Friday, July 18, 2014

NASA's Kepler Telescope Discovers First Earth-Size Planet in 'Habitable Zone'

NASA's Kepler Telescope Discovers First Earth-Size Planet in 'Habitable Zone':

Kepler-186f, the first Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone
The artistic concept of Kepler-186f is the result of scientists and artists collaborating to imagine the appearance of these distant worlds. Image credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


April 17, 2014

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.

While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth, and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.

"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."

Although the size of Kepler-186f is known, its mass and composition are not. Previous research, however, suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky.

"We know of just one planet where life exists -- Earth. When we search for life outside our solar system, we focus on finding planets with characteristics that mimic that of Earth," said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published today in the journal Science. "Finding a habitable zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward."

Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system, about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four companion planets, which orbit a star half the size and mass of our sun. The star is classified as an M dwarf, or red dwarf, a class of stars that makes up 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

"M dwarfs are the most numerous stars," said Quintana. "The first signs of other life in the galaxy may well come from planets orbiting an M dwarf."

Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130 days and receives one-third the energy from its star that Earth gets from the sun, placing it nearer the outer edge of the habitable zone. On the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its star at high noon is only as bright as our sun appears to us about an hour before sunset.

"Being in the habitable zone does not mean we know this planet is habitable. The temperature on the planet is strongly dependent on what kind of atmosphere the planet has," said Thomas Barclay, research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and co-author of the paper. "Kepler-186f can be thought of as an Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It has many properties that resemble Earth."

The four companion planets, Kepler-186b, Kepler-186c, Kepler-186d and Kepler-186e, whiz around their sun every four, seven, 13 and 22 days, respectively, making them too hot for life as we know it. These four inner planets all measure less than 1.5 times the size of Earth.

The next steps in the search for distant life include looking for true Earth-twins -- Earth-size planets orbiting within the habitable zone of a sun-like star -- and measuring their chemical compositions. The Kepler Space Telescope, which simultaneously and continuously measured the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun.

Ames is responsible for Kepler's ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

The SETI Institute is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to scientific research, education and public outreach. The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Whitney Clavin

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4673

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


Michele Johnson

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

650-604-4789

michele.johnson@nasa.gov


J.D. Harrington

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-5241

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov


Karen Randall

SETI Institute

650 960-4537

krandall@seti.org


2014-119
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NASA Celebrates Earth Day with Public Events and Online Activities

NASA Celebrates Earth Day with Public Events and Online Activities:

This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.
This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite. › Larger view


April 18, 2014

NASA will celebrate the 44th anniversary of Earth Day with a variety of live and online activities April 21-27 to engage the public in the agency's mission to better understand and protect our home planet.

This year, for the first time in more than a decade, five NASA Earth Science missions will be launched into space in the same year. These new missions will help address some of the critical challenges facing our planet today and in the future: climate change, sea level rise, access to freshwater resources, and extreme weather events. For more information about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

Earth Day in the Nation's Capital

Monday, April 21 (11 a.m. - 5 p.m. EDT) and Tuesday, April 22 (10 a.m. - 6 p.m.) -- NASA Hyperwall and Science Gallery exhibits in the main hall of Union Station at 40 Massachusetts Ave., NE. The exhibit will include activities and displays showing how NASA uses satellite technology to better understand our changing planet. NASA scientists will give a series of talks April 22 at the Hyperwall stage. For a complete listing of events, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1kIrbtX

NASA #GlobalSelfie Event

Join NASA April 22 as we encourage people all over the world to step outside and celebrate environmental awareness. Anyone, anywhere on the globe, can participate by posting a "selfie" with their local environment as a backdrop. Post your photo to Twitter, Instagram or Google+ using the hashtag #GlobalSelfie or to the event groups on Facebook and Flickr. Photos tagged #GlobalSelfie will be used to create a mosaic image of Earth. For details on how to participate, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/globalselfie/

NASA Center Activities

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.:

April 22 (8 p.m. PDT) -- Theater Arts Caltech will present a special Earth Day production of the play "Dr. Keeling's Curve," starring Mike Farrell, in the California Institute of Technology's Ramo Auditorium in Pasadena. The play tells the story of the scientist whose research on carbon dioxide provided the first early warnings about global warming. Tickets must be purchased for the play performance, but a 9:30 p.m. post-performance climate change discussion that includes JPL scientists is free of charge. More information is available at:

http://www.caltech.edu/content/mike-farrell-dr-keelings-curve

Aquarium of the Pacific 14th Annual Earth Day event, Long Beach, Calif., April 26 and 27 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PDT) -- JPL will host a booth in the main hall for this event, which focuses on Earth as an ocean planet. The event includes hands-on learning demonstrations for all ages. For more information, go to:

http://www.aquariumofpacific.org/events/info/earth_day_celebration/

Stennis Space Center, Hancock County, Miss.:

April 22 (10:30 a.m. - 3 p.m. CDT) -- Demonstrations and hands-on activities will be part of the center's Earth Week at Infinity Science Center. School groups and the general public will be able to participate in the solar beads bracelet activity, tornado in a bottle experiment, Science on a Sphere presentations, and Experimentation Station demonstrations. For more information, visit:

http://www.visitinfinity.com/

For more information about NASA's Earth science results and programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earth

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Alan Buis

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0474

Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Cole

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-0918

stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

2014-120
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JPL Cargo Launched to Space Station

JPL Cargo Launched to Space Station:

Flight Engineer Steve Swanson sent this image of the SpaceX Dragon
Flight Engineer Steve Swanson sent this image of the SpaceX Dragon grappled by Canadarm2, a robotic arm on the exterior of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
› Larger image


April 21, 2014

When the SpaceX-3 cargo resupply mission launched to the International Space Station April 18, an experiment designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., was among the cargo headed to space.

The experiment, Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), will test the potential for using a laser to transmit data to Earth from space. Instead of being broadcast on radio waves, data is packaged onto beams of laser light and pointed to a receiver station on the ground. Radio wave transmissions are limited by the speed they can transfer data, but beaming information packages with lasers can greatly increase the amount of information transmitted over the same period of time.

SpaceX-3 is NASA's third contracted resupply mission to the space station by U.S. company SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif. SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft launched atop the company's Falcon rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 3:25 p.m. EDT.

SpaceX developed its Dragon capsule, the only cargo spacecraft currently servicing the space station with the capability to return cargo back to Earth, with NASA and now successfully has completed three missions to the orbiting outpost. Expedition 39 crew members captured the SpaceX-3 Dragon using the station's robotic arm at 7:06 a.m. Sunday, April 20. The capsule is scheduled to remain attached to the station until May 18. It then will return to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. It will return samples from scientific investigations currently underway aboard the space station.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has had continuous human occupation since November 2000. In that time, it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.

For more information about the SpaceX-3 mission and the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Stephanie L. Smith

818-393-5464

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Stephanie.l.smith@jpl.nasa.gov


Joshua Buck

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1100

jbuck@nasa.gov


Susan Anderson

Johnson Space Center, Houston

281-483-5111

susan.h.anderson@nasa.gov


2014-122
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NASA's Spitzer, WISE Find Sun's Close, Cold Neighbor

NASA's Spitzer, WISE Find Sun's Close, Cold Neighbor:

Cold and Close Celestial Orb
This artist's conception shows the object named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, the coldest known brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are dim star-like bodies that lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel as stars do.
› Full image and caption


April 25, 2014

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest "brown dwarf" known -- a dim, star-like body that surprisingly is as frosty as Earth's North Pole.

Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object's distance to 7.2 light-years away, earning it the title for fourth closest system to our sun. The closest system, a trio of stars, is Alpha Centauri, at about 4 light-years away.

"It's very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close," said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, University Park. "And given its extreme temperature, it should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures."

Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight. The newfound coldest brown dwarf is named WISE J085510.83-071442.5. It has a chilly temperature between minus 54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 48 to minus 13 degrees Celsius). Previous record holders for coldest brown dwarfs, also found by WISE and Spitzer, were about room temperature.

WISE was able to spot the rare object because it surveyed the entire sky twice in infrared light, observing some areas up to three times. Cool objects like brown dwarfs can be invisible when viewed by visible-light telescopes, but their thermal glow -- even if feeble -- stands out in infrared light. In addition, the closer a body, the more it appears to move in images taken months apart. Airplanes are a good example of this effect: a closer, low-flying plane will appear to fly overhead more rapidly than a high-flying one.

"This object appeared to move really fast in the WISE data," said Luhman. "That told us it was something special."

After noticing the fast motion of WISE J085510.83-071442.5 in March of 2013, Luhman spent time analyzing additional images taken with Spitzer and the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile. Spitzer's infrared observations helped determine the frosty temperature of the brown dwarf. Combined detections from WISE and Spitzer, taken from different positions around the sun, enabled the measurement of its distance through the parallax effect. This is the same principle that explains why your finger, when held out right in front of you, appears to jump from side to side when you alternate left- and right-eye views.

"It is remarkable that even after many decades of studying the sky, we still do not have a complete inventory of the sun's nearest neighbors," said Michael Werner, the project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. JPL manages and operates Spitzer. "This exciting new result demonstrates the power of exploring the universe using new tools, such as the infrared eyes of WISE and Spitzer."

WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is estimated to be 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter. With such a low mass, it could be a gas giant similar to Jupiter that was ejected from its star system. But scientists estimate it is probably a brown dwarf rather than a planet since brown dwarfs are known to be fairly common. If so, it is one of the least massive brown dwarfs known.

In March of 2013, Luhman's analysis of the images from WISE uncovered a pair of much warmer brown dwarfs at a distance of 6.5 light years, making that system the third closest to the sun. His search for rapidly moving bodies also demonstrated that the outer solar system probably does not contain a large, undiscovered planet, which has been referred to as "Planet X" or "Nemesis."

For more information on NASA's WISE mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/wise

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Whitney Clavin

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-4673

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


J.D. Harrington

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-5241

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov


2014-127
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:18 AM 0 comments

Natural Ozone Changes Suggest Good News for Future

Natural Ozone Changes Suggest Good News for Future:

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured this photograph of Earth's atmospheric layers
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured this photograph of Earth's atmospheric layers on July 31, 2011, revealing the troposphere (orange-red) to the stratosphere and above. Earth-observing instruments in space allow scientists to better understand the chemistry and dynamics occurring within and between these layers. Credit: NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
› Full image and caption


April 25, 2014

New NASA research on natural ozone cycles suggests ozone levels in the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere probably won't be affected much by projected future strengthening of the circulating winds that transport ozone between Earth's two lowest atmospheric layers.

The finding is good news, since human and plant health are harmed by exposure to ozone near the ground. Significant increases in ozone in Earth's lowest atmospheric layer, the troposphere, would also lead to additional climate warming because ozone is a greenhouse gas.

The research, which studied the natural ups and downs in ozone in the troposphere and stratosphere, increases our ability to reliably predict future changes in ozone in Earth's troposphere. This information is useful for developing effective air quality and climate policies.

Jessica Neu, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and colleagues used NASA satellite observations to show that short-term periodic strengthening and weakening of circulating winds in Earth's stratosphere -- the layer right above the troposphere -- account for about half of the observed year-to-year changes in the amount of tropospheric ozone in Earth's northern mid-latitudes. Those are the same latitudes where North America, most of Europe and Central Asia are located. In a first-of-its-kind estimate, they calculated that a 40-percent change in the strength of stratospheric winds increases tropospheric ozone levels by an average of about two percent over Earth's northern mid-latitudes at an altitude of about 16,000 feet (5,000 meters). Results are published this month in the journal Nature Geoscience.

While a two-percent change in ozone is small, it does represent a significant natural variation in tropospheric ozone, which has large seasonal changes but only varies by about four percent from year to year at these altitudes in Earth's northern mid-latitudes. As the human contribution to ozone levels evolves due to increased development and stricter air quality controls, the relative importance of natural sources of tropospheric ozone such as the stratosphere will also shift.

Global climate models project the stratospheric circulating winds of particular interest to Neu and colleagues are expected to strengthen by about 30 percent over the coming century in response to increased greenhouse gas emissions, but the impacts on tropospheric ozone had been highly uncertain.

"If the correlations between tropospheric ozone and changing stratospheric circulation found in this study hold true in the future, the small changes in tropospheric ozone we measured show it's unlikely the projected long-term changes in stratospheric winds will have a big impact on long-term changes in tropospheric ozone in the future," said Neu.

The researchers studied changes in the well-established global wind circulation of the stratosphere. Like water in a fountain, winds in the tropics rise up, move toward Earth's poles, and then descend over middle and high latitudes. In these regions, the descending air carries ozone-rich air from the stratosphere to the troposphere.

To quantify how ozone responds to changes in wind circulation, Neu and colleagues investigated two natural phenomena known to contribute to shorter-term circulation changes: the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and the stratospheric Quasi-Biennial Oscillation. The study focused on the northern mid-latitudes because that is where most stratospheric ozone enters the troposphere.

The researchers used water vapor measurements from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on NASA's Aura satellite from 2005 to 2010 to infer wind circulation changes driven by these two natural phenomena. They compared the magnitude and timing of those changes with measurements of stratospheric and tropospheric ozone from Aura's MLS and Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instruments, respectively. JPL developed and manages both instruments.

"This sort of study is exciting because it reveals connections between the stratosphere and troposphere on timescales of a few years, with implications for connections on multi-decadal -- or longer -- timescales," said Anne Douglass, Aura project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The connections can be quantified only because the observational record from Aura instruments is long."

While the mechanisms that change wind circulation over the course of six months, such as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, are different from those that change it over the course of a century, the difference "likely doesn't matter in terms of the impact on tropospheric ozone," Neu said. "This study gives us confidence that the impact in the future will be on the same order of magnitude -- around two percent."

NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious 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

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

For more information about MLS and TES, visit: http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/index-eos-mls.php and http://tes.jpl.nasa.gov/

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Alan Buis

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0474

Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov


Kathryn Hansen

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

301-286-1046

kathryn.h.hansen@nasa.gov


2014-129
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NASA Seeks External Concepts for Mission to Oceanic Jovian Moon

NASA Seeks External Concepts for Mission to Oceanic Jovian Moon:

Europa
This image shows two views of the trailing hemisphere of Jupiter's ice-covered satellite, Europa. The left image shows the approximate natural color appearance of Europa. The image on the right is a false-color composite version combining violet, green and infrared images to enhance color differences in the predominantly water-ice crust of Europa.
› Full image and caption


April 28, 2014

NASA has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to science and engineering communities for ideas for a mission to Europa that could address fundamental questions of the enigmatic moon and the search for life beyond Earth.

The RFI's focus is for concepts for a mission to Europa that costs less than $1 billion, excluding the launch vehicle that can meet as many of the science priorities as possible recommended by the National Research Council's 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey for the study of Europa.

"This is an opportunity to hear from those creative teams that have ideas on how we can achieve the most science at minimum cost," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Europa is one of the most interesting sites in our solar system in the search for life beyond Earth. The drive to explore Europa has stimulated not only scientific interest but also the ingenuity of engineers and scientists with innovative concepts."

NASA has studied a variety of mission designs and concepts in previous years and currently is funding the development of technologies that will be needed for the science instruments for a Europa mission. Congress appropriated $80 million for this work in Fiscal Year 2014, and the Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal requests an additional $15 million.

Previous scientific findings point to the existence of a liquid water ocean located under the moon's icy crust. This ocean covers Europa entirely and contains more liquid water than all of Earth's oceans combined.

The Decadal Survey deemed a mission to the Jupiter moon as among the highest priority scientific pursuits for NASA. It lists five key science objectives in priority order that are necessary to improve our understanding of this potentially habitable moon.

The mission will need to:

• Characterize the extent of the ocean and its relation to the deeper interior

• Characterize the ice shell and any subsurface water, including their heterogeneity, and the nature of surface-ice-ocean exchange

• Determine global surface, compositions and chemistry, especially as related to habitability

• Understand the formation of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity, identify and characterize candidate sites for future detailed exploration

• Understand Europa's space environment and interaction with the magnetosphere.

Although Europa and Jupiter's other moons have been visited by other spacecraft, they were each limited to a single distant flyby of these satellites. NASA's Galileo spacecraft, launched in 1989 by the space shuttle, was the only mission to make repeated visits to Europa, passing close by the moon fewer than a dozen times.

In December 2013, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed water vapor above the moon's frigid south polar region. This provided the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface, although researchers are still working to verify the existence of these plumes.

Any mission to Europa must take into account the harsh radiation environment that would require unique protection of the spacecraft and instruments. In addition, spacecraft must meet planetary protection requirements intended to protect Europa's potentially habitable ocean. These requirements are very strict and involve ensuring that a viable Earth organism is not introduced into the Europa ocean.

The RFI is not a request for proposal or formal procurement and therefore is not a solicitation or commitment by the government. Deadline to submit the mission concepts is May 30.

To view the RFI in its entirety, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1lp693R

For more information about Europa, visit:

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/europa

Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov


2014-131
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Well-behaved, Young Galaxy Surprises Astronomers

Well-behaved, Young Galaxy Surprises Astronomers:

Smeared and Magnified Galaxy
The young galaxy SDSS090122.37+181432.3, also known as S0901, is seen here as the bright arc to the left of the central bright galaxy. Credit: NASA/STScI; S. Allam and team; and the Master Lens Database, L. A. Moustakas, K. Stewart, et al (2014)
› Full image and caption


April 29, 2014

Scientists have discovered a young galaxy acting in unexpectedly mature ways. The galaxy, called S0901, is rotating in a calm manner typical of more developed galaxies like our own spiral Milky Way.

"Usually, when astronomers examine galaxies in an early era, they find that turbulence plays a much greater role than it does in modern galaxies. But S0901 is a clear exception to that pattern," said James Rhoads of Arizona State University, Tempe.

It has taken the light from the galaxy 10 billion years to reach us across
space, so we are seeing it when it was comparatively young.


"This galaxy is the equivalent of a 10-year-old. I can tell you from watching my kids' classes that 10-year-olds like to fidget! S0901 is unusual because it's not fidgeting, and instead is very well behaved." Rhoads is lead author of the research, appearing in the May 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The discovery was made using the Herschel space observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.

"This is a truly surprising result that reminds us that we still don't understand many details of the evolution of the universe. Facilities like Herschel help us understand this complex story," said Paul Goldsmith, U.S. Herschel Project Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

When galaxies form, they accumulate mass because their gravity attracts vast, external gas clouds. As the gas clouds enter a particular galaxy, they fall into haphazard orbits. These disordered paths cause turbulence in the host galaxy, which can drive star formation.

To investigate the internal conditions of forming galaxies, Rhoads and Sangeeta Malhotra, also from Arizona State University, and colleagues targeted two young galaxies, one of them being S0901.

Using a cosmic magnifier known as a gravitational lens, the researchers got a better view of the galaxies than they would have otherwise. An instrument on Herschel, the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI), was then able to pick up the signature of ionized carbon, revealing the motion of the gas molecules in the galaxies. This motion was much smoother than anticipated in the S0901 galaxy. Results for the second galaxy hinted at a calm rotation too, but were less clear.

"Galaxies 10 billion years ago were making stars more actively than they do now," says Malhotra. "They usually also show more turbulence, likely because they are accumulating gas faster than a modern galaxy does. But here we have cases where an early galaxy combines the calm rotation of a modern one with the active star formation of their early peers."

More observations with other telescopes should help reveal if other galaxies behave in similarly grown-up ways, or if S0901 is oddly ahead of its time.

Read the news release from ESA online at:

http://sci.esa.int/herschel/53992-herschel-discovers-mature-galaxies-in-the-young-universe

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. While the observatory stopped making science observations in April 2013, after running out of liquid coolant as expected, scientists continue to analyze its data. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments, including HIFI. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at these websites:

http://www.herschel.caltech.edu

http://www.nasa.gov/herschel

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


2014-133
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California Faults Moved Quietly After Baja Quake

California Faults Moved Quietly After Baja Quake:

Superstition Hills fault movement
UAVSAR measurement, called an interferogram, of quiet movement on the Superstition Hills Fault after a 2010 Baja California earthquake, overlaid on a Google Earth image. Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS/California Geological Survey/Google
› Hi-Res image


April 30, 2014

A new NASA study finds that a major 2010 earthquake in northern Mexico triggered quiet, non-shaking motions on several Southern California faults that released as much energy as a magnitude 4.9 to 5.3 earthquake.

The quiet motion associated with the widely felt, magnitude 7.2 earthquake centered in northern Baja California in Mexico, in April 2010 was discovered in before-and-after radar images of the region made by a NASA airborne instrument that produces extremely accurate maps of Earth motions. The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR), which flies on a NASA C-20A aircraft from NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center facility in Palmdale, Calif., allows scientists to see how locations on Earth's surface change between repeat flights over the same spot.

"It's a new way of seeing the earthquake cycle," said Andrea Donnellan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who led the study, published recently in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. "If we had been relying only on seismometers, we wouldn't have known the extent to which these California faults were active." Quiet, or aseismic, movement in faults doesn't shake the ground, so it isn't recorded by seismometers, which are typically used to study earthquakes.

The 2010 El Mayor-Cucapah quake area is at the transition between spreading faults in the Gulf of California and sliding faults (called transform faults) where the Pacific and North American plates grind past each other along the West Coast. "The Earth is hot and soft there, and the plate boundary is still sorting itself out," Donnellan said. The region is scored by roughly parallel faults running northwest-southeast, which are linked by short, crosswise faults.

Donnellan's study focused on the parallel Imperial and Superstition Hills faults and the crosswise East Elmore Ranch fault. The UAVSAR measurements show that the Imperial fault slipped 1.4 inches (36 millimeters) along its entire length of 19 miles (30 kilometers). The Superstition Hills fault, about 16 miles (25.5 kilometers) long, slipped 0.6 inches (14 millimeters). The short East Elmore Ranch fault slipped 0.4 inches (9 millimeters).

In 2009, Donnellan and her colleagues chose this and two other California regions for UAVSAR observations because a JPL earthquake model targeted them as high-risk spots for a major earthquake. They also targeted the La Habra, California area, site of the recent March 28 magnitude 5.1 quake. Donnellan is following up with UAVSAR flights there as well to understand the motions related to that earthquake.

"Large, diffuse areas of slip are hard to document in the field, but they show up in UAVSAR images," she said.

These UAVSAR flights are part of a larger NASA-led effort to regularly monitor crustal deformation throughout much of California in order to better understand geologic hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and sinkholes. The UAVSAR data complement that obtained from spaceborne instruments and help NASA design more effective satellite observatories for global application.

For more information about UAVSAR, visit:

http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov

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 in 2014, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

Alan Buis 818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov


Written by Carol Rasmussen

NASA Earth Science News Team


2014-137
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:16 AM 0 comments

How Does Your Garden Glow? NASA's OCO-2 Seeks Answer

How Does Your Garden Glow? NASA's OCO-2 Seeks Answer:

Researchers who study the interaction of plants
Researchers who study the interaction of plants, carbon and climate are eagerly awaiting data from NASA's upcoming Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 mission on a nearly invisible fluorescent glow emitted from the chlorophyll contained within plants.
Credit: Shutterstock

› Larger image


May 05, 2014

Science is full of serendipity -- moments when discoveries happen by chance or accident while researchers are looking for something else. For example, penicillin was identified when a blue-green mold grew on a Petri dish that had been left open by mistake.

Now, satellite instruments have given climate researchers at NASA and other research institutions an unexpected global view from space of a nearly invisible fluorescent glow that sheds new light on the productivity of vegetation on land. Previously, global views of this glow from chlorophyll were only possible over Earth's ocean, using NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua spacecraft.

When the Japanese Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT), known as "IBUKI" in Japan, launched into orbit in 2009, its primary mission was to measure levels of carbon dioxide and methane, two major heat-trapping greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere. However, NASA researchers, in collaboration with Japanese and other international colleagues, found another treasure hidden in the data: fluorescence from chlorophyll contained within plants. Although scientists have measured fluorescence in laboratory settings and ground-based field experiments for decades, these new satellite data now provide the ability to monitor what is known as solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence on a global scale, opening up a world of potential new applications for studying vegetation on land.

A "signature" of photosynthesis, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence is an indicator of the process by which plants convert light from the sun into chemical energy. As chlorophyll molecules absorb incoming radiation, some of the light is dissipated as heat, and some radiation is re-emitted at longer wavelengths as fluorescence.

Enter NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2). Researchers who study the interaction of plants, carbon and climate are eagerly awaiting fluorescence data from the OCO-2 satellite mission, scheduled to launch in July 2014. The instrument aboard OCO-2 will make precise measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, recording 24 observations a second versus GOSAT's single observation every four seconds, resulting in almost 100 times more observations of both carbon dioxide and fluorescence than GOSAT.

"Data from OCO-2 will extend the GOSAT time series and allow us to observe large-scale changes to photosynthesis in a new way," said David Schimel, lead scientist for the Carbon and Ecosystems research program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., which manages the OCO-2 mission for NASA. "The fluorescence data may turn out to be a unique and very complementary data set of the OCO-2 mission."

"OCO-2's fluorescence data, when combined with the observatory's atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements, will increase the value of the OCO-2 mission to NASA, the United States and world," said Ralph Basilio, OCO-2 project manager at JPL.

Turning the Sun Off

Being able to see fluorescence from space allows scientists to estimate photosynthesis rates over vast scales, gleaning insights into vital processes that affect humans and other living things on Earth. "The rate of photosynthesis is critical because it's the process that drives the absorption of carbon from the atmosphere and agricultural [food] production," said Joseph Berry, a researcher in the Department of Global Ecology at Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif.

Measuring the fluorescent "glow" may sound simple, but the tiny signal is overpowered by reflected sunlight. "Imagine that you're in your child's bedroom and they have a bunch of glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling," Schimel said. "Then you turn the lights on. The stars are still glowing, but looking for that glow with the lights on is like looking for fluorescence amidst the reflected sunlight." Retrieving the fluorescence data requires disentangling sunlight that is reflected by plants from the light given off by them -- in other words, figuring out a way to "turn the sun off."

Researchers found that by tuning GOSAT's spectrometer (an instrument that can measure different parts of the spectrum of light) to look at very narrow channels, they could see parts of the spectrum where there was fluorescence but less reflected solar radiation. "It's as if you had put on a pair of glasses that filtered out the radiation in your child's room except for that glow from the stars," said Schimel.

Scientists are excited about the new measurement because it will give them better insight into how Earth's plants are taking up carbon dioxide. According to the Global Carbon Project, a non-governmental organization devoted to developing a complete picture of the carbon cycle, our burning of fossil fuels on Earth had produced nearly 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2011. This is almost 5 tons of carbon dioxide for every one of Earth's seven billion inhabitants.

About half of that carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere. The other half is dissolved in the ocean or taken up by Earth's biosphere (living organisms on land and in the ocean), where it is tucked away in carbon reservoirs or "sinks." These sinks are shielding us from the full effect of our emissions.

Plants in a High-Carbon World

"Everybody that's using fossil fuels right now is being subsidized by the biosphere," said Berry. "But one of the key unknowns is -- what's going to be happening in the long term? Is it going to continue to subsidize us?"

The future of Earth's plants depends largely on one of the carbon cycle's key ingredients: water. Plants need water to carry out photosynthesis. When their water supply runs low, such as during times of drought, photosynthesis slows down.

For the past quarter century, satellite instruments such as MODIS and the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on NOAA polar-orbiting satellites have enabled researchers to monitor plant health and productivity by measuring the amount of "greenness," which shows how much leaf material is exposed to sunlight. The drawback of using the greenness index, however, is that greenness doesn't immediately respond to stresses -- water stress for example -- that reduce photosynthesis and productivity.

"Plants can be green, but not active," said JPL research scientist Christian Frankenberg, also a member of the OCO-2 science team. "Imagine an evergreen needle-leaf forest at high elevation in winter. The trees are still green, but they're not photosynthesizing."

Solar-induced fluorescence data would tell you straight away that something had happened, explains Schimel, but greenness doesn't tell you until the plants are already drooping and maybe dead.

About 30 percent of the photosynthesis that occurs in Earth's land regions takes place in the tropical rainforest of the Amazon, which encompasses about 2.7 million square miles (7 million square kilometers) of South America. The Amazon is home to more than half of Earth's terrestrial biomass and tropical forest area -- making it one of the two most important land regions for carbon storage (the other being the Arctic, where carbon is stored in the soil).

Recent studies in the Amazon using fluorescence measurements have examined how photosynthesis rates change during wet and dry seasons. Most of the results show that during the dry season, photosynthesis slows down. According to Berry, when the air is dry and hot, it makes sense for plants to conserve water by closing their stomates (pores). "During the dry season when it would cost the plants a lot of water, photosynthesis is dialed down and the forest becomes less active," he said.

In 2005 and 2010, the Amazon basin experienced the type of droughts that historically have happened only once in a century. Greenness measurements indicated widespread die-off of trees and major changes to the forest canopy (treetops) after the droughts, but fluorescence data from GOSAT exposed even milder water stress in the dry season of normal years. "There is the potential that as climate change proceeds, these droughts will become more severe. The areas that support tropical rainforest could decrease," said Berry. Less tropical forest means less carbon absorbed from the air.

In addition, as trees decay, they release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, creating a scenario whereby the biosphere potentially becomes a source of carbon rather than a sink. "If there is a dieback of the tropical rainforest, that might add to the effect of fossil fuel carbon dioxide on climate change," said Frankenberg.

Because photosynthesis is one of the key processes involved in the carbon cycle, and because the carbon cycle plays an important role in climate, better fluorescence information could help resolve some uncertainties about the uptake of carbon dioxide by plants in climate models. "We think fluorescence is going to help carbon cycle models get the right answer," said Berry. "If you don't have the models right, how can you get the rest of it right?"

"We really don't understand the quantitative relationship between climate and photosynthesis very well, because we've only been able to study it at very small scales," said Schimel. "Measuring plant fluorescence from space may be an important addition to the set of techniques available to us."

Written by Laurie J. Schmidt


Alan Buis 818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov


2014-141
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:14 AM 0 comments

NASA Delivers New Insight into Star Cluster Formation

NASA Delivers New Insight into Star Cluster Formation:

The Flame Nebula
Stars are often born in clusters, in giant clouds of gas and dust.
› Full image and caption


May 07, 2014

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes, astronomers have made an important advance in the understanding of how clusters of stars come into being.

The data show early notions of how star clusters are formed cannot be correct. The simplest idea is stars form into clusters when a giant cloud of gas and dust condenses. The center of the cloud pulls in material from its surroundings until it becomes dense enough to trigger star formation. This process occurs in the center of the cloud first, implying that the stars in the middle of the cluster form first and, therefore, are the oldest.

However, the latest data from Chandra suggest something else is happening. Researchers studied two clusters where sun-like stars currently are forming - NGC 2024, located in the center of the Flame Nebula, and the Orion Nebula Cluster. From this study, they discovered the stars on the outskirts of the clusters actually are the oldest.

"Our findings are counterintuitive," said Konstantin Getman of Penn State University, University Park, who led the study. "It means we need to think harder and come up with more ideas of how stars like our sun are formed."

Getman and his colleagues developed a new two-step approach that led to this discovery. First, they used Chandra data on the brightness of the stars in X-rays to determine their masses. Then they determined how bright these stars were in infrared light using ground-based telescopes and data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. By combining this information with theoretical models, the ages of the stars throughout the two clusters were estimated.

The results were contrary to what the basic model predicted. At the center of NGC 2024, the stars were about 200,000 years old, while those on the outskirts were about 1.5 million years in age. In the Orion Nebula, star ages ranged from 1.2 million years in the middle of the cluster to almost 2 million years near the edges.

"A key conclusion from our study is we can reject the basic model where clusters form from the inside out," said co-author Eric Feigelson, also of Penn State. "So we need to consider more complex models that are now emerging from star formation studies."

Explanations for the new findings can be grouped into three broad notions. The first is star formation continues to occur in the inner regions because the gas in the inner regions of a star-forming cloud is denser -- contains more material from which to build stars -- than the more diffuse outer regions. Over time, if the density falls below a threshold where it can no longer collapse to form stars, star formation will cease in the outer regions, whereas stars will continue to form in the inner regions, leading to a concentration of younger stars there.

Another idea is that old stars have had more time to drift away from the center of the cluster, or be kicked outward by interactions with other stars. One final notion is that the observations could be explained if young stars are formed in massive filaments of gas that fall toward the center of the cluster.

Previous studies of the Orion Nebula Cluster revealed hints of this reversed age spread, but these earlier efforts were based on limited or biased star samples. This latest research provides the first evidence of such age differences in the Flame Nebula.

"The next steps will be to see if we find this same age range in other young clusters," said Penn State graduate student Michael Kuhn, who also worked on the study.

These results will be published in two separate papers in The Astrophysical Journal and are available online. They are part of the MYStIX (Massive Young Star-Forming Complex Study in Infrared and X-ray) project led by Penn State astronomers.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

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 in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colo. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech.

For an additional interactive image, podcast, and video on the finding, visit:

http://chandra.si.edu

For Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

For more information on NASA's Spitzer mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer and

http://spitzer.caltech.edu

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Janet Anderson
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-6162
janet.l.anderson@nasa.gov

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
2014-144
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:13 AM 0 comments

Planck Takes Magnetic Fingerprint of Our Galaxy

Planck Takes Magnetic Fingerprint of Our Galaxy:

Magnetic field of our Milky Way galaxy
The magnetic field of our Milky Way galaxy as seen by the Planck satellite, a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA contributions. This image was compiled from the first all-sky observations of polarized light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way.
› Full image and caption


May 06, 2014

A new image from the Planck space telescope reveals the magnetic field lines of our Milky Way galaxy. The fingerprint-like map allows astronomers to study the structure of the magnetic field and better understand the process of star formation.

The image, compiled from the first all-sky observations of polarized light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way, is available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18048

Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA contributions. Though the mission stopped collecting data in 2013, scientists are still analyzing its huge data sets for more clues to the history of our universe.

In particular, they are looking at polarized light, both from the early universe and from dust in our galaxy as shown in the new map. (Results from the early universe are scheduled to come out later this year.)

"This is the best picture we've ever had of the magnetic field in the Milky Way over such a large part of the sky," said Charles Lawrence, the U.S. Planck project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Light can be described as a wave of electric and magnetic fields that vibrate in directions at right angles to each other and to their direction of travel. Usually, these fields can vibrate at all orientations. However, if they happen to vibrate preferentially in certain directions, the light is "polarized." This can happen, for example, when light bounces off a reflective surface like a mirror or the sea. Special filters can be used to absorb this polarized light, which is how polarized sunglasses eliminate glare.

In space, the light emitted by stars, gas and dust can also be polarized in various ways that depend on magnetic fields. Consequently, the swirls, loops and arcs in this new image trace the structure of the magnetic field in our home galaxy. Darker regions correspond to stronger polarized emission, and the striations indicate the direction of the magnetic field projected on the plane of the sky. The Planck image shows that there is large-scale organization in some parts of the galactic magnetic field.

The dark band running horizontally across the center corresponds to the galactic plane. The data also reveal variations of the polarization direction within nearby clouds of gas and dust. This can be seen in the tangled features above and below the plane, where the local magnetic field is particularly disorganized.

Planck's galactic polarization data are analyzed in a series of four papers just submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Read the full story from the European Space Agency at: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck/Planck_takes_magnetic_fingerprint_of_our_Galaxy

Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA's Planck Project Office is based at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck's science instruments. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

More information is online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/planck

http://www.esa.int/planck

http://planck.caltech.edu

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


2014-143
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:12 AM 0 comments

Rosetta's Target Comet is Becoming Active

Rosetta's Target Comet is Becoming Active:

Sequence of images shows comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
This sequence of images shows comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko moving against the background star field. Image Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS
› Full image and caption


May 15, 2014

The target of ESA's Rosetta mission has started to reveal its true personality as a comet, its dusty veil clearly developing over the past six weeks.

A new sequence of images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was taken between March 24 and May 4, as the gap between craft and comet closed from around 3.1 million miles (5 million kilometers) to 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers). By the end of the sequence, the comet's coma extends about 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) into space. By comparison, the nucleus is roughly only 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across, and cannot yet be 'resolved.'

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's coma has developed as a result of the comet moving progressively closer to the sun along its 6.5-year orbit. Even though it is still more than 373 million miles (600 million kilometers) from the sun - four times the distance between Earth and sun - its surface has already started to warm, causing its surface ices to sublimate and gas to escape from its rock-ice nucleus.

The escaping gas also carries a cloud of tiny dust particles out into space, which slowly expands to create the coma. As the comet continues to move closer to the sun, the warming continues and activity rises, and pressure from the solar wind will eventually cause some of the material to stream out into a long tail.

The Optical, Spectrocopic and Infrared Remote Imaging System (OSIRIS), and the spacecraft's dedicated navigation cameras, have been regularly acquiring images to help determine Rosetta's exact trajectory relative to the comet. Using this information, the spacecraft has already started a series of maneuvers that will slowly bring it in line with the comet before making its rendezvous in the first week of August. Detailed scientific observations will then help to find the best location on the comet for the spacecraft's Philae lander to descend to the surface in November.

Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the epoch when the sun and its planets formed. By studying the gas, dust and structure of the nucleus and organic materials associated with the comet, via both remote and in-situ observations, the Rosetta mission should become a key to unlocking the history and evolution of our solar system, as well as answering questions regarding the origin of Earth's water and perhaps even life. Rosetta will be the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the sun, and deploy a lander.

ESA member states and NASA contributed to the Rosetta mission. Airbus Defense and Space built the Rosetta spacecraft. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the U.S. contribution of the Rosetta mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For information on the U.S. instruments on Rosetta, visit:

http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov

More information about Rosetta, visit:

http://www.esa.int/rosetta

DC Agle

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

818-393-9011

agle@jpl.nasa.gov


Markus Bauer

European Space Agency, Noordwijk, Netherlands

+31 71 565 6799

markus.bauer@esa.int


2014-150
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:11 AM 0 comments

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is Smaller Than Ever Measured

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is Smaller Than Ever Measured:

Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot
Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot -- a swirling storm feature larger than Earth -- has shrunken to its smallest size ever measured. Astronomers have followed this downsizing since the 1930s.

This series of images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope documents the storm over time, beginning in 1995 with a view from the telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) when the long axis of the Great Red Spot was estimated to be 13,020 miles (20,950 kilometers) across. This camera was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and corrected the telescope's initial blurry vision. In a 2009 photo, after WFPC2 had been replaced by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), the storm was measured at 11,130 miles (17,910 kilometers) across.
› Larger view


May 15, 2014

Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot -- a swirling storm feature larger than Earth -- has shrunk to its smallest size ever measured.

According to Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope observations confirm the Great Red Spot now is approximately 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) across. Astronomers have followed this downsizing since the 1930s.

Historic observations as far back as the late 1800s gauged the Great Red Spot to be as big as 25,500 miles (41,000 kilometers) on its long axis. NASA's Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flybys of Jupiter in 1979 measured the storm to be 14,500 miles (23,300 kilometers) across.

In the comparison images, one Hubble photo was taken in 1995 by the Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) when the long axis of the Great Red Spot was estimated to be 13,020 miles (20,950 kilometers) across. This camera was developed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and corrected the telescope's initial blurry vision. In a 2009 photo, after WFPC2 had been replaced by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), the storm was measured at 11,130 miles (17,910 kilometers) across.

Beginning in 2012, amateur observations revealed a noticeable increase in the rate at which the spot is shrinking -- by 580 miles (930 kilometers) per year -- changing its shape from an oval to a circle.

"In our new observations it is apparent that very small eddies are feeding into the storm," said Simon. "We hypothesized that these may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the internal dynamics and energy of the Great Red Spot."

Simon's team plans to study the motions of the small eddies and also the internal dynamics of the storm to determine whether these eddies can feed or sap momentum entering the upwelling vortex, resulting in this yet unexplained shrinkage.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington.

For more information about the WFPC2, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/1kyiuSL

For more information about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, visit these sites:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

http://hubblesite.org/

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 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 these sites:

http://www.nasa.gov/voyager

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:10 AM 0 comments

Construction to Begin on 2016 NASA Mars Lander

Construction to Begin on 2016 NASA Mars Lander:

Artist rendition of the proposed InSight (Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations)
This artist's concept depicts the stationary NASA Mars lander known by the acronym InSight at work studying the interior of Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


May 19, 2014

NASA and its international partners now have the go-ahead to begin construction on a new Mars lander, after it completed a successful Mission Critical Design Review on Friday.

NASA's Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission will pierce beneath the Martian surface to study its interior. The mission will investigate how Earth-like planets formed and developed their layered inner structure of core, mantle and crust, and will collect information about those interior zones using instruments never before used on Mars.

InSight will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, on the central California coast near Lompoc, in March 2016. This will be the first interplanetary mission ever to launch from California. The mission will help inform the agency's goal of sending a human mission to Mars in the 2030s.

InSight team leaders presented mission design results last week to a NASA review board, which then gave approval for advancing to the next stage of preparation.

"Our partners across the globe have made significant progress in getting to this point and are fully prepared to deliver their hardware to system integration starting this November, which is the next major milestone for the project," said Tom Hoffman, InSight project manager of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "We now move from doing the design and analysis to building and testing the hardware and software that will get us to Mars and collect the science that we need to achieve mission success."

To investigate the planet's interior, the stationary lander will carry a robotic arm that will deploy surface and burrowing instruments contributed by France and Germany. The national space agencies of France and Germany -- Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) -- are partnering with NASA by providing InSight's two main science instruments.

The Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) will be built by CNES in partnership with DLR and the space agencies of Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It will measure waves of ground motion carried through the interior of the planet, from "marsquakes" and meteor impacts. The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, from DLR, will measure heat coming toward the surface from the planet's interior.

"Mars actually offers an advantage over Earth itself for understanding how habitable planetary surfaces can form," said Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator from JPL. "Both planets underwent the same early processes. But Mars, being smaller, cooled faster and became less active while Earth kept churning. So Mars better preserves the evidence about the early stages of rocky planets' development."

The three-legged lander will go to a site near the Martian equator and provide information for a planned mission length of 720 days -- about two years. InSight adapts a design from the successful NASA Phoenix Mars Lander, which examined ice and soil on far-northern Mars in 2008.

"We will incorporate many features from our Phoenix spacecraft into InSight, but the differences between the missions require some differences in the InSight spacecraft," said InSight Program Manager Stu Spath of Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Denver. "For example, the InSight mission duration is 630 days longer than Phoenix, which means the lander will have to endure a wider range of environmental conditions on the surface."

Guided by images of the surroundings taken by the lander, InSight's robotic arm will place the seismometer on the surface and then place a protective covering over it to minimize effects of wind and temperature on the sensitive instrument. The arm will also put the heat-flow probe in position to hammer itself into the ground to a depth of 3 to 5 yards, or meters.

Another experiment will use the radio link between InSight and NASA's Deep Space Network antennas on Earth to precisely measure a wobble in Mars' rotation that could reveal whether Mars has a molten or solid core. Wind and temperature sensors from Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia and a pressure sensor will monitor weather at the landing site, and a magnetometer will measure magnetic disturbances caused by the Martian ionosphere.

InSight's international science team is made up of researchers from Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. JPL manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program of competitively selected missions. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Discovery Program. Lockheed Martin will build the lander and other parts of the spacecraft at its Littleton, Colorado, facility near Denver.

For more about InSight, visit:

http://insight.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information about Mars missions:

http://www.nasa.gov/mars

For more about the Discovery Program, visit:

http://discovery.nasa.gov

Guy Webster

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-6278

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov


Dwayne Brown

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov


Gary Napier

Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver

303-971-4012

gary.p.napier@lmco.com


2014-156
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 8:10 AM 0 comments
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