Sunday, July 20, 2014

NASA Hosts Deep Space Network Social Media Event

NASA Hosts Deep Space Network Social Media Event:

Beam Wave Guide antennas at Goldstone, known as the
Beam Wave Guide antennas at Goldstone, known as the "Beam Waveguide Cluster." Each antenna is 111.5-feet (34-m) in diameter. They're located in an area at Goldstone called "Apollo Valley." This photograph was taken on Jan. 11, 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


March 25, 2014

About 50 people from 11 U.S. states will attend a two-day NASA Social, to be held April 1 at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and April 2 at NASA's Deep Space Network complex in Goldstone, Calif.

The attendees, who follow NASA and JPL on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks, will be provided a unique, in-person experience, which they are encouraged to share with others through their favorite social networks. They were selected from nearly 500 people who registered online last month. Participants represent California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

On April 1 at JPL, attendees will be based inside the Space Flights Operations Facility, which is the mission control center of NASA's Deep Space Network. That's where engineers communicate with spacecraft across the solar system. Tour stops will include the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where hardware for upcoming missions is under construction, and the Mars Yard, where engineering models of NASA's Curiosity rover are tested in a sandy, Mars-like environment.

On April 2, participants will attend the Deep Space Network's 50th anniversary celebration at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex near Barstow in California's Mojave Desert. The tour will include Apollo Valley, site of the historic Apollo antenna; Mars Valley, home of the 70-meter Mars antenna; and the Spacecraft Operations Control Center.

NASA Television will broadcast a portion of the NASA Social on April 1 starting at 9:30 a.m. PDT (12:30 p.m. EDT) at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

To join and track the conversation online during the NASA Social, follow the hashtags #NASASocial and #DSN50.

More information about connecting and collaborating with NASA is at: http://www.nasa.gov/connect

More information about the Deep Space Network is at: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov

The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA.

Courtney O'Connor 818-354-2274

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

oconnor@jpl.nasa.gov


John Yembrick/Jason Townsend 650-604-2065 / 202-358-0359

NASA Headquarters, Washington

john.yembrick@nasa.gov / jason.c.townsend@nasa.gov


2014-092
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:30 PM 0 comments

The Search for Seeds of Black Holes

The Search for Seeds of Black Holes:

Bulgeless Galaxy Hides Black Hole
The galaxy NGC 4395 is shown here in infrared light, captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption


March 26, 2014

How do you grow a supermassive black hole that is a million to a billion times the mass of our sun? Astronomers do not know the answer, but a new study using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has turned up what might be the cosmic seeds from which a black hole will sprout. The results are helping scientists piece together the evolution of supermassive black holes -- powerful objects that dominate the hearts of all galaxies.

Growing a black hole is not as easy as planting a seed in soil and adding water. The massive objects are dense collections of matter that are literally bottomless pits; anything that falls in will never come out. They come in a range of sizes. The smallest, only a few times greater in mass than our sun, form from exploding stars. The biggest of these dark beasts, billions of times the mass of our sun, grow together with their host galaxies over time, deep in the interiors. But how this process works is an ongoing mystery.

Researchers using WISE addressed this question by looking for black holes in smaller, "dwarf" galaxies. These galaxies have not undergone much change, so they are more pristine than their heavier counterparts. In some ways, they resemble the types of galaxies that might have existed when the universe was young, and thus they offer a glimpse into the nurseries of supermassive black holes.

In this new study, using data of the entire sky taken by WISE in infrared light, up to hundreds of dwarf galaxies have been discovered in which buried black holes may be lurking. Infrared light, the kind that WISE collects, can see through dust, unlike visible light, so it's better able to find the dusty, hidden black holes. The researchers found that the dwarf galaxies' black holes may be about 1,000 to 10,000 times the mass of our sun -- larger than expected for these small galaxies.

"Our findings suggest the original seeds of supermassive black holes are quite massive themselves," said Shobita Satyapal of George Mason University, Fairfax, Va. Satyapal is lead author of a paper published in the March issue of Astrophysical Journal.

Daniel Stern, an astronomer specializing in black holes at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who was not a part of the new study, says the research demonstrates the power of an all-sky survey like WISE to find the rarest black holes. "Though it will take more research to confirm whether the dwarf galaxies are indeed dominated by actively feeding black holes, this is exactly what WISE was designed to do: find interesting objects that stand out from the pack."

The new observations argue against one popular theory of black hole growth, which holds that the objects bulk up in size through galaxy collisions. When our universe was young, galaxies were more likely to crash into others and merge. It is possible the galaxies' black holes merged too, accumulating more mass. In this scenario, supermassive black holes grow in size through a series of galaxy mergers.

The discovery of dwarf galaxy black holes that are bigger than expected suggests that galaxy mergers are not necessary to create big black holes. Dwarf galaxies don't have a history of galactic smash-ups, and yet their black holes are already relatively big.

Instead, supermassive black holes might form very early in the history of the universe. Or, they might grow harmoniously with their host galaxies, feeding off surrounding gas.

"We still don't know how the monstrous black holes that reside in galaxy centers formed," said Satyapal. "But finding big black holes in tiny galaxies shows us that big black holes must somehow have been created in the early universe, before galaxies collided with other galaxies."

Other authors of the study include: N.J. Secrest, W. McAlpine and J.L. Rosenberg of George Mason University; S.L. Ellison of the University of Victoria, Canada; and J. Fischer of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington.

WISE was put into hibernation upon completing its primary mission in 2011. In September 2013, it was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects. NEOWISE will also characterize previously known asteroids and comets to better understand their sizes and compositions.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages and operates the NEOWISE mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The WISE mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information on WISE and NEOWISE can be found online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise, http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


2014-093
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:29 PM 0 comments

Satellite Shows High Productivity from U.S. Corn Belt

Satellite Shows High Productivity from U.S. Corn Belt:

The magnitude of fluorescence portrayed in this visualization
The magnitude of fluorescence portrayed in this visualization prompted researchers to take a closer look at the productivity of the U.S. Corn Belt. The glow represents fluorescence measured from land plants in early July, over a period from 2007 to 2011. Image credit:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
› Larger image


March 31, 2014

Data from satellite sensors show that during the Northern Hemisphere's growing season, the Midwest region of the United States boasts more photosynthetic activity than any other spot on Earth, according to NASA and university scientists.

Healthy plants convert light to energy via photosynthesis, but chlorophyll also emits a fraction of absorbed light as a fluorescent glow that is invisible to the naked eye. The magnitude of the glow is an excellent indicator of the amount of photosynthesis, or gross productivity, of plants in a given region.

Research in 2013, led by Joanna Joiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., demonstrated that fluorescence from plants could be teased out from existing data from satellites that were designed and built for other purposes. The new research, led by Luis Guanter of the Freie Universität Berlin, used the data for the first time to estimate photosynthesis from agriculture. Results were published March 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to co-author Christian Frankenberg of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., "The paper shows that fluorescence is a much better proxy for agricultural productivity than anything we've had before. This can go a long way regarding monitoring -- and maybe even predicting -- regional crop yields."

Guanter, Joiner and Frankenberg launched their collaboration at a 2012 workshop, hosted by the Keck Institute for Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, to explore measurements of photosynthesis from space. The team noticed that on an annual basis, the tropics are the most active in photosynthesis. But during the Northern Hemisphere's growing season, the U.S. Corn Belt "really stands out," Frankenberg said. "Areas all over the world are not as productive as this area."

The researchers set out to describe the phenomenon observed by carefully interpreting data from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment 2 (GOME-2) on Metop-A, a European meteorological satellite. Data showed that fluorescence from the U.S. Corn Belt peaks in July at levels 40 percent greater than those observed in the Amazon.

Comparison with ground-based measurements from carbon flux towers and yield statistics confirmed the results.

"The match between ground-based measurements and satellite measurements was a pleasant surprise," said Joiner, a co-author on the paper.

Ground-based measurements have a resolution of about 0.4 square mile (1 square kilometer), while the satellite measurements currently have a resolution of more than 1,158 square miles (3,000 square kilometers). The study confirms that even with coarse resolution, the satellite method could estimate the photosynthetic activity occurring inside plants at the molecular level for areas with relatively homogenous vegetation like the Corn Belt.

Challenges remain in estimating the productivity of fragmented agricultural areas not properly sampled by current space-borne instruments. That's where missions with better resolution could help, such as NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) -- a mission planned for launch in July 2014 that will also measure solar-induced fluorescence.

The research could also help scientists improve the computer models that simulate Earth's carbon cycle, as Guanter found a strong underestimation of crop photosynthesis in models. The analysis revealed that carbon cycle models -- which scientists use to understand how carbon cycles through the ocean, land and atmosphere over time -- underestimate the productivity of the U.S. Corn Belt by 40 to 60 percent.

Unlike most vegetation, food crops are managed to maximize productivity. They usually have access to abundant nutrients and are irrigated. The U.S. Corn Belt, for example, receives water from the Mississippi River. Accounting for the region's irrigation is currently a challenge for models, which is one reason why they underestimate agricultural productivity.

"If we don't take into account irrigation and other human influences in the agricultural areas, we're not going to correctly estimate the amount of carbon taken up by vegetation, particularly corn," Joiner said. "Corn plants are very productive in terms of assimilating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This needs to be accounted for going forward in trying to predict how much of the atmospheric carbon dioxide will be taken up by crops in a changing climate."

According to Frankenberg, the remote sensing-based techniques now available could be a powerful monitoring tool for food security, especially data from OCO-2 in combination with data from other upcoming satellites such as NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP), scheduled for launch later this year.

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.

Caltech manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA.

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

Kathryn Hansen

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

301-286-1046

kathryn.h.hansen@nasa.gov


Alan Buis
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

818-354-0474

alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov


Carsten Wette

Freie Universität Berlin

030-838-73189

carsten.wette@fu-berlin.de


2014-097
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:28 PM 0 comments

NASA Model Provides a 3-D Look at L.A.-area Quake

NASA Model Provides a 3-D Look at L.A.-area Quake:


JPL scientists modeled the March 28, 2014 magnitude 5.1 quake near Los Angeles based on USGS seismic data. This model image shows how the quake may appear to airborne radar, such as NASA's UAVSAR, which will survey the area soon. Blue shades indicate the greatest surface displacement. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/Google Earth
› Larger image


March 31, 2014

On March 28, residents of Greater Los Angeles experienced the largest earthquake to strike the region since 2008. The magnitude 5.1 quake was centered near La Habra in northwestern Orange County about 21 miles (33 kilometers) east-southeast of Los Angeles, and was widely felt throughout Southern California. There have been hundreds of aftershocks, including one of magnitude 4.1.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have developed a model of the earthquake, based on the distribution of aftershocks and other seismic information from the U.S. Geological Survey.

A new image based on the model shows what the earthquake may look like through the eyes of an interferometric synthetic aperture radar, such as NASA's Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR). JPL scientists plan to acquire UAVSAR data from the region of the March 28 quake, possibly as soon as this week, and process the data to validate and improve the results of their model.

The model image is online at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia18041

The earthquake is believed to be associated with the Puente Hills Thrust fault, a blind thrust fault (meaning it does not break the earth surface) that zigzags from Orange County northwest through downtown Los Angeles. The same fault was responsible for the magnitude 5.9 Whittier Narrows earthquake on Oct. 1, 1987, which caused eight fatalities, injured several hundred and left about $360 million in property damage.

The NASA model is based on a fault estimated to be 5.6 miles (9 kilometers) long, 3.1 miles (5 kilometers) deep and 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) wide. The modeled fault segment dips upward through the ground at a 60-degree angle. The model estimated that in this earthquake, one side of the fault moved at a slanted angle horizontally and vertically 3.9 inches (10 centimeters) relative to the other side. The model also estimated the maximum displacement of Earth's surface from the quake at approximately 0.4 inch (1 centimeter), which is at the threshold of what is detectable with UAVSAR. The region of greatest ground displacement is indicated by the darker blue area located in the right center of the image.

In Nov. 2008, NASA JPL scientists began conducting a series of UAVSAR flights over regions of Northern and Southern California that are actively deforming and are marked by frequent earthquakes. About every six months, the scientists precisely repeat the same flight paths to produce images of ground deformation called interferograms. From these data, 3-D maps are being created for regions of interest, including the San Andreas and other California faults, extending from the Gulf of California in Mexico to Santa Rosa in the northern San Francisco Bay.

UAVSAR, which flies on a NASA C-20A aircraft from NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, measures ground deformation over large areas to a precision of 0.04 to 0.2 inches (0.1 to 0.5 centimeters).

By comparing the repeat-pass radar observations, scientists hope to measure any crustal deformations that may occur between observations, allowing them to "see" the amount of strain building up on fault lines, and giving them a clearer picture of which faults are active and at what rates they're moving, both before earthquakes and after them. The UAVSAR fault mapping project is designed to substantially improve knowledge of regional earthquake hazards in California. The 3-D UAVSAR data will allow scientists to bring entire faults into focus, allowing them to understand faults not just at their surfaces, but also at depth. When integrated into computer models, the data should give scientists a much clearer picture of California's complex fault systems.

The scientists are estimating the total displacement occurring in each region. As additional observations are collected, they expect to be able to determine how strain is partitioned between individual faults.

The UAVSAR flights serve as a baseline for pre-earthquake activity. As earthquakes occur during the course of this project, the team is measuring the deformation at the time of the earthquakes to determine the distribution of slip on the faults, and then monitoring longer-term motions after the earthquakes to learn more about fault zone properties.

Airborne UAVSAR mapping can allow a rapid response after an earthquake to determine what fault was the source and which parts of the fault slipped during the earthquake. Information about the earthquake source can be used to estimate what areas were most affected by an earthquake's shaking to guide rescue efforts and damage assessment.

The model was developed as part of NASA's QuakeSim project. The JPL-developed QuakeSim is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art software tool for simulating and understanding earthquake fault processes and improving earthquake forecasting. Initiated in 2002, QuakeSim uses NASA remote sensing and other earthquake-related data to simulate and model the behavior of faults in 3-D both individually and as part of complex, interacting systems. This provides long-term histories of fault behavior that can be used for statistical evaluation. QuakeSim also is used to identify regions of increased earthquake probabilities, called hotspots.

NASA's Earthquake Data Enhanced Cyber-Infrastructure for Disaster Evaluation and Response (E-DECIDER) project, which provides tools for earthquake disaster management and response using remote sensing data and NASA earthquake modeling software, published the model results, along with automatically generated deformation models and aftershock forecasts on a La Habra earthquake event page: http://e-decider.org/content/la-habra-earthquake-march-2014


For more on QuakeSim, visit: http://www.quakesim.org

For more information about UAVSAR, visit:

http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/

Alan Buis 818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov


2014-098
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 1:28 PM 0 comments

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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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