Sunday, July 20, 2014

NASA Space Assets Detect Ocean inside Saturn Moon

NASA Space Assets Detect Ocean inside Saturn Moon:

Ocean Inside Saturn's Moon Enceladus
Gravity measurements by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network suggest that Saturn's moon Enceladus, which has jets of water vapor and ice gushing from its south pole, also harbors a large interior ocean beneath an ice shell, as this illustration depicts. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


April 03, 2014

NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network have uncovered evidence Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a large underground ocean of liquid water, furthering scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes.

Researchers theorized the presence of an interior reservoir of water in 2005 when Cassini discovered water vapor and ice spewing from vents near the moon's south pole. The new data provide the first geophysical measurements of the internal structure of Enceladus, consistent with the existence of a hidden ocean inside the moon. Findings from the gravity measurements are in the Friday, April 4 edition of the journal Science.

"The way we deduce gravity variations is a concept in physics called the Doppler Effect, the same principle used with a speed-measuring radar gun," said Sami Asmar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., a coauthor of the paper. "As the spacecraft flies by Enceladus, its velocity is perturbed by an amount that depends on variations in the gravity field that we're trying to measure. We see the change in velocity as a change in radio frequency, received at our ground stations here all the way across the solar system."

The gravity measurements suggest a large, possibly regional, ocean about 6 miles (10 kilometers) deep, beneath an ice shell about 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) thick. The subsurface ocean evidence supports the inclusion of Enceladus among the most likely places in our solar system to host microbial life. Before Cassini reached Saturn in July 2004, no version of that short list included this icy moon, barely 300 miles (500 kilometers) in diameter.

"This then provides one possible story to explain why water is gushing out of these fractures we see at the south pole," said David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, one of the paper's co-authors.

Cassini has flown near Enceladus 19 times. Three flybys, from 2010 to 2012, yielded precise trajectory measurements. The gravitational tug of a planetary body, such as Enceladus, alters a spacecraft's flight path. Variations in the gravity field, such as those caused by mountains on the surface or differences in underground composition, can be detected as changes in the spacecraft's velocity, measured from Earth.

The technique of analyzing a radio signal between Cassini and the Deep Space Network can detect changes in velocity as small as less than one foot per hour (90 microns per second). With this precision, the flyby data yielded evidence of a zone inside the southern end of the moon with higher density than other portions of the interior.

The south pole area has a surface depression that causes a dip in the local tug of gravity. However, the magnitude of the dip is less than expected given the size of the depression, leading researchers to conclude the depression's effect is partially offset by a high-density feature in the region, beneath the surface.

"The Cassini gravity measurements show a negative gravity anomaly at the south pole that however is not as large as expected from the deep depression detected by the onboard camera," said the paper's lead author, Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome. "Hence the conclusion that there must be a denser material at depth that compensates the missing mass: very likely liquid water, which is seven percent denser than ice. The magnitude of the anomaly gave us the size of the water reservoir."

There is no certainty the subsurface ocean supplies the water plume spraying out of surface fractures near the south pole of Enceladus, however, scientists reason it is a real possibility. The fractures may lead down to a part of the moon that is tidally heated by the moon's repeated flexing, as it follows an eccentric orbit around Saturn.

Much of the excitement about the Cassini mission's discovery of the Enceladus water plume stems from the possibility that it originates from a wet environment that could be a favorable environment for microbial life.

"Material from Enceladus' south polar jets contains salty water and organic molecules, the basic chemical ingredients for life," said Linda Spilker, Cassini's project scientist at JPL. "Their discovery expanded our view of the 'habitable zone' within our solar system and in planetary systems of other stars. This new validation that an ocean of water underlies the jets furthers understanding about this intriguing environment."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about Cassini, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

and

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Jane Platt
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0880
jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov


Brian Bell

California Institute of Technology, Pasadena

626-395-5832

bpbell@caltech.edu
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:24 PM 0 comments

Faraway Moon or Faint Star? Possible Exomoon Found

Faraway Moon or Faint Star? Possible Exomoon Found:

Moon or Planet? The 'Exomoon Hunt' Continues
Researchers have detected the first "exomoon" candidate -- a moon orbiting a planet that lies outside our solar system. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


April 10, 2014

Titan, Europa, Io and Phobos are just a few members of our solar system's pantheon of moons. Are there are other moons out there, orbiting planets beyond our sun?

NASA-funded researchers have spotted the first signs of an "exomoon," and though they say it's impossible to confirm its presence, the finding is a tantalizing first step toward locating others. The discovery was made by watching a chance encounter of objects in our galaxy, which can be witnessed only once.

"We won't have a chance to observe the exomoon candidate again," said David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame, Ind., lead author of a new paper on the findings appearing in the Astrophysical Journal. "But we can expect more unexpected finds like this."

The international study is led by the joint Japan-New Zealand-American Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) and the Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork (PLANET) programs, using telescopes in New Zealand and Tasmania. Their technique, called gravitational microlensing, takes advantage of chance alignments between stars. When a foreground star passes between us and a more distant star, the closer star can act like a magnifying glass to focus and brighten the light of the more distant one. These brightening events usually last about a month.

If the foreground star -- or what astronomers refer to as the lens -- has a planet circling around it, the planet will act as a second lens to brighten or dim the light even more. By carefully scrutinizing these brightening events, astronomers can figure out the mass of the foreground star relative to its planet.

In some cases, however, the foreground object could be a free-floating planet, not a star. Researchers might then be able to measure the mass of the planet relative to its orbiting companion: a moon. While astronomers are actively looking for exomoons -- for example, using data from NASA's Kepler mission - so far, they have not found any.

In the new study, the nature of the foreground, lensing object is not clear. The ratio of the larger body to its smaller companion is 2,000 to 1. That means the pair could be either a small, faint star circled by a planet about 18 times the mass of Earth -- or a planet more massive than Jupiter coupled with a moon weighing less than Earth.

The problem is that astronomers have no way of telling which of these two scenarios is correct.

"One possibility is for the lensing system to be a planet and its moon, which if true, would be a spectacular discovery of a totally new type of system," said Wes Traub, the chief scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who was not involved in the study. "The researchers' models point to the moon solution, but if you simply look at what scenario is more likely in nature, the star solution wins."

The answer to the mystery lies in learning the distance to the circling duo. A lower-mass pair closer to Earth will produce the same kind of brightening event as a more massive pair located farther away. But once a brightening event is over, it's very difficult to take additional measurements of the lensing system and determine the distance. The true identity of the exomoon candidate and its companion, a system dubbed MOA-2011-BLG-262, will remain unknown.

In the future, however, it may be possible to obtain these distance measurements during lensing events. For example, NASA's Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes, both of which revolve around the sun in Earth-trailing orbits, are far enough away from Earth to be great tools for the parallax-distance technique.

The basic principle of parallax can be explained by holding your finger out, closing one eye after the other, and watching your finger jump back and forth. A distant star, when viewed from two telescopes spaced really far apart, will also appear to move. When combined with a lensing event, the parallax effect alters how a telescope will view the resulting magnification of starlight. Though the technique works best using one telescope on Earth and one in space, such as Spitzer or Kepler, two ground-based telescopes on different sides of our planet can also be used.

Meanwhile, surveys like MOA and the Polish Optical Gravitational Experiment Lensing Experiment, or OGLE, are turning up more and more planets. These microlensing surveys have discovered dozens of exoplanets so far, in orbit around stars and free-floating. A previous NASA-funded study, also led by the MOA team, was the first to find strong evidence for planets the size of Jupiter roaming alone in space, presumably after they were kicked out of forming planetary systems. (See http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-147).

The new exomoon candidate, if real, would orbit one such free-floating planet. The planet may have been ejected from the dusty confines of a young planetary system, while keeping its companion moon in tow.

The ground-based telescopes used in the study are the Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand and the Mount Canopus Observatory in Tasmania.

Additional observations were obtained with the W.M. Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, Hawaii; European Southern Observatory's VISTA telescope in Chile; the Optical Gravitational Lens Experiment (OGLE) using the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile; the Microlensing Follow-Up Network (MicroFUN) using the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile; and the Robonet Collaboration using the Faulkes Telescope South in Siding Spring, Australia.

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

2014-109
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:23 PM 0 comments

Join in the Cassini Name Game

Join in the Cassini Name Game:

In its next phase, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will perform 22 loops between Saturn and its innermost ring.
In its next phase, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will perform 22 loops between Saturn and its innermost ring. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

› Larger image


April 10, 2014

As NASA's Cassini mission approaches its 10th anniversary at Saturn, its team members back here on Earth are already looking ahead to an upcoming phase.

Starting in late 2016, the Cassini spacecraft will repeatedly climb high above Saturn's north pole, flying just outside its narrow F ring. Cassini will probe the water-rich plume of the active geysers on the planet's intriguing moon Enceladus, and then will hop the rings and dive between the planet and innermost ring 22 times.

Because the spacecraft will be very close to Saturn, the team has been calling this phase "the proximal orbits." But they think someone out there can conjure up a cooler name. Here's where you come in: you can choose your faves from a list already assembled, or you can submit your own ideas (up to three). The big reveal for the final name will be in May 2014.

This naming contest is part of the 10-year anniversary celebration. The mission will mark a decade of exploring Saturn, its rings and moons on June 30 PDT (July 1 EDT).

For more information on the contest, visit: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/name

As part of the anniversary celebration, the Cassini team has released a video preview of the next four years of the mission: http://youtu.be/fAQM9rfZq7w

Jane Platt 818-354-0880

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov


2014-110
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:22 PM 0 comments

International Space Station to Beam Video via Laser Back to Earth

International Space Station to Beam Video via Laser Back to Earth:

This artist's concept shows how the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS)
This artist's concept shows how the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) laser will beam data to Earth from the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA.
› Larger image


April 11, 2014

A team of about 20 working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., through the lab's Phaeton early-career-hire program, led the development of the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) investigation, which is preparing for an April 14 launch to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX-3 mission. The goal? NASA's first optical communication experiment on the orbital laboratory.

Scientific instruments used in space missions increasingly require higher communication rates to transmit gathered data back to Earth or to support high-data-rate applications, like high-definition video streams. Optical communications-also referred to as "lasercom"-is an emerging technology where data is sent via laser beams. This offers the promise of much higher data rates than what is achievable with current radio frequency (RF) transmissions and has the advantage that it operates in a frequency band that is currently unregulated by the Federal Communications Commission.

"Optical communications has the potential to be a game-changer," said Mission Manager Matt Abrahamson. "Right now, many of our deep space missions communicate at 200 to 400 kilobits per second." OPALS will demonstrate up to 50 megabits per second, and future deep space optical communication systems will provide over one gigabits per second from Mars.

"It's like upgrading from dial-up to DSL," added the project's systems engineer Bogdan Oaida. "Our ability to generate data has greatly outpaced our ability to downlink it. Imagine trying to download a movie at home over dial-up. It's essentially the same problem in space, whether we're talking about low-Earth orbit or deep space."

OPALS is scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, part of a cargo resupply mission to the space station. The payload will be inside the Dragon cargo spacecraft. Once deployed, OPALS will be conducting transmission tests for a period of nearly three months, with the possibility of a longer mission. After the Dragon capsule docks with the station, OPALS will be robotically extracted from the trunk of the Dragon, and then manipulated by a robotic arm for positioning on the station's exterior. It is the first investigation developed at JPL to launch on SpaceX's Falcon rocket.

The technology demo was conceived, developed, built and tested at JPL by engineers in the early stage of their careers in order to gain experience building space hardware and developing an end-to-end communication system. The system uses primarily commercial off-the-shelf hardware and encloses electronics in a pressurized container. "We were not as constrained by mass, volume or power on this mission as we were by cost," said Abrahamson, and this approach allowed a lower cost development on an efficient schedule.

As the space station orbits Earth, a ground telescope tracks it and transmits a laser beacon to OPALS. While maintaining lock on the uplink beacon, the orbiting instrument's flight system will downlink a modulated laser beam with a formatted video. Each demonstration, or test, will last approximately 100 seconds as the station instrument and ground telescope maintain line of sight. It will be used to study pointing, acquisition and tracking of the very tightly focused laser beams, taking into account the movement of the space station, and to study the characteristics of optical links through Earth's atmosphere. NASA will also use OPALS to educate and train personnel in the operation of optical communication systems.

The success of OPALS will provide increased impetus for operational optical communications in NASA missions. The space station is a prime target for multi-gigabit-per-second optical links. Fast laser communications between Earth and spacecraft like the space station or NASA's Mars Curiosity rover would enhance their connection to engineers and scientists on the ground as well as to the public.

OPALS is a partnership between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; the International Space Station Program based at Johnson Space Center in Houston; Kennedy Space Center in Florida; Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the Advanced Exploration Systems Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Written by David Israel and Mark Whalen


Media contact:
Stephanie L. Smith 818-393-5464

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

slsmith@jpl.nasa.gov


Joshua Buck

NASA Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1100

jbuck@nasa.gov


2014-111
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:21 PM 0 comments

OCO-2 Data to Lead Scientists Forward into the Past

OCO-2 Data to Lead Scientists Forward into the Past:
Carbon in Smoke Plumes
Scientists will use measurements from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 to track atmospheric carbon dioxide to sources such as these wildfires in Siberia, whose smoke plumes quickly carry the greenhouse gas worldwide. The fires were imaged on May 18 by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer instrument on the Terra satellite.
Image credit: NASA/LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response


› Larger image


July 18, 2014

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, which launched on July 2, will soon be providing about 100,000 high-quality measurements each day of carbon dioxide concentrations from around the globe. Atmospheric scientists are excited about that. But to understand the processes that control the amount of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, they need to know more than just where carbon dioxide is now. They need to know where it has been. It takes more than great data to figure that out.

"In a sense, you're trying to go backward in time and space," said David Baker, a scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. "You're reversing the flow of the winds to determine when and where the input of carbon at the Earth's surface had to be to give you the measurements you see now."

Harry Potter used a magical time turner to travel to the past. Atmospheric scientists use a type of computer model called a chemical transport model. It combines the atmospheric processes found in a climate model with additional information on important chemical compounds, including their reactions, their sources on Earth's surface and the processes that remove them from the air, known as sinks.

Baker used the example of a forest fire to explain how a chemical transport model works. "Where the fire is, at that point in time, you get a pulse of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning carbon in wood. The model's winds blow it along, and mixing processes dilute it through the atmosphere. It gradually gets mixed into a wider and wider plume that eventually gets blown around the world."

Some models can be run backward in time -- from a point in the plume back to the fire, in other words -- to search for the sources of airborne carbon dioxide. The reactions and processes that must be modeled are so complex that researchers often cycle their chemical transport models backward and forward through the same time period dozens of times, adjusting the model as each set of results reveals new clues. "You basically start crawling toward a solution," Baker said. "You may not be crawling straight toward the best answer, but you course-correct along the way."

Lesley Ott, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, noted that simulating carbon dioxide's atmospheric transport correctly is a prerequisite for improving the way global climate models simulate the carbon cycle and how it will change with our changing climate. "If you get the transport piece right, then you can understand the piece about sources and sinks," she said. "More and better-quality data from OCO-2 are going to create better characterization of global carbon."

Baker noted that the volume of data provided by OCO-2 will improve knowledge of carbon processes on a finer scale than is currently possible. "With all that coverage, we'll be able to resolve what's going on at the regional scale," Baker said, referring to areas the size of Texas or France. "That will help us understand better how the forests and oceans take up carbon. There are various competing processes, and right now we're not sure which ones are most important."

Ott pointed out that improving the way global climate models represent carbon dioxide provides benefits far beyond the scientific research community. "Trying to figure out what national and international responses to climate change should be is really hard," she said. "Politicians need answers quickly. Right now we have to trust a very small number of carbon dioxide observations. We're going to have a lot better coverage because so much more data is coming, and we may be able to see in better detail features of the carbon cycle that were missed before." Taking those OCO-2 data backward in time may be the next step forward on the road to understanding and adapting to climate change.

To learn more about the OCO-2 mission, visit these websites:

http://www.nasa.gov/oco2

http://oco.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

OCO-2 is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

Alan Buis

818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov


Written by Carol Rasmussen

NASA Earth Science News Team


2014-237
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:20 PM 0 comments

Friday, July 18, 2014

NASA Cassini Images May Reveal Birth of a Saturn Moon

NASA Cassini Images May Reveal Birth of a Saturn Moon:

Commotion at Ring's Edge May Be Effect of Small Icy Object
The disturbance visible at the outer edge of Saturn's A ring in this image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft results from gravitational effects on ring particles by an object that may be replaying the birth process of icy moons. Cassini's narrow-angle camera recorded this view on April 15, 2013.
› Full image and caption


April 14, 2014

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has documented the formation of a small icy object within the rings of Saturn that may be a new moon, and may also provide clues to the formation of the planet's known moons.

Images taken with Cassini's narrow angle camera on April 15, 2013, show disturbances at the very edge of Saturn's A ring -- the outermost of the planet's large, bright rings. One of these disturbances is an arc about 20 percent brighter than its surroundings, 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) long and 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide. Scientists also found unusual protuberances in the usually smooth profile at the ring's edge. Scientists believe the arc and protuberances are caused by the gravitational effects of a nearby object. Details of the observations were published online today (April 14, 2014) by the journal Icarus.

The object is not expected to grow any larger, and may even be falling apart. But the process of its formation and outward movement aids in our understanding of how Saturn's icy moons, including the cloud-wrapped Titan and ocean-holding Enceladus, may have formed in more massive rings long ago. It also provides insight into how Earth and other planets in our solar system may have formed and migrated away from our star, the sun.

"We have not seen anything like this before," said Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London, the report's lead author. "We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right."

The object, informally named Peggy, is too small to be seen in images so far. Scientists estimate it is probably no more than about a half mile (about a kilometer) in diameter. Saturn's icy moons range in size depending on their proximity to the planet -- the farther from the planet, the larger. And many of Saturn's moons are composed primarily of ice, as are the particles that form Saturn's rings. Based on these facts, and other indicators, researchers recently proposed that the icy moons formed from ring particles and then moved outward, away from the planet, merging with other moons on the way.

"Witnessing the possible birth of a tiny moon is an exciting, unexpected event," said Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. According to Spilker, Cassini's orbit will move closer to the outer edge of the A ring in late 2016 and provide an opportunity to study Peggy in more detail and perhaps even image it.

It is possible the process of moon formation in Saturn's rings has ended with Peggy, as Saturn's rings now are, in all likelihood, too depleted to make more moons. Because they may not observe this process again, Murray and his colleagues are wringing from the observations all they can learn.

"The theory holds that Saturn long ago had a much more massive ring system capable of giving birth to larger moons," Murray said. "As the moons formed near the edge, they depleted the rings and evolved, so the ones that formed earliest are the largest and the farthest out."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

To view an image of the Saturn ring disturbance attributed to the new moon, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18078

For more information about Cassini, visit these sites: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Jane Platt

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0880

jane.platt@jpl.nasa.gov


Dwayne Brown

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-1726

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov


2014-112
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:06 AM 0 comments

NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discovery

NASA Hosts Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discovery:

Artist's concept of NASA's Kepler space telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist's concept of NASA's Kepler space telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


April 15, 2014

NASA will host a news teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) Thursday, April 17, to announce a new discovery made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.

The journal Science has embargoed the findings until the time of the news conference.

The briefing participants are:

-- Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington

-- Elisa Quintana, research scientist, SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

-- Tom Barclay, research scientist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames

-- Victoria Meadows, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, Seattle, and principal investigator for the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, a team in the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Ames

Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone -- the range of distance from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. The telescope has since detected planets and planet candidates spanning a wide range of sizes and orbital distances, including those in the habitable zone. These findings have led to a better understanding of our place in the galaxy.

The public is invited to listen to the teleconference live on UStream at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Audio of the teleconference also will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

Questions can be submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.

A link to relevant graphics will be posted at the start of the teleconference on NASA's Kepler site: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

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


Michele Johnson

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

650-604-6982

michele.johnson@nasa.gov


2014-113
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:06 AM 0 comments

NASA Mars Orbiter Spies Rover Near Martian Butte

NASA Mars Orbiter Spies Rover Near Martian Butte:

Curiosity and Rover Tracks at 'the Kimberley,' April 2014
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover and tracks from its driving are visible in this view from orbit, acquired on April 11, 2014, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona › Full image and caption


April 16, 2014

Scientists using NASA's Curiosity Mars rover are eyeing a rock layer surrounding the base of a small butte, called "Mount Remarkable," as a target for investigating with tools on the rover's robotic arm.

The rover works near this butte in an image taken on April 11 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It is available at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18081

A rover's-eye view of Mount Remarkable and surroundings as seen from Curiosity's position in that HiRISE image is available in a mosaic of images from Curiosity's Navigation Camera (Navcam), at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18083

The butte stands about 16 feet (5 meters) high. Curiosity's science team refers to the rock layer surrounding the base of Mount Remarkable as the "middle unit" because its location is intermediate between rocks that form buttes in the area and lower-lying rocks that show a pattern of striations.

Depending on what the mission scientists learn from a close-up look at the rock and identification of chemical elements in it, a site on this middle unit may become the third rock that Curiosity samples with its drill. The rover carries laboratory instruments to analyze rock powder collected by the drill. The mission's first two drilled samples, in an area called Yellowknife Bay near Curiosity's landing site, yielded evidence last year for an ancient lakebed environment with available energy and ingredients favorable for microbial life.

The rover's current location, where multiple types of rocks are exposed close together, is called "the Kimberley." Here and, later, at outcrops on the slope of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater, researchers plan to use Curiosity's science instruments to learn more about habitable past conditions and environmental changes.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The project designed and built Curiosity and operates the rover on Mars.

For more information about Curiosity, visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. You can follow the mission on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.

Guy Webster 818-354-6278

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov


2014-116
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 9:05 AM 0 comments

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
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