Showing posts with label nasa images. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nasa images. Show all posts

Monday, July 21, 2014

Thinking Inside the Box, Launching into Space

Thinking Inside the Box, Launching into Space:

NASA CubeSats Heading into Orbit
The NROL-39 GEMSat mission lifted off from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on Dec. 5, 2013, aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The mission includes two NASA Earth-orbiting cube satellites ("CubeSats") led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.: the Intelligent Payload Experiment (IPEX) and M-Cubed/COVE. Image credit: P. Corkery/ULA

› Larger image

December 06, 2013

Two tiny, cube-shaped research satellites hitched a ride to Earth orbit to validate new hardware and software technologies for future NASA Earth-observing instruments.


The cube satellites, or "CubeSats," which typically have a volume of exactly 33.814 ounces (1 liter), were launched on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 11:14 p.m. PST last night (Dec. 5) from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base as part of the NROL-39 GEMSat mission. Led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and developed with university and industry partners, these two CubeSats will help enable near-real-time processing capabilities relevant to future climate science measurements.


One of the CubeSats that launched was developed in collaboration with California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and is called the Intelligent Payload Experiment, or IPEX. It enables imagery to be transmitted more rapidly from satellite missions back to Earth. By using new software and algorithms, the spacecraft can sift through the data, looking only for the most important images that the scientists urgently need on the ground. This method is designed to speed delivery time of critical data products from days to minutes.


"IPEX will demonstrate software that will enable future NASA missions to recognize science events such as flooding, volcanism and wildfires, and respond by sending alerts and autonomously acquiring follow-up imagery," said Steve Chien of JPL, principal investigator for the IPEX mission.


The other CubeSat launched is the Michigan Multipurpose Mini-satellite/CubeSat On-board processing Validation Experiment, or M-Cubed/COVE.


M-Cubed, developed in partnership with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will image Earth. The COVE payload will use these data to validate an instrument image data processing algorithm that will greatly reduce the science data transmission rate required for on-orbit operations.


"The COVE payload will advance processor and algorithm technology designed for use in a future science instrument to characterize properties of aerosols and clouds, which will help our understanding of global climate change," said Paula Pingree of JPL, principal investigator of the MCubed/COVE-2 mission.


These technology validation missions are sponsored by NASA's Earth Science Technology Office. They are designed to satisfy their science objectives within six months, but will remain in Earth orbit for many years.


The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
For additional information on NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative program, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/nXOuPI .

David Israel 818-354-4797

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

david.israel@jpl.nasa.gov


Joshua Buck 202-358-1100

NASA Headquarters, Washington

jbuck@nasa.gov


2013-353
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NASA Highlights Mars, Earth and Other Science at AGU Event

NASA Highlights Mars, Earth and Other Science at AGU Event:

An artist's concept of a solar-system montage featuring the eight planets, a comet and an asteroid.
An artist's concept of a solar-system montage featuring the eight planets, a comet and an asteroid. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


December 06, 2013

NASA researchers, including some from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will present new findings on a wide range of Earth and space science topics next week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).


The meeting will take place Dec. 9 to 13 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.


Some news conference will be available via live streaming at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2, as follows:


Monday, 9 a.m. PSTCuriosity Rover Update

Monday, 10:30 a.m. PST Mapping Snowpack from the Sky

Tuesday, 9 a.m. PST Improving Natural Hazard Warnings

Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. PST News from Juno's Earth Flyby

Tuesday, 11:30 a.m. PST Dynamic Mars Over Time

Thursday, 11:30 a.m. PST New Results from Cassini Mission to Saturn


The briefings will not be carried on NASA Television.


After the Curiosity briefing on Dec. 9 hosted by AGU, a NASA media teleconference will be held at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) to discuss the new results from the Radiation Assessment Detector on Curiosity. Audio will be streamed live on NASA's website at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio .
NASA's media briefings during the meeting will feature topics such as the latest discoveries from Mars. Saturn's moon Titan, prospects for the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, Comet ISON, and close-up views of the sun from a NASA spacecraft launched this year.


For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

jccook@jpl.nasa.gov


Steve Cole 202-358-0918

NASA Headquarters, Washington

stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov


2013-352
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NASA Snow Mapper Reaps Big Benefits for California

NASA Snow Mapper Reaps Big Benefits for California:

Spatial distribution of snow water equivalent across the Tuolumne River Basin
Spatial distribution of snow water equivalent across the Tuolumne River Basin from April 10 to June 1, 2013 as measured by NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


December 09, 2013

Unprecedented snowpack maps from NASA's prototype Airborne Snow Observatory mission helped water managers for 2.6 million residents of the San Francisco Bay Area achieve near-perfect water operations this summer, despite the driest year in California's recorded history.


The high-resolution NASA snow maps of the Tuolumne River Basin in the Sierra Nevada helped optimize reservoir filling and hydroelectric generation at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir and its O'Shaughnessy Dam. This resulted in a full reservoir at the end of the snowmelt season, no water spillage, and generation of more than $3.9 million in hydropower. The NASA data helped optimize operations during the last two critical weeks of runoff.


At a media briefing today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, scientists from NASA; the University of Washington, Seattle; and McGurk Hydrologic Associates, Orinda, Calif., discussed the observatory's first year of operations in California and the Uncompahgre watershed in Colorado's Upper Colorado River Basin. The three-year demonstration mission is a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the California Department of Water Resources in Sacramento.


"For the first time, Airborne Snow Observatory data are telling us the total water in the snowpack in the watershed and the absorption of sunlight that control its melt speed, enabling us to estimate how much water will flow out of a basin when the snow melts," said Tom Painter, observatory principal investigator at JPL. "By combining near-real-time information on the total amount of water in the snowpack with observations of water inflow to Hetch Hetchy reservoir between April and July, we were able to greatly improve the model we developed to predict inflow into the reservoir."


Painter said this helped reservoir managers more efficiently allocate water inflow between power generation, water supplies and ecological purposes.


He noted that the improved snowpack measurements and more efficient reservoir operations are vital in the face of continued climate change, larger weather uncertainties, California's continuing severe drought and increasing demand for water.


Flying aboard a Twin Otter aircraft, the Airborne Snow Observatory measures two properties most critical to understanding snowmelt runoff and timing: snow depth and snow reflectivity. By combining snow depth with estimated density, snow water equivalent -- the amount of water in the snow -- is derived and used to calculate the amount of water that will run off. Snow reflectivity, or albedo, is the fraction of the incoming amount of sunlight reflected by snow. Subtracting reflected sunlight from incoming sunlight gives the absorbed sunlight, which largely controls the speed of snowmelt and timing of its runoff.


Before now, Tuolumne River Basin runoff forecasts could only be made using monthly manual ground snow surveys and daily automated measurement devices called snow pillows at sparsely located sites in lower to middle elevations. As those sites melt free of snow in early spring, an unknown amount of snow remains at higher elevations. The total area of the basin measured at all of these survey sites is only about 270 square feet (25 square meters). The observatory measured all the snow in the basin over an area 46 million times larger: 460 square miles (1,140 square kilometers).


The observatory mapped the basin weekly from early April through early June. Over 65 days, it measured the decline in water volume as the Hetch Hetchy basin snowpack melted, shrinking from 218.1 thousand acre-feet (71.06 billion gallons) to 15.2 thousand acre-feet (4.94 billion gallons). An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land to a depth of one foot, or 325,851 gallons. For comparison, the average family of four uses about an acre-foot per year.


Every day in summer, 290 million gallons, or 870 acre-feet, come out of Hetch Hetchy and travel 150 miles (241 kilometers) to the San Francisco Peninsula, providing all or some of the water for 2.6 million customers. When full, the 8-mile-long (13-kilometer) reservoir holds 360.4 thousand acre-feet. The reservoir's water level is typically lowered about a third of the way (about 120 feet, or 37 meters) every summer.


In early June, a modeling forecast of predicted water inflow to the reservoir that had been corrected using Airborne Snow Observatory data was used to supplement the City of San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy Water & Power managers' existing models as they topped off the reservoir. Hydrologist Bruce McGurk of McGurk Hydrologic, Orinda, Calif., provided the results from a daily forecasting model he built to use with observatory results. Without the observatory data, his model over-predicted by 32,000 acre-feet the amount of water that would flow into the reservoir. Had all that water been used to generate power, it would have drafted the reservoir down 16 feet (4.9 meters) - water supplies that would not have been available to the thirsty city this summer. "The Airborne Snow Observatory provides information on snow depth and water quantity at weekly intervals that water managers have never had before, but have always wanted," McGurk said.


Beyond its water management applications, Associate Professor Jessica Lundquist of the University of Washington, Seattle, said the observatory data are game-changing in providing useful snow information for snow hydrology, climate sciences, glaciology and ecosystem studies. "Snow controls high-elevation streamflow and ecosystems, but we've historically had to guess how much snow fell and where it was stored," Lundquist said. "With these data, we can improve how we model mountain systems and predictions of how those systems will change in time. It's pretty amazing that we can both forecast for Hetch Hetchy and also drill down to one small basin affecting a meadow and see details that match photos taken on the ground. To me, the Airborne Snow Observatory snow maps are cooler than pictures from Mars."


"The Airborne Snow Observatory is an innovative use of NASA advanced sensor research applied to one of the top challenges our nation and our planet face: freshwater management and practical water management information needs," said Brad Doorn, program manager in Applied Sciences at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The observatory is also advancing our scientific understanding of Earth processes and how we can better monitor them in the future, from both air and space."


JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. For more information on the Airborne Snow Observatory, visit: http://aso.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

Alan Buis 818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-357
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NASA's Juno Gives Starship-Like View of Earth Flyby

NASA's Juno Gives Starship-Like View of Earth Flyby:

This cosmic pirouette of Earth and our moon was captured by the Juno spacecraft as it flew by Earth on Oct. 9, 2013.
This cosmic pirouette of Earth and our moon was captured by the Juno spacecraft as it flew by Earth on Oct. 9, 2013.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Larger image | 'HI' to Juno in Morse Code


December 10, 2013

When NASA's Juno spacecraft flew past Earth on Oct. 9, 2013, it received a boost in speed of more than 8,800 mph (about 3.9 kilometers per second), which set it on course for a July 4, 2016, rendezvous with Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. One of Juno's sensors, a special kind of camera optimized to track faint stars, also had a unique view of the Earth-moon system. The result was an intriguing, low-resolution glimpse of what our world would look like to a visitor from afar.


"If Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise said, 'Take us home, Scotty,' this is what the crew would see," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio. "In the movie, you ride aboard Juno as it approaches Earth and then soars off into the blackness of space. No previous view of our world has ever captured the heavenly waltz of Earth and moon."


The Juno Earth flyby movie is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CzBlSXgzqI&feature=youtu.be . The music accompaniment is an original score by Vangelis.


The cameras that took the images for the movie are located near the pointed tip of one of the spacecraft's three solar-array arms. They are part of Juno's Magnetic Field Investigation (MAG) and are normally used to determine the orientation of the magnetic sensors. These cameras look away from the sunlit side of the solar array, so as the spacecraft approached, the system's four cameras pointed toward Earth. Earth and the moon came into view when Juno was about 600,000 miles (966,000 kilometers) away -- about three times the Earth-moon separation.


During the flyby, timing was everything. Juno was traveling about twice as fast as a typical satellite, and the spacecraft itself was spinning at 2 rpm. To assemble a movie that wouldn't make viewers dizzy, the star tracker had to capture a frame each time the camera was facing Earth at exactly the right instant. The frames were sent to Earth, where they were processed into video format.


"Everything we humans are and everything we do is represented in that view," said the star tracker's designer, John Jørgensen of the Danish Technical University, near Copenhagen.


Also during the flyby, Juno's Waves instrument, which is tasked with measuring radio and plasma waves in Jupiter's magnetosphere, recorded amateur radio signals. This was part of a public outreach effort involving ham radio operators from around the world. They were invited to say "HI" to Juno by coordinating radio transmissions that carried the same Morse-coded message. Operators from every continent, including Antarctica, participated. The results can be seen in this video clip: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/?id=1263 . A four-minute video depicting the efforts of a few of the amateur radio operators who participated in the event can be seen at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/?id=1262


"With the Earth flyby completed, Juno is now on course for arrival at Jupiter on July 4, 2016," said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.


The Juno spacecraft was launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 5, 2011. Juno's launch vehicle was capable of giving the spacecraft only enough energy to reach the asteroid belt, at which point the sun's gravity pulled it back toward the inner solar system. Mission planners designed the swing by Earth as a gravity assist to increase the spacecraft's speed relative to the sun, so that it could reach Jupiter. (The spacecraft's speed relative to Earth before and after the flyby is unchanged.)


After Juno arrives and enters into orbit around Jupiter in 2016, the spacecraft will circle the planet 33 times, from pole to pole, and use its collection of science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant's obscuring cloud cover. Scientists will learn about Jupiter's origins, internal structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.


Juno's name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief from his wife, but the goddess Juno used her special powers to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature.


NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers 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.


More information about Juno is online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu

DC Agle 818-393-9011

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

agle@jpl.nasa.gov


Steve Cole 202-358-0918

NASA Headquarters, Washington

Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov


2013-360
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Clay-Like Minerals Found on Icy Crust of Europa

Clay-Like Minerals Found on Icy Crust of Europa:

This image, using data from NASA's Galileo mission, shows the first detection of clay-like minerals on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa
This image, using data from NASA's Galileo mission, shows the first detection of clay-like minerals on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI
› Full image and caption


December 11, 2013

A new analysis of data from NASA's Galileo mission has revealed clay-type minerals at the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa that appear to have been delivered by a spectacular collision with an asteroid or comet. This is the first time such minerals have been detected on Europa's surface. The types of space rocks that deliver such minerals typically also often carry organic materials.


"Organic materials, which are important building blocks for life, are often found in comets and primitive asteroids," said Jim Shirley, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Shirley is giving a talk on this topic at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on Friday, Dec. 13. "Finding the rocky residues of this comet crash on Europa's surface may open up a new chapter in the story of the search for life on Europa," he said.


Many scientists believe Europa is the best location in our solar system to find existing life. It has a subsurface ocean in contact with rock, an icy surface that mixes with the ocean below, salts on the surface that create an energy gradient, and a source of heat (the flexing that occurs as it gets stretched and squeezed by Jupiter's gravity). Those conditions were likely in place shortly after Europa first coalesced in our solar system.


Scientists have also long thought there must be organic materials at Europa, too, though they have yet to detect them directly. One theory is that organic material could have arrived by comet or asteroid impacts, and this new finding supports that idea.


Shirley and colleagues, funded by a NASA Outer Planets Research grant, were able to see the clay-type minerals called phyllosilicates in near-infrared images from Galileo taken in 1998. Those images are low resolution by today's standards, and Shirley's group is applying a new technique for pulling a stronger signal for these materials out of the noisy picture. The phyllosilicates appear in a broken ring about 25 miles (40 kilometers) wide, which is about 75 miles (120 kilometers) away from the center of a 20-mile-diameter (30 kilometers) central crater site.


The leading explanation for this pattern is the splash back of material ejected when a comet or asteroid hits the surface at an angle of 45 degrees or more from the vertical direction. A shallow angle would allow some of the space rock's original material to fall back to the surface. A more head-on collision would likely have vaporized it or driven that space rock's materials below the surface. It is hard to see how phyllosilicates from Europa's interior could make it to the surface, due to Europa's icy crust, which scientists think may be up to 60 miles (100 kilometers) thick in some areas.


Therefore, the best explanation is that the materials came from an asteroid or comet. If the body was an asteroid, it was likely about 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) in diameter. If the body was a comet, it was likely about 5,600 feet (1,700 meters) in diameter. It would have been nearly the same size as the comet ISON before it passed around the sun a few weeks ago.


"Understanding Europa's composition is key to deciphering its history and its potential habitability," said Bob Pappalardo of JPL, the pre-project scientist for a proposed mission to Europa. "It will take a future spacecraft mission to Europa to pin down the specifics of its chemistry and the implications for this moon hosting life."


For more information about Europa, visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa/home.cfm .


JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

jccook@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-362
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Sunday, August 7, 2011

Universe_Nasa_Spazio_Google_Images



Universe_Nasa_Spazio_Google_Images  Universe Wallpaper
 
WALLPAPER

The recent mesaurements made by the scientists and engineers of the CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales) in collaboration with the JET PROPULSION LABORATORY  OF NASA,show that the universe is flat and it will continue expandind at an increasing speed.
The main cause of this expansion is believed to be the infamous dark energy,a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe and  currently accounts for 74% of the total mass-energy of the universe.
Scientist were able to examine the effects of dark energy,by studing Abel 1689 the  most massive galaxy clusters.The gravity of its trillion stars, plus dark matter, acts like a 2-million-light-year-wide “lens” in space. The gravitational lens bends and magnifies the light of galaxies far behind it,and by observing such images,the astronomists are able do determine the speed and acceleration of our universe.
The implications of such results are as infinte as the expansion of the universe itself,in fact these mesaurements  break down the sustainers of the “shrink theory” aka the ones who thought that the universe would stop expandind at a certain point and shrink back to where everything started from,the big bang.
The future of o
ur universe is not very bright either,in a few billion years it will become a cold place and all of the stars like our son will finish their nuclear fuel and put out like candles on a birthday cake.




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Friday, August 5, 2011

Voyager Spacecraft

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