov/spitzer. More information about extrasolar planets and NASA's planet-finding program is athttp://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-missions-chosen-for-popular-science-magazine-award

JPL Missions Chosen for Popular Science Magazine Award

NASA's unprecedented work in Space Science and Earth Science captured three of Popular Science's "Best of What's New Awards"

NASA's unprecedented work in Space Science and Earth Science captured three of Popular Science's "Best of What's New Awards" for 2002.The Mars Odyssey mission and the twin satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace), managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; and the Aqua spacecraft mission, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., were chosen in the Aviation/Space category. Aqua includes the JPL-managed Atmospheric Infrared Sounder experiment system. Popular Science will feature the 100 winners, chosen in 10 categories, in its December 2002 issue. Popular Science annually reviews thousands of new products and innovations. To win, a product or technology must represent a significant step forward in its category.Mars Odyssey, part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, has been in orbit around the red planet for just over one year. In May, mission data astounded the scientific world, pointing to the existence of enormous quantities of water ice just under Mars' surface. Odyssey is also measuring the radiation environment in low Mars orbit to determine the radiation-related risk to any future human explorers to the planet."The Mars Odyssey project is pleased to be recognized by Popular Science," said Roger Gibbs, Mars Odyssey project manager at JPL. "It's an exciting time, as multiple missions are venturing out to unravel the mysteries of the red planet."Grace is eight months into its mission to precisely measure Earth's shifting water masses and map their affects on Earth's gravity field. A gravity field map, which was created from only 14 days of data, is proving to be substantially more accurate than the combined results of more than three decades of satellite and surface instrument gravity measurements collected before Grace."We're very excited by the recognition of Grace as a novel technology for studying Earth system science," said Grace project scientist Dr. Michael Watkins. "What makes it unique is the use of gravity as a new remote sensing tool. We'll basically be using these gravity measurements to see changes in the weight of the water in the ocean and the polar ice sheets, which has never been done before.""This is a very exciting recognition of a significant advancement in technology and of our scientific understanding of Earth," said Grace principal investigator Dr. Byron Tapley of the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas in Austin. "The extremely accurate measurements provided by the Grace twin satellites allow us to determine variations associated with the mass exchange between Earth's atmosphere, ocean and solid earth. These signals are important in understanding global climate change."Aqua is the latest in a series of spacecraft dedicated to advancing our understanding of global climate and global change. A central role of Aqua is to gather information about water in Earth's system. Aqua is also gathering information about other Earth variables as well. This information will help scientists all over the world to better understand the global water cycle and better understand the interactions within the climate system. Aqua's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder spectrometer and its two companion instruments-the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit and the Humidity Sounder for Brazil--will measure Earth's atmosphere and surface, allowing scientists to improve weather prediction and observe changes in Earth's climate."Aqua and its six Earth-observing instruments are doing spectacularly well, and it's a terrific extra bonus to have a magazine like Popular Science recognize this and award Aqua one of these awards,''' said Dr. Claire Parkinson, Aqua Project Scientist.JPL manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science. Investigators at Arizona State University in Tempe, the University of Arizona in Tucson and NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, operate the science instruments. Additional science partners are located at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and at Los Alamos National Laboratories, N.M.Grace is a joint partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center. The University of Texas' Center for Space Research has overall mission responsibility. GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Germany is responsible for the German mission elements. JPL manages the U.S. portion of the project for NASA's Office of Earth Science. Science data processing, distribution, archiving and product verification are managed under a cooperative arrangement between JPL, the University of Texas Center for Space Research and the Geo-Research Center in Germany.Aqua is a joint project among the United States, Japan and Brazil. Overall management of the Aqua mission is located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.For more information on Mars Odyssey, see:http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/For more information on Grace see:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/grace/For more information on Aqua, see:http://aqua.nasa.govFor more information on the awards see:http://www.popsci.com

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/athlete-rover-steps-up-to-long-desert-trek

ATHLETE Rover Steps Up to Long Desert Trek

The ATHLETE rover is poised to go 40 kilometers in the Arizona desert as part of the 2010 Desert RATS test.

The ATHLETE rover, currently under development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is in the Arizona desert this month to participate in NASA's Research and Technology Studies, also known as Desert RATS. The desert tests offer a chance for a NASA-led team of engineers, astronauts and scientists from across the country to test concepts for future missions.To see a video of ATHLETE at the 2010 Desert RATS visit:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC8jBdRO_80NASA will demonstrate a variety of hardware during this year's test, including:-- All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorers (ATHLETE): two heavy-lift rover platforms that allow a habitat, or other large items, to go where the action is.-- Space Exploration Vehicles: two rovers astronauts could live in for seven days at a time.-- Habitat Demonstration Unit/Pressurized Excursion Module: a simulated habitat where the rovers can dock to allow the crew room to perform experiments or deal with medical issues.-- Portable Communications Terminal: a rapidly deployable communications station.-- Centaur 2: a four-wheeled possible transportation method for NASA Robonaut 2.-- Portable Utility Pallets: mobile charging stations for equipment.-- A suite of new geology sample collection tools, including a self-contained GeoLab glove box for conducting in-field analysis of various collected rock samples.The public was involved in test preparation by helping NASA decide what areas should be explored. NASA posted several possibilities online and allowed members of the public to vote on the most promising locations. Several thousand ballots were cast and 67 percent favored a location that appeared to be home of several overlapping lava flows.NASA centers involved in the Desert RATS tests include Johnson Space Center in Houston; Langley Research Center in Va.; JPL; Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; Kennedy Space Center in Florida; Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland; Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama; and NASA Headquarters in Washington.In addition, professors and students from various universities, as well as the Canadian Space Agency, are participating in the Desert RATS field tests.For more information about NASA's field tests and to follow Desert RATS on various social media sites, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/desert_rats.htmlFollow the Desert RATS tests on Twitter at:http://www.twitter.com/Desert_RATS

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-sensors-provide-safe-platform-for-volcano-studies

NASA Sensors Provide Safe Platform for Volcano Studies

NASA scientists are developing and using a variety of airborne and spaceborne remote-sensing tools to study potentially dangerous volcanoes that could one day threaten populated areas in the United States and around the world.

NASA scientists are developing and using a variety of airborne and spaceborne remote-sensing tools to study potentially dangerous volcanoes that could one day threaten populated areas in the United States and around the world.A number of domestic volcanoes are being studied, including Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington; Mount Shasta and Lassen Peak in California; and Kilauea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Using information collected with the Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR), the Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIRSAR), the Airborne Emission Spectrometer (AES), the Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS), the airborne Laser Altimeter Facility, and the Shuttle Laser Altimeter, scientists create three-dimensional "flyover" video animation clips that help them study how the volcanoes are changing."Imaging radar is a particularly useful tool for studying volcanoes because the radar is able to see through the weather and volcanic clouds. It's a good tool for mapping new volcanic deposits because of the radar's sensitivity to texture such as ash and different types of lava flows," said Dr. Jeffrey J. Plaut, SIR-C experiment scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We are using radar data to study the dormant lava domes in Long Valley, CA so we can understand how lava is placed during eruptions. Understanding the eruptive process helps us know where lava will flow and that has bearing on the hazards that are posed to the nearby communities, including the Mammoth Mountain ski areas.""By combining the radar data with information from scanning laser altimeters, we are now tracking changes at the summits of Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier that will document the impact of erosion, climate and other factors on the topography and stability of large volcanoes," said Dr. James B. Garvin, chief scientist for the Shuttle Laser Altimeter at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD. "These laser altimeters also have successfully measured the flank topography of volcanoes beneath their tree canopies. This is important because many of the most dangerous volcanoes are heavily vegetated, and the subtleties of their local relief must be known to accurately predict the path of their flows."In recent months, AIRSAR, AES and TIMS were part of a cadre of scientific instruments onboard a NASA DC-8 aircraft that captured images of the Manam volcano within hours of an eruption on an island off the north coast of Papua New Guinea. "The airborne instrument helps us map the topography from a safe distance. The data over Manam were collected as a "target of opportunity" and the topographic data set will serve as a valuable baseline for studies about future changes to the volcano," said Ellen O'Leary, the AIRSAR science coordinator at JPL."We use the thermal infrared data to study volcanoes in three ways. The first is to map ground temperatures, which we can relate to geothermal phenomena. The second is to map variations in the composition of lava flows and the third is to map the sulfur dioxide in volcanic plumes," said Dr. Vincent J. Realmuto, TIMS experiment scientist at JPL. "TIMS data are useful for studying volcanoes because thermal infrared remote sensing is the only practical means of obtaining virtually instantaneous maps of dynamic phenomena such as the distribution of temperatures on the ground or sulfur dioxide in a plume. Such data are of great use in monitoring volcanoes, where changes in ground temperatures or sulfur dioxide emission can signal impending activity."JPL's Digital Image Animation Laboratory (DIAL) turns the scientific data into three-dimensional video animations and other images. "These visualizations can range from the simple, such as the use of color to combine data sets, to the complex, such as simulated flights through the data. The basic objectives of data visualization are to give scientists new perspectives into complex data sets and to permit them to communicate their findings in a format that is both compelling and accessible," Realmuto said.The DIAL is best known for visualizations of planetary data sets of Venus and Mars, but visualizations have been produced for a variety of volcanoes, such as Mount Rainier, the Long Valley caldera in the Mammoth Mountains of California, Mauna Loa, Mount Pinatubo and Taal in the Philippines, Mount Etna near Sicily, and the trans-Mexican volcanic belt. The most recent addition to this series is a simulated flight over Mount St. Helens that was created by combining TIMS data with a high-resolution digital elevation map.AIRSAR is the airborne cousin of SIR-C/X-SAR that flew twice on the space shuttle Endeavour in 1994. AIRSAR also uses three radar wavelengths: L-band (24-cm), C-band (6-cm) and P-band (68-cm) and can collect data in both vertical and horizontal polarization. AIRSAR can also be used to collect three- dimensional topographic data in its TOPSAR mode to create digital elevation models.TIMS collects image data in the thermal infrared portion of the spectrum. TIMS operates at six channels between 8 and 12 micrometers. For comparison, visible light extends from 0.4 to 0.7 micrometers. TIMS is a precursor to the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) that is scheduled to fly on the first Earth Observing System satellite (EOS AM-1) in 1998.AES is a spectrometer that operates between 2.3 and 15.4 micrometers, and is a precursor to the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). TES is scheduled for launch aboard the EOS CHEM-1 platform in 2002.The GSFC Laser Altimeter Facility sensors are routinely flown aboard NASA Wallops Flight Facility aircraft such as the P-3 and T-39. The Shuttle Laser Altimeter (SLA) experiment flew on STS-72, and a second flight of SLA is scheduled for July 1997 as part of STS-85.JPL manages the SIR-C/X-SAR, AIRSAR and AES missions for NASA's Office of Mission to Planet Earth, Washington D.C. TIMS and the DC-8 aircraft are maintained and operated by NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, CA. All of these instruments are part of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth, a coordinated research enterprise designed to study the Earth as a total system.For more information:http://www.geo.mtu.edu/eos/818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-cameras-debut-as-nasa-craft-adjusts-orbit

Mars Cameras Debut as NASA Craft Adjusts Orbit

Researchers today released the first Mars images from two of the three science cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Researchers today released the first Mars images from two of the three science cameras on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.Images taken by the orbiter's Context Camera and Mars Color Imager during the first tests of those instruments at Mars confirm the performance capability of the cameras. The test images were taken from nearly 10 times as far from the planet as the spacecraft will be once it finishes reshaping its orbit. Test images from the third camera of the science payload were released previously."The test images show that both cameras will meet or exceed their performance requirements once they're in the low-altitude science orbit. We're looking forward to that time with great anticipation," said Dr. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. Malin is team leader for the context camera and principal investigator for the Mars Color Imager.The cameras took the test images two weeks after the orbiter's March 10 arrival at Mars and before the start of "aerobraking," a process of reshaping the orbit by using controlled contact with Mars' atmosphere. This week, the spacecraft is dipping into Mars' upper atmosphere as it approaches the altitude range that it will use for shrinking its orbit gradually over the next six months.The orbiter is currently flying in very elongated loops around Mars. Each circuit lasts about 35 hours and takes the spacecraft about 27,000 miles (43,000 kilometers) away from the planet before swinging back in close.On Wednesday, a short burn of intermediate sized thrusters while the orbiter was at the most distant point nudged the spacecraft to pass from approximately 70 miles (112 kilometers) to within 66 miles (107 kilometers) of Mars' surface."This brings us well into Mars' upper atmosphere for the drag pass and will enable the mission to start reducing the orbit to its final science altitude," said Dan Johnston of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., deputy mission manager.After hundreds of passes through the upper atmosphere, the drag will gradually reduce the far point of the orbit until the spacecraft is in a nearly circular orbit every two hours.After the spacecraft gets into the proper orbit for its primary science phase, the six science instruments on board will begin their systematic examination of Mars. The Mars Color Imager will view the planet's entire atmosphere and surface every day to monitor changes in clouds, wind-blown dust, polar caps and other variable features.Images from the Context Camera will have a resolution of 20 feet (6 meters) per pixel, allowing surface features as small as a basketball court to be discerned. The images will cover swaths 18.6 miles (30 kilometers) wide.The Context Camera will show how smaller areas examined by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment Camera -- which will have the best resolution ever achieved from Mars orbit -- and by the mineral-identifying Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer fit into the broader landscape. It will also allow scientists to watch for small-scale changes, such as newly cut gullies, in the broader coverage area.The new test images from the Context Camera and the Mars Color Imager are available online atwww.nasa.gov/mro,www.msss.com/mro/ctx/images/2006/04/13/andwww.msss.com/mro/marci/images/2006/04/13/.For more detailed information about Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, seehttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro.NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/landslides-on-ceres-reflect-ice-content

Landslides on Ceres Reflect Ice Content

As NASA's Dawn spacecraft continues exploring Ceres, evidence mounts that the enigmatic dwarf planet retains a significant amount of water ice.

As NASA's Dawn spacecraft continues exploring Ceres, evidence mounts that the enigmatic dwarf planet retains a significant amount of water ice. A new study in the journal Nature Geoscience adds to this picture, showing how ice may have shaped the variety of landslides seen on Ceres today."Images from Dawn show that landslides, many of which are similar to those seen on Earth, are very common on Ceres, and further the case that Ceres has a lot of water ice involved in its structure," said Britney Schmidt, who led the study. She is an associate of the Dawn science team and assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.Types of LandslidesSchmidt and colleagues identified three types of landslides. Type I, which are relatively round and large, have thick "toes" at their ends. They look similar to rock glaciers and icy landslides on Earth. Type I landslides are mostly found at high latitudes on Ceres, which is also where the most ice is thought to reside just beneath the surface, suggesting they involve the most ice of any of the flow features. Three small Type 1 flows are found in Oxo Crater, a tiny bright crater in the northern hemisphere that hosts an ice deposit at the surface.Type II features are often thinner and longer than Type I, and are the most common type of landslide on Ceres. The landslide deposits appear similar to those left behind by avalanches seen on Earth.Ceres' Type III features may involve a brief melting of some of the ice within the soil-like regolith, causing the material to flow like mud before refreezing. These landslides are always associated with large impact craters, and may have formed when an impact event melts subsurface ice on Ceres. These features have similar appearances to ejected material from craters in the icy regions of Mars and on Jupiter's moon Ganymede."The locations of these different types of features reinforces the idea that the shallow subsurface of Ceres is a mixture of ice and rock, and that ice is most plentiful near the surface at the poles," Schmidt said.Scientists were also surprised at just how many landslides have occurred on Ceres in general. About 20 to 30 percent of craters greater than 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide have some type of landslide associated with them. Such widespread "ground ice" features, which formed from of a mixture of rock and ice, had only been observed before on Earth and Mars.Implications and Future ObservationsBased on the shape and distribution of landslides on Ceres, study authors estimate that the ice in the upper few tens of meters of Ceres may range from 10 percent to 50 percent by volume."These kinds of flows are not seen on bodies such as Vesta, which Dawn studied from 2011 to 2012, because the regolith is devoid of water," said Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.Now in its extended mission phase, Dawn is using its ion engine to swivel the plane of its orbit around Ceres to prepare forobservations from a new orbit and orientation.At the end of April, the spacecraft will be directly between the sun and the mysterious Occator Crater. In this geometry, Dawn may deliver new insights about the reflective material of Ceres' most famous "bright spot," the highly reflective center of Occator that has been named Cerealia Facula.The Dawn mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit:https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/missionMore information about Dawn is available at the following sites:https://www.nasa.gov/dawnhttps://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-invites-public-comment-on-mars-2020-draft-environmental-impact-statement

NASA Invites Public Comment on Mars 2020 Draft Environmental Impact Statement

NASA is requesting the public and interested organizations to review and comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the agency's proposed Mars 2020 mission.

NASA is requesting the public and interested organizations to review and comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the agency's proposed Mars 2020 mission. The comment period runs through July 21.During the comment period, NASA will host an online public meeting from 10 a.m. to noon PDT (1 to 3 p.m. EDT) Thursday, June 26, at:https://ac.arc.nasa.gov/mars2020The meeting site will be accessible to participants at 9:45 a.m. PDT (12:45 p.m. EDT). The meeting will include briefings about the proposed mission, its power source options, and the findings of the DEIS. A question-and-answer session and an open period for the public to submit live written comments will follow. Advance registration for the meeting is not required.The DEIS addresses the potential environmental impacts associated with carrying out the Mars 2020 mission, a continuation of NASA's in-depth exploration of the planet. The mission would include a mobile science rover based closely on the design of the Curiosity rover, which was launched in November 2011 and is operating successfully on Mars.The mission is planned to launch in July or August 2020 from Florida on an expendable launch vehicle.NASA will consider all received comments in the development of its Mars 2020 Final Environmental Impact Statement, and comments received, and responses to these comments, will be included in the final document.The DEIS, background material on the proposed mission, and instructions on how to submit comments on the DEIS are available at:http://www.nasa.gov/agency/nepa/mars2020eisAfter the conclusion of the virtual public meeting, an on-demand replay of the event also will be available at the above link.Additional information on NASA's National Environmental Policy Act process and the proposed Mars 2020 mission can be found at:http://www.nasa.gov/agency/nepa/andhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mars2020/NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages NASA's Mars Exploration Program for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/memorial-image-taken-on-mars-on-september-11-2011

Memorial Image Taken on Mars on September 11, 2011

A view of a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers was taken on Mars yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

PASADENA, Calif. -- A view of a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers was taken on Mars yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.The memorial, made from aluminum recovered from the site of the twin towers in weeks following the attacks, serves as a cable guard on a tool on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and bears an image of the American flag.The view combining exposures from two cameras on the rover is online at:http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14750.The memorial is on the rover's rock abrasion tool, which was being made in September 2001 by workers at Honeybee Robotics in lower Manhattan, less than a mile from the World Trade Center.Opportunity's panoramic camera and navigation camera photographed the tool on Sept. 11, 2011, during the 2,713th Martian day of the rover's work on Mars. Opportunity completed its three-month prime mission on Mars in April 2004 and has worked for more than seven years since then in bonus extended missions.NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Additional information about Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, is online athttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.govandhttp://www.nasa.gov/rovers.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-built-atomic-clock-does-the-time-warp-again

NASA-Built Atomic Clock Does the Time Warp, Again

"If I could save time in a bottle..."

A '70s song by the late singer Jim Croce begins, "If I could save time in a bottle..." And when it comes to atomic clocks-those ultra-precise standard-keepers to which other precision timekeeping devices are set-some do just that. Atoms of an element are often held in a glass vacuum chamber whose walls are coated to prevent the atoms' collision with the walls from altering their internal compositions. Inevitably, however, such collisions still distort the atoms and make them 'tick' differently, causing the clocks to run fast or slow.Now a team of physicists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has developed an improved way to release the time genie from its bottle, so to speak. Building upon more than a decade of work on a frequency standard called the linear ion trap, the JPL Frequency Standards Laboratory team has developed and installed a new trapped ion atomic clock for the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington that essentially eliminates these walls. These recent JPL innovations are expected to provide 20 times improved stability over previous trapped ion clocks. The result is a clock with an effective stability equivalent to about one minute in 10 billion years -- the approximate age of the universe.The instrument, based on mercury ions, will be measured with a large ensemble of atomic clocks operated to form a very stable, continuous timescale at the U.S. Naval Observatory, which serves as the center of all U.S. Department of Defense timekeeping and supports the needs of the Global Positioning System, or GPS. During this evaluation, the ion clock will also be used as a frequency reference for transcontinental time and frequency transfer comparisons to be performed between the Observatory and the only other ion clock of its kind, located at JPL."These trapped ion atomic clocks are designed for long-term stability, continuous operation and high reliability," said Dr. Robert Tjoelker, supervisor of JPL's Frequency and Timing Advanced Instrumentation Development Group. "Long-term timekeeping is an ideal application for the technology."In the linear ion trap frequency standard, mercury ions--atoms with an electron removed-- collide not with a wall but with an applied electric force field. The field completely surrounds the ions, forming a container called an ion trap. "Atomic ions colliding with this sort of 'wall' are disturbed about 10,000 times less than in glass cell-based atomic clocks," said Dr. John Prestage of the JPL Quantum Sciences and Technology Group. Because the mercury ions have a positive charge, they can be held with oscillating electric fields in a container produced with metallic electrodes inside an ultra-high vacuum system, and made into a clock.Like all clocks, atomic clocks measure frequency of a recurring event to keep time. A wonder of quantum mechanics that govern the world of atoms is that every isolated atom in the universe is exactly the same as every other atom of the same element and containing the same number of neutrons. Atomic clocks have unique measurement capability because every atom or ion in the clock is quantum-mechanically identical to every other one. Therefore, by measuring the transition of atoms as they move back and forth between two energy levels, atomic clocks provide an absolute reference for frequency and time. Their success is such that time and frequency are today measured with far higher accuracy than any other physical quantity.One use of the time scale maintained at the U.S. Naval Observatory is to monitor onboard GPS space clocks and reset them periodically to keep the GPS radio navigation system working so well. These onboard clocks aren't as accurate as the ground clock ensemble maintained at the Observatory.NASA uses atomic clocks to provide reliable and consistent navigation for interplanetary space travel, where fractional disparities in clock tick rates can dramatically affect the navigation of spacecraft. Trapped ion clock technology currently operates in NASA's Deep Space Network and is also being developed for small, low-mass and low-power space flight applications.The U.S. Naval Observatory performs an essential scientific role for the United States, Navy and Department of Defense. Its mission includes determining positions and motions of the Earth, Sun, Moon, planets, stars and other celestial objects, providing astronomical data; determining precise time; measuring Earth's rotation; and maintaining the Master Clock for the U.S. Department of Defense. Observatory astronomers formulate the theories and conduct the relevant research necessary to improve these mission goals. This astronomical and timing data, essential for accurate navigation and support of communications on Earth and in space, is vital to the Navy and Department of Defense and is used extensively by other government agencies and the public at large.JPL is NASA's lead center for frequency and time and is responsible for technology development, generation, and distribution of ultra-stable reference frequencies and synchronized timing signals for the Deep Space Network. NASA's Office of Space Flight, Washington, D.C., supports JPL's linear ion trap frequency standard research.JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mid-depth-soil-collected-for-lab-test-on-nasas-mars-lander

Mid-Depth Soil Collected for Lab Test On NASA's Mars Lander

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has scooped up a soil sample from an intermediate depth between the ground surface and a subsurface icy layer.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has scooped up a soil sample from an intermediate depth between the ground surface and a subsurface icy layer. The sample was delivered to a laboratory oven on the spacecraft.The robotic arm on Phoenix collected the sample, dubbed "Burning Coals," from a trench named "Burn Alive 3." The sample consisted of about one-fourth to one-half teaspoon of loose soil scooped from depth about 3 centimeters (1.2 inch) below the surface of the ground and about 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) above a hard, icy underground layer.Data received from Phoenix early Thursday confirmed that the arm had delivered some of that sample through the doors of cell 7 on the lander's Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) and that enough material passed through a screen and down a funnel to nearly fill the cell's tiny oven. The Phoenix team prepared commands Thursday to have TEGA close the oven and begin heating the sample to low temperature (35 degrees Celsius, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit).The purpose of the low temperature heating is to look for ice in the sample. The next step is a middle temperature process, which heats the sample to 125 degrees Celsius (257 degrees Fahrenheit) to thoroughly dry the sample. The last heating takes the sample to 1000 degrees Celsius (1832 degrees Fahrenheit). The gases given off during these heating stages help the science team to determine properties of the Martian soil."We are expecting the sample to look similar to previous samples," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for TEGA. "One of the things we'll be looking for is an oxygen release indicative of perchlorate."Perchlorate was found in a sample delivered to Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA). The MECA team saw the perchlorate signal in a sample taken from a trench called "Dodo-Goldilocks" on June 25, and again in another sample taken from the "Rosy Red" trench on July 6. To see signs of perchlorate in TEGA would help confirm the previous results. Scientists are analyzing data from a Rosy Red surface sample heated in TEGA cell number 5 last week.The new sample in cell 7 completes a three-level soil profile that also includes the surface material (from Rosy Red) and ice-layer material (from a trench called "Snow White")."We want to know the structure and composition of the soil at the surface, at the ice and in-between to help answer questions about the movement of water -- either as vapor or liquid -- between the icy layer and the surface," said Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, a leader of Phoenix science team activities.The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/stardust-can-see-clearly-now-just-before-earth-flyby

Stardust Can See Clearly Now -- Just Before Earth Flyby

After a few months of foggy camera vision, NASA's Stardust mission team has improved the spacecraft's navigation-camera resolution to nearly normal, just as Stardust is preparing to make a close flyby of the Earth on Monday.

After a few months of foggy camera vision, NASA's Stardust mission team has improved the spacecraft's navigation-camera resolution to nearly normal, just as Stardust is preparing to make a close flyby of the Earth on Monday.By heating the camera's optical path, the Stardust team was able to help its nearsighted spacecraft boil away contaminants that had been deposited on optical surfaces.One year ago, the imaging team took pictures of a small lamp inside the optical path of the camera. The camera will be used to navigate Stardust to its 2004 encounter with Comet Wild 2 (pronounced "vilt-2"). Apparent contamination of the navigation-camera prevented a clear test-image of the squiggly line of the lamp's filament, and the lens seemed to be covered with a veil of light- scattering material that produced a blurry image.The team concluded that the contamination might have been released with gases escaping from the spacecraft after its launch, and that heating the optical path of the camera might evaporate the contaminant covering the camera lens. After a series of heating cycles, they re-tested the camera by taking more pictures of the lamp.Pictures taken after the heating revealed that the zigzag line of the lamp's filament was visible again. Images of stars taken by the camera are also clearer. The team estimates the camera can now photograph stars two magnitudes (celestial degrees of brightness) better. The navigation camera has detected stars as faint as 9th magnitude in brightness, which should allow the spacecraft to perform its final navigation maneuvers during approach to the comet nearly at the time originally planned.Now Stardust, on its journey to collect comet dust, is getting ready to springboard from Earth -- in a maneuver called a "gravity-assist" -- when the spacecraft passes closest to Earth on January 15, 2001. The Earth will not be in the navigation camera's field-of-view during the flyby, so no images of Earth will be taken.Stardust was launched on February 7, 1999, into its first loop around the Sun. When Stardust passes by Earth at about 10 kilometers per second (22,400 miles per hour), it will go into a slightly wider orbit that will allow it to reach the comet on January 2, 2004.On Monday, January 15, Stardust will fly by a point just southeast of the southern tip of Africa, slightly more than 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) from the surface at about 3:15 a.m. PST (6:15 a.m. EST).Stardust may be visible to observers using sophisticated telescopes with charge-coupled device (CCD) detectors from the Pacific Ocean and the Western United States just after the spacecraft flies by Earth. Stardust will not be visible using binoculars.A gravity-assist works like this: when a spacecraft closely approaches a planet, the planet's gravitational pull accelerates the spacecraft and bends the flight path. Mission designers account for this extra pull and use it to their advantage to boost spacecraft speed and direct interplanetary spacecraft to their targets. Like a windup before the pitch, the Earth gravity-assist will sling Stardust into the right path to meet Comet Wild 2.About 15 hours after its closest approach to Earth, the spacecraft will pass about 98,000 kilometers (61,000 miles) from the Moon. Because of the greater distance, the Moon's gravity will have essentially no influence on the spacecraft's flight path.Stardust, a part of NASA's Discovery Program of low- cost, highly focused science missions, is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. More information on the Stardust mission is available athttp://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html.#####NOTE TO BROADCASTERS: Interview clips and B-roll to accompany this release are being carried on NASA Television, GE-2, Transponder 9C at 85 degrees West longitude, with vertical polarization. Frequency is on 3880.0 megahertz with audio on 6.8 megahertz. For broadcast times, seeftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/tv-advisory/nasa-tv.txt. Live shots are available Friday, Dec. 12 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Time.To arrange a live shot, contact Jack Dawson at (818) 354-0040.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/chain-of-impact-craters-suspected-in-spaceborne-radar-images

Chain of Impact Craters Suspected in Spaceborne Radar Images

A team of scientists believes they have discovered a chain of impact craters in the central African country of Chad that suggests ancient Earth may have been hit by a large, fragmented comet or asteroid similar to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that slammed into Jupiter in 1994.

A team of scientists believes they have discovered a chain of impact craters in the central African country of Chad that suggests ancient Earth may have been hit by a large, fragmented comet or asteroid similar to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that slammed into Jupiter in 1994.The craters were discovered in radar images of the Earth taken by the Spaceborne Imaging Radar C/X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) that flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in April and October of 1994. The images reveal two new craters adjacent to a previously known impact site, called Aorounga, in northern Chad. The two new craters still need to be confirmed by fieldwork on the ground."The Aorounga craters are only the second chain of large craters known on Earth, and were apparently formed by the break-up of a large comet or asteroid prior to impact," said Adriana Ocampo, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "With ground confirmation, this second chain will provide valuable data on the nature and origin of small bodies that cross Earth's orbit."Ocampo is presenting her findings today at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, TX."The two new craters are the first impact craters discovered in SIR-C data," said Dr. Kevin Pope, a SIR-C team member from Geo Eco Arc Research in La Canada-Flintridge. "That shows the power of the SIR-C instrument, because these craters are highly eroded and buried by wind-blown sand. They are hard to see even if you are standing on the ground."The most prominent of the craters, called Aorounga South, has been observed in Landsat satellite-based images and space shuttle hand-held photos, and has been verified by ground work. The other two craters, Aorounga Central and Aorounga North, have not been scientifically confirmed through fieldwork and that has caused other scientists to view this discovery with some skepticism."These could very well be impact structures, but we don't have the kind of evidence we need to catalogue them yet," said Dr. John McHone, a SIR-C science team member from Arizona State University, who has studied impact craters for more than 20 years.Ocampo and Pope theorize that the object that created these impact sites was either a comet or asteroid that broke up before it hit the Earth. "The pieces were all similar in size -- about 1/2 of a kilometer to 1 kilometer in diameter -- and the craters are all similar in size, about 12 kilometers to 17 kilometers wide," Ocampo said.Similar chains of equal size craters have also been seen on Jupiter's moon Callisto.The scientists estimate the Chad impact craters date back about 360 million years, to a time when the Earth was undergoing a period of mass biological extinction. By way of comparison, the impact that scientists believed wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago involved an asteroid or comet 10 times larger than the one that broke up to form the craters in Chad."These impacts in Chad weren't big enough to cause the extinction, but they may have contributed to it," Ocampo said. "Could these impacts be part of a larger event? Were they, perhaps, part of comet showers that could have added to the extinction? Little by little, we are putting the puzzle together to understand how Earth has evolved."The Spaceborne Imaging Radar project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Mission to Planet Earth, Washington, DC. SIR-C/X-SAR is a joint mission of the United States, German and Italian space agencies.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-express-radar-to-be-deployed

Mars Express Radar to Be Deployed

The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter will soon deploy its radar instrument for the first time.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter will soon deploy its radar instrument for the first time. The instrument is designed to look below the surface of Mars for different layers of material, most notably water.Once the deployment is successful, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (Marsis) instrument will complement the orbiter's study of the planet's atmosphere and surface. The instrument was funded by NASA and the Italian Space Agency and developed by the University of Rome, Italy, in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.The instrument's co-principal investigator, Dr. Jeffrey Plaut of JPL said, "We look forward to the start of the Marsis experiment, and to becoming full partners in the mission of discovery that is Mars Express. The radar gives us two ways to explore the fate of the water that once flowed on the surface of Mars. We will probe beneath the surface for evidence of frozen or liquid reservoirs, and we will study the outer fringes of Mars' atmosphere, where the planet may have lost its water to space."The deployment of the three radar booms will take place in three phases, in a window spanning from May 2 to 12. These operations will be initiated and monitored from the European Space Agency's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Each boom will be deployed separately, with the two 20- meter-long (66-foot-long) dipole booms to be unfurled first and the 7-meter (23-foot) monopole boom to follow a few days later.Before each deployment, the spacecraft will be placed in a 'robust' attitude control mode, which will allow it to tumble freely while the boom extends before regaining standard pointing to the Sun and Earth.The result of each deployment can be assessed only after a series of tests, each taking a few days. After the deployment of the three booms, European Space Agency engineers will start the analysis of the complete behavior of the satellite to be able to confirm the overall success of the operation. The current schedule is subject to change, due to the timing and nature of the complex series of operations.Once deployment is complete, the Marsis instrument will undergo three weeks of commissioning before the start of actual science investigations. This timing coincides with the spacecraft's orbit reaching a favorable position to examine one of the prime targets for radar observations.JPL's Richard Horttor, project manager for NASA's roles in the Mars Express mission, said, "The first data from the radar next month will signal the success of an innovative international partnership." Italy provided the instrument's digital processing system and integrated the parts. The University of Iowa, Iowa City, built the transmitter for the instrument, JPL built the receiver and Astro Aerospace, Carpinteria, Calif., built the antenna.JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/first-of-nasas-sunrise-smallsats-rolls-off-production-line

First of NASA’s SunRISE SmallSats Rolls Off Production Line

Six of these small satellites will work together, creating the largest radio telescope ever launched to detect and track hazardous explosive space weather events.

Building a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) telescope in space may sound like science fiction. But through the combined power of six toaster-size satellites, that’s what NASA’s SunRISE will be: a huge radio telescope in orbit that will help deepen scientists’ understanding of explosive space weather events. These phenomena generate particle radiation that can jeopardize astronauts and technology in space while also negatively impacting communications and power grids on Earth.In anticipation of the planned 2024 launch ofSunRISE– short for Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment – the first of those small satellites has already been completed at Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, which is contracted to build, test, and commission all six satellites for NASA.“It’s really exciting to see the space vehicles coming together,” said Jim Lux, SunRISE project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “In a couple of years, these satellites will form a vast space telescope observing the Sun in a way that is impossible from Earth’s surface.”This illustrated poster shows a flare erupting from the Sun and the six SunRISE SmallSats flying in formation. Radio bursts are generated by these explosive events and, to detect them, the satellites create a vast virtual telescope – depicted here by the wireframe dish.Download the poster for free.Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechEach small satellite, or SmallSat, will act as a single antenna to detect bursts of radio waves from the Sun’s superheated atmosphere, known as the corona. Equipped with four telescoping antenna booms that extend about 10 feet (2.5 meters) to form an “X,” they will orbit Earth from about 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) away, swarming together to trace out one virtual radio telescope.After NASA’sDeep Space Networkreceives the signals from all six SmallSats, scientists will use the technique ofinterferometryto create a large-aperture radio telescope as wide as the distance between the SmallSats that are farthest apart – about 6 miles (10 kilometers).Ground-based radio telescopes, such as the iconic Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico, often use interferometry to combine the observing power of many individual antennas. But SunRISE will have a unique advantage over its ground-based cousins: It will be able to “see” the long radio wavelengths that are blocked by a portion of our planet’s upper atmosphere known as the ionosphere. This means SunRISE will pinpoint where solar radio bursts, or sudden event-type emissions of radio waves, erupt higher up in the Sun’s corona. Then the SunRISE team can create detailed maps of their positions in 3D.Hazardous Space WeatherThe Sun’s corona is a hotbed of activity, where powerful magnetic fields and superheated solar particles mix, erupting withsolar flaresandcoronal mass ejections(CMEs). Flares and CMEs can, in turn, accelerate solar energetic particles, which also originate in the corona,creating a hazardfor human activities throughout the solar system. Solar radio bursts have been associated with solar energetic particle events and are known to precede their arrival at Earth by tens of minutes.By pinpointing the locations of solar radio bursts, SunRISE will illustrate how an early warning of incoming solar energetic particle events might be of benefit. And if scientists can locate regions of particle acceleration by tracking solar radio bursts relative to where CMEs occur, they can investigate how CMEs lead to radio bursts. In addition to delivering 3D images, SunRISE will map the pattern ofsolar magnetic field linesthat reach far into interplanetary space as the radio bursts are generated along them. The telescope will be constantly watching the Sun for radio bursts popping off randomly throughout the corona.Your browser cannot play the provided video file(s).This animation shows the six SunRISE SmallSats tracing out a virtual space telescope as they detect a solar radio burst (shown as blue ripples) and then transmit their data (shown as green wavy lines) to the Deep Space Network on Earth.Credit: NASA“The ultimate goal of the mission is to help scientists better understand the mechanisms driving these explosive space weather events,” said Justin Kasper, SunRISE principal investigator at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “These high-energy solar particles can jeopardize unprotected astronauts and technology. By tracking the radio bursts associated with these events, we can be better prepared and informed.”The mission’s observations will be used in conjunction with data from other space missions and ground-based observatories. For example, SunRISE may image solar radio bursts asNASA’s Parker Solar Probezips through them, providing an opportunity to see how the solar energetic particles are accelerated. And by combining SunRISE data with observations made by theNASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory(SOHO), scientists will be able to determine how and where CMEs can trigger different types of radio bursts as they travel from the Sun, and how many of the accelerated particles arrive in Earth’s vicinity.Get the Latest JPL NewsSUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTERMore About the MissionSunRISE is a Mission of Opportunity under the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Explorers Program Office. Missions of Opportunity are part of the Explorers Program, the oldest continuous NASA program designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the Science Mission Directorate’s (SMD) astrophysics and heliophysics programs. The program is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for SMD. SunRISE is led by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and managed by JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-airs-tracks-record-breaking-heat-wave-in-pacific-northwest

NASA’s AIRS Tracks Record-Breaking Heat Wave in Pacific Northwest

The science instrument mapped the dome of high pressure that settled over the northwestern U.S. and western Canada in late June, sending temperatures into the triple digits.

An unprecedented heat wave that started around June 26 smashed numerous all-time temperature records in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), aboard the Aqua satellite, captured the progression of this slow-moving heat dome across the region from June 21 to 30. An animation of some of the AIRS data show surface air temperature anomalies – values above or below long-term averages. Surface air temperature is something that people directly feel when they are outside.In many cases, the highs exceeded previous temperature records by several degrees or more. On June 28, Quillayute, Washington, set an all-time high temperature record of 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius), shattering the old record of 99 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). Numerous weather stations broke records on consecutive days, showing the unprecedented nature of this extreme heat, which is also being blamed for a number of fatalities. In British Columbia, the village of Lytton set a new all-time record for Canada at 119 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) on June 29, only to break it the next day with a reading of 121 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius).Get the Latest JPL NewsSUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTERThe AIRS instrument recorded similar temperature anomalies at an altitude of about 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), showing that the extreme heat also affected mountainous regions. And temperature anomalies at roughly 18,000 feet (5,500 meters) demonstrated that the heat dome extended high into Earth’s troposphere, creating the conditions for intense heat at the planet’s surface that are normally found farther south.AIRS, in conjunction with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), senses emitted infrared and microwave radiation from Earth to provide a three-dimensional look at the planet’s weather and climate. Working in tandem, the two instruments make simultaneous observations down to Earth’s surface. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, three-dimensional map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations and many other atmospheric phenomena. Launched into Earth orbit in 2002 aboard NASA’s Aqua spacecraft, the AIRS and AMSU instruments are managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of Caltech.More information about AIRS can be found at:https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/programs-will-share-inside-story-of-mars-bound-robots

Programs Will Share Inside Story of Mars-Bound Robots

Two free public programs in Pasadena this week will offer an introduction to the challenges and excitement of NASA's project to examine two areas of Mars with robotic rovers that are currently flying to Mars.

Two free public programs in Pasadena this week will offer an introduction to the challenges and excitement of NASA's project to examine two areas of Mars with robotic rovers that are currently flying to Mars.Peter Theisinger, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, will describe the project on Thursday evening, Aug. 21, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and on Friday evening, Aug. 22, at Pasadena City College."Three years of work by a great team got these spacecraft built and tested and launched, but the biggest hurdle is still in front of us," Theisinger said. "We have to get them safely onto the surface of Mars."The two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, will arrive three weeks apart in January at opposite sides of Mars. They will bounce and roll inside cocoons of inflated airbags. Unlike the much smaller Sojourner rover of the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997, each Mars Exploration Rover will be independent of its stationary lander, capable of communicating directly with Earth and carrying a full set of cameras for scouting locations to explore. At selected rocks it will extend an arm bearing geological tools for close-up analysis. The landing sites were selected as places likely to hold geological clues about the history of water on Mars.Theisinger, a La Crescenta resident, has worked on several interplanetary exploration missions since his 1967 graduation from the California Institute of Technology, including Voyager to the outer planets, Galileo to Jupiter and Mars Global Surveyor.His two talks will be part of JPL's Theodore von Kármán Lecture Series. Both will begin at 7 p.m. Seating is first-come, first-served. The Thursday lecture will be in JPL's von Kármán Auditorium. JPL is at 4800 Oak Grove Dr., off the Oak Grove Drive exit of the 210 (Foothill) Freeway. The Friday lecture will be in Pasadena City College's Vosloh Forum, 1570 E. Colorado Blvd. For more information, call (818) 354-0112. Thursday's lecture will be webcast live and available afterwards athttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures/aug03.html.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/genesis-mission-named-next-discovery-program-flight

'Genesis' Mission Named Next Discovery Program Flight

A JPL-teamed mission to gather and return samples of the solar wind to Earth has been selected as the next flight in NASA's Discovery program of lower cost, highly focused scientific spacecraft.

A JPL-teamed mission to gather and return samples of the solar wind to Earth has been selected as the next flight in NASA's Discovery program of lower cost, highly focused scientific spacecraft.The Genesis mission is designed to collect samples of the solar wind and return them to laboratories on Earth for detailed analysis. The $216 million mission, led by Dr. Donald Burnett of the California Institute of Technology, will be launched in January 2001 and return isotopes of oxygen, nitrogen, the noble gases, and other elements of the solar wind via an airborne capture vehicle as it plummets toward the floor of the Utah desert in August 2003."The Genesis mission is a crucial step in the future of planetary exploration," said Burnett, principal investigator of the mission. "By bringing back solar matter that we can analyze in laboratories on Earth, we will be providing the fundamental data to understand how planets formed in the early history of our solar system."The Genesis payload is comprised of electron and ion monitors, an ion concentrator and collector arrays to capture particles of the solar wind, which streams outward from the Sun, said Chet Sasaki, Genesis project manager at JPL. "These particles will embed themselves in the collector arrays, which are made primarily of extremely high purity silicon. The collector arrays will later be stowed and returned using a sample return capsule which will separate from the spacecraft and parachute through Earth's atmosphere. Helicopters will catch the vehicle before it hits the ground."JPL, which will manage the mission for Burnett at Caltech, will work with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, to develop the spacecraft. Other partners in the mission are Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, which will furnish portions of the payload, and the NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, which will oversee contamination control issues associated with the payload before, during and after the sample is returned to Earth.The selection of this mission is the second step of a two- step process. In the first step, NASA selected five proposals in April 1997 for detailed four-month feasibility studies. Funded by NASA at $350,000 each, these studies focused on cost, management and technical plans, including small business involvement and educational outreach.The selected proposals were among 34 proposals originally submitted to NASA in December 1996, in response to a Discovery announcement of opportunity issued on Sept. 20, 1996. As stated in the announcement of opportunity, the initial cost estimates were allowed to grow by a maximum of 20 percent between the April selection and the detailed final proposals."This was a very difficult selection, given the first-class science proposed by all five teams," said Dr. Wesley Huntress, associate administrator for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. "We picked two based on our distribution of resources and the excellent fit of the timetables for these missions with other robotic space science explorers. Genesis will give us a sample of the Sun as we are preparing to receive samples of a comet and asteroid from other missions. A second Discovery mission, CONTOUR, will help us better understand the breadth of the 'family of comets,' which are believed to be quite individual in their properties."CONTOUR (or the Comet Nucleus Tour) was also chosen this year for development under the auspices of the Discovery program. CONTOUR, which will be tracked by JPL's deep space tracking facilities, will take images and comparative spectral maps of at least three comet nuclei and analyze the dust flowing from them.CONTOUR will be led by Dr. Joseph Veverka of Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, at a total cost to NASA of $154 million. It is scheduled for launch in July 2002, with its first comet flyby to occur in November 2003. This flyby of Comet Encke at a distance of about 100 kilometers (60 miles) will be followed by similar encounters with Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann-3 in June 2006 and Comet d'Arrest in August 2008.Genesis and CONTOUR follow four previously selected NASA Discovery missions. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft was launched in February 1996 and returned images of the asteroid Mathilde from a distant flyby in June of this year, on its way to orbit the asteroid Eros in early 1999. The Mars Pathfinder lander, carrying a small robotic rover named Sojourner, touched down on the surface of Mars on July 4, and since has returned hundreds of images and thousands of measurements of the Martian environment.The Lunar Prospector orbiter mission to map the composition and gravity field of Earth's moon is scheduled for launch in January 1998, and the Stardust mission is designed to gather dust from Comet Wild-2 in 2004 and return it to Earth, following a planned February 1999 launch.The California Institute of Technology manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/similar-looking-ridges-on-mars-have-diverse-origins

Similar-Looking Ridges on Mars Have Diverse Origins

Thin, blade-like walls, some as tall as a 16-story building, dominate a previously undocumented network of intersecting ridges on Mars, found in images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Fast Facts:› Many places on Mars have networks of ridges that intersect at angles to form polygons.› Martian polygonal-ridge features vary in size and origin.› A new project seeks volunteers to examine Mars images and identify sites with polygonal ridgesThin, blade-like walls, some as tall as a 16-story building, dominate a previously undocumented network of intersecting ridges on Mars, found in images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.The simplest explanation for these impressive ridges is that lava flowed into pre-existing fractures in the ground and later resisted erosion better than material around them.A new survey of polygon-forming ridges on Mars examines this network in the Medusae Fossae region straddling the planet's equator and similar-looking networks in other regions of the Red Planet."Finding these ridges in the Medusae Fossae region set me on a quest to find all the types of polygonal ridges on Mars," said Laura Kerber of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, lead author of the surveyreportpublished this month in the journal Icarus.The pattern is sometimes called boxwork ridges. Raised lines intersect as the outlines of multiple adjoining rectangles, pentagons, triangles or other polygons. Despite the similarity in shape, these networks differ in origin and vary in scale from inches to miles.Small and Large ExamplesMars rover missions have found small versions they have been able to inspect up close. Some of these polygonal ridges, such as at"Garden City"seen by Curiosity, are veins deposited by mineral-laden groundwater moving through underground fissures, long before erosion exposed the veins. Curiosity recently also imaged small boxwork ridges that likely originated asmud cracks.At the other end of the size scale, ridges outline several rectangles each more than a mile (more than 2 kilometers) wide at a location called"Inca City"near Mars' south pole. These may have resulted from impact-related faults underground, with fractures filled by rising lava that hardened and was later exposed by erosion."Polygonal ridges can be formed in several different ways, and some of them are really key to understanding the history of early Mars," Kerber said. "Many of these ridges are mineral veins, and mineral veins tell us that water was circulating underground."Polygonal ridges in the Nilosyrtis Mensae region of northern Mars may hold clues about ancient wet, possibly warm environments. Examples of them found so far tend to be in the same areas as water-related clues such as minerals that form in hot springs, clay-mineral layers and channels carved by ancient streams. A larger sample is needed to test this hypothesis.Volunteers SoughtKerber is seeking help from the public through a citizen-science project using images of Mars from the Context Camera (CTX) on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter."We're asking for volunteers to search for more polygonal ridges," she said. Finding as-yet-unidentified polygonal ridges in CTX images could improve understanding about their relationship to other features and also will help guide future observations with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera to reveal details of the ridge networks.This citizen-science program, called Planet Four: Ridges, began Jan. 17 on a platform released by the Zooniverse, which hosts dozens of projects that enlist people worldwide to contribute to discoveries in fields ranging from astronomy to zoology. More information is at:http://ridges.planetfour.orgOther Zooniverse Mars projects using data from CTX and HiRISE have drawn participation from more than 150,000 volunteers.On Earth, too, polygonal ridges have diverse origins. Examples include grand walls of lava that hardened underground then were exposed by erosion, and small ridge networks inside limestone caves, where erosion can be chemical as well as physical.With CTX, HiRISE and four other instruments, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been investigating Mars since 2006.Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates CTX. The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter and collaborates with JPL to operate it. For additional information about the project, visit:http://mars.nasa.gov/mro

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ion-propulsion-system-wins-discover-magazine-award

Ion Propulsion System Wins Discover Magazine Award

The futuristic ion propulsion system on NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft is the winner of Discover Magazine's Award for Technological Innovation in the exploration category.

The futuristic ion propulsion system on NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft is the winner of Discover Magazine's Award for Technological Innovation in the exploration category.Discover magazine's annual awards, now in their 10th year, honor teams whose innovations improve the quality of everyday life. Twenty-seven technologies were selected as finalists. Nine winners, featured in Discover's July issue, were announced at a recent ceremony in Florida.The award went to NASA's Solar Electric Propulsion Technology Application Readiness (NSTAR) program team, which developed and delivered Deep Space 1's ion propulsion system. Accepting on behalf of the team was former NSTAR manager Jack Stocky of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.The ion drive combines a gas found in photo flash units with some of the technologies that make television picture tubes work to deliver a thrust only as powerful as the pressure of a sheet of paper resting on the palm of a hand. Despite the almost imperceptible level of thrust, this engine, for a given amount of fuel, can increase a spacecraft's velocity 10 times more than can a conventional liquid or solid fuel rocket.Deep Space 1, launched last October, has tested 12 new technologies, including ion propulsion, so that they can be confidently used on science missions of the 21st century.The NASA Solar Electric Propulsion Technology Application Readiness program began in the early 1990s as a partnership between JPL and NASA's Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH, to develop xenon ion engines for deep space missions. In June 1996, a prototype engine built by the Glenn center began a long- duration test in a vacuum chamber at JPL simulating the conditions of outer space. The test concluded in September 1997 after the engine successfully logged more than 8,000 hours of operation.Results of the tests were used to define the design of flight hardware that was built for Deep Space 1 by Hughes Electron Dynamics Division, Torrance, CA, and Spectrum Astro Inc., Gilbert, AZ. Other partners in the development of the flight ion engine system included Moog Inc., East Aurora, NY, and Physical Science Inc., Andover, MA. Development of the ion propulsion system was supported by NASA's Office of Space Science and the Office of Aeronautics and Space Transportation Technology, Washington, DC. A portion of the program was supported by the Advanced Space Transportation Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL.Deep Space 1 is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. More information about the mission is available on the web athttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1news.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/global-storms-on-mars-launch-dust-towers-into-the-sky

Global Storms on Mars Launch Dust Towers Into the Sky

Newly documented behavior seen during global dust storms on the Red Planet may play a role in how the planet's water escapes into space.

Dust storms are common on Mars. But every decade or so, something unpredictable happens: A series of runaway storms breaks out, covering the entire planet in a dusty haze.Last year,a fleet of NASA spacecraftgot a detailed look at the life cycle of the 2018 global dust storm that ended theOpportunity rover's mission. And while scientists are still puzzling over the data,twopapersrecently shed new light on a phenomenon observed within the storm: dust towers, or concentrated clouds of dust that warm in sunlight and rise high into the air. Scientists think that dust-trapped water vapor may be riding them like an elevator to space, where solar radiation breaks apart their molecules. This might help explain how Mars' water disappeared over billions of years.Dust towers are massive, churning clouds that are denser and climb much higher than the normal background dust in the thin Martian atmosphere. While they also occur under normal conditions, the towers appear to form in greater numbers during global storms.A tower starts at the planet's surface as an area of rapidly lifted dust about as wide as the state of Rhode Island. By the time a tower reaches a height of 50 miles (80 kilometers), as seen during the 2018 global dust storm, it may be as wide as Nevada. As the tower decays, it can form a layer of dust 35 miles (56 kilometers) above the surface that can be wider than the continental United States.The recent findings on dust towers come courtesy of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which is led by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Though global dust storms cloak the planet's surface, MRO can use its heat-sensing Mars Climate Sounder instrument to peer through the haze. The instrument is designed specifically for measuring dust levels. Its data, coupled with images from a camera aboard the orbiter called the Mars Context Imager (MARCI), enabled scientists to detect numerous swelling dust towers.How Did Mars Lose Its Water?Dust towers appear throughout the Martian year, but MRO observed something different during the 2018 global dust storm. "Normally the dust would fall down in a day or so," said the paper's lead author, Nicholas Heavens of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. "But during a global storm, dust towers are renewed continuously for weeks." In some cases, multiple towers were seen for as long as 3 1/2 weeks.The rate of dust activity surprised Heavens and other scientists. But especially intriguing is the possibility that dust towers act as "space elevators" for other material, transporting them through the atmosphere. When airborne dust heats up, it creates updrafts that carry gases along with it, including the small quantity of water vapor sometimes seen aswispy cloudson Mars.A previous paper led by Heavens showed that during a 2007 global dust storm on Mars, water molecules werelofted into the upper atmosphere, where solar radiation could break them down into particles that escape into space. That might be a clue to how the Red Planet lost its lakes and rivers over billions of years, becoming the freezing desert it is today.Scientists can't say with certainty what causes global dust storms; they've studied fewer than a dozen to date."Global dust storms are really unusual," said Mars Climate Sounder scientist David Kass of JPL. "We really don't have anything like this on the Earth, where the entire planet's weather changes for several months."With time and more data, the MRO team hopes to better understand the dust towers created within global storms and what role they may play in removing water from the Red Planet's atmosphere.For more information about MRO:https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/main/index.html

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-dawn-spacecraft-beams-back-new-photo

NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Beams Back New Photo

NASA's Dawn mission, in orbit around Vesta, captured the latest image from a distance of about 6,500 miles (10,500 kilometers) kilometers from the giant asteroid.

Dawn took this image during its current orbit of Vesta, traveling from the day side to the night side. The large structure near the south pole that showed up so prominently in previous images is visible in the center of the illuminated surface. Compared to other images, this one shows more of the surface beneath the spacecraft in the shadow of night. Vesta turns on its axis once every five hours and 20 minutes.Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 15, 2011, and will spend a year orbiting the body. After that, the next stop on its itinerary will be an encounter with the dwarf planet Ceres.The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA. The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The Framing Camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-2020-rovers-pixl-to-focus-x-rays-on-tiny-targets

Mars 2020 Rover's PIXL to Focus X-Rays on Tiny Targets

An X-ray instrument for NASA's next Mars rover combines a sharpshooting spectrometer and a camera, to identify and map chemical elements in targets at microscopic scale.

One of seven instruments selected for a Mars rover that NASA is developing for launch in 2020 would be able to identify chemical elements in target spots as small as a grain of table salt.PIXL, for Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry, would be mounted at the end of the rover's robotic arm so that it can be placed next to a rock or soil target. It is designed to provide finer-scale identification of elemental composition than ever before possible on Mars.The instrument's capabilities would help NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission accomplish its goals, which include seeking evidence for past life on Mars."If you are looking for signs of ancient life, you want to look at a small scale and get detailed information about chemical elements present," said PIXL Principal Investigator Abigail Allwood of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.PIXL will be fast. Its intended use is to spend a few seconds to 2 minutes with the instrument's X-ray focused on each spot to be analyzed, then move the beam to another spot, working in a linear or grid pattern to produce a detailed map of the elements in the rock or soil target. The mapped area would be up to about the size of a postage stamp.The element-identification method is X-ray fluorescence. It reads the X-rays distinctively emitted by various types of atoms when they are excited by X-rays coming from the instrument.PIXL's design also incorporates a high-resolution camera so that the map of elemental composition can be analyzed in conjunction with visible characteristics of the target area."We can correlate fine-scale textures and features with very detailed information about the chemistry," Allwood said. "Understanding these relationships is crucial for investigation goals such as searching for microbial biosignatures."NASA announced selection of PIXL and six other investigations for the Mars 2020 rover's payload on July 31, 2014.The Mars 2020 mission will be based on the design of the highly successful Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which landed almost two years ago and currently is operating on Mars. The new rover will carry more sophisticated, upgraded hardware and new instruments to conduct geological assessments of the rover's landing site, determine the potential habitability of the environment, and directly search for signs of ancient Martian life.Scientists will use the Mars 2020 rover to identify and select a collection of rock and soil samples that will be stored for potential return to Earth by a future mission. The Mars 2020 mission is responsive to the science objectives recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey.The Mars 2020 rover also will help advance our knowledge of how future human explorers could use natural resources available on the surface of the Red Planet. An ability to live off the Martian land would transform future exploration of the planet. Designers of future human expeditions can use this mission to understand the hazards posed by Martian dust and demonstrate technology to process carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce oxygen. These experiments will help engineers learn how to use Martian resources to produce oxygen for human respiration and potentially for use as an oxidizer for rocket fuel.The California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages JPL for NASA.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/missing-piece-inspires-new-look-at-mars-puzzle

Missing Piece Inspires New Look at Mars Puzzle

Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life.

PASADENA, Calif. -- Experiments prompted by a 2008 surprise from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander suggest that soil examined by NASA's Viking Mars landers in 1976 may have contained carbon-based chemical building blocks of life."This doesn't say anything about the question of whether or not life has existed on Mars, but it could make a big difference in how we look for evidence to answer that question," said Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. McKay coauthored a study published online by the Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets, reanalyzing results of Viking's tests for organic chemicals in Martian soil.The only organic chemicals identified when the Viking landers heated samples of Martian soil were chloromethane and dichloromethane -- chlorine compounds interpreted at the time as likely contaminants from cleaning fluids. But those chemicals are exactly what the new study found when a little perchlorate -- the surprise finding from Phoenix -- was added to desert soil from Chile containing organics and analyzed in the manner of the Viking tests."Our results suggest that not only organics, but also perchlorate, may have been present in the soil at both Viking landing sites," said the study's lead author, Rafael Navarro-González of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City.Organics can come from non-biological or biological sources. Many meteorites raining onto Mars and Earth for the past 5 billion years contain organics. Even if Mars has never had life, scientists before Viking anticipated that Martian soil would contain organics from meteorites."The lack of organics was a big surprise from the Vikings," McKay said. "But for 30 years we were looking at a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing. Phoenix has provided the missing piece: perchlorate. The perchlorate discovery by Phoenix was one of the most important results from Mars since Viking." Perchlorate, an ion of chlorine and oxygen, becomes a strong oxidant when heated. "It could sit there in the Martian soil with organics around it for billions of years and not break them down, but when you heat the soil to check for organics, the perchlorate destroys them rapidly," McKay said.This interpretation proposed by Navarro-González and his four co-authors challenges the interpretation by Viking scientists that Martian organic compounds were not present in their samples at the detection limit of the Viking experiment. Instead, the Viking scientists interpreted the chlorine compounds as contaminants. Upcoming missions to Mars and further work on meteorites from Mars are expected to help resolve this question.The Curiosity rover that NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will deliver to Mars in 2012 will carry the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument provided by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. In contrast to Viking and Phoenix, Curiosity can rove and thus analyze a wider variety of rocks and samples. SAM can check for organics in Martian soil and powdered rocks by baking samples to even higher temperatures than Viking did, and also by using an alternative liquid-extraction method at much lower heat. Combining these methods on a range of samples may enable further testing of the new report's hypothesis that oxidation by heated perchlorates that might have been present in the Viking samples was destroying organics.One reason the chlorinated organics found by Viking were interpreted as contaminants from Earth was that the ratio of two isotopes of chlorine in them matched the three-to-one ratio for those isotopes on Earth. The ratio for them on Mars has not been clearly determined yet. If it is found to be much different than Earth's, that would support the 1970s interpretation.If organic compounds can indeed persist in the surface soil of Mars, contrary to the predominant thinking for three decades, one way to search for evidence of life on Mars could be to check for types of large, complex organic molecules, such as DNA, that are indicators of biological activity. "If organics cannot persist at the surface, that approach would not be wise, but if they can, it's a different story," McKay said.The Phoenix mission was led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Phoenix finding of perchlorate was reported by JPL's Michael Hecht and co-authors. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, also manages Mars Science Laboratory for the NASA Exploration Missions Directorate, Washington.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/terra-earth-science-mission-ready-for-launch-dec-16

Terra Earth Science Mission Ready for Launch Dec. 16

The launch of NASA's Earth-observing Terra satellite, bearing state-of-the-art instruments to study interactions between the land, atmosphere, ocean and life on the planet, is set for Thursday, Dec. 16 from Space Launch Complex 3 East at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS rocket. The launch window is 25 minutes in duration extending from 10:33 to 10:58 a.m. PST (1:33 to 1:58 p.m. EST).

The launch of NASA's Earth-observing Terra satellite, bearing state-of-the-art instruments to study interactions between the land, atmosphere, ocean and life on the planet, is set for Thursday, Dec. 16 from Space Launch Complex 3 East at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS rocket. The launch window is 25 minutes in duration extending from 10:33 to 10:58 a.m. PST (1:33 to 1:58 p.m. EST).Terra, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., is the NASA flagship mission in a new series of spacecraft dedicated to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Terra carries five sophisticated sets of instruments with measurement and accuracy capabilities never before flown. Seehttp://eos-am.gsfc.nasa.govfor details on the mission.Terra takes a global approach to data collection that will enable scientists to study the interaction among the four spheres of the Earth system -- the oceans, lands, atmosphere and biosphere. Long-term weather and climate prediction requires the collection of better data over longer periods to understand the links between these spheres.Among the instruments are two managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.:- The JPL-built Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) will improve our understanding of the Earth's ecology and climate by studying how changes in the amounts, types, and distribution of clouds, airborne particulates, and surface covers can affect our climate. For more information, go tohttp://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov.- The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and reflection Radiometer (ASTER), a joint U.S.-Japanese instrument, will produce detailed global, regional and local image maps of land surface temperature, reflectance and elevation and other characteristics. ASTER is the only high-spatial-resolution instrument on Terra, and the instrument's ability to serve as a "zoom lens" for the other instruments will be particularly important for land studies, detecting surface changes, and for calibrating instruments. Seehttp://asterweb.jpl.nasa.govfor more information.JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-stardust-spacecraft-completes-comet-flyby

NASA's Stardust Spacecraft Completes Comet Flyby

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., watched as data downlinked from the Stardust spacecraft indicated it completed its closest approach with comet Tempel 1.

PASADENA, Calif. - Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., watched as data downlinked from the Stardust spacecraft indicated it completed its closest approach with comet Tempel 1. An hour after closest approach, the spacecraft turned to point its large, high-gain antenna at Earth. It is expected that images of the comet's nucleus collected during the flyby will be received on Earth starting at about midnight California time (3 a.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 15).Preliminary data already transmitted from the spacecraft indicate the time of closest approach was about 8:39 p.m. PST (11:39 p.m. EST), at a distance of 181 kilometers (112 miles) from Tempel 1.This is a bonus mission for the comet chaser, which previously flew past comet Wild 2 and returned samples from its coma to Earth. During this bonus encounter, the plan called for the spacecraft to take images of the comet's surface to observe what changes occurred since a NASA spacecraft last visited. (NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft executed an encounter with Tempel 1 in July 2005).Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that will expand the investigation of comet Tempel 1 initiated by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Stardust-NExT for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.For more information about Stardust-NExT, visit:http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/new-study-outlines-water-world-theory-of-lifes-origins

New Study Outlines 'Water World' Theory of Life's Origins

Did life first arise on Earth in warm, gentle springs on the sea floor? Researchers are putting together the chemical pieces of how this process might have occurred.

Life took root more than four billion years ago on our nascent Earth, a wetter and harsher place than now, bathed in sizzling ultraviolet rays. What started out as simple cells ultimately transformed into slime molds, frogs, elephants, humans and the rest of our planet's living kingdoms. How did it all begin?A new study from researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Icy Worlds team at NASA's Astrobiology Institute, based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., describes how electrical energy naturally produced at the sea floor might have given rise to life. While the scientists had already proposed this hypothesis -- called "submarine alkaline hydrothermal emergence of life" -- the new report assembles decades of field, laboratory and theoretical research into a grand, unified picture.According to the findings, which also can be thought of as the "water world" theory, life may have begun inside warm, gentle springs on the sea floor, at a time long ago when Earth's oceans churned across the entire planet. This idea of hydrothermal vents as possible places for life's origins was first proposed in 1980 by other researchers, who found them on the sea floor near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Called "black smokers," those vents bubble with scalding hot, acidic fluids. In contrast, the vents in the new study -- first hypothesized by scientist Michael Russell of JPL in 1989 -- are gentler, cooler and percolate with alkaline fluids. One such towering complex of these alkaline vents was found serendipitously in the North Atlantic Ocean in 2000, and dubbed the Lost City."Life takes advantage of unbalanced states on the planet, which may have been the case billions of years ago at the alkaline hydrothermal vents," said Russell. "Life is the process that resolves these disequilibria." Russell is lead author of the new study, published in the April issue of the journal Astrobiology.Other theories of life's origins describe ponds, or "soups," of chemicals, pockmarking Earth's battered, rocky surface. In some of those chemical soup models, lightning or ultraviolet light is thought to have fueled life in the ponds.The water world theory from Russell and his team says that the warm, alkaline hydrothermal vents maintained an unbalanced state with respect to the surrounding ancient, acidic ocean -- one that could have provided so-called free energy to drive the emergence of life. In fact, the vents could have created two chemical imbalances. The first was a proton gradient, where protons -- which are hydrogen ions -- were concentrated more on the outside of the vent's chimneys, also called mineral membranes. The proton gradient could have been tapped for energy -- something our own bodies do all the time in cellular structures called mitochondria.The second imbalance could have involved an electrical gradient between the hydrothermal fluids and the ocean. Billions of years ago, when Earth was young, its oceans were rich with carbon dioxide. When the carbon dioxide from the ocean and fuels from the vent -- hydrogen and methane -- met across the chimney wall, electrons may have been transferred. These reactions could have produced more complex carbon-containing, or organic compounds -- essential ingredients of life as we know it. Like proton gradients, electron transfer processes occur regularly in mitochondria."Within these vents, we have a geological system that already does one aspect of what life does," said Laurie Barge, second author of the study at JPL. "Life lives off proton gradients and the transfer of electrons."As is the case with all advanced life forms, enzymes are the key to making chemical reactions happen. In our ancient oceans, minerals may have acted like enzymes, interacting with chemicals swimming around and driving reactions. In the water world theory, two different types of mineral "engines" might have lined the walls of the chimney structures."These mineral engines may be compared to what's in modern cars," said Russell."They make life 'go' like the car engines by consuming fuel and expelling exhaust. DNA and RNA, on the other hand, are more like the car's computers because they guide processes rather than make them happen."One of the tiny engines is thought to have used a mineral known as green rust, allowing it to take advantage of the proton gradient to produce a phosphate-containing molecule that stores energy. The other engine is thought to have depended on a rare metal called molybdenum. This metal also is at work in our bodies, in a variety of enzymes. It assists with the transfer of two electrons at a time rather than the usual one, which is useful in driving certain key chemical reactions."We call molybdenum the Douglas Adams element," said Russell, explaining that the atomic number of molybdenum is 42, which also happens to be the answer to the "ultimate question of life, the universe and everything" in Adams' popular book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Russell joked, "Forty-two may in fact be one answer to the ultimate question of life!"The team's origins of life theory applies not just to Earth but also to other wet, rocky worlds."Michael Russell's theory originated 25 years ago and, in that time, JPL space missions have found strong evidence for liquid water oceans and rocky sea floors on Europa and Enceladus," said Barge. "We have learned much about the history of water on Mars, and soon we may find Earth-like planets around faraway stars. By testing this origin-of-life hypothesis in the lab at JPL, we may explain how life might have arisen on these other places in our solar system or beyond, and also get an idea of how to look for it."For now, the ultimate question of whether the alkaline hydrothermal vents are the hatcheries of life remains unanswered. Russell says the necessary experiments are jaw-droppingly difficult to design and carry out, but decades later, these are problems he and his team are still happy to tackle.The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-odyssey-mission-status-10

Mars Odyssey Mission Status

Mars Odyssey Mission Status

NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft deployed its high-gain communications antenna last night, marking a major technical milestone prior to the beginning of the science mapping mission.At 7:29 p.m. Pacific Time, Tuesday, Feb. 5, mission controllers monitored changes in the radio signal from Odyssey, indicating that the release and deployment of the antenna boom were proceeding as planned. The antenna boom was deployed to its latched position with a motor-driven hinge and locked into place as expected. The antenna's position is controlled with a two-axis gimbal assembly that allows the spacecraft to communicate with Earth while the science instruments are simultaneously collecting data of Mars. Overnight, flight controllers checked out the gimbals, which allow the antenna to be pointed in a variety of positions to track Earth."Successful deployment of the high gain antenna paves the way for Odyssey to achieve the real payoff of the mission, the science data return," said David A. Spencer, Odyssey's mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.The science instruments are expected to begin collecting data later this month. Flight controllers first need to test the mapping orientation of the spacecraft, in which the instruments are pointed at Mars while the antenna tracks Earth.The high-gain antenna is 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) in diameter, with a parabolic shape. The antenna can transmit at data rates as high as 110 thousand bits per second.JPL manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Principal investigators at Arizona State University in Tempe, the University of Arizona in Tucson, and NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, operate the science instruments. Additional science investigators are located at the Russian Space Research Institute and Los Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, Colo., is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-releases-new-eye-popping-view-of-carbon-dioxide

NASA Releases New Eye-Popping View of Carbon Dioxide

Follow the movement of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere in a new NASA visualization created using data from JPL's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite.

A new NASA supercomputer project builds on the agency's satellite measurements of carbon dioxide and combines them with a sophisticated Earth system model to provide one of the most realistic views yet of how this critical greenhouse gas moves through the atmosphere.Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/K. Mersmann, M. Radcliff, producersScientists have tracked the rising concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide for decades using ground-based sensors in a few places. A high-resolution visualization of the new combined data product provides an entirely different perspective. The visualization was generated by the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, using data from the agency's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite, built and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.The 3-D visualization reveals in startling detail the complex patterns in which carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, decreases and moves around the globe over the time period from September 2014 to September 2015.Atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as Earth's thermostat. Rising concentrations of the greenhouse gas, due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels for energy, have driven Earth's current long-term warming trend. The visualization highlights the advances scientists are making in understanding the processes that control how much emitted carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere and how long it stays there -- questions that ultimately will determine Earth's future climate.Scientists know that nearly half of all human-caused emissions are absorbed by the land and ocean. The current understanding is that about 50 percent of emissions remain in the atmosphere, about 25 percent are absorbed by vegetation on the land, and about 25 percent are absorbed by the ocean. However, those seemingly simple numbers leave scientists with critical and complex questions: Which ecosystems, especially on land, are absorbing what amounts of carbon dioxide? Perhaps most significantly, as emissions keep rising, will the land and the ocean continue this rate of absorption, or reach a point of saturation?The new dataset is a step toward answering those questions, explained Lesley Ott, a carbon cycle scientist at NASA Goddard and a member of the OCO-2 science team. Scientists need to understand the processes driving the "carbon flux" -- the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere, land and ocean, Ott said."We can't measure the flux directly at high resolution across the entire globe," she said. "We are trying to build the tools needed to provide an accurate picture of what's happening in the atmosphere and translate that to an accurate picture of what's going on with the flux. There's still a long way to go, but this is a really important and necessary step in that chain of discoveries about carbon dioxide."OCO-2, launched in 2014, is NASA's first satellite designed specifically to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide at regional scales."Since September of 2014, OCO-2 has been returning almost 100,000 carbon dioxide estimates over the globe each day. Modeling tools like those being developed by our colleagues in the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office are critical for analyzing and interpreting this high-resolution dataset," said David Crisp, OCO-2 science team leader at JPL.The Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has previously included carbon dioxide in its GEOS Earth system model, which is used for all manner of atmospheric studies. This new product builds on that work by using the technique of data assimilation to combine the OCO-2 observations with the model. "Data assimilation is the process of blending model simulations with real-world measurements, with the precision, resolution and coverage needed to reflect our best understanding of the exchange of carbon dioxide between the surface and atmosphere," explained Brad Weir, a researcher based in the GMAO.The visualization showcases information about global carbon dioxide that has not been seen before in such detail: The rise and fall of carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere throughout a year; the influence of continents, mountain ranges and ocean currents on weather patterns and therefore carbon dioxide movement; and the regional influence of highly active photosynthesis in places like the U.S. Corn Belt.While the finely detailed carbon dioxide fluctuations are eye-catching, they also remind GMAO chief Steven Pawson of the progress scientists are making with computer models of the Earth system. One future step will be to integrate a more complex biology module into the model to better target the questions of carbon dioxide absorption and release by forests and other land ecosystems.The results highlighted here demonstrate the value of NASA's unique capabilities in observing and modeling Earth. They also emphasize the collaboration among NASA centers and the value of powerful supercomputing. The assimilation was created using a model called the Goddard Earth Observing System Model-Version 5 (GEOS-5), which was run by the Discover supercomputer cluster at Goddard's NASA Center for Climate Simulation."It's taken us many years to pull it all together," Pawson said. "The level of detail included in this dataset gives us a lot of optimism that our models and observations are beginning to give a coherent view of the carbon cycle."For more information about OCO-2:http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/NASA collects data from space, air, land and sea to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-takes-to-kansas-skies-to-study-nighttime-thunderstorms

NASA Takes to Kansas Skies to Study Nighttime Thunderstorms

In most of the U.S., summer thunderstorms form on hot days. In the Great Plains, they often form at night. NASA is joining a multi-agency field campaign to learn why.

NASA has joined a multi-agency field campaign studying summer storm systems in the U.S. Great Plains to find out why they often form after the sun goes down instead of during the heat of the day.The Plains Elevated Convection at Night, or PECAN, project began June 1 and continues through mid-July. Participants from eight research laboratories and 14 universities are collecting storm data to find out how and why storms form. NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory began research flights Tuesday from the Salina Regional Airport, Salina, Kansas. The DC-8 carries atmospheric science instruments and investigators from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and other participating institutions."We're hoping to collect measurements that will be used to characterize the atmosphere ahead of these storms," said Richard Ferrare, senior research scientist in the Atmospheric Sciences Division at NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. "If we can map the water vapor that goes into these storms, we'll be able to improve computer models that represent these conditions and better predict the storms."The NASA DC-8 and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) P-3 Orion research aircraft supporting the PECAN mission will be open to the media from 3 to 5 p.m. CDT on Saturday, July 11, at the Salina Regional Airport. The airport is located at 3237 Arnold Avenue.Unlike other parts of the United States, summer thunderstorms across the Great Plains are most common after sunset. Much of the rain comes from medium-size weather systems and resulting thunderstorms known as mesoscale convective systems. These nighttime storms can produce heavy rainfall that contributes a significant portion of the yearly precipitation in the region.Scientists understand that thunderstorms form during the day because of vertical convective circulation, driven by rising warm air from Earth's heated surface and falling air cooled at higher latitudes in the atmosphere. Less well understood are the mechanisms that cause thunderstorms after the sun has gone down and the land surface has cooled.The DC-8 carries atmospheric science instruments and investigators from Langley; JPL; and several universities and research labs. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is providing a ground-based Doppler radar system.PECAN is funded by the National Science Foundation with additional support from NASA; NOAA; the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado; and the Department of Energy.In addition to the NASA and NOAA aircraft, researchers will receive data from a University of Wyoming King Air plane, ground-based instruments, weather balloons and mobile radars. Storm information will continue to be gathered from multiple agency ground and air instruments across northern Oklahoma, central Kansas and south-central Nebraska through July.The DC-8 is based at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Facility in Palmdale, California, and supports NASA's Airborne Science Program under the Science Mission Directorate. The extended range, prolonged flight-duration capability, large payload capacity and laboratory environment of the DC-8 make it one of the premier aircraft available for NASA Earth science investigations.NASA researchers collect and study data from space, air, land and sea to tackle challenges facing the world today, including improved environmental prediction and natural hazard and climate change preparedness. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ceres-temporary-atmosphere-linked-to-solar-activity

Ceres' Temporary Atmosphere Linked to Solar Activity

Solar particles free water molecules from the surface of Ceres, allowing them to escape and create a tenuous atmosphere, according to a new study.

Scientists have long thought that Ceres may have a very weak, transient atmosphere, but mysteries lingered about its origin and why it's not always present. Now, researchers suggest that this temporary atmosphere appears to be related to the behavior of the sun, rather than Ceres' proximity to the sun. The study was conducted by scientists from NASA's Dawn mission and others who previously identified water vapor at Ceres using other observatories."We think the occurrence of Ceres' transient atmosphere is the product of solar activity," said Michaela Villarreal, lead author of the new study in theAstrophysical Journal Lettersand researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter. When energetic particles from the sun hit exposed ice and ice near the surface of the dwarf planet, it transfers energy to the water molecules as they collide. This frees the water molecules from the ground, allowing them to escape and create a tenuous atmosphere that may last for a week or so."Our results also have implications for other airless, water-rich bodies of the solar system, including the polar regions of the moon and some asteroids," said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, also at UCLA. "Atmospheric releases might be expected from their surfaces, too, when solar activity erupts."Before Dawn arrived in orbit at Ceres in 2015, evidence for an atmosphere had been detected by some observatories at certain times, but not others, suggesting that it is a transient phenomenon. In 1991, the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite detected hydroxyl emission from Ceres, but not in 1990. Then, in 2007, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope searched for a hydroxide emission, but came up empty. The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory detected water in the possible weak atmosphere, or "exosphere," of Ceres on three occasions, but did not on a fourth attempt.As Dawn began its thorough study of Ceres in March 2015, scientists found ample evidence for water in the form of ice. The spacecraft's gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) has found that the uppermost surface is rich in hydrogen, which is consistent with broad expanses of water ice. This ice is nearer to the surface at higher latitudes, where temperatures are lower, a 2016 study published in the journal Science found. Ice has been detected directly at the small bright crater called Oxo and in at least one of the craters that are persistently in shadow in the northern hemisphere. Other research has suggested that persistently shadowed craters are likely to harbor ice. Additionally, the shapes of craters and other features are consistent with significant water-ice content in the crust.Because of this evidence for abundant ice, many scientists think that Ceres' exosphere is created in a process similar to what occurs on comets, even though they are much smaller. In that model, the closer Ceres gets to the sun, the more water vapor is released because of ice sublimating near or at the surface.But the new study suggests comet-like behavior may not explain the mix of detections and non-detections of a weak atmosphere."Sublimation probably is present, but we don't think it's significant enough to produce the amount of exosphere that we're seeing," Villarreal said.Villarreal and colleagues showed that past detections of the transient atmosphere coincided with higher concentrations of energetic protons from the sun. Non-detections coincided with lower concentrations of these particles. What's more, the best detections of Ceres' atmosphere did not occur at its closest approach to the sun. This suggests that solar activity, rather than Ceres' proximity to the sun, is a more important factor in generating an exosphere.The research began with a2016 Science studyled by Chris Russell. The study, using GRaND data, suggested that, during a six-day period in 2015, Ceres had accelerated electrons from the solar wind to very high energies.In its orbital path, Ceres is currently getting closer to the sun. But the sun is now in a particularly quiet period, expected to last for several more years. Since their results indicate Ceres' exosphere is related to solar activity, study authors are predicting that the dwarf planet will have little to no atmosphere for some time. However, they recommend that other observatories monitor Ceres for future emissions.Dawn is now in its extended mission and studying Ceres in a highly elliptical orbit. Engineers are maneuvering the spacecraft to a different orbital plane so that Ceres can be viewed in a new geometry. The primary science objective is to measure cosmic rays to help determine which chemical elements lie near the surface of Ceres. As a bonus, in late April, the sun will be directly behind Dawn, when the spacecraft is at an altitude of about 12,300 miles (20,000 kilometers). Ceres will appear brighter than before in that configuration, and perhaps reveal more secrets about its composition and history.The Dawn mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit:http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/missionMore information about Dawn is available at the following sites:http://www.nasa.gov/dawnhttp://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/dr-edward-olsen-astronomer-and-earth-scientist-2

Dr. Edward Olsen, Astronomer and Earth Scientist

Edward Olsen started his science career as an astronomer looking outward at the universe, but now he has turned his focus in the other direction - inward towards Earth.

Edward Olsen started his science career as an astronomer looking outward at the universe, but now he has turned his focus in the other direction - inward towards Earth.A senior member of the technical staff of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, he's preparing for the instrument's launch in May aboard the Aqua satellite. The instrument will measure radiances and derive temperature, moisture, ozone and cloud properties in Earth's atmosphere, improving weather prediction and our understanding of Earth's climate system.Before joining the instrument team, Olsen worked for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, until JPL's involvement with the program ended in 1993. "It's a bit ironic," says Olsen. "When I was an astronomer trying to observe the sky, water vapor made that difficult. Now, I'm finding it to be interesting in its own right. The global hydrologic cycle is a major driving force of our weather and climate."Born in Brooklyn, New York, Olsen says he grew up all over. "My father was in the Navy in the war," he says. "I can remember my mother driving cross country at the speed limit--it was 30 miles per hour to save gas. "After getting his undergraduate degree in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Olsen went on to complete his graduate work at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan, specializing in radio astronomy.Q: How is the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder going to improve weather and climate forecasting?Right now the most detailed measurements of the atmosphere--the basic data that go into computer models that help create forecasts--come from radiosondes, or weather balloons. There are huge gaps in this coverage. Most radiosondes are launched from land, very few over the oceans. There's also little coverage in places like Asia, South America and Antarctica.The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder is going to observe the entire Earth over a short time span with a 50-kilometer, or about 31-mile, footprint. It will be as if 324,000 radiosondes are daily tunneling up through the air measuring the atmosphere as they go.Also, radiosondes typically achieve an altitude of 30 kilometers, or about 18 miles. Our instrument will be looking through the entire atmosphere down to the surface, retrieving temperature, water vapor, ozone, cloud top pressures and temperatures, and other gases.Q: What's your job on the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder?Right now, I'm preparing for validation. Once the satellite is in stable orbit our instrument's measurements have to be compared to observations from the ground in order to calibrate the instrument properly. Our goal is to provide global soundings of the atmosphere that are as accurate as those of radiosondes or better.We'll be taking different kinds of looks at the data. One team member is coordinating the validation scientists, who will be conducting a campaign of special observations from Earth in support of our instrument. Another is working with the arrays of automated sea buoys. My responsibility is to statistically compare our instrument's retrievals of temperature and water vapor with the in situ measurements by thousands of radiosondes released daily. I'm building software tools now to analyze that data.We want to ensure that when the data are publicly released that other scientists, who incorporate it into their weather prediction and climate modeling work, can use it and trust it.Q: At JPL's open house last year, you fascinated visitors with stories of how weather has affected history. Is this a special interest of yours?I've been digging a little into Earth's climate history and its impact on our civilization. For the whole of human history, climate has been the invisible hand that has pushed people. It's been move or starve.For example, there was a reason that Greenland was called "green land." But the climate changed, the weather got colder, and settlements died out. The Barbarian invasion of Europe may have been the consequence of a climate change in eastern Asia that started a chain of westward migrations.I'm also intrigued by the rapidity with which climate may change. The Greenland ice cores, for example, show signals that temperature changed over a period of decades, so-called "climate flickering." It doesn't take much, a shift in temperature of just a few degrees, to trigger an ice age or a widespread drought.We live on a knife-edge. We need to know more about our climate system, for it can rapidly change a continent's economy. We better learn what we can do to cope.Q: What do you do for fun?I read a lot. Our home is just filled with books. I particularly enjoy science fiction. My wife and I like to go see ballet when we can. I also enjoy traveling in Europe, but have not had the opportunity in quite a while.We've taken up Regency dancing. A few years ago, we attended a science fiction convention and saw people dancing in the manner you would see in a film about English life in the 18th century. Regency dances can be quite complex. Participants form two lines and then proceed to work through formal patterns in groups of four or six, progressing down the lines and switching roles. Ultimately, everyone has the opportunity to dance with everyone else. It is popular at large science fiction conventions, and there are Regency (and Victorian) dance groups all over the country, including one in Sierra Madre.Q: What was your first job out of school?I came to JPL immediately after finishing graduate school and remained ever since. It's been great. I love the work, people and atmosphere. It has been a real privilege to be at JPL during the initial exploration of our solar system.I've been doing something that I've felt is for the long-term benefit of mankind. It's a dream of mine that millions of years from now, other civilizations in our galaxy will look back upon us with fondness when considering our growth to a mature and accomplished civilization.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-snow-science-supporting-the-us-water-supply

NASA: Snow Science Supporting the US Water Supply

Researchers have completed the first flights of a NASA-led field campaign that is targeting one of the biggest gaps in scientists' understanding of Earth's water resources: snow.

Researchers have completed the first flights of a NASA-led field campaign that is targeting one of the biggest gaps in scientists' understanding of Earth's water resources: snow.NASA uses the vantage point of space to study all aspects of Earth as an interconnected system. But there remain significant obstacles to measuring accurately how much water is stored across the planet's snow-covered regions. The amount of water in snow plays a major role in water availability for drinking water, agriculture and hydropower.Enter SnowEx, a NASA-led multi-year research campaign to improve remote sensing measurements of how much snow is on the ground at any given time and how much water is contained in that snow. SnowEx is sponsored by the Terrestrial Hydrology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The first year of the campaign is taking place this month in western Colorado."This is the most comprehensive campaign we have ever done on snow," said Edward Kim, a remote sensing scientist at NASA Goddard and the SnowEx project scientist. "An army of nearly 100 scientists from universities and agencies across the U.S., Europe and Canada are participating. Our goal is to find and refine the best snow-measuring techniques."Why snow?More than one-sixth of the world's population relies on seasonal snow for water. In the western United States, nearly three-quarters of the annual streamflow that provides the water supply arrives as spring and summer melt from the mountain snowpacks. Right now, predictions of streamflow can vary widely due to limited ground measurement sites. That's one reason scientists and resource managers are interested in a comprehensive view from space of what they call snow water equivalent -- the amount of liquid water contained in snow cover. Scientists use snow water equivalent to estimate the amount of water that will melt into rivers and reservoirs.Snow also affects and is affected by the climate. Scientists have detected changes in snow quantity and snowmelt timing that track with other changes prompted by Earth's warming climate. While satellites are not able to measure snow-water equivalent accurately over all snowy landscapes, satellites have monitored the extent of seasonal snow-covered areas for decades. Since 1967, Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover has declined by about 1 million square miles. Loss of snow cover results in Earth absorbing more sunlight, accelerating the planet's warming.In the air, on the groundThe instruments and techniques developed in campaigns such as SnowEx could one day result in a snow-observing space mission. "We will also figure out a better way to optimize the use of existing satellites to make measurements," said Jared Entin, program manager of the Terrestrial Hydrology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.Five aircraft with a total of 10 different sensors are part of the SnowEx campaign. From an operations base at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, SnowEx will deploy a P-3 Orion aircraft operated by the Scientific Development Squadron ONE (VXS-1), stationed at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. High-altitude NASA jets will fly from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California. A King Air and a Twin Otter will fly out of Grand Junction, Colorado.The King Air carries theAirborne Snow Observatoryfrom NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. ASO is the first remote sensing system ever to measure snow depth, snow water equivalent and snow albedo across entire mountain basins, and has uniquely quantified snow water equivalent over mountainous regions since 2013.The other planes will carry five different microwave sensors that are good at measuring snow-water equivalent in dry snow but less optimal at measuring snow in forests or light snow cover; a thermal infrared camera and a remote thermometer for measuring surface temperature; a laser instrument that is good at measuring snow depth and snow water equivalent through trees; an imaging spectrometer that measures snow albedo -- the amount of sunlight reflected and absorbed by snow, which controls the speed of snowmelt and the timing of its runoff.The field portion of the campaign is based on Grand Mesa and in theSenator Beck Basin. Teams of 50 researchers are making ground measurements, rotating in and out of the field each week for three weeks. The scientists will use measurement and sampling procedures to validate the remotely sensed measurements acquired with aircraft. They will be working above 10,000 feet in potentially windy and freezing conditions up to 10 hours a day. The teams use snowshoes, skis and snowmobiles to access the ground locations.The Senator Beck Basin study area is near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River. "Its research areas are the first major mountain systems downwind of the desert Southwest and Colorado Plateau, making it an ideal place to study the effects of dust on snowmelt," said Hans-Peter Marshall of Boise State University, Idaho, who is leading operations in the basin. Grand Mesa was chosen for its flatness and range of forest conditions, according to Chris Hiemstra, a research physicist with theU.S. Army Corps of Engineersand the lead for the Grand Mesa operations.Ground equipment was installed in September 2016, before snow started to fall. A ground site near a campground will host specialized equipment too large to move around. This Local Scale Observation Site effort is led by Ludovic Brucker from NASA Goddard.Read the full story:https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/snow-science-in-support-of-our-nations-water-supply

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-confirms-15th-century-volcanic-eruption

JPL Confirms 15th Century Volcanic Eruption

A giant volcanic eruption in the South Pacific in the 15th century that until recently was known only in island legends has been confirmed by a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.

A giant volcanic eruption in the South Pacific in the 15th century that until recently was known only in island legends has been confirmed by a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.The powerful eruption broke a big island in half, created a submerged crater nearly a kilometer (about half a mile) deep, and interrupted a great battle raging half a world away -- the siege and fall of Constantinople, said JPL's Dr. Kevin Pang.Pang gave an invited presentation on the cataclysmic eruption at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.Using clues as diverse as growth rings visible in the wood frames of British portraits and crop records from China, Pang fixed the year of 1453 as when the legendary volcanic explosion must have taken place.The new date is much more precise, he said, than previous ones based on tribal genealogy and carbon dating.Pang says he first heard of the legend of the volcano from scientists studying how the islands of Tongoa and Epi in the New Hebrides volcanic arc -- about 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) east of Australia -- came into being.Previously a single island, Tongoa and Epi are now separated by Kuwae, a submerged crater measuring 12 by 6 by 1 kilometers (7.5 by 4 by 0.5 miles). The eruption blew about 40 cubic kilometers (10 cubic miles) of rock and dust into the atmosphere.Pang said such an eruption, equivalent to two million Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, would have changed the world's climate. His research, which delved into records around the world, proved that to be true.In his study, Pang drew on evidence found in tree rings, ice cores and in the historic records of civilizations in Europe and China. Oak panels of contemporary British portraits had abnormally narrow rings in 1453-55.In Sweden, corn tithes fell to zero as the crops failed; western U.S. bristlecone pines show frost damage in 1453; and the growth of European and Chinese trees was stunted in 1453-57.According to the history of the Ming Dynasty in China in the spring of 1453, "Nonstop snow damaged wheat crops." Later that year, as the dust obscured the sunlight, "Several feet of snow fell in six provinces; tens of thousands of people froze to death."Early in 1454, "it snowed for 40 days south of the Yangtze River and countless died of cold and famine." (That latitude, running through northern Mexico, normally has much milder weather.) Lakes and rivers were frozen, and the Yellow Sea was icebound out to 20 kilometers (13 miles) from shore."The climatic change was probably global," Pang said. "Large volcanic acid peaks dated to 1452-60 have been found in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores." On the basis of his research, Pang fixed the eruption as occurring early in 1453.The eruption occurred just before the siege of Constantinople, the last bastion of the once-mighty Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Turks, led by Sultan Muhammad II, laid siege to the city on April 5, 1453, and conquered it on May 29 of that year.Pang said he also finds mention of the volcano's aftereffects in chronicles of the city's last days.Historians noted the city's gardens that spring produced very little, which Pang attributes to volcanic chill. On May 25, a thunderstorm burst on the city: "It was impossible to stand up against the hail, and the rain came down in such torrents that whole streets were flooded," historians noted.On the night of May 22, 1453, the moon, symbol of Constantinople, rose in dark eclipse, fulfilling a prophecy on the city's demise. Four days later, the whole city was blotted out by a thick fog, a condition unknown in that part of the world in May.When the fog lifted that evening, "flames engulfed the dome of the Hagia Sophia (Church of Santa Sophia), and lights, too, could be seen from the walls, glimmering in the distant countryside far behind the Turkish camp (to the west)," historians noted.Residents of the city thought the strange light was due to reflection from a fire set by the Turkish attackers. Pang said, however, such a "fire" was an optical illusion due to the reflection of intensely red twilight glow by clouds of volcanic ash high in the atmosphere. Many such false fire alarms were reported worldwide after the 1883 Krakatau eruption in Indonesia."I conclude that Kuwae erupted in early 1453," Pang said. "The residual volcanic cloud could have made the apocalyptic June 1456 apparition of Halley's Comet look `red' with a `golden' tail, as reported by contemporary astronomers."818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/cassini-plans-doubleheader-flybys-of-saturns-geyser-moon

Cassini Plans Doubleheader Flybys of Saturn's Geyser Moon

As major league baseball readies for the World Series, NASA's Cassini team will come to bat twice this month when the spacecraft flies by Saturn's geyser moon, Enceladus.

PASADENA, Calif. – As major league baseball readies for the World Series, NASA's Cassini team will come to bat twice this month when the spacecraft flies by Saturn's geyser moon, Enceladus.The Oct. 9 flyby is an inside pitch -- the closest flyby yet of any moon of Saturn, at only 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the surface. The Oct. 31 flyby is farther out, at 196 kilometers (122 miles).Scientists are intrigued by the possibility that liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, may exist beneath the surface of Enceladus. Trace amounts of organics have also been detected, raising tantalizing possibilities about the moon's habitability.While Cassini's cameras and other optical instruments were the focus of an Aug. 11 flyby, during Cassini's Oct. 9 flyby, the spacecraft's fields and particles instruments will venture deeper into the plume than ever before, directly sampling the particles and gases. The emphasis here is on the composition of the plume rather than imaging the surface."We know that Enceladus produces a few hundred kilograms per second of gas and dust and that this material is mainly water vapor and water ice," said Tamas Gambosi, Cassini scientist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "The water vapor and the evaporation from the ice grains contribute most of the mass found in Saturn's magnetosphere."One of the overarching scientific puzzles we are trying to understand is what happens to the gas and dust released from Enceladus, including how some of the gas is transformed to ionized plasma and is disseminated throughout the magnetosphere," said Gambosi.On Oct. 31, the cameras and other optical remote sensing instruments will be front and center, imaging the fractures that slash across the moon's south polar region like stripes on a tiger.These two flybys might augment findings from the most recent Enceladus flyby, which hint at possible changes associated with the icy moon. Cassini's Aug. 11 encounter with Enceladus showed temperatures over one of the tiger-stripe fractures were lower than those measured in earlier flybys. The fracture, called Damascus Sulcus, was about 160 to 167 Kelvin (minus 171 to minus 159 degrees Fahrenheit), below the 180 Kelvin (minus 136 degrees Fahrenheit) reported from a flyby in March of this year."We don't know yet if this is due to a real cooling of this tiger stripe, or to the fact that we were looking much closer, at a relatively small area, and might have missed the warmest spot," said John Spencer, Cassini scientist on the composite infrared spectrometer, at the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo.Results from Cassini's magnetometer instrument during the August flyby suggest a difference in the intensity of the plume compared to earlier encounters. Information from the next two flybys will help scientists understand these observations.Four more Enceladus flybys are planned in the next two years, bringing the total number to seven during Cassini's extended mission, called the Cassini Equinox Mission. The next Enceladus doubleheader will be November 2 and 21, 2009.The Enceladus geysers were discovered by Cassini in 2005. Since then, scientists have been intrigued about what powers them, because the moon is so tiny, roughly the width of Arizona at only 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter."The October doubleheader gives Cassini two more opportunities to hit the ball out of the park," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "With high scores in geology, surface heat, watery plumes and magnetospheric effects, Enceladus could win the 'world championship' title this year!"Scientists anticipate reporting results from the two flybys in November and early December.Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.For images, videos and a mission blog on the flyby, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. More information on the Cassini mission is also available athttp://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/free-mars-screen-saver-on-line

Free Mars screen saver on-line

Three-dimensional, computer-rendered images of Mars and its surfaces are featured in a free screensaver now available on the Internet. Scientists used these very images to decide where they will land the Sojourner microrover this summer.

Three-dimensional, computer-rendered images of Mars and its surfaces are featured in a free screensaver now available on the Internet. Scientists used these very images to decide where they will land the Sojourner microrover this summer.This imaginative screensaver also features an animated version of Sojourner, launched last December on the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft, as it climbs over or navigates around Martian boulders.The rover animation sequence depicts the 60-centimeter (23-inch)- long microrover that will drive out onto the surface of Mars to explore the composition of rocks and soil after landing in the mouth of Ares Valles, an outflow channel, early this July. Sojourner, which is able to scale rocks up to its own size and to steer around larger ones, features miniaturized electronics and such innovative technologies as a six-wheeled "rocker-bogie" suspension system. It will be the first rover ever to land on Mars.The screensaver was designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as part of an effort to educate the public about the Mars Pathfinder mission and the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter. Both missions, rocketing into space last fall, heralded the debut of a decade-long NASA program of robotic exploration of Mars.In addition to the rover sequences, the screensaver features a second module devoted to the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, launched last November. Surveyor, which reaches Mars this September, will orbit for one full Martian year, or 687 days, taking new images while measuring the red planet's atmosphere and surface. Circling Mars every two hours, it is designed to provide global maps of surface topography, distribution of minerals, and monitoring of global weather.Depicting the very regions of Mars that will be photographed by Surveyor, the screensaver zeroes in on the planet, depicting increasing detail of such prominent features as Olympus Mons, a towering volcano, and Valles Marineris, a huge canyon. The closing sequence shows a Viking photograph of Pathfinder's targeted landing site, Ares Valles, an ancient flood plain.The screensaver, titled Mars Exploration Program: A New Trail to the Red Planet, is available on the Internet in versions tailored for those with Windows '95 or Macintosh software. It can be downloaded from the JPL Mars home page at:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/marsTo complete the download, users will need Version 4.0 of the "After Dark" screensaver software produced by Berkeley Systems, Inc. "After Dark" can be downloaded from:http://www.berksys.com/The images seen in both of the screensavers' modules were created at JPL on its CRAY T3D parallel processor, part of JPL's Supercomputing Project. The screensaver, a joint effort of JPL and Berkeley Systems, was developed by the Mars exploration program and JPL's Supercomputing Project, with support from NASA's Office of Space Science.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/ocean-survey-spacecraft-arrives-at-launch-site

Ocean Survey Spacecraft Arrives at Launch Site

A spacecraft designed to continue a long-term survey of Earth's oceans has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for final launch preparations.

PASADENA, Calif. – A NASA and French Space Agency (CNES) spacecraft designed to continue a long-term survey of Earth's oceans has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for final launch preparations. The new satellite will study ocean circulation and the effect oceans have on weather, climate and how Earth is responding to global climate change.The Ocean Surface Topography Mission, called OSTM for short, will be flown on the Jason-2 spacecraft, which was transported on April 24 from its manufacturer, Thales Alenia Space, in Cannes, France, to Toulouse, France. It was loaded onto a Boeing 747 aircraft for its trans-Atlantic journey and after refueling in Boston, it arrived April 29 at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Following final tests, it will be integrated onto a United Launch Alliance Delta II launch vehicle in preparation for a planned launch in June.With the launch of this satellite, the science of precisely measuring and studying the height of the sea surface across Earth's oceans will come of age. Continuous collection of these measurements began in 1992 with the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon mission and continued in 2001 with NASA/CNES's Jason-1 mission, which is currently providing near-real-time data to a variety of users. The addition of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) as partners on OSTM/Jason-2 begins transitioning the responsibility for collecting these data to weather and climate forecasting agencies, which will use them for short-range and seasonal-to-long-range ocean forecasting.The 15-plus-year climate data record that this mission will continue is the only one capable of addressing how ocean circulation is linked to climate change and how global sea level, one of the most important consequences and indicators of global climate change, is changing.Satellite observations of Earth's oceans have revolutionized our understanding of global climate by improving ocean models and hurricane forecasts, and identifying and tracking large ocean/atmosphere phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña. The data are used every day in applications as diverse as, for example, routing ships, improving the safety and efficiency of offshore industry operations, managing fisheries and tracking marine mammals.The spacecraft will be launched into a 1,336-kilometer (830-mile) circular, non-sun-synchronous orbit at an inclination of 66 degrees to Earth's equator, allowing it to monitor 95 percent of Earth's ice-free oceans every 10 days.The Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 is an international and interagency mission developed and operated as a four-party collaboration among NASA; NOAA; the French Space Agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales; and EUMETSAT. CNES is providing the spacecraft, NASA and CNES are jointly providing the payload instruments and NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center is responsible for the launch management and countdown operations for the Delta II. After completing the on-orbit commissioning of the spacecraft, CNES will hand over operation and control of the spacecraft to NOAA. NOAA and EUMETSAT will generate the near-real-time products and distribute them to users. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.For more information on the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, visit:http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ostm.html

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-airs-images-cyclone-kenneth-over-mozambique

NASA's AIRS Images Cyclone Kenneth over Mozambique

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, aboard the Aqua satellite, captures the powerful storm just before landfall over the African nation.

Just weeks after Cyclone Idai left a path of destruction through Mozambique, Cyclone Kenneth is now battering the country in southeast Africa. It is likely the strongest storm on record to hit Mozambique, with wind speeds equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane at landfall. It is also the first time in recent history that the country has been hit by back-to-back hurricane-strength storms.NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured this infrared image of Kenneth just as the storm was about to make landfall on April 25. The large purple area indicates very cold clouds carried high into the atmosphere by deep thunderstorms. The orange areas are mostly cloud-free; the clear air is caused by air moving outward from the cold clouds near the storm's center, then downward into the surrounding areas.The image was taken at 1:30 p.m. local time, just before the cyclone made landfall in northern Mozambique's Cabo Delgado Province. With maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph), Kenneth was the first known hurricane-strength storm to make landfall in the province. Heavy rainfall and life-threatening flooding are expected over the next several days.AIRS, in conjunction with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU), senses emitted infrared and microwave radiation from Earth to provide a three-dimensional look at Earth's weather and climate. Working in tandem, the two instruments make simultaneous observations down to Earth's surface, even in the presence of heavy clouds. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, three-dimensional map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations and many other atmospheric phenomena. Launched into Earth orbit in 2002, the AIRS and AMSU instruments fly onboard NASA's Aqua spacecraft and are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, under contract with NASA. JPL is a division of Caltech.More information about AIRS and NASA's Disasters Program can be found here:https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/https://disasters.nasa.gov/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/saturn-moons-activity-could-be-curtain-eruptions

Saturn Moon's Activity Could Be 'Curtain Eruptions'

New research using data from NASA's Cassini mission suggests most of the eruptions from Saturn's moon Enceladus might be diffuse curtains rather than discrete jets.

New research using data from NASA's Cassini mission suggests most of the eruptions from Saturn's moon Enceladus might be diffuse curtains rather than discrete jets. Many features that appear to be individual jets of material erupting along the length of prominent fractures in the moon's south polar region might be phantoms created by an optical illusion, according to the new study.The research is being published on Thursday, May 7, in the journal Nature."We think most of the observed activity represents curtain eruptions from the 'tiger stripe' fractures, rather than intermittent geysers along them," said Joseph Spitale, lead author of the study and a participating scientist on the Cassini mission at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. "Some prominent jets likely are what they appear to be, but most of the activity seen in the images can be explained without discrete jets."In analyzing Cassini's images of the eruptions on Enceladus, Spitale and colleagues took particular note of the faint background glow present in most images. The brightest eruption features, which appear to be discrete jets, look to them to be superimposed intermittently upon this background structure.The researchers modeled eruptions on Enceladus as uniform curtains along the tiger stripe fractures. They found that phantom brightness enhancements appear in places where the viewer is looking through a "fold" in the curtain. The folds exist because the fractures in Enceladus' surface are more wavy than perfectly straight. The researchers think this optical illusion is responsible for most of what appear to be individual jets."The viewing direction plays an important role in where the phantom jets appear," said Spitale. "If you rotated your perspective around Enceladus' south pole, such jets would seem to appear and disappear."Phantom jets in simulated images produced by the scientists line up nicely with some of the features in real Cassini images that appear to be discrete columns of spray. The correspondence between simulation and spacecraft data suggests that much of the discrete-jet structure is an illusion, according to the researchers.Curtain eruptions occur on Earth where molten rock, or magma, gushes out of a deep fracture. These eruptions, which often create spectacular curtains of fire, are seen in places such as Hawaii, Iceland and the Galapagos Islands."Our understanding of Enceladus continues to evolve, and we've come to expect surprises along the way," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who was not involved in the study. "This little ice world is becoming more exciting, not less, as we tease out new details about its subsurface ocean and astonishing geophysical activity."The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.For more information about Cassini, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/cassiniandhttp://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-mars-2020-mission-drops-in-on-death-valley

NASA's Mars 2020 Mission Drops in on Death Valley

Flight tests of the Mars 2020 Lander Vision System, which will help guide NASA's next Mars mission to a safe touchdown on the Red Planet, are taking place in the California desert.

On a test flight in Death Valley, California, an Airbus helicopter carried an engineering model of the Lander Vision System (LVS) that will help guide NASA's next Mars mission to a safe touchdown on the Red Planet. During the flight - one in a series - the helicopter (which is not part of the mission and was used just for testing) and its two-person crew flew a pre-planned sequence of maneuvers while LVS collected and analyzed imagery of the barren, mountainous terrain below.LVS is an integral part of a guidance system called Terrain-Relative Navigation (TRN) that will steer NASA's Mars 2020 rover away from hazardous areas during its final descent to Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.Mars 2020 will be the first spacecraft in the history of planetary exploration with the ability to accurately retarget its point of touchdown during the landing sequence. Also among the firsts of the mission, the 2020 rover carries a sample-caching system that will collect samples of Martian rock and soil and store them on the surface of the planet for retrieval and return to Earth by subsequent missions.Mars 2020 will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in July of 2020.JPL is building and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.If you want to send your name to Mars with NASA's 2020 mission you can do so from now until Sept. 30, 2019. Add your name to the list and obtain a souvenir boarding pass to Mars here:https://go.nasa.gov/Mars2020PassFor more information about the mission, go to:https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-rover-confirms-mars-origin-of-some-meteorites

NASA Rover Confirms Mars Origin of Some Meteorites

Findings from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover confirm that some meteorites on Earth really came from the Red Planet.

PASADENA, Calif. -- Examination of the Martian atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover confirms that some meteorites that have dropped to Earth really are from the Red Planet.A key new measurement of the inert gas argon in Mars' atmosphere by Curiosity's laboratory provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origin of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origin of other meteorites.The new measurement is a high-precision count of two forms of argon -- argon-36 and argon-38 -- accomplished by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument inside the rover. These lighter and heavier forms, or isotopes, of argon exist naturally throughout the solar system. On Mars the ratio of light to heavy argon is skewed because much of that planet's original atmosphere was lost to space. The lighter form of argon was taken away more readily because it rises to the top of the atmosphere more easily and requires less energy to escape. That left the Martian atmosphere relatively enriched in the heavier isotope, argon-38.Years of past analyses by Earth-bound scientists of gas bubbles trapped inside Martian meteorites had already narrowed the Martian argon ratio to between 3.6 and 4.5 (that is 3.6 to 4.5 atoms of argon-36 to every one of argon-38). Measurements by NASA's Viking landers in the 1970s put the Martian atmospheric ratio in the range of four to seven. The new SAM direct measurement on Mars now pins down the correct argon ratio at 4.2."We really nailed it," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, lead author of an Oct. 16 paper reporting the finding in Geophysical Research Letters. "This direct reading from Mars settles the case with all Martian meteorites."One reason scientists have been so interested in the argon ratio in Martian meteorites is that it was -- before Curiosity -- the best measure of how much atmosphere Mars has lost since the planet's wetter, warmer days billions of years ago. Figuring out the planet's atmospheric loss would enable scientists to better understand how Mars transformed from a once water-rich planet, more like our own, into today's drier, colder and less-hospitable world.Had Mars held onto all of its atmosphere and its original argon, its ratio of the gas would be the same as that of the sun and Jupiter. Those bodies have so much gravity that isotopes can't preferentially escape, so their argon ratio -- which is 5.5 -- represents that of the primordial solar system.While argon makes up only a tiny fraction of the gas lost to space from Mars, it is special because it's a noble gas. That means the gas is inert, not reacting with other elements or compounds, and therefore a more straightforward tracer of the history of the Martian atmosphere."Other isotopes measured by SAM on Curiosity also support the loss of atmosphere, but none so directly as argon," said Atreya. "Argon is the clearest signature of atmospheric loss because it's chemically inert and does not interact or exchange with the Martian surface or the interior. This was a key measurement that we wanted to carry out on SAM."The Curiosity measurements do not directly measure the current rate of atmospheric escape, but NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN), is designed to do so. That mission is being prepared at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a launch-opportunity period that begins on Nov. 18.Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012 and is investigating evidence about habitable environments there. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the rover for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover's SAM suite of instruments was developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., with instrument contributions from Goddard, JPL and the University of Paris in France.For more information about the mission, visithttp://www.nasa.gov/mslandhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl. To learn more about the SAM instrument, visit:http://ssed.gsfc.nasa.gov/sam/index.html.You can follow Curiosity's mission on Facebook athttp://www.facebook.com/marscuriosityand on Twitter athttp://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/rosetta-sets-sights-on-destination-comet

Rosetta Sets Sights on Destination Comet

The Rosetta spacecraft caught its first glimpse of its destination comet since waking up from deep-space hibernation on Jan. 20, 2014.

The Rosetta spacecraft has caught a first glimpse of its destination comet since waking up from deep-space hibernation on Jan. 20. The first images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko were taken on March 20 and 21 by the Optical, Spectroscopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS) wide-angle camera and narrow-angle camera. Rosetta is an international mission spearheaded by the European Space Agency with support and instruments provided by NASA.The two images were taken at a distance of about three million miles (five million kilometers) and required a series of exposures of 60 to 300 seconds, taken with the wide-angle and narrow-angle camera. The imaging of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is part of six weeks of activities dedicated to preparing the spacecraft's science instruments for close-up study of the comet. Rosetta has been traveling through the solar system for 10 years, and will arrive at the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August of this year.Rosetta was reactivated Jan. 20 after a record 957 days in hibernation. The three U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta are the Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter, Alice (an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph) and the Ion and Electron Sensor.ESA member states and NASA contributed to the Rosetta mission. Airbus Defense and Space built the Rosetta spacecraft. JPL manages the US contribution of the Rosetta mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL also built the Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter and hosts its principal investigator, Samuel Gulkis. The Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio developed the Rosetta orbiter's Ion and Electron Sensor (IES) and hosts its principal investigator, James Burch. The Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., developed the Alice instrument and hosts its principal investigator, Alan Stern.For information on the U.S. instruments on Rosetta, visit:http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.govMore information about Rosetta, visit:http://www.esa.int/rosettaFor more information on the DSN, visit:http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/6-things-to-know-about-nasas-asteroid-exploring-psyche-mission

6 Things to Know About NASA’s Asteroid-Exploring Psyche Mission

The first-ever mission to study a metal-rich asteroid, Psyche aims to help scientists learn more about the formation of rocky bodies in our solar system.

With a launch readiness date set for Friday, Oct. 13, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will travel 2.2 billion miles from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to a metal-rich asteroid in the far reaches of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Trailing a blue glow from its thrusters and powered by a pair of massive solar arrays, the orbiter will use its payload of science instruments to learn more about the asteroid Psyche.Here are six things to know about the mission:1. Learning more about the asteroid Psyche could tell us more about the origins of our solar system.Based on data obtained by Earth-based radar and optical telescopes, scientists hypothesize that the asteroidPsychecould be part of the metal-rich interior of a planetesimal, a building block of a rocky planet that never formed. Psyche may have collided with other large bodies during its early formation and lost its outer rocky shell. Humans can’t bore a path to Earth’s metal core, so visiting Psyche could provide a one-of-a-kind window into the history of violent collisions and accumulation of matter that created planets like our own.Scientists hypothesize that the asteroid Psyche could be part of a building block of the rocky planets in our solar system. Studying it up close could help us understand how rocky planets formed. Join us on the journey to the first metal-rich asteroid humankind has ever visited.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU2. The asteroid could also suggest a different story of how solar system objects formed.While rocks on Mars, Venus, and Earth are flush with iron oxides, Psyche’s surface doesn’t seem to feature much of these chemical compounds. This suggests that Psyche’s history differs from standard stories of planetary formation.If the asteroid proves to be leftover core material from a planetary building block, scientists will learn how its history resembles and diverges from that of the rocky planets. And if scientists discover that Psyche is not an exposed core, it may prove to be a never-before-seen kind of primordial solar system object.3. Three science instruments and a gravity science investigation will help sort out these solar system origin stories and more.The spacecraft’smagnetometerwill look for evidence of an ancient magnetic field at the asteroid Psyche. A residual magnetic field would be strong evidence the asteroid formed from the core of a planetary body.The orbiter’sgamma-ray and neutron spectrometerwill help scientists determine the chemical elements that make up the asteroid – and better understand how it formed.The spacecraft’smultispectral imagerwill provide information about the mineral composition of Psyche as well as its topography.The mission’s science team will harness the telecommunications system to conductgravity science. By analyzing the radio waves the spacecraft communicates with, scientists can measure how the asteroid Psyche affects the spacecraft’s orbit. That information will help them determine the asteroid’s rotation, mass, and gravity field, offering additional insights into the composition and structure of the asteroid’s interior.4. The spacecraft will use a very efficient propulsion system for the first time beyond the Moon.Powered by Hall-effect thrusters, Psyche’ssolar electric propulsionsystem harnesses energy from large solar arrays to create electric and magnetic fields. These, in turn, accelerate and expel charged atoms, or ions, of a propellant called xenon (a neutral gas used in car headlights and plasma TVs) at such high speed, it creates thrust. The ionized gas, will emit a sci-fi-like blue glow as it trails behind Psyche in space. Each of Psyche’s four thrusters, which will operate one at a time, exert the same amount of force that you would feel holding three quarters in the palm of your hand. In the frictionless void of space, the spacecraft will slowly and continuously accelerate.Get the Latest JPL NewsSUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTERThis propulsion system builds on similar technologies used by NASA’sDawn mission, but Psyche will be the agency’s first mission to use Hall-effect thrusters in deep space.5. Psyche is a collaboration.The mission draws on resources and know-how from NASA, universities, and industry. The principal investigator, Lindy Elkins-Tanton, is based at Arizona State University. By enabling collaboration with students nationwide, the partnership offers opportunities to train future instrument and mission leads in science and engineering, and to inspire student projects involving art, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Over a dozen other universities and research institutions are represented on themission team.NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, JPL is also responsible for system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations.NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center manages launch operations and procured the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.Maxar Technologies’ team in Palo Alto, California, delivered the solar electric propulsion chassis – the main body of the spacecraft – and most of its engineering hardware systems.6. The Psyche mission wants you to be part of the journey, too.Space exploration is for everyone. The mission’s “get involved” webpage highlights activities and opportunities, including an annual internship for college students to interpret the mission through artistic and other creative works, as well as classroom lessons, craft projects, and videos. Information on how to participate in a virtual launch experience is atnasa.gov/specials/virtualguest/.The mission websitesnasa.gov/psycheandpsyche.asu.eduwill post official news about the spacecraft’s journey. NASA and ASU will also post regular social media updates on Facebook, Instagram, and X.NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, a free web-based 3D visualization tool, will track the location of the spacecraft in real time. Visitgo.nasa.gov/45k0OVYto see where Psyche is in the solar system.About two months after launch, as the team performs an initial checkout of the spacecraft and science instruments, the mission expects to receive its first images. Once the team confirms the imager is functioning as expected, awebpagewill feature the unprocessed, or raw, images flowing straight from the spacecraft.More About the MissionA technology demonstration calledDeep Space Optical Communications(DSOC) will fly on Psyche in order to test high-data-rate laser communications that could be used by future NASA missions. JPL manages DSOC for the Technology Demonstration Missions program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and the Space Communications and Navigation program within the Space Operations Mission Directorate.Psyche is the 14th mission selected as part ofNASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.For more about the mission, go to:http://www.nasa.gov/psychePsyche press kit

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/scientists-planning-now-for-asteroid-flyby-a-decade-away

Scientists Planning Now for Asteroid Flyby a Decade Away

On April 13, 2029, asteroid Apophis will cruise harmlessly by Earth at distance of about 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers). Scientists are already planning observations and science opportunities for the event.

On April 13, 2029, a speck of light will streak across the sky, getting brighter and faster. At one point it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little Dipper. But it won't be a satellite or an airplane - it will be a 1,100-foot-wide (340-meter-wide) near-Earth asteroid called 99942 Apophis that will cruise harmlessly by Earth, about 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) above the surface. That's within the distance that some of our spacecraft that orbit Earth.The international asteroid research community couldn't be more excited.This week at the2019 Planetary Defense Conferencein College Park, Maryland, scientists are gathering to discuss observation plans and science opportunities for the celestial event still a decade away. During a session on April 30, scientists will discuss everything from how to observe the event to hypothetical missions we could send out to the asteroid."The Apophis close approach in 2029 will be an incredible opportunity for science," said Marina Brozovi&cacute, a radar scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who works on radar observations of near-Earth objects (NEOs). "We'll observe the asteroid with both optical and radar telescopes. With radar observations, we might be able to see surface details that are only a few meters in size."It's rare for an asteroid of this size to pass by Earth so close. Although scientists have spotted small asteroids, on the order of 5-10 meters, flying by Earth at a similar distance, asteroids the size of Apophis are far fewer in number and so do not pass this close to Earth as often.The asteroid, looking like a moving star-like point of light, will first become visible to the naked eye in the night sky over the Southern Hemisphere, flying above Earth from the east coast to the west coast of Australia. It will be mid-morning on the East Coast of the United States when Apophis is above Australia. It will then cross the Indian Ocean, and by the afternoon in the eastern U.S. it will have crossed the equator, still moving west, above Africa. At closest approach, just before 6 p.m. EDT, Apophis will be over the Atlantic Ocean - and it will move so fast that it will cross the Atlantic in just an hour. By 7 p.m. EDT, the asteroid will have crossed over the United States.A team of astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory discovered Apophis in June2004. The astronomers were only able to detect the asteroid for two days before technical and weather issues prevented further observations. Luckily, another team rediscovered the asteroid at the Siding Spring Survey in Australia later that year. The observations caused quite a stir - initial orbital calculations revealed that the asteroid had a 2.7% chance of impacting Earth in 2029. Fortunately, additional observations completely ruled out that possibility.Since its discovery, optical and radar telescopes have tracked Apophis as it continues on its orbit around the Sun, so we know its future trajectory quite well. Current calculations show that Apophis still has a small chance of impacting Earth, less than 1 in 100,000 many decades from now, but future measurements of its position can be expected to rule out any possible impacts.The most important observations of Apophis will occur in 2029, when asteroid scientists around the world will have an opportunity to conduct a close-up study of the Apophis' size, shape, composition and possibly even its interior.At the conference, scientists will discuss questions like "How will Earth's gravity affect the asteroid as it passes by?," "Can we use Apophis' flyby to learn about an asteroid's interior?" and "Should we send a spacecraft mission to Apophis?""We already know that the close encounter with Earth will change Apophis' orbit, but our models also show the close approach could change the way this asteroid spins, and it is possible that there will be some surface changes, like small avalanches," said Davide Farnocchia, an astronomer at JPL's Center for Near Earth Objects Studies (CNEOS), who is co-chairing the April 30 session on Apophis with Brozovi&cacute."Apophis is a representative of about 2,000 currently known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)," said Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS. "By observing Apophis during its 2029 flyby, we will gain important scientific knowledge that could one day be used for planetary defense."

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-mars-rover-test-drive-racks-up-miles-and-smiles

NASA's Mars Rover Test Drive Racks Up Miles and Smiles

It is the ultimate test drive for the newest otherworldly vehicle. A few practice spins around an ancient lake bed in the Mojave desert this week with the next-generation Mars rover are helping NASA scientists and engineers learn more about driving the real thing on Mars.

It is the ultimate test drive for the newest otherworldly vehicle. A few practice spins around an ancient lake bed in the Mojave desert this week with the next-generation Mars rover are helping NASA scientists and engineers learn more about driving the real thing on Mars."It's pretty exciting out here. We want to rack up a lot of miles and see how far this rover can go," said Dr. Raymond Arvidson, a geologist from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, and mission director for the field tests. "We are doing an 'end-to-end' test, using systems similar to what we will use on Mars. These test drives will help ensure that we will have a successful Mars rover mission."Future robotic rovers on Mars will need to find the best rocks to bring back to Earth, samples that are likely to contain the evidence scientists need to prove that life once existed on the red planet. The rovers are being built and tested by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.To find the best sample, scientists need a good retriever. This week they're testing the work horse, er dog, named FIDO -- Field Integrated Design and Operations -- that is helping them figure out how to use the kinds of instruments the next Mars rovers will need to fetch the most scientifically interesting rocks. FIDO is designed to test the advanced technology of the Athena flight rover and science payload that will be launched as part of NASA's Mars Sample Return missions in 2003 and 2005."No place on Earth is like Mars, but our field site on an ancient lake bed in the Mojave Desert comes close. So far we've been able to use the rover's mini-corer to drill a rock sample and we've used the microscopic camera to look inside the hole," Arvidson said. "We're practicing looking for rocks that contain carbonate minerals. If we find those kinds of rocks on Mars it may tell us if the early planet had a carbon dioxide atmosphere.""We've had a fantastic week. In just a few days, we've shown that we can find good rocks, drill samples out of them, and take the samples back to a lander. That's a huge step forward in preparing to bring the first samples back from Mars," said Dr. Steven Squyres, principal investigator for the Athena rover payload from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY."FIDO's advanced technology includes the ability to navigate over distances on its own and avoid natural obstacles without receiving directions from a controller," said Dr. Eric Baumgartner, a robotics engineer at JPL and mission engineer for the desert field tests. "The rover also uses a robot arm to manipulate science instruments and it has a new mini-corer or drill to extract and cache rock samples. There are also several camera systems onboard that allow the rover to collect science and navigation images by remote-control."FIDO is about the size of a coffee table and weighs as much as a St. Bernard, about 70 kilograms (150 pounds). It is approximately 85 centimeters (about 33 inches) wide, 105 centimeters (41 inches) long, and 55 centimeters (22 inches) high. The rover moves up to 300 meters an hour (less than a mile per hour) over smooth terrain, using its onboard stereo vision systems to detect and avoid obstacles as it travels "on-the-fly." During these tests, FIDO is powered by both solar panels that cover the top of the rover and by replaceable, rechargeable batteries."FIDO is about six times the size of Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner and is far more capable of performing its job without frequent human help," Dr. Paul S. Schenker, who directs FIDO rover development at JPL as part of the NASA Exploration Technology Program. "FIDO navigates continuously using on-board computer vision and autonomous controls, and has similar capabilities for eye-to-hand coordination of its robotic science arm and mast. The rover has six wheels that are all independently steered and can drive forward or backward allowing FIDO to turn or back up with the use of its rear-mounted cameras."In addition to testing FIDO, the scientists and engineers are supporting students from four schools around the country in designing and carrying out their own mission with the rover. This is the first time students have been able to remotely operate a NASA/JPL rover. The students, from Los Angeles, Phoenix, Ithaca, NY, and St, Louis, (LAPIS), form an integrated mission team and are responsible for planning, conducting and archiving a two-day mission using FIDO."It is important to excite young people about space exploration and discovery and these tests provide an excellent educational opportunity," Arvidson said. "We're including high school students in the FIDO tests as a pilot experiment in which the students gain a sense of participation in the field trials by planning their own mission segments and working with us to implement the rover's assignments."The FIDO rover development and the Mars Sample Return 2003/2005 missions are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science Washington, DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.More information about FIDO is available at:http://wundow.wustl.edu/rover.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/wfirst-will-use-warped-space-time-to-help-find-exoplanets

WFIRST Will Use Warped Space-time to Help Find Exoplanets

The NASA mission will identify planets with large orbits, similar to our solar system's far-flung giants, Uranus and Neptune.

NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will search for planets outside our solar system toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy, where most stars are. Studying the properties ofexoplanet worldswill help us understand what planetary systems throughout the galaxy are like and how planets form and evolve.Combining WFIRST's findings with results from NASA'sKeplerandTransiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)missions will complete the first planet census that is sensitive to a wide range of planet masses and orbits, bringing us a step closer to discovering habitable Earth-like worlds beyond our own.To date, astronomers have found most planets when they pass in front of their host star in events called transits, which temporarily dim the star's light. WFIRST data can spot transits, too, but the mission will primarily watch for the opposite effect - little surges of radiance produced by a light-bending phenomenon called microlensing. These events are much less common than transits because they rely on the chance alignment of two widely separated and unrelated stars drifting through space."Microlensing signals from small planets are rare and brief, but they're stronger than the signals from other methods," said David Bennett, who leads the gravitational microlensing group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Since it's a one-in-a-million event, the key to WFIRST finding low-mass planets is to search hundreds of millions of stars."In addition, microlensing is better at finding planets in and beyond the habitable zone - the orbital distances where planets might have liquid water on their surfaces.Microlensing 101This effect occurs when light passes near a massive object. Anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time, sort of like the dent a bowling ball makes when set on a trampoline. Light travels in a straight line, but if space-time is bent - which happens near something massive, like a star - light follows the curve.Any time two stars align closely from our vantage point, light from the more distant star curves as it travels through the warped space-time of the nearer star. This phenomenon, one of the predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, wasfamously confirmedby British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington during a total solar eclipse in 1919. If the alignment is especially close, the nearer star acts like a natural cosmic lens, focusing and intensifying light from the background star.Planets orbiting the foreground star may also modify the lensed light, acting as their own tiny lenses. The distortion they create allows astronomers to measure the planet's mass and distance from its host star. This is how WFIRST will use microlensing to discover new worlds.Familiar and Exotic Worlds"Trying to interpret planet populations today is like trying to interpret a picture with half of it covered," said Matthew Penny, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge who led a study to predict WFIRST's microlensing survey capabilities. "To fully understand how planetary systems form we need to find planets of all masses at all distances. No one technique can do this, but WFIRST's microlensing survey, combined with the results from Kepler and TESS, will reveal far more of the picture."More than 4,000 confirmed exoplanets have been discovered so far, but only 86 were found via microlensing. The techniques commonly used to find other worlds are biased toward planets that tend to be very different from those in our solar system. The transit method, for example, is best at finding sub-Neptune-like planets that have orbits much smaller than Mercury's. For a solar system like our own, transit studies could miss every planet.WFIRST's microlensing survey will help us find analogs to every planet in our solar system except Mercury, whose small orbit and low mass combine to put it beyond the mission's reach. WFIRST will find planets that are the mass of Earth and even smaller - perhaps even large moons, like Jupiter's moon Ganymede.WFIRST will find planets in other poorly studied categories, too. Microlensing is best suited to finding worlds from the habitable zone of their star and farther out. This includes ice giants, like Uranus and Neptune in our solar system, and even rogue planets - worlds freely roaming the galaxy unbound to any stars.While ice giants are a minority in our solar system,a 2016 studyindicated that they may be the most common kind of planet throughout the galaxy. WFIRST will put that theory to the test and help us get a better understanding of which planetary characteristics are most prevalent.Hidden Gems in the Galactic CoreWFIRST will explore regions of the galaxy that haven't yet been systematically scoured for exoplanets due to the different goals of previous missions. Kepler, for example, searched a modest-sized region of about 100 square degrees with 100,000 stars at typical distances of around a thousand light-years. TESS scans the entire sky and tracks 200,000 stars; however their typical distances are around 100 light-years. WFIRST will search roughly 3 square degrees, but will follow 200 million stars at distances of around 10,000 light-years.Since WFIRST is an infrared telescope, it will see right through the clouds of dust that block other telescopes from studying planets in the crowded central region of our galaxy. Most ground-based microlensing observations to date have been in visible light, making the center of the galaxy largely uncharted exoplanet territory. Amicrolensing surveyconducted since 2015 using theUnited Kingdom Infrared Telescope(UKIRT) in Hawaii is smoothing the way for WFIRST's exoplanet census by mapping the region.The UKIRT survey is providing the first measurements of the rate of microlensing events toward the galaxy's core, where stars are most densely concentrated. The results will help astronomers select the final observing strategy for WFIRST's microlensing effort.The UKIRT team's most recent goal is detecting microlensing events using machine learning, which will be vital for WFIRST. The mission will produce such a vast amount of data that combing through it solely by eye will be impractical. Streamlining the search will require automated processes.Additional UKIRT results point to an observing strategy that will reveal the most microlensing events possible while avoiding the thickest dust clouds that can block even infrared light."Our current survey with UKIRT is laying the groundwork so that WFIRST can implement the first space-based dedicated microlensing survey," said Savannah Jacklin, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who has led several UKIRT studies. "Previous exoplanet missions expanded our knowledge of planetary systems, and WFIRST will move us a giant step closer to truly understanding how planets - particularly those within the habitable zones of their host stars - form and evolve."From Brown Dwarfs to Black HolesThe same microlensing survey that will reveal thousands of planets will also detect hundreds of other bizarre and interesting cosmic objects. Scientists will be able to study free-floating bodies with masses ranging from that of Mars to 100 times the Sun's.The low end of the mass range includes planets that were ejected from their host stars and now roam the galaxy as rogue planets. Next are brown dwarfs, which are too massive to be characterized as planets but not quite massive enough to ignite as stars. Brown dwarfs don't shine visibly like stars, but WFIRST will be able to study them in infrared light through the heat left over from their formation.Objects at the higher end include stellar corpses - neutron stars and black holes - left behind when massive stars exhaust their fuel. Studying them and measuring their masses will help scientists understand more about stars' death throes while providing a census of stellar-mass black holes."WFIRST's microlensing survey will not only advance our understanding of planetary systems," said Penny, "it will also enable a whole host of other studies of the variability of 200 million stars, the structure and formation of the inner Milky Way, and the population of black holes and other dark, compact objects that are hard or impossible to study in any other way."The FY2020 Consolidated Appropriations Act funds the WFIRST program through September 2020. The FY2021 budget request proposes to terminate funding for the WFIRST mission and focus on the completion of the James Webb Space Telescope, now planned for launch in March 2021. The Administration is not ready to proceed with another multi-billion-dollar telescope until Webb has been successfully launched and deployed.WFIRST is managed at Goddard, with participation by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from research institutions across the United States.For more information about WFIRST, visit:https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/wfirst-wide-field-infrared-survey-telescope

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/8-martian-postcards-to-celebrate-curiositys-landing-anniversary

8 Martian Postcards to Celebrate Curiosity's Landing Anniversary

The NASA rover touched down eight years ago, on Aug. 5, 2012, and will soon be joined by a second rover, Perseverance.

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has seen a lot since Aug. 5, 2012, when it first set its wheels inside the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) basin of Gale Crater. Its mission: to study whether Mars had the water, chemical building blocks, and energy sources that may have supported microbial life billions of years ago.Curiosity has since journeyed more than 14 miles (23 kilometers), drilling 26 rock samples and scooping six soil samples along the way as it revealed that ancient Mars was indeed suitable for life. Studying the textures and compositions of ancient rock strata is helping scientists piece together how the Martian climate changed over time, losing its lakes and streams until it became the cold desert it is today.Get the Latest JPL NewsSubscribe to the NewsletterThe Curiosity mission is led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, and involves almost 500 scientists from the United States and other countries around the world. Here are eight postcards the rover has sent from Mars. Most of the panoramas were taken by the rover's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, led by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.A Dusty ScientistA self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity rover taken on Sol 2082 (June 15, 2018). A Martian dust storm has reduced sunlight and visibility at the rover's location in Gale Crater.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSFull Image DetailsCuriosity took this selfie on June 20, 2018 (Sol 2082) as a global dust storm enshrouded Mars, filtering sunlight and obscuring the view. The rover drills rocks to analyze their composition and takes a selfie afterward to capture the landscape each sample was taken from (this one is called "Duluth"). Selfies are created by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm. If you're wondering why you can't see the arm in this photo, read more about how selfies are takenhere.Mount Sharp Towers AboveThe Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used its telephoto lens to capture Mount Sharp in the morning illumination on Oct. 13, 2019.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSFull Image DetailsLook up from Curiosity's current location, and you'd be met with this dramatic view of Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) peak that Curiosity is exploring. Composed of 44 individual images stitched together, this portrait was taken by the Mastcam on Oct. 13, 2019 (Sol 2555).Curiosity will never venture to the upper portion of the mountain; instead, it's exploring the many layers found lower down. Each has a different story to tell about how Mars, which was once more like Earth (warmer and wetter), changed over time. The rover it will reach the next layerlater this year."I love this image because it tells two stories - one about the mission and one about Mars," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at JPL. "The crater rim and floor where we started at eight years ago peek in from the left, while spread out before us is the future as Curiosity climbs higher on the mountain."You Are HereA view from the 'Kimberly' formation on Mars taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The strata in the foreground dip towards the base of Mount Sharp, indicating the ancient depression that existed before the larger bulk of the mountain formed.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSFull Image DetailsShot near Mount Sharp's base on March 24, 2014 (Sol 580), this panorama shows just how far Curiosity has traveled in a little over six years. The arrow indicates the rover's location today, about 3 1/2 miles away (about 5 1/2 kilometers)."I can't help but also think about the corresponding distance we've traveled in our understanding of Mars' habitable past since the time we took this picture," said Abigail Fraeman of JPL, Curiosity's deputy project scientist.You Were ThereNASA’s Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada gives a descriptive tour of the Mars rover's view in Gale Crater. The scene from "Vera Rubin Ridge" looks back over the journey so far, including buttes, dunes and other features along the route."I still can't get over how amazingly clear the skies were when we took this, and how we could see for miles and miles and miles," Fraeman said of this 2018 panorama, which shows the floor of Gale Crater as seen from higher up the mountain, at a location called Vera Rubin Ridge. "How spectacular would the rim of Gale Crater have looked to an astronaut if they were standing on Mount Sharp that day?"Vasavada narrated this video tour of the journey up the mountain.Martian Spaghetti WesternThis wide panorama was taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Dec. 19, 2019. On the righthand foreground is Western Butte. The ridge with a crusty cap in the background is the Greenheugh pediment.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSFull Image DetailsParts of the Martian desert resemble the American Southwest. This wide panorama, shot by the Mastcam on Dec. 19, 2019 (Sol 2620), includes 130 images stitched together. In the foreground on the right is "Western Butte"; the slope with a crusty cap in the background is the "Greenheugh Pediment," which Curiosity ascended in March 2020 for a sneak peek of terrain scientists hope to investigate later in the mission.A Sea of DunesTwo sizes of wind-sculpted ripples are evident in this view from NASA's Curiosity of the top surface of 'Namib Dune' in the Bagnold Dune Field. The larger ripples are a type not seen on Earth nor previously recognized as a distinct type on Mars.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSFull Image DetailsThis location, part of "Namib Dune," shows two different-sized ripples that the wind sculpted in the sand. Curiosity discovered that the larger kind, standing roughly 10 feet (3 meters) apart, are found on Mars only as a result of its thin atmosphere. The panorama was taken on Dec. 13, 2015 (Sol 1192).Staring at CloudsNASA's Curiosity Mars rover imaged these drifting clouds on May 17, 2019, the 2,410th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, using its Navigation Cameras (Navcams).Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechFull Image DetailsCuriosity occasionally studies clouds to learn more about the Martian atmosphere. There is vanishingly little water in the Martian air, which is 1% as dense as Earth's air, but water-ice clouds do sometimes form. The clouds shown here, which are likely water-ice, were captured about 19 miles (31 kilometers) above the surface on May 17, 2019 (Sol 2410), using the rover's black-and-white Navigation Cameras.Curiosity's Hole StoryThese 26 holes represent each of the rock samples NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has collected as of early July 2020. A map in the upper left shows where the holes were drilled along the rover's route.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSSFull Image DetailsThese 26 holes represent each of the pulverized rock samples NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has collected with its robotic arm as of early July 2020. A map in the upper left shows where the holes were drilled on the rover's route, along with where it scooped six samples of soil for analysis.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/climate-change-may-lead-to-bigger-atmospheric-rivers

Climate Change May Lead to Bigger Atmospheric Rivers

A new NASA-led study shows the events are likely to intensify, but become slightly less frequent, across most of the globe by the end of this century.

A new NASA-led study shows that climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers across most of the globe by the end of this century, while slightly reducing their number.The new study projects atmospheric rivers will be significantly longer and wider than the ones we observe today, leading to more frequent atmospheric river conditions in affected areas."The results project that in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, there will be about 10 percent fewer atmospheric rivers globally by the end of the 21st century," said the study's lead author, Duane Waliser, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "However, because the findings project that the atmospheric rivers will be, on average, about 25 percent wider and longer, the global frequency of atmospheric river conditions -- like heavy rain and strong winds -- will actually increase by about 50 percent."The results also show that the frequency of the most intense atmospheric river storms is projected to nearly double.Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow jets of air that carry huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics to Earth's continents and polar regions. These "rivers in the sky" typically range from 250 to 375 miles (400 to 600 kilometers) wide and carry as much water -- in the form of water vapor -- as about 25 Mississippi Rivers. When an atmospheric river makes landfall, particularly against mountainous terrain (such as the Sierra Nevada and the Andes), it releases much of that water vapor in the form of rain or snow.These storm systems are common -- on average, there are about 11 present on Earth at any time. In many areas of the globe, they bring much-needed precipitation and are an important contribution to annual freshwater supplies. However, stronger atmospheric rivers -- especially those that stall at landfall or that produce rain on top of snowpack -- can cause disastrous flooding.Atmospheric rivers show up on satellite imagery, including in data from aseries of actual atmospheric river stormsthat drenched the U.S. West Coast and caused severe flooding in early 2017.The StudyClimate change studies on atmospheric rivers to date have been mostly limited to two specific regions, the western United States and Europe. They have typically used different methodologies for identifying atmospheric rivers and different climate projection models -- meaning results from one are not quantitatively comparable to another.The team sought to provide a more streamlined and global approach to evaluating the effects of climate change on atmospheric river storms.The study relied on two resources -- a set ofcommonly used global climate model projectionsfor the 21st century developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment report, and a global atmospheric river detection algorithm that can be applied to climate model output. The algorithm, developed earlier by members of the study team, identifies atmospheric river events from every day of the model simulations, quantifying their length, width and how much water vapor they transport.The team applied the atmospheric river detection algorithm to both actual observations and model simulations for the late 20thcentury. Comparing the data showed that the models produced a relatively realistic representation of atmospheric rivers for the late 20thcentury climate.They then applied the algorithm to model projections of climate in the late 21stcentury. In doing this, they were able to compare the frequency and characteristics of atmospheric rivers for the current climate with the projections for future climate.The team also tested the algorithm with a different climate model scenario that assumed more conservative increases in the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. They found similar, though less drastic changes. Together, the consideration of the two climate scenarios indicates a direct link between the extent of warming and the frequency and severity of atmospheric river conditions.What does this mean?The significance of the study is two-fold.First, "knowing the nature of how these atmospheric river events might change with future climate conditions allows for scientists, water managers, stakeholders and citizens living in atmospheric river-prone regions [e.g. western N. America, western S. America, S. Africa, New Zealand, western Europe] to consider the potential implications that might come with a change to these extreme precipitation events," said Vicky Espinoza, a doctoral student at the University of California-Merced and first author of the study.And secondly, the study and its approach provide a much-needed, uniform way to research atmospheric rivers on a global level -- illustrating a foundation to analyze and compare them that did not previously exist.LimitationsData across the models are generally consistent -- all support the projection that atmospheric river conditions are linked to warming and will increase in the future; however, co-author Marty Ralph of the University of California, San Diego, points out that there is still work to be done."While all the models project increases in the frequency of atmospheric river conditions, the results also illustrate uncertainties in the details of the climate projections of this key phenomenon," he said. "This highlights the need to better understand why the models' representations of atmospheric rivers vary."The study, titled "Global Analysis of Climate Change Projection Effects on Atmospheric Rivers," was recently published in the journalGeophysical Research Letters.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/study-slashes-deforestation-carbon-emission-estimate

Study Slashes Deforestation Carbon Emission Estimate

A new study with NASA participation cuts, by two-thirds, previous estimates of how much carbon is being emitted into our atmosphere from tropical deforestation.

A new study with NASA participation has sharply reduced previous estimates of how much carbon was emitted into Earth's atmosphere from tropical deforestation in the early 2000s.Research scientist Sassan Saatchi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., participated in the study, published June 21 in the journal Science. The team, led by researchers from Winrock International, an environmental nonprofit organization in Little Rock, Ark., also included scientists from Applied GeoSolutions, Durham, N.H.; and the University of Maryland, College Park. They combined satellite data on gross forest loss and forest carbon stocks to track emissions from deforestation in the world's tropical forests. The resulting gross emissions estimate of 0.81 billion metric tons of carbon emitted per year is approximately one third of previously published estimates, and represents just 10 percent of the total global human-produced carbon emissions over the time period analyzed (2000 to 2005).Two countries - Brazil and Indonesia - produced the highest emissions during the study period, accounting for 55 percent of total emissions from tropical deforestation. Nearly 40 percent of all forest loss in the study region was concentrated in the dry tropics, but accounted for only 17 percent of total carbon emissions, reflecting their relatively low carbon stocks in comparison to those found in tropical moist forests.The Winrock study is the first study of global carbon emissions from tropical deforestation to use satellite data, rather than tabular bookkeeping models, to account for carbon. This approach allows for a much more refined analysis and yields results that will serve as a better benchmark for monitoring global progress on reducing emissions in the future. Individual emissions numbers were calculated for each country, along with a statistical uncertainty range."These detailed emissions estimates would not have been possible without the NASA satellites that helped us quantify forest cover change and forest carbon stocks, which are the two critical data sources for this work," said Saatchi. Data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite; NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat); NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite; and the joint NASA/U.S. Geological Survey Landsat program were used to produce the estimate.The team hopes the policy mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that proposes to compensate developing countries for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) will benefit from a more accurate benchmark of emissions from deforestation."The relative contribution of deforestation to total greenhouse gas emissions will likely continue to decline through time as emissions from other sectors rise, but the loss of millions of hectares of forest per year remains considerable," said Alexander Lotsch of the World Bank, which funded the study. "Effectively reducing forest-related emissions through international efforts that also promote biodiversity conservation, forest livelihoods and help maintain essential forest functions such as water regulation, is an essential measure to avoid serious climate change impacts and to ensure low carbon sustainable development in the developing world."The team plans to update their work for the period from 2006 to 2010 to assess whether carbon emissions increased or decreased in the second half of the 2000s.For more information on the study, readthe full news release from Winrock International. For more on Winrock International, visit:http://www.winrock.org.For more information on Sassan Saatchi's terrestrial carbon cycle research, visit:http://carbon.jpl.nasa.gov/.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/trajectory-maneuver-brings-spacecraft-closer-to-home

Trajectory Maneuver Brings Spacecraft Closer to Home

Thirty days before its historic return to Earth with NASA's first samples from space since the Apollo missions, the Genesis spacecraft successfully completed its twentieth trajectory maneuver.

Thirty days before its historic return to Earth with NASA's first samples from space since the Apollo missions, the Genesis spacecraft successfully completed its twentieth trajectory maneuver.At 12:00 Universal Time (5:00 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time), Mon., August 9, Genesis fired its 90 gram (.2 pound) thrusters for a grand total of 50 minutes, changing the solar sampler's speed by 1.4 meters per second (about 3.1 miles per hour). The maneuver required half a kilogram (1.1 pounds) of hydrazine monopropellant to complete."It was a textbook maneuver," said Ed Hirst, Genesis's mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "After sifting through all the post-burn data, I expect we will find ourselves right on the money."The Genesis mission was launched in August of 2001 on a journey to capture samples from the storehouse of 99 percent of all the material in our solar system -- the Sun. The samples of solar wind particles, collected on ultra-pure wafers of gold, sapphire, silicon and diamond, will be returned for analysis by Earth-bound scientists. The samples Genesis provides will supply scientists with vital information on the composition of the Sun, and will shed light on the origins of our solar system.Helicopter flight crews, navigators and mission engineers continue to prepare for the return of the Genesis spacecraft on September 8. On that date, Genesis will dispatch a sample return capsule that will re-enter Earth's atmosphere for a planned mid-air capture at the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range. To preserve the delicate particles of the Sun in their prisons of silicon, gold, sapphire and diamond, specially trained helicopter pilots will snag the return capsule from mid-air using the space-age equivalent of a fisherman's rod and reel. The flight crews for the two helicopters assigned for Genesis capture and return are comprised of former military aviators and Hollywood stunt pilots.JPL manages the Genesis mission for NASA's Space Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, developed and operates the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, the home institute of Genesis's principal investigator Dr. Don Burnett.More information about Genesis is available athttp://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/. More information about the actual capture and return process is available athttp://www.genesismission.org/mission/recgallery.html.DC Agle (818) 393-9011Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CalifDonald Savage (202) 358-1547NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.2004-198

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/latest-images-from-mars-global-surveyor-now-online

Latest Images from Mars Global Surveyor Now Online

New pictures of the south polar cap on Mars and a global view of the dust storm occurring there have been released by the imaging team for NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.

New pictures of the south polar cap on Mars and a global view of the dust storm occurring there have been released by the imaging team for NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.Marking the four-year anniversary of its arrival at Mars, Global Surveyor's camera took a wide-angle view of the Martian south polar region on Sept. 12, 2001.Several dramatic dust storms that began a few months ago are also seen in the image. One is located near the Martian equator, and the other is shown northwest of the Ascraeus Mons volcano.The images are available at these Web sites:http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/dust_9_01/http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/spolar_9_01http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgsMars Global Surveyor is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The camera system is operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/huge-cavity-in-antarctic-glacier-signals-rapid-decay

Huge Cavity in Antarctic Glacier Signals Rapid Decay

A NASA-led study has found a giant, growing cavern under Antarctica's Thwaites Glacier - just one of multiple mechanisms that are rapidly melting this enormous mass of ice.

A gigantic cavity - two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall - growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings highlight the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers' undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change.Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. The size and explosive growth rate of the newfound hole, however, surprised them. It's big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice, and most of that ice melted over the last three years."We have suspected for years that Thwaites was not tightly attached to the bedrock beneath it," said Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Rignot is a co-author of the new study, which was published today in Science Advances. "Thanks to a new generation of satellites, we can finally see the detail," he said.The cavity was revealed by ice-penetrating radar in NASA'sOperation IceBridge, an airborne campaign beginning in 2010 that studies connections between the polar regions and the global climate. The researchers also used data from a constellation ofItalianandGermanspaceborne synthetic aperture radars. These very high-resolution data can be processed by a technique called radar interferometry to reveal how the ground surface below has moved between images."[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," said the study's lead author, Pietro Milillo of JPL. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster."Numerical models of ice sheets use a fixed shape to represent a cavity under the ice, rather than allowing the cavity to change and grow. The new discovery implies that this limitation most likely causes those models to underestimate how fast Thwaites is losing ice.About the size of Florida, Thwaites Glacier is currently responsible for approximately 4 percent of global sea level rise. It holds enough ice to raise the world ocean a little over 2 feet (65 centimeters) and backstops neighboring glaciers that would raise sea levels an additional 8 feet (2.4 meters) if all the ice were lost.Thwaites is one of the hardest places to reach on Earth, but it is about to become better known than ever before. The U.S. National Science Foundation and British National Environmental Research Council are mounting a five-year field project to answer the most critical questions about its processes and features. TheInternational Thwaites Glacier Collaborationwill begin its field experiments in the Southern Hemisphere summer of 2019-20.How Scientists Measure Ice LossThere's no way to monitor Antarctic glaciers from ground level over the long term. Instead, scientists use satellite or airborne instrument data to observe features that change as a glacier melts, such as its flow speed and surface height.Another changing feature is a glacier's grounding line - the place near the edge of the continent where it lifts off its bed and starts to float on seawater. Many Antarctic glaciers extend for miles beyond their grounding lines, floating out over the open ocean.Just as a grounded boat can float again when the weight of its cargo is removed, a glacier that loses ice weight can float over land where it used to stick. When this happens, the grounding line retreats inland. That exposes more of a glacier's underside to sea water, increasing the likelihood its melt rate will accelerate.An Irregular RetreatFor Thwaites, "We are discovering different mechanisms of retreat," Millilo said. Different processes at various parts of the 100-mile-long (160-kilometer-long) front of the glacier are putting the rates of grounding-line retreat and of ice loss out of sync.The huge cavity is under the main trunk of the glacier on its western side - the side farther from the West Antarctic Peninsula. In this region, as the tide rises and falls, the grounding line retreats and advances across a zone of about 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 kilometers). The glacier has been coming unstuck from a ridge in the bedrock at a steady rate of about 0.4 to 0.5 miles (0.6 to 0.8 kilometers) a year since 1992. Despite this stable rate of grounding-line retreat, the melt rate on this side of the glacier is extremely high."On the eastern side of the glacier, the grounding-line retreat proceeds through small channels, maybe a kilometer wide, like fingers reaching beneath the glacier to melt it from below," Milillo said. In that region, the rate of grounding-line retreat doubled from about 0.4 miles (0.6 kilometers) a year from 1992 to 2011 to 0.8 miles (1.2 kilometers) a year from 2011 to 2017. Even with this accelerating retreat, however, melt rates on this side of the glacier are lower than on the western side.These results highlight that ice-ocean interactions are more complex than previously understood.Milillo hopes the new results will be useful for the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration researchers as they prepare for their fieldwork. "Such data is essential for field parties to focus on areas where the action is, because the grounding line is retreating rapidly with complex spatial patterns," he said."Understanding the details of how the ocean melts away this glacier is essential to project its impact on sea level rise in the coming decades," Rignot said.The paper by Milillo and his co-authors in the journal Science Advances is titled "Heterogeneous retreat and ice melt of Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica." Co-authors were from the University of California, Irvine; the German Aerospace Center in Munich, Germany; and the University Grenoble Alpes in Grenoble, France.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-orbiter-reveals-big-changes-in-mars-atmosphere

NASA Orbiter Reveals Big Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered the total amount of atmosphere on Mars changes dramatically as the tilt of the planet's axis varies.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered the total amount of atmosphere on Mars changes dramatically as the tilt of the planet's axis varies. This process can affect the stability of liquid water, if it exists on the Martian surface, and increase the frequency and severity of Martian dust storms.Researchers using the orbiter's ground-penetrating radar identified a large, buried deposit of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, at the Red Planet's south pole. The scientists suspect that much of this carbon dioxide enters the planet's atmosphere and swells the atmosphere's mass when Mars' tilt increases. The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.The newly found deposit has a volume similar to Lake Superior's nearly 3,000 cubic miles (about 12,000 cubic kilometers). The deposit holds up to 80 percent as much carbon dioxide as today's Martian atmosphere. Collapse pits caused by dry ice sublimation and other clues suggest the deposit is in a dissipating phase, adding gas to the atmosphere each year. Mars' atmosphere is about 95 percent carbon dioxide, in contrast to Earth's much thicker atmosphere, which is less than .04 percent carbon dioxide."We already knew there is a small perennial cap of carbon-dioxide ice on top of the water ice there, but this buried deposit has about 30 times more dry ice than previously estimated," said Roger Phillips of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Phillips is deputy team leader for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Shallow Radar instrument and lead author of the report."We identified the deposit as dry ice by determining the radar signature fit the radio-wave transmission characteristics of frozen carbon dioxide far better than the characteristics of frozen water," said Roberto Seu of Sapienza University of Rome, team leader for the Shallow Radar and a co-author of the new report. Additional evidence came from correlating the deposit to visible sublimation features typical of dry ice."When you include this buried deposit, Martian carbon dioxide right now is roughly half frozen and half in the atmosphere, but at other times it can be nearly all frozen or nearly all in the atmosphere," Phillips said.An occasional increase in the atmosphere would strengthen winds, lofting more dust and leading to more frequent and more intense dust storms. Another result is an expanded area on the planet's surface where liquid water could persist without boiling. Modeling based on known variation in the tilt of Mars' axis suggests several-fold changes in the total mass of the planet's atmosphere can happen on time frames of 100,000 years or less.The changes in atmospheric density caused by the carbon-dioxide increase also would amplify some effects of the changes caused by the tilt. Researchers plugged the mass of the buried carbon-dioxide deposit into climate models for the period when Mars' tilt and orbital properties maximize the amount of summer sunshine hitting the south pole. They found at such times, global, year-round average air pressure is approximately 75 percent greater than the current level."A tilted Mars with a thicker carbon-dioxide atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect that tries to warm the Martian surface, while thicker and longer-lived polar ice caps try to cool it," said co-author Robert Haberle, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Our simulations show the polar caps cool more than the greenhouse warms. Unlike Earth, which has a thick, moist atmosphere that produces a strong greenhouse effect, Mars' atmosphere is too thin and dry to produce as strong a greenhouse effect as Earth's, even when you double its carbon-dioxide content."The Shallow Radar, one of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's six instruments, was provided by the Italian Space Agency, and its operations are led by the Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications at Sapienza University of Rome. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, visithttp://www.nasa.gov/mro.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-bound-instrument-detects-solar-bursts-effects

Mars-Bound Instrument Detects Solar Burst's Effects

This week's solar storm is giving a NASA Mars-bound spacecraft a chance to gauge how such events would affect radiation exposure of future astronauts flying to Mars.

The largest solar particle event since 2005 has been detected by the radiation- monitoring instrument aboard the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, on its way from Earth to Mars.The Radiation Assessment Detector, inside the mission's Curiosity rover tucked inside the spacecraft, is measuring the radiation exposure that could affect a human astronaut on a potential Mars mission. It has measured an increase resulting from a Jan. 22 solar storm observed by other NASA spacecraft. No harmful effects to the Mars Science Laboratory have been detected from this solar event.For more information about what effects the radiation detector has measured, visit:http://www.swri.org/9what/releases/2012/rad-solarstorm.htm.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-to-discuss-next-mars-rover-on-facebook-live

NASA to Discuss Next Mars Rover on Facebook Live

NASA will host a Facebook Live event Friday, July 15 at 10 a.m. PDT, about NASA's next Mars rover, Mars 2020, which is moving forward with final design and construction.

NASA will host a Facebook Live event at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) Friday, July 15, to talk about the science and technology aboard NASA's next Mars rover, Mars 2020, and the significant step the agency is taking on its Journey to Mars, proceeding with final design and construction of the robotic explorer.During the event, viewers will get a glimpse of the Mars Yard and rock drilling facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and can ask questions during the program via Facebook. Media can submit questions by email at: hq-social@nasa.gov.Participants will be:• Kenneth Farley, Mars 2020 project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena• Matt Robinson, Mars 2020 sampling and caching team deputy manager at JPL• Allen Chen, Mars 2020 entry, descent and landing lead at JPLThe event can be viewed live on NASA's Facebook page at:http://www.facebook.com/nasaThe event also will air on NASA Television and stream on the agency's website at:http://www.nasa.gov/nasatvhttp://www.nasa.gov/liveMars 2020, which has just passed a major development milestone, will look for signs of past life in a region of Mars where the ancient environment is believed to have been favorable for microbial life. It will collect samples of Martian rock and soil that a potential future mission could return to Earth for analysis. It also will assess Mars' geology and modern environment, providing context for other investigations. These studies will address high-priority goals for planetary science and further aid NASA's preparations for a human mission to the Red Planet.For more information about NASA's Mars missions, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-spacecraft-prepares-for-valentines-day-comet-rendezvous

NASA Spacecraft Prepares for Valentine's Day Comet Rendezvous

NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial date with comet Tempel 1 at approximately 8:37 p.m. PST (11:37 p.m. EST), on Feb. 14.

› Visuals from 1-19-2011 news briefingPASADENA, Calif., -- NASA's Stardust-NExT spacecraft is nearing a celestial date with comet Tempel 1 at approximately 8:37 p.m. PST (11:37 p.m. EST), on Feb. 14. The mission will allow scientists for the first time to look for changes on a comet's surface that occurred following an orbit around the sun.The Stardust-NExT, or New Exploration of Tempel, spacecraft will take high-resolution images during the encounter, and attempt to measure the composition, distribution, and flux of dust emitted into the coma, or material surrounding the comet's nucleus. Data from the mission will provide important new information on how Jupiter-family comets evolved and formed.The mission will expand the investigation of the comet initiated by NASA's Deep Impact mission. In July 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft delivered an impactor to the surface of Tempel 1 to study its composition. The Stardust spacecraft may capture an image of the crater created by the impactor. This would be an added bonus to the huge amount of data that mission scientists expect to obtain."Every day we are getting closer and closer and more and more excited about answering some fundamental questions about comets," said Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Going back for another look at Tempel 1 will provide new insights on how comets work and how they were put together four-and-a-half billion years ago."At approximately 336 million kilometers (209 million miles) away from Earth, Stardust-NExT will be almost on the exact opposite side of the solar system at the time of the encounter. During the flyby, the spacecraft will take 72 images and store them in an onboard computer.Initial raw images from the flyby will be sent to Earth for processing that will begin at approximately midnight PST (3 a.m. EST) on Feb. 15. Images are expected to be available at approximately 1:30 a.m. PST (4:30 a.m. EST).As of today, the spacecraft is approximately 24.6 million kilometers (15.3 million miles) away from its encounter. Since 2007, Stardust-NExT executed eight flight path correction maneuvers, logged four circuits around the sun and used one Earth gravity assist to meet up with Tempel 1.Another three maneuvers are planned to refine the spacecraft's path to the comet. Tempel 1's orbit takes it as close in to the sun as the orbit of Mars and almost as far away as the orbit of Jupiter. The spacecraft is expected to fly past the nearly 6-kilometer-wide comet (3.7 miles) at a distance of approximately 200 kilometers (124 miles).In 2004, the Stardust mission became the first to collect particles directly from comet Wild 2, as well as interstellar dust. Samples were returned in 2006 for study via a capsule that detached from the spacecraft and parachuted to the ground southwest of Salt Lake City. Mission controllers placed the still viable Stardust spacecraft on a trajectory that could potentially reuse the flight system if a target of opportunity presented itself.In January 2007, NASA re-christened the mission Stardust-NExT and began a four-and-a-half year journey to comet Tempel 1."You could say our spacecraft is a seasoned veteran of cometary campaigns," said Tim Larson, project manager for Stardust-NExT at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's been half-way to Jupiter, executed picture-perfect flybys of an asteroid and a comet, collected cometary material for return to Earth, then headed back out into the void again, where we asked it to go head-to-head with a second comet nucleus."The mission team expects this flyby to write the final chapter of the spacecraft's success-filled story. The spacecraft is nearly out of fuel as it approaches 12 years of space travel, logging almost 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) since launch in 1999. This flyby and planned post-encounter imaging are expected to consume the remaining fuel.JPL manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.For more information about the Stardust-NExT mission, visit:http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/mars-rover-opportunity-working-at-matijevic-hill

Mars Rover Opportunity Working at 'Matijevic Hill'

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, well into its ninth year on Mars, will work for the next several weeks or months at a site with some of the mission's most intriguing geological features.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, well into its ninth year on Mars, will work for the next several weeks or months at a site with some of the mission's most intriguing geological features.The site, called "Matijevic Hill," overlooks 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater. Opportunity has begun investigating the site's concentration of small spherical objects reminiscent of, but different from, the iron-rich spheres nicknamed "blueberries" at the rover's landing site nearly 22 driving miles ago (35 kilometers).The small spheres at Matijevic Hill have different composition and internal structure. Opportunity's science team is evaluating a range of possibilities for how they formed.  The spheres are up to about an eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter.The "blueberries" found earlier are concretions formed by the action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, but that is only one of the ways nature can make small, rounded particles. One working hypothesis, out of several, is that the new-found spherules are also concretions but with a different composition. Others include that they may be accretionary lapilli formed in volcanic ash eruptions, impact spherules formed in impact events, or devitrification spherules resulting from formation of crystals from formerly melted material. There are other possibilities, too."Right now we have multiple working hypotheses, and each hypothesis makes certain predictions about things like what the spherules are made of and how they are distributed," said Opportunity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "Our job as we explore Matijevic Hill in the months ahead will be to make the observations that will let us test all the hypotheses carefully, and find the one that best fits the observations."The team chose to refer to this important site as Matijevic Hill in honor of Jacob Matijevic (1947-2012), who led the engineering team for the twin Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity for several years before and after their landings. He worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., from 1981 until his death last month, most recently as chief engineer for surface operations systems of NASA's third-generation Mars rover, Curiosity. In the 1990s, he led the engineering team for the first Mars rover, Sojourner.A different Mars rover team, operating Curiosity, has also named a feature for Matijevic: a rock that Curiosity recently investigated about halfway around the planet from Matijevic Hill."We wouldn't have gotten to Matijevic Hill, eight-and-a-half years after Opportunity's landing, without Jake Matijevic," Squyres said.Opportunity's project manager, John Callas, of JPL, said, "If there is one person who represents the heart and soul of all three generations of Mars rovers -- Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity -- it was Jake."JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about Opportunity, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/roversandhttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at:http://twitter.com/MarsRoversandhttp://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/magellan-embarks-on-new-experiment

Magellan Embarks on New Experiment

Having successfully completed its original mission of radar mapping the planet Venus, NASA's Magellan spacecraft is embarking on a new experiment that will give scientists glimpses into the planet's interior and a better understanding of its atmosphere.

Having successfully completed its original mission of radar mapping the planet Venus, NASA's Magellan spacecraft is embarking on a new experiment that will give scientists glimpses into the planet's interior and a better understanding of its atmosphere.Magellan scientists and mission managers reported on the project's recent findings and a new experiment in "aerobraking" it started this week in a press conference today.On May 25 the spacecraft completed its fourth eight-month orbital cycle at Venus, during which it collected data on the planet's gravity field, particularly close to the equator.On that same day Magellan executed the first in a series of aerobraking maneuvers to be conducted over the next 70 days in which it dips into Venus' atmosphere, taking advantage of drag on the spacecraft to lower its orbit. The maneuvers are designed to place Magellan in a circular orbit, allowing it to get better gravity data at the planet's north and south poles."This experiment is a scientific bonus for what is already a highly successful mission," said Dr. R. Stephen Saunders, Magellan project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.According to Saunders, the gravity data that Magellan is collecting allow scientists to "see" into the interior of the planet because they can gauge how dense the material underlying various parts of the planet is.In recent weeks, for example, Magellan passed over a region dominated by three volcanoes -- Hathor, Innini and Ushas. "They occupy a broad swelling of the Venusian crust believed to result from upwelling of hot material from the deep interior, a phenomenon known on Earth as a `hot spot,'" Saunders added.In other ways, however, Venus seems to be distinctly different from Earth. While Earth's surface geology is largely created by tectonic motion -- enormous continental plates that move slowly over an underlying magma -- the Magellan team found little evidence of plate tectonics at Venus.One possible exception to that is the Ovda region at the western end of the equatorial highlands of Aphrodite Terra."In this region we see what appear to be the closest thing on Venus to Earth's continents," said Saunders. "It has features that seem to have been formed by compression of the Venusian crust in a process that may resemble some plate tectonic regions on Earth."Saunders said that Ovda and similar terrains -- called tesserae, they are intensely fractured regions that are pushed upward compared with most of the rest of the planet -- may represent ancient crustal materials on Venus. "They could, in fact, be fragments of the oldest rocks on the planet," he said.During Magellan's fourth eight-month orbital cycle which ended May 25, flight controllers collected gravity data by monitoring the frequency of the signal sent to Earth from the spacecraft. Changes in the gravity field would make Magellan speed up or slow down slightly, causing the frequency of its signal to change by tiny fractions.During that cycle, however, Magellan was in a widely looping elliptical orbit, with a low point near 170 kilometers (105 miles) from Venus and high point of 8,500 kilometers (5,300 miles). Because of the varying distance, it could collect high resolution gravity data at the planet's equator but not near its poles.If successful, the aerobraking maneuver will put Magellan into an orbit 200 by 600 kilometers (125 by 375 miles) above Venus. The change will be made gradually over the course of about 70 days.The change in orbit will also provide important new data about Venus' atmosphere, which can be studied through its effect on the spacecraft. The upper atmosphere varies with the 11-year cycle of activity on the sun. "We are currently approaching a solar minimum, which means that the number of sunspots and solar storms will be at a minimum," said Saunders.Magellan has fulfilled all of its prime mission objectives, mapping 98 percent of the surface of Venus with many areas covered up to three times. "This provides us with stereo imaging," said Saunders, "as well as a long-time base so that we can search for surface changes in the high-resolution images."JPL manages the Magellan mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/oco-2-takes-the-a-train-to-study-earths-atmosphere

OCO-2 Takes the A-Train to Study Earth's Atmosphere

New NASA satellite will be the latest addition to an international line of Earth observers.

Every day, above our planet, five Earth-observing satellites rush along like trains on the same "track," flying minutes, and sometimes seconds, behind one another. They carry more than 15 scientific instruments in total, looking at many different aspects of our home planet. Called the Afternoon Constellation, or A-Train, these satellites work as a united, powerful tool for advancing our understanding of Earth's surface and atmosphere.The train is about to get longer. NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), which launched July 2, will be the A-Train's sixth member. Its mission is to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that makes up a greater percentage of our atmosphere today than it has in at least 800,000 years. It will produce data that will help scientists analyze data from the other A-Train instruments. In return, other satellites will help validate its vital data."The A-Train constellation is an ideal measurement system for us," said Dave Crisp, the leader of the OCO-2 science team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.OCO-2 will fly along the same path as NASA satellites CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) and CloudSat, which monitor minute particles in the atmosphere called aerosols, and clouds, respectively. "We've lined up the ground tracks of OCO-2, CALIPSO and CloudSat almost perfectly, and we're hoping to keep them well aligned for as long as possible during the missions, so we can do the science we want with measurements from all three satellites," Crisp said.OCO-2 measures carbon dioxide by observing its effect on sunlight. Sunlight is made up of waves of many lengths, or frequencies, some visible and others invisible. As sunlight passes through the atmosphere, carbon dioxide and other molecules absorb specific frequencies in the spectrum of light, leaving dark, narrow gaps in the spectrum. The more light that has been absorbed in a certain column of air, the more carbon dioxide is present there. In some cases, this may suggest that Earth's surface beneath that air contains a source of carbon dioxide, like a large industrial city. Less carbon dioxide implies a "sink," which absorbs carbon dioxide, like a thick forest during the growing season.The OCO-2 spacecraft carries a single instrument composed of three spectrometers that measure different regions of the spectrum of light. One of these spectrometers observes the spectrum of molecular oxygen, referred to as the A-band spectrum. This is important because molecular oxygen is a relatively constant fraction of the atmosphere and can be used as a reference for measurements of other atmospheric gases, such as carbon dioxide. In addition to being critical for calibrating the carbon dioxide concentrations, it also tells scientists how much sunlight is absorbed or reflected by the aerosols and clouds, features that CALIPSO and CloudSat observe."If we combine the A-band spectrometer's measurements with information on aerosols and clouds from CALIPSO and CloudSat, we can use that information to estimate the amount of absorption of sunlight by these airborne particles, which is something we cannot currently do," said Dave Winker, principal investigator for the CALIPSO mission.CloudSat and CALIPSO also help clarify OCO-2's data. The observatory uses its A-band spectrometer to find out how far sunlight has traveled before it reaches the satellite (its optical path) -- vital information for finding sources and sinks. A tiny mistake in the path-length measurement can introduce serious errors in the satellite's carbon dioxide measurements. Often clouds and aerosols in Earth's atmosphere reflect some sunlight back toward space before it reaches the surface, shortening sunlight's path and confusing the spectrometer about the distance to Earth. But CALIPSO and CloudSat's data about the location and height of aerosols and clouds can verify OCO-2's path-length measurements and determine what kept the sun from reaching Earth's surface."To check OCO-2's accuracy, we can compare it to CloudSat and CALIPSO. These measurements are synergistic," Crisp said.Winker noted, "From OCO-2's point of view, CALIPSO is going to be very important in validating their measurement by correcting for cloud and aerosol effects. That these two satellites are flying together is a key part of the mission."The A-Train's other satellites support OCO-2's work, too. MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), an instrument on the Aqua satellite, tracks cloud cover. AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder), another Aqua instrument, measures air temperature and the amount of water content in the atmosphere. To accurately measure carbon dioxide, scientists must know all those details."We have the platforms that can tell us about water vapor and temperature, as well as clouds from the CloudSat satellite, the CALIPSO satellite, the AIRS instrument, and the MODIS instrument. This is the right place to fly OCO-2," Crisp said.For more information about OCO-2, visit these sites:http://www.nasa.gov/oco2http://oco.jpl.nasa.govNASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.For more information about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/new-international-ocean-satellite-completes-testing

New International Ocean Satellite Completes Testing

A team of engineers in the U.S. and Europe subjected the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft to a battery of trials to ready it for liftoff later this year.

Once the state-of-the-art Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite launches in November, it will collect the most accurate data yet on sea level - a key indicator of how Earth's warming climate is affecting the oceans, weather and coastlines. But first, engineers need to ensure that the spacecraft can survive the rigors of launch and of operating in the harsh environment of space. That's where meticulous testing comes in.At the end of May, engineers finished putting the spacecraft - which is being built in Germany - through a battery of tests that began in November 2019. "If it can survive all the abuse we deliberately put it through on the ground, then it's ready for space," said John Oswald, the mission's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich spacecraft is a part of the Copernicus Sentinel-6/Jason-CS (Continuity of Service) mission, a joint U.S.-European effort in which two identical satellites will be launched five years apart. The spacecraft will join the Copernicus constellation of satellites that constitutes the European Union's Earth Observation Programme. Once in orbit, each satellite will collect sea level measurements down to the centimeter for 90% of the world's oceans. The data will add to almost 30 years of information gathered by an uninterrupted series of joint U.S.-European satellites, creating an unprecedented - and unbroken - 40-year sea level dataset. The spacecraft will also measure the temperature and humidity of Earth's atmosphere, which can be used to help improve weather forecasts and hurricane predictions.These measurements are important because the oceans and atmosphere are tightly connected. "We're changing our climate, and the clearest signal of that is the rising oceans," said Josh Willis, the mission's project scientist at JPL. "More than 90% of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases is going into the ocean." That heat causes seawater to expand, accounting for about one-third of the global average of modern-day sea level rise. Meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets account for the rest."For climate science, what we need to know is not just sea level today, but sea level compared to 20 years ago. We need long records to do climate science," said Willis.Six scientific instruments are key to that task. Two of them will work in concert to measure the distance from the satellite to the ocean's surface. That information - combined with data from three other instruments that precisely establish the satellite's position in orbit and a sixth that will measure vertical slices of the atmosphere for temperature and humidity - will help determine sea levels around the world.Put Through Their PacesTo ensure that the scientific instruments will work once they get into space, engineers sent the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich to a testing facility near Munich and ran the satellite through a gauntlet starting in November 2019.First up: the vibration test, where the engineers subjected the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite to the kinds of shaking it will experience while attached to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasting into orbit. Then in December, engineers tested the spacecraft in a big vacuum chamber and exposed it to the extreme temperatures that it will encounter in space, ranging from 149 to minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit (65 to minus 180 degrees Celsius).The next two trials took place in late April and May. The acoustics test, performed in April, made sure the satellite could withstand the loud noises that occur during launch. Engineers placed the spacecraft in a roughly 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) chamber outfitted with enormous speakers. Then they blasted the satellite with four 60-second bursts of sound, with the loudest peaking around 140 decibels. That's like standing next to a jet's engine as the plane takes off.Finally, in the last week of May, engineers performed an electromagnetic compatibility test to ensure that the sensors and electronics on the satellite wouldn't interfere with one another, or with the data collection. The mission uses state-of-the-art instruments to make precise measurements, so the smallest interference could compromise that data.Normally, JPL engineers would help to conduct these tests in person, but two of the trials took place after social-distancing safety measures had been established due to the coronavirus pandemic. So team members worked out a system to support their counterparts in Germany remotely.To account for the nine-hour time-zone difference, engineers in California pulled shifts from midnight to 10 a.m. for several weeks, consulting with colleagues in Germany through phone calls, video conferences, chat rooms and text messages. "It was confusing sometimes, keeping all the channels and groups going at the same time in the middle of the night, but I was impressed with our team," said Oswald.The upshot of all that effort? "The tests are complete and the preliminary results look good," Oswald said. Team members will spend the next several weeks completing the analysis of the test results and then preparing the satellite for shipment to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California for launch this fall.About the MissionCopernicus Sentinel-6/Jason-CS is being jointly developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the European Commission and support from France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES).The first Sentinel-6/Jason-CS satellite that will launch was named after the former director of NASA's Earth Science Division, Michael Freilich. It will follow the most recent U.S.-European sea level observation satellite, Jason-3, which launched in 2016 and is currently providing data.NASA's contributions to the Sentinel-6 mission are three of the science instrument payloads for each of the two Sentinel-6 satellites, including the Advanced Microwave Radiometer, the Global Navigation Satellite System - Radio Occultation, and the Laser Reflector Array. NASA is also contributing launch services for those satellites, ground systems supporting operation of the JPL-provided science instruments, the science data processors for two of these instruments, and support for the international Ocean Surface Topography Science Team.To learn more about NASA's study of sea level rise, visit:https://sealevel.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/crystal-rich-rock-mojave-is-next-mars-drill-target

Crystal-Rich Rock 'Mojave' is Next Mars Drill Target

This week, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is preparing to drill its second sample of Mount Sharp. An upgraded version of its onboard software is ready for installation next week.

A rock target where NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is using its sample-collection drill this week may have a salty story to tell.This target, called "Mojave," displays copious slender features, slightly smaller than grains of rice, that appear to be mineral crystals. A chance to learn their composition prompted the Curiosity science team to choose Mojave as the next rock-drilling target for the 29-month-old mission investigating Mars' Gale Crater. The features might be a salt mineral left behind when lakewater evaporated.This week, Curiosity is beginning a "mini-drill" test to assess the rock's suitability for deeper drilling, which collects a sample for onboard laboratory analysis.A weeklong pause in science operations to install a new version of rover flight software is scheduled to begin early next week, possibly before completion of the drilling and sample delivery. This is the fourth new version of the onboard software since the rover's August 2012 landing.The Mojave drilling begins Curiosity's third round of investigating the basal layer of Mount Sharp exposed at an area called "Pahrump Hills." In the first round, the rover drove about 360 feet (110 meters) and scouted sites ranging about 30 feet (9 meters) in elevation. Then it followed a similar path, investigating selected sites in more detail. That second pass included inspection of Mojave in November 2014 with the dust-removal brush, close-up camera and Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer on the rover's arm. The results put Mojave at the head of the list of targets for the rover's most intensive inspection, using laboratory instruments that ingest powdered rock collected by the drill."The crystal shapes are apparent in the earlier images of Mojave, but we don't know what they represent," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "We're hoping that mineral identifications we get from the rover's laboratory will shed more light than we got from just the images and bulk chemistry."Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, or CheMin, can identify specific minerals in rock powder from a drilled sample. Analysis of the drill hole and drill tailings may also reveal whether the crystals are only at the surface, like a salty crust, or are also deeper in the rock."There could be a fairly involved story here," Vasavada said. "Are they salt crystals left from a drying lake? Or are they more pervasive through the rock, formed by fluids moving through the rock? In either case, a later fluid may have removed or replaced the original minerals with something else."Curiosity's work at Pahrump Hills may include drilling one or more additional rocks before heading to higher layers of Mount Sharp.Next week's planned software revision, like the mission's earlier ones, adds protections against vulnerabilities identified in rover testbed activities on Earth. It also adds improvements to make planning drives more efficient."The files have already been uplinked and are sitting in the rover's file system to be ready for the installation," said JPL's Danny Lam, the deputy engineering operations chief leading the upgrade process.One change in the new software is to enable use of the rover's gyroscope-containing "inertial measurement unit" at the same time as the rover's drill, for better capability to sense slippage of the rover during a drilling operation. Another is a set of improvements to the rover's ability to autonomously identify and drive in good terrain.NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, built the rover and manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.For more information about Curiosity, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/mslandhttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosityandhttp://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/asteroid-named-for-nobel-prize-winner-joins-historic-lineup

Asteroid Named for Nobel Prize Winner Joins Historic Lineup

An asteroid discovered by NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft has a new designation: 316201 Malala, to honor Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, who received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

An asteroid discovered by NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft has been given the formal designation 316201 Malala, in honor of Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. The asteroid's previous appellation was 2010 ML48.The International Astronomical Union (IAU) renamed the asteroid as the request of Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Mainzer is the principal investigator of NASA's NEOWISE space telescope. The IAU is the sole worldwide organization recognized by astronomers everywhere to designate names for astronomical bodies. So far, Mainzer and the NEOWISE team have focused on pioneers in civil rights, science and the arts for the astronomical honor. Among the strong women of history who have already had NEOWISE-discovered asteroids named for them are civil rights activist Rosa Parks, conservationist Wangari Maathai, abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and singer Aretha Franklin.Asteroid Malala is in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter and orbits the sun every five-and-a-half years. It is about two-and-a-half miles (four kilometers) in diameter, and its surface is very dark, the color of printer toner.NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the NEOWISE mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.For more information about NEOWISE, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/neowise

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/comet-makes-a-pit-stop-near-jupiters-asteroids

Comet Makes a Pit Stop Near Jupiter’s Asteroids

For the first time, a wayward comet-like object has been spotted near the family of ancient asteroids.

After traveling several billion miles toward the Sun, a wayward young comet-like object orbiting among the giant planets has found a temporary parking place along the way. The object has settled near a family of captured ancient asteroids, called Trojans, that are orbiting the Sun alongside Jupiter. This is the first time a comet-like object has been spotted near the Trojan population.The unexpected visitor belongs to a class of icy bodies found in space between Jupiter and Neptune. Called Centaurs, they become active for the first time when heated as they approach the Sun, and dynamically transition into becoming more comet-like.Visible-light snapshots byNASA’s Hubble Space Telescopereveal that the vagabond object shows signs of comet activity, such as a tail, outgassing in the form of jets, and an enshrouding coma of dust and gas. Earlier observations by NASA’sSpitzer Space Telescopegave clues to the composition of the comet-like object and the gasses driving its activity.Get the Latest JPL NewsSubscribe to the Newsletter“Only Hubble could detect active comet-like features this far away at such high detail, and the images clearly show these features, such as a roughly 400,000-mile-long broad tail and high-resolution features near the nucleus due to a coma and jets,” said lead Hubble researcher Bryce Bolin of Caltech in Pasadena, California.Describing the Centaur’s capture as a rare event, Bolin added, “The visitor had to have come into the orbit of Jupiter at just the right trajectory to have this kind of configuration that gives it the appearance of sharing its orbit with the planet. We’re investigating how it was captured by Jupiter and landed among the Trojans. But we think it could be related to the fact that it had a somewhat close encounter with Jupiter.”The team’spaperappears in Feb. 11 issue ofThe Astronomical Journal.The research team’s computer simulations show that the icy object, called P/2019 LD2 (LD2), probably swung close to Jupiter about two years ago. The planet then gravitationally punted the wayward visitor to the Trojan asteroid group’s co-orbital location, leading Jupiter by about 437 million miles.Bucket BrigadeThe nomadic object was discovered in early June 2019 by the University of Hawaii’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescopes located on the extinct volcanoes, one on Mauna Kea and one on Haleakala. Japanese amateur astronomer Seiichi Yoshida tipped off the Hubble team to possible comet activity. The astronomers then scanned archival data from the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide-field survey conducted at Palomar Observatory in California, and realized that the object was clearly active in images from April 2019.They followed up with observations from the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, which also hinted at the activity. The team observed the comet using Spitzer just days before the observatory’sretirementin January 2020, and identified gas and dust around the comet nucleus. These observations convinced the team to use Hubble to take a closer look. Aided by Hubble’s sharp vision, the researchers identified the tail, coma structure, the size of the dust particles, and their ejection velocity. These images helped them confirm that the features are due to relatively new comet-like activity.Although LD2’s location is surprising, Bolin wonders whether this pit stop could be a common pull-off for some sunward-bound comets. “This could be part of the pathway from our solar system through the Jupiter Trojans to the inner solar system,” he said.The main asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter, whereas Trojan asteroids both lead and follow Jupiter. Scientists now know that asteroids in the early solar system (4.6 billion years ago) adhered together and eventually formed the inner planets, including Earth.Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Olmsted/STScIThe unexpected guest probably will not stay among the asteroids for very long. Computer simulations show that it will have another close encounter with Jupiter in about another two years. The hefty planet will boot the comet from the system, and it will continue its journey to the inner solar system.“The cool thing is that you’re actually catching Jupiter flinging this object around and changing its orbital behavior and bringing it into the inner system,” said team member Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “Jupiter controls what’s going on with comets once they get into the inner system by altering their orbits.”The icy interloper is most likely one of the latest members of the so-called “bucket brigade” of comets to get kicked out of its frigid home in the Kuiper Belt and into the giant planet region through interactions with another Kuiper Belt object. Located beyond Neptune’s orbit, the Kuiper Belt is a haven of icy, leftover debris from our planets’ construction 4.6 billion years ago, containing millions of objects, and occasionally these objects have near misses or collisions that drastically alter their orbits from the Kuiper Belt inward into the giant planet region.The bucket brigade of icy relics endure a bumpy ride during their journey sunward. They bounce gravitationally from one outer planet to the next in a game of celestial pinball before reaching the inner solar system, warming up as they come closer to the Sun. The researchers say the objects spend as much or even more time around the giant planets, which are gravitationally pulling on them – about 5 million years – than they do crossing into the inner system where we live.“Inner-system, ‘short-period’ comets break up about once a century,” Lisse explained. “So, in order to maintain the number of local comets we see today, we think the bucket brigade has to deliver a new short-period comet about once every 100 years.”An Early BloomerSeeing outgassing activity on a comet 465 million miles away from the Sun (where the intensity of sunlight is 1/25th as strong as on Earth) surprised the researchers. “We were intrigued to see that the comet had just started to become active for the first time so far away from the Sun at distances where water ice is barely starting to sublimate,” said Bolin.Water remains frozen on a comet until it reaches about 200 million miles from the Sun, where heat from sunlight converts water ice to gas that escapes from the nucleus in the form of jets. So the activity signals that the tail might not be made of water. In fact, observations by Spitzer indicated the presence of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide gas, which could be driving the creation of the tail and jets seen on the Jupiter-orbiting comet. These volatiles do not need much sunlight to heat their frozen form and convert them to gas.Once the comet gets kicked out of Jupiter’s orbit and continues its journey, it may meet up with the giant planet again. “Short-period comets like LD2 meet their fate by being thrown into the Sun and totally disintegrating, hitting a planet, or venturing too close to Jupiter once again and getting thrown out of the solar system, which is the usual fate,” Lisse said. “Simulations show that in about 500,000 years, there’s a 90% probability that this object will be ejected from the solar system and become an interstellar comet.”The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, managed the Spitzer mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at IPAC at Caltech. Spitzer’s entire science catalogue is available via the Spitzer data archive, housed at the Infrared Science Archive at IPAC. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.For more information, visit:https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-05http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/dawn-holding-in-second-mapping-orbit

Dawn Holding in Second Mapping Orbit

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is healthy and stable, after experiencing an anomaly in the system that controls its orientation.

DAWN MISSION STATUS REPORTNASA's Dawn spacecraft is healthy and stable, after experiencing an anomaly in the system that controls its orientation. It is still in its second mapping orbit 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) above dwarf planet Ceres.On June 30, shortly after turning on its ion engine to begin the gradual spiral down to the next mapping orbit, its protective software detected the anomaly. Dawn responded as designed by stopping all activities (including thrusting), reconfiguring its systems to safe mode and transmitting a radio signal to request further instructions. On July 1 and 2, engineers made configuration changes needed to return the spacecraft to its normal operating mode. The spacecraft is out of safe mode, using the main antenna to communicate with Earth.Dawn will remain at its current orbital altitude until the operations team has completed an analysis of what occurred and has updated the flight plan.Because of the versatility of Dawn's ion propulsion system and the flexibility of the mission's plan for exploring Ceres, there is no special "window" for starting or completing the spiral to the third mapping orbit. The plans for the third and fourth mapping orbits can be shifted to new dates without significant changes in objectives or productivity.More information on the Dawn mission is online at:http://www.nasa.gov/dawnhttp://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/sixth-annual-space-settlement-design-competition

Sixth Annual Space Settlement Design Competition

More than 120 students will converge on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory April 26-28 in hopes of designing a realistic proposal for a human colony on the moon. The exercise is all part of SPACESET, the sixth annual Space Settlement Design Competition to be held at JPL.

More than 120 students will converge on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory April 26-28 in hopes of designing a realistic proposal for a human colony on the moon. The exercise is all part of SPACESET, the sixth annual Space Settlement Design Competition to be held at JPL.The students, ages 15 to 20, will be divided into mock aerospace companies and will work with engineers from the industry as they use their math and science skills to create the best plans for a lunar base. At the end of the competition the students will make a formal presentation of their designs to a panel of judges consisting of members of the aerospace industry. Prizes will be awarded to each member of the winning team."This is a valuable opportunity for any high school student interested in science and engineering to see what a career in these fields could be like," said Brian Behlendorf, SPACESET '91 Director.The cost of the event is $50, including accommodations and meals for the weekend.SPACESET '91 is sponsored by the JPL Space Exploration Post 509. For further information please contact the SPACESET Hotline at (818) 354-7868.818-354-5011

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/dawn-captures-sharper-images-of-ceres

Dawn Captures Sharper Images of Ceres

Craters and mysterious bright spots are beginning to pop out in the latest images of Ceres from NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

Craters and mysterious bright spots are beginning to pop out in the latest images of Ceres from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. These images, taken Feb. 12 at a distance of 52,000 miles (83,000 kilometers) from the dwarf planet, pose intriguing questions for the science team to explore as the spacecraft nears its destination.The image is available at:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA19056"As we slowly approach the stage, our eyes transfixed on Ceres and her planetary dance, we find she has beguiled us but left us none the wiser," said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, based at UCLA. "We expected to be surprised; we did not expect to be this puzzled."Dawn will be gently captured into orbit around Ceres on March 6. As the spacecraft delivers better images and other data, the science team will be investigating the nature and composition of the dwarf planet, including the nature of the craters and bright spots that are coming into focus. The latest images, which have a resolution of 4.9 miles (7.8 kilometers) per pixel, represent the sharpest views of Ceres to date.The spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta for 14 months during 2011 and 2012. Scientists gained numerous insights about the geological history of this body and saw its cratered surface in fine detail. By comparing Vesta and Ceres, they will develop a better understanding of the formation of the solar system.Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., of Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The framing cameras were provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Gottingen, Germany, with significant contributions by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer was provided by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, built by Selex ES, and is managed and operated by the Italian Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. The gamma ray and neutron detector was built by Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, and is operated by the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona.For more information about Dawn, visit:http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/lending-an-improved-ear

Lending an Improved Ear

With the help of friends down under, calling home is about to get easier.

With the help of friends down under, calling home is about to get easier.With NASA-funded upgrades planned for this summer, the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, celebrated by the movie "The Dish" for its role in the first moonwalk, will once again help communicate with spacecraft exploring the solar system.Owned by the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the 64-meter (210-foot) antenna is located near the town of Parkes, Australia. With upgrades to handle the current deep space transmission standards, Parkes' will take on some of the workload of NASA's Deep Space Network. Managed by JPL, the Deep Space Network is the largest telecommunications system in the world. With antennas in Spain, Australia and California's Mojave Desert, the Deep Space Network is a network of antennas that allow us to have two-way communications with spacecraft at all times. JPL is overseeing the Parkes upgrades and integrating Parkes into the Deep Space Network for several months of operations.Communications CrunchStarting this coming November and peaking in January 2004, an unprecedented fleet of spacecraft will require communications for critical maneuvers. Among the potential users of the Parkes antenna are NASA's Mars Odyssey, the Mars Global Surveyor, the two distant Voyagers, the Stardust mission, the recently launched Space Infrared Telescope Facility and the European Mars Express."Parkes will be used to provide backup support for a large number of critical mission events and also to provide coverage for missions that would otherwise receive none during periods of conflicts," said Gary Spradlin, deputy manager of scheduling for the Deep Space Network Plans and Commitments Office at JPL.Although not part of the Deep Space Network, the Parkes antenna has been used by NASA before to support the Apollo moon missions, the Galileo spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, and both Voyager missions during their grand tour of the solar system.The major improvement is adding a microwave system that allows for reception in the X-band frequency currently used by all JPL missions. The X-band frequency has a larger spectrum that allows more data to be transmitted. Better performance will also be achieved by extending the antenna's solid paneling by 10 meters (about 33 feet).Glorious Past, Movie Star StatusThanks to the movie "The Dish," the Parkes Radio Telescope may be the world's best-known antenna. The giant dish surrounded by sheep and green fields was featured in the film about the hectic days preceding the first human landing on the Moon.As Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon's surface, an estimated 600 million people were glued to the television. Searching for the best quality images, NASA alternated between three tracking stations during the first minutes of the telecast. Parkes' TV pictures, however, were of superior quality, and NASA remained with Parkes for the remainder of the 2 1/2-hour telecast.Starting in late September a series of tests will be conducted, and by the end of October, Parkes should be ready to start supporting spacecraft tracking activities.After giving us Armstrong's moonwalk, commonly referred to as "the best live television show in history," the "dish" in the middle of nowhere will be ready to bring us a feast of stunning images to fill anyone's appetite.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-to-participate-in-tabletop-exercise-simulating-asteroid-impact

NASA to Participate in Tabletop Exercise Simulating Asteroid Impact

JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies will lead the hypothetical impact scenario to see how international agencies respond to an actual impact prediction.

UPDATE: 2021 Planetary Defense Conference Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Tabletop ExerciseEXERCISE ONLY– the information listed under this update summarizes details from a simulated asteroid impact exercise during the 7th International Academy of Aeronautics (IAA) Planetary Defense Conference. The fictitious asteroid, named 2021PDC, is being used solely for the purpose of this exercise. It does not exist and therefore there is no threat to Earth.The 7th IAA Planetary Defense conference kicked off on Monday, April 26, along with the simulated “tabletop” asteroid impact exercise, led by NASA JPL’sCenter for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).Exercises such as these are extremely important as they bring key members in government, the international planetary defense community, and other areas of expertise such as emergency response together to work through how a global response to a future asteroid impact threat might occur. During the exercise, participants received daily updates, simulating the continued observation and collection of data over time, revealing more information about the asteroid’s size and expected impact region on Earth. A quick summary of daily exercise updates is below, and further information – including daily fact sheets and briefing materials – may be found on the CNEOS asteroid impact exercise page:https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21/Day 1 Summary (April 26):The exercise begins with the “discovery” of a fictious asteroid on April 19, 2021, by the Pan-STARRS near-Earth object survey project, operated by the University of Hawaii forNASA’s Planetary Defense Program. Confirmed and named “2021PDC,” an obvious fictitious name by the Minor Planet Center, the simulated asteroid is estimated to be 35 million miles (57 million kilometers) from Earth at that time, and orbit calculations have determined it to have a 5% (1 in 20 chance) of impacting Earth on or around Oct. 20, 2021, six months from its discovery date.For more detailed information on Day 1’s developments, visit:https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21/day1.htmlDay 2 Summary (April 27):Day two of the exercise hypothetically fast forwards to May 2, 2021, where astronomers have spent the previous week working to refine 2021PDC’s orbit and impact probability. Newly processed archival image data collected by the Pan-STARRS asteroid survey back in 2014 reveal 2021PDC could be seen in images seven years prior to discovery, during its previous close approach to Earth, and astronomers have used this data in tandem with recent observations to reduce orbit uncertainties and conclude the simulated asteroid now has a 100% certainty of hitting Earth in Europe or northern Africa. Over the next several months, the region of the fictitious asteroid’s impact is expected to shrink significantly in size as new observation data continue to refine the asteroid’s orbit. However, the size of 2021PDC – and subsequently, any effects that would result from its impact – remain highly uncertain and will not be well known until the asteroid is closer to Earth and able to be analyzed using radar. Hypothetical options for how to prevent 2021PDC impacting Earth are discussed. Space mission designers tried to envision what might be done to attempt to disrupt the asteroid before it impacts, but concluded the short amount of time before impact (less than 6 months) did not allow a credible space mission to be undertaken, given the current state of technology.For more detailed information on Day 2’s developments, visit:https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21/day2.htmlDay 3 of Exercise (April 28):Day three begins on June 30, 2021 – International Asteroid Day – which is less than four months prior to fictitious asteroid 2021PDC’s simulated impact. Using the world’s largest telescopes, astronomers around the globe have continued to track 2021PDC every night to continually refine the asteroid’s orbit and significantly narrow its expected impact region to fall within Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. The specific size of asteroid 2021PDC is still uncertain, but new space-based infrared measurements simulated by NASA’s NEOWISE satellite have helped constrain the largest possible size for 2021PDC as 1600ft (500 m), and the smallest possible size as 100 feet (35 meters). As more information is ascertained by incoming data, risk and damage assessment analyses increase in frequency to help inform emergency response and evacuation planning for regions affected by the simulated asteroid’s region of impact effects.For more detailed information on Day 3’s developments, visit:https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21/day3.htmlDay 4 of Exercise (April 29):The final day of the hypothetical asteroid impact exercise occurs on Oct.14, 2021, just six days before 2021PDC’s simulated impact. 2021PDC is an estimated 3.9 million miles (6.3 million km) from Earth, which is close enough for Goldstone Solar System Radar to detect and analyze 2021PDC and significantly refine the asteroid’s size and physical characteristics. This determined the asteroid is much smaller than previously thought, thus reducing the expected region of damage from the impact. At this point, astronomers have been able to narrow the impact region to be centered near the border of Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria, and have determined the asteroid has a 99% probability of impacting within this region. Further disaster response discussions occur to help ensure affected regions are safely evacuated ahead of the simulated impact.For more detailed information on Day 4’s developments, visit:https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21/final.htmlPosted on April 21, 2021:During the week of April 26, members ofNASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO)will participate in a “tabletop exercise” to simulate an asteroid impact scenario. The exercise depicting this fictional event is being led byNASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), allowing NASA’s PDCO and other U.S. agencies and space science institutions, along with international space agencies and partners, to use the fictitious scenario to investigate how near-Earth object (NEO) observers, space agency officials, emergency managers, decision makers, and citizens might respond and work together to an actual impact prediction and simulate the evolving information that becomes available in the event an asteroid impact threat is discovered.The fictitious impact scenario will occur during the7th IAA Planetary Defense Conference, hosted by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), and will evolve over the five days of the conference, starting Monday, April 26. At several points in the conference program, leaders of the exercise will brief participants on the latest status of the fictitious scenario and solicit feedback for next steps based on the simulated data that is “discovered” each day. These type of exercises are specifically identified as part of theNational Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plandeveloped over a three-year period and published by the White House in June 2018.Your browser cannot play the provided video file(s).The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured a large fireball — or extremely bright and visible meteor (or meteoroid) — over the Bering Sea on Dec. 18, 2018. The fireball's explosion unleashed 49 kilotons of energy. The image shows the path the meteoroid traveled and its point of explosion (lower right).Full Image DetailsCredit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL-Caltech, MISR Team“Each time we participate in an exercise of this nature, we learn more about who the key players are in a disaster event, and who needs to know what information, and when,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer. “These exercises ultimately help the planetary defense community communicate with each other and with our governments to ensure we are all coordinated should a potential impact threat be identified in the future.”So far, NASA has participated in seven impact scenarios – four at previous Planetary Defense Conferences (2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019) and three in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The joint NASA-FEMA exercises included representatives of several other federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense and State.“Hypothetical asteroid impact exercises provide opportunities for us to think about how we would respond in the event that a sizeable asteroid is found to have a significant chance of impacting our planet,” said Dr. Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS. “Details of the scenario – such as the probability of the asteroid impact, where and when the impact might occur – are released to participants in a series of steps over the days of the conference to simulate how a real situation might evolve.”The fictional scenario kicks off on April 26, when astronomers “discover” a potentially hazardous NEO considered a risk to Earth. Details about the imaginary asteroid’s threat to our planet will evolve over the days of the conference, and exercise participants will discuss potential preparations for asteroid reconnaissance and deflection missions and planning for mitigation of a potential impact’s effects. But it is a real parameter that the international community has decided that a 1 in 100 chance of impact is the threshold to begin response actions.The Planetary Defense Conference and its exercise serve as precursors to the launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which is the first-ever actual demonstration of an asteroid deflection technology, and the first test mission of the agency’s Planetary Defense program. DART is scheduled to launch later this year and will impact the asteroid Dimorphos in Fall 2022 to change its orbit in space, which could be a key technique for mitigating a potentially hazardous asteroid that is on a collision path with Earth, should one be discovered in the future. Through an international observation campaign, follow-up observations of Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes will monitor the orbit of Dimorphos and measure the change in time it takes the asteroid to orbit its larger companion, Didymos, due to DART’s impact.“DART will be the first test for planetary defense, and the data returned after it impacts Dimorphos will help scientists better understand one way we might mitigate a potentially hazardous NEO discovered in the future,” said Andrea Riley, program executive for DART at NASA Headquarters. “While the asteroid DART impacts poses no threat to Earth, it is in a perfect location for us to perform this test of the technology before it may actually be needed.”Starting April 26, this page will be updated during the week with quick snapshots that capture the results from each step of the exercise. More information on the exercise, including a “fact sheet” of updated findings, will be available on the exercise page on the2021 PDC Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenariopage.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-media-telecon-on-probes-moon-orbit-insertion

NASA Media Telecon on Probes' Moon Orbit Insertion

NASA will hold a media telecon at 11 a.m. PST on Dec. 28, to preview twin spacecraft being placed in orbit around the moon for the New Year.

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) on Wednesday, Dec. 28, to preview twin spacecraft being placed in orbit around the moon on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.NASA's twin lunar Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) probes were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 10, 2011. GRAIL-A is scheduled to arrive in lunar orbit beginning at 1:21 p.m. PST (4:21 p.m. EST) on Saturday, Dec. 31, and GRAIL-B on Sunday, Jan. 1, beginning at 2:05 p.m. PST (5:05 p.m. EST). After confirmation they are in orbit and operating nominally, the two solar-powered spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits to answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.Participants are:- Maria Zuber, principal investigator, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge- David Lehman, project manager, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.Audio of the teleconference will be streamed at:http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.Supporting images will be available 15 minutes prior to the telecon at:http://1.usa.gov/grailnewsNASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.For more information about GRAIL visit:http://www.nasa.gov/grail.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-smap-may-clarify-link-from-wet-soil-to-weather

NASA's SMAP May Clarify Link from Wet Soil to Weather

Weather -- rain, heat and wind -- affects the moisture in soil that allows plants to grow. How does soil moisture influence weather in return?

Anyone who spends time outdoors knows that weather influences soil moisture -- the moisture locked in soils that allows plants to grow -- through temperature, wind and, of course, rain and snowfall. But in our complex, interlocking Earth system, there are almost no one-way streets. How does soil moisture influence weather in return?NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) instrument may help answer that question. Scheduled for launch on January 29, 2015, SMAP was built and will be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.Scientist Randy Koster of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, has found specific regions of the globe where soil moisture appears to be especially influential on local weather. These "hot spots," as Koster calls them, encompass only about 10 percent of Earth's land surface. However, they include three important agricultural areas: the U.S. Midwest, northern India and the African Sahel.Koster and his colleagues found the hot spots during a study of 12 global climate models that focused on how the models' land processes affected rainfall and temperature. They devised an experiment to isolate how much of the natural variation in rainfall and temperature around the globe is due to variations in soil moisture.In Koster's experiment -- part of the Global Land-Atmosphere Coupling Experiment (GLACE) -- 12 climate forecasting centers each ran two sets of 16 simulations. The only difference between the two sets had to do with soil moisture: in one set the soil moisture varied between simulations, and in the other set it did not. "It was a very simple experiment, but very telling for this problem," Koster said."In places we call hot spots, soil moisture has -- in the models at least -- a significant impact on these variables. Some evidence for this behavior can be seen in observations."Koster said that in a follow-up study, "We were able to show that when you set the soil moisture value correctly at the beginning of the modeling process, you are able to improve your forecast of temperature and precipitation out a month or two -- not by much, but the improvements do look real." For seasonal forecasting, a field that is far from mature, even a small improvement is an important step forward.For those looking further into the future than the next growing season, "SMAP's remotely sensed soil moisture can also be used with atmospheric models to improve predictions of longer-term climate impacts," said Eni Njoku of JPL, a senior research scientist with the SMAP mission.Soil moisture affects the atmosphere mostly through evaporation. You cool down when you step out of the shower because your body loses heat energy evaporating the water on your skin. In the same way, "Much of the solar energy received at Earth's surface is used to evaporate water and cool the surface," said Njoku. "That's why soil moisture is a key variable in how the land and atmosphere work together to create our climate and weather."Many factors affect evaporation, such as wind speed, soil type and cloudiness. Koster's study found that the factor that creates a hot spot is the local climate. Desert climates are so dry that there's rarely enough evaporation to matter. In wet climates there is a lot of evaporation, but it is regulated by things other than soil moisture. The hot spots where soil moisture does make a difference occur in climates that are neither too wet nor too dry.Getting a better understanding of these hot spots and how they affect weather and climate will be a lengthy process. One important requirement is better soil-moisture data so that theories can be tested against reality and so that models used to forecast rainfall and temperature can have better data to work with. That's where SMAP comes in. SMAP data will allow scientists to make the most accurate and highest-resolution maps of soil moisture ever obtained, covering the land surface worldwide every two to three days.Koster is looking forward to the SMAP data, which will help him and other climate modelers hone their assumptions of how processes on land are affecting the atmosphere. This is especially true of parts of the world where surface observations are spotty or nonexistent. "For example, SMAP will improve our soil moisture measurements in the United States, but they'll improve measurements in the Sahel substantially more," Koster explained."Capturing land-surface processes realistically is very important. Measurements from SMAP will provide us with invaluable information for forecasts."More information about SMAP is available at:http://www.nasa.gov/smapThe California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages JPL for NASA.NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.For more information about NASA's Earth science activities this year, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow