Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)

The purpose of the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission was to take precise measurements of the diffuse radiation between 1 micrometer and 1 cm over the whole celestial sphere. The following quantities were measured: (1) the spectrum of the 3 K radiation over the range 100 micrometers to 1 cm; (2) the anisotropy of this radiation from 3 to 10 mm; and, (3) the spectrum and angular distribution of diffuse infrared background radiation at wavelengths from 1 to 300 micrometers.

The experiment module contained the instruments and a dewar filled with 650 liters of 1.6 K liquid helium, with a conical sun shade. The base module contained the attitude control, communications and power systems. The satellite rotated at 1 rpm about the axis of symmetry to control systematic errors in the anisotropy measurements and to allow observations of the zodiacal light at various solar elongation angles. The orientation of the spin axis was maintained anti-earth and at 94 degrees to the sun-earth line. The operational orbit was dawn-dusk sun-synchronous so that the sun was always to the side and thus was shielded from the instruments. With this orbit and spin-axis orientation, the instruments performed a complete scan of the celestial sphere every six months.

Instrument operations were terminated 1993-12-23. As of January 1994, engineering operations were to conclude that month, after which operation of the spacecraft would be transferred to Wallops for use as a test satellite.

The CGRO Mission(1991 - 2000)

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was the second of NASA's Great Observatories. Compton, at 17 tons, was the heaviest astrophysical payload ever flown at the time of its launch on April 5, 1991 aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. Compton was safely deorbited and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on June 4, 2000.

Compton had four instruments that covered an unprecedented six decades of the electromagnetic spectrum, from 30 keV to 30 GeV. In order of increasing spectral energy coverage, these instruments were the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE), the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment (OSSE), the Imaging Compton Telescope (COMPTEL), and the Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET). For each of the instruments, an improvement in sensitivity of better than a factor of ten was realized over previous missions.

The Observatory was named in honor of Dr. Arthur Holly Compton, who won the Nobel prize in physics for work on scattering of high-energy photons by electrons - a process which is central to the gamma-ray detection techniques of all four instruments.

CGRO Observation Timelines

CloudSat Profiles Tornadic Outbreak

The intense thunderstorms responsible for this week's deadly outbreak of tornadoes in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas were imaged by the Cloud Profiling Radar on NASA's CloudSat satellite on February 5.
› Full image and caption

Clementine Project Information

Clementine was a joint project between the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and NASA. The objective of the mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the Moon and the near-Earth asteroid 1620 Geographos. The observations included imaging at various wavelengths including ultraviolet and infrared, laser ranging altimetry, and charged particle measurements. These observations were originally for the purposes of assessing the surface mineralogy of the Moon and Geographos, obtaining lunar altimetry from 60N to 60S latitude, and determining the size, shape, rotational characteristics, surface properties, and cratering statistics of Geographos.

Clementine was launched on 25 January 1994 at 16:34 UTC (12:34 PM EDT) from Vandenberg AFB aboard a Titan IIG rocket. After two Earth flybys, lunar insertion was achieved on February 21. Lunar mapping took place over approximately two months, in two parts. The first part consisted of a 5 hour elliptical polar orbit with a perilune of about 400 km at 28 degrees S latitude. After one month of mapping the orbit was rotated to a perilune of 29 degrees N latitude, where it remained for one more month. This allowed global imaging as well as altimetry coverage from 60 degrees S to 60 degrees N.

After leaving lunar orbit, a malfunction in one of the on-board computers on May 7 at 14:39 UTC (9:39 AM EST) caused a thruster to fire until it had used up all of its fuel, leaving the spacecraft spinning at about 80 RPM with no spin control. This made the planned continuation of the mission, a flyby of the near-Earth asteroid Geographos, impossible. The spacecraft remained in geocentric orbit and continued testing the spacecraft components until the end of mission.

More information on the Clementine mission, instruments, and early results can also be found in the Clementine special issue of Science magazine, Vol. 266, No. 5192, December 1994.

Clementine Flight Plan (1994)

January 25   Launch (16:34 UTC)
February 3   Leave Earth Orbit
February 5   First Earth Flyby
February 15  Second Earth Flyby
February 19  Enter Lunar Orbit
February 26  Start of Systematic Mapping - Cycle 1 (South)
March 26     End of Cycle 1, Start of Cycle 2 (North)
April 21     Completion of Cycle 2
May 5        Exit Lunar Orbit
(May 7        Computer Malfunction (14:39 UTC))
*May          Earth and Lunar Flybys
*June-August  Cruise to Geographos
*August 31    Geographos Flyby

Chandra - A New Way to Weigh Giant Black Holes

How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer can be found from a new technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By measuring a peak temperature in the hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists have determined the mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole -- providing consistent results with a traditional technique.

> Feature
> Photo
> Chandra X-ray Center

The CHAMP Mission

CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Payload) is a German small satellite mission for geoscientific and atmospheric research and applications, managed by GFZ. With its highly precise, multifunctional and complementary payload elements (magnetometer, accelerometer, star sensor, GPS receiver, laser retro reflector, ion drift meter) and its orbit characteristics (near polar, low altitude, long duration) CHAMP will generate for the first time simultaneously highly precise gravity and magnetic field measurements over a 5 years period. This will allow to detect besides the spatial variations of both fields also their variability with time. The CHAMP mission will open a new era in geopotential research and will become a significant contributor to the Decade of Geopotentials.

In addition with the radio occultation measurements onboard the spacecraft and the infrastructure developed on ground, CHAMP will become a pilot mission for the pre-operational use of space-borne GPS observations for atmospheric and ionospheric research and applications in weather prediction and space weather monitoring.

Cassini to Earth: 'Mission Accomplished, But New Questions Await!'

NASA's Cassini mission is closing one chapter of its journey at Saturn and embarking on a new one with a two-year mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intriguing targets—Titan and Enceladus.
Read more

Public release of CALIPSO Data Products

12.08.06: Public release of CALIPSO Data Products

The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite mission is pleased to announce an initial release of its data products. CALIPSO provides new insight into the role that clouds and atmospheric aerosols (airborne particles) play in regulating Earth's weather, climate, and air quality. CALIPSO is a joint mission between NASA and CNES, the French space agency.

CALIPSO's payload includes an active lidar (CALIOP), a passive Infrared Imaging Radiometer (IIR), and visible Wide Field Camera. This data release consists of data beginning in mid June 2006 and includes Level 1 radiances from each of the instruments. This release also includes the lidar Level 2 vertical feature mask and cloud and aerosol layer products. The CALIPSO data are available through the Atmospheric Sciences Data Center (ASDC) at NASA Langley Research Center and can be accessed at the following URL:

» + http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/PRODOCS/calipso/table_calipso.html

Reference resources on the CALIPSO data set, including detailed data quality summaries and a data catalog are also available at the ASDC CALIPSO page.

If you have questions concerning the ordering of CALIPSO data products, contact User Services at larc@eos.nasa.gov.

NASA's Close-Up Images of 'Snow Queen' Show Changes

A distinctive hard-surface feature called "Snow Queen" beneath NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander visibly changed sometime between mid-June and mid-July, close-up images from the Robotic Arm Camera show.

Cracks as long as 10 centimeters, or about four inches, have appeared. A seven-millimeter (less than one-third inch) pebble or clod not seen there before has popped up on the surface. And some smooth texture on Snow Queen has subtly roughened. Phoenix's Robotic Arm Camera, or RAC, took its first close-up image of Snow Queen on May 31, 2008, the sixth Martian day, or sol, after the May 25 landing. Thruster exhaust blew away surface soil covering Snow Queen as Phoenix landed, exposing a hard layer comprising several smooth, rounded cavities.

"Images taken since landing showed these fractures didn't form in the first 20 sols of the mission," Phoenix co-investigator Mike Mellon of the University of Colorado, Boulder, said. "We might expect to see additional changes in the next 20 sols."

Mellon, who has spent most of his career studying permafrost, said long-term monitoring of Snow Queen and other icy soil cleared by Phoenix landing and trenching operations is unprecedented for science. It's the first chance to see visible changes in Martian ice at a place where temperatures are cold enough that the ice doesn't immediately sublimate, or vaporize, away. Phoenix scientists discovered that centimeter-sized chunks of ice scraped up in the Dodo-Goldilocks trench lasted several days before vanishing.

The Phoenix team has been watching ice in the Dodo-Goldilocks and Snow White trenches in views from the lander's Surface Stereo Imager as well as RAC, but only RAC can view Snow Queen near a strut under the lander.

The fact that RAC is attached to the robotic arm is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that RAC can take close-ups of Snow Queen, while the Surface Stereo Imager can't see Snow Queen at all from the topside of the spacecraft. The disadvantage is that the robotic arm has so many tasks to perform that RAC can't be used for monitoring trench ice at some opportune times. Also, RAC hasn't been used to take up-close images of other icy places under the spacecraft cleared on landing because it would require the robotic arm to make a difficult and complex series of moves.

"I've made a list of hypotheses about what could be forming cracks in Snow Queen, and there are difficulties with all of them," Mellon said.

One possibility is that temperature changes over many sols, or Martian days, have expanded and contracted the surface enough to create stress cracks. It would take a fairly rapid temperature change to form fractures like this in ice, Mellon said.

Another possibility is the exposed layer has undergone a phase change that has caused it to shrink. An example of a phase change could be a hydrated salt losing its water after days of surface exposure, causing the hard layer to shrink and crack. "I don't think that's the best explanation because dehydration of salt would first form a thin rind and finer cracks," Mellon said.

"Another possibility is that these fractures were already there, and they appeared because ice sublimed off the surface and revealed them," he said.

As for the small pebble that popped up on Snow Queen after 21 sols -- it might be a piece that broke free from the original surface or it might be a piece that fell down from somewhere else. "We have to study the shadows a little more to understand what's happening," Mellon said.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

NASA HOSTS INTERNATIONAL MEETING FOR LUNAR SCIENCE DISCUSSIONS

NASA hosted a meeting of space agencies from nine countries last week to discuss the next steps in the ongoing scientific exploration of the moon. The meeting laid the groundwork for a new generation of lunar science.

Discussions, led by NASA Headquarters officials, were held at NASA's Lunar Science Institute, located at the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. Representatives from space agencies in Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States attended the meeting. During the meeting, attendees discussed cooperation on an international activity called the International Lunar Network (ILN). The network is designed to gradually place 6-8 fixed or mobile science stations on the lunar surface. The stations will form a second-generation robotic science network to replace hardware left by the Apollo Program to study the moon's surface and interior.

NASA plans to place its first two ILN landers on the surface of the moon in 2013-14. The landers are being developed under the Lunar Precursor Robotic Program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Huntsville, Ala.

The ILN is supported by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. It was created in response to a 2007 report released by the National Research Council, which affirmed that the moon offers "profound scientific value" and "lunar activities apply to broad scientific and exploration concerns."

Representatives from space agencies considering participation in the ILN agreed on a statement of intent as a first step in planning. The statement marked an expression of interest by the agencies to study options for participating in a series of international lunar missions. The goal is to form a network of missions that will benefit scientists worldwide.

"We are tremendously excited by the enthusiasm shown for the ILN and lunar science more broadly," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. "This international activity will greatly extend scientific knowledge of the moon in a number of important areas."

The statement of intent does not completely define the ILN concept. The document leaves open the possibility for near and long-term evolution and implementation. Initially, participants intend to establish potential landing sites, interoperable spectrum and communications standards, and a set of scientifically equivalent core instrumentation to carry out specific measurements.

"We are in a new era of lunar exploration," said Jim Adams, deputy director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. "Scientific coordination of the international armada of missions being sent to the moon in the next decade will greatly leverage our scientific capabilities, and perhaps even more importantly, develop the next generation of lunar scientists."

International participation in specific ILN activities will be established by appropriate international agreements. Additional participants may join in the future when they are programmatically and financially ready. Participation in the ILN could include the contribution of landers, orbiters, instrumentation, or other significant infrastructure, such as ground segment elements or power supplies for surviving the lunar night.

For more information on NASA lunar activities, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

NASA AWARDS CONTRACTS FOR CONCEPTS OF LUNAR SURFACE SYSTEMS

NASA's Constellation Program has selected 11 companies and one university to independently develop concepts that contribute to how astronauts will live and work on the moon.

Each organization will conduct a 180-day study focused on a topic relevant to lunar surface systems. Selected organizations and topics are:

--Alternative Packaging Options: Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston
--Avionics: Honeywell International, Inc. of Glendale, Ariz,
--Energy Storage: ATK Space Systems Group of Brigham City, Utah,
Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio, and Hamilton
Sundstrand of Canoga Park, Calif.
--Minimum Habitation Functions: The Boeing Company of Huntington
Beach, Calif., ILC Dover of Frederica, Del., and University of
Maryland, College Park
--Regolith Moving Methods: Astrobotic Technology Inc. of Pittsburgh
and Honeybee Robotics of New York
--Software: The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. of Cambridge,
Mass., and United Space Alliance of Houston

The awards total approximately $2 million, with a maximum individual award of $250,000.

"These studies provide new ideas to help the Constellation Program develop innovative, reliable requirements for the systems that will be used when outposts are established on the moon," said Jeff Hanley, the Constellation Program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The recommendations from the studies will help determine packaging options, identify basic functions for lunar habitats, and conceptualize innovative avionics, computer software, energy storage ideas and equipment and techniques that could help preparation for the lunar outpost site.

The Constellation Program is building NASA's next generation fleet of spacecraft -- including the Ares I and Ares V rockets, the Orion crew capsule, the Altair lunar lander and lunar surface systems -- to send humans beyond low Earth orbit and back to the moon. NASA plans to establish a human outpost on the moon through a successive series of lunar missions beginning in 2020. Lunar surface systems may include habitats, pressurized and un-pressurized rovers, communication and navigation elements, electrical power control, and natural resource use.

For more information about NASA's Constellation Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/constellation

Monday, July 28, 2008

AVIATION INNOVATORS COMPETE FOR NASA TECHNOLOGY PRIZES

The 2008 General Aviation Technology Challenge will be held Aug. 4-10 at the Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, Calif. Competitors will demonstrate innovations resulting in aircraft that are safer, less expensive and easier to operate, while having fewer negative impacts on the environment and communities surrounding airports.

This year's competition will feature the first Green Prize for aviation. The highlight of the week-long event will occur Saturday, Aug. 9, with the CAFE 400 - a 400-mile, cross-country air race that requires speed and efficiency.

The Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation based in Santa Rosa manages this challenge for NASA. The total purse for 2008 is $300,000, which will be divided among the following prizes:

- The Community Noise Prize
- The Green Prize (for the highest miles per gallon)
- The CAFE Safety Prize (for handling and electronic safety features)
- The CAFE 400 Prize
- The Quietest Light Sport Aircraft Prize

The General Aviation Technology Challenge is one of seven current NASA technology prize competitions. The prize program, which began in 2005, is known as Centennial Challenges in recognition of the centennial of powered flight. In keeping with the spirit of the Wright Brothers and other American innovators, Centennial Challenge prizes are offered to independent inventors who work without government support, including small businesses, student groups and individuals.

The prize competitions are targeted at a range of technical challenges that support NASA's missions in aeronautics and space. The goal is to encourage novel solutions from non-traditional sources. In the Centennial Challenge program, NASA provides the prize money, and each of the competitions is managed by an independent organization. NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program Office manages the Centennial Challenges program. For more information on the Centennial Challenges, visit:

http://centennialchallenges.nasa.gov/

For information about NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program, visit:

www.ipp.nasa.gov

NASA PHOENIX MISSION SCIENTISTS TO DISCUSS MARTIAN STUDIES

NASA Space Station and the University of Arizona, Tucson, will hold a media briefing Thursday, July 31, at 11 a.m. PDT, in the NASA Space Station mission's Science Operations Center at the university. Briefing participants will discuss the latest progress by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in exploring a site in the Martian arctic. Following its May 25 landing, NASA Space Station Phoenix has been studying whether Mars' environment ever has been favorable for microbial life.

The briefing participants are: - Michael Meyer, NASA Space Station chief scientist, Mars Exploration Program, NASA Space Station Headquarters, Washington - Peter Smith, NASA Space Station Phoenix principal investigator, University of Arizona, Tucson - Victoria Hipkin, NASA Space Station mission scientist for NASA Space Station Phoenix Meteorological Station, Canadian Space Agency, Saint-Hubert, Quebec - Mark Lemmon, lead NASA Space Station scientist for Phoenix Surface Stereo Imager, Texas A&M University, College Station

NASA Space Station News media may participate by telephone during the question and answer portion of the briefing. Reporters should call NASA Space Station Jet Propulsion Laboratory media office at 818-354-5011 before the briefing for instructions and the dial-in number.

The briefing will be carried live by NASA Space Station TV and on the Internet at:

www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information on the NASA Space Station Phoenix mission, visit:

www.nasa.gov/phoenix

NASA MEDIA INVITED FOR DEMO OF LUNAR SURFACE MANIPULATOR CONCEPT

A NASA concept for lifting and manipulating materials on the lunar surface will be demonstrated for reporters at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., on Friday, Aug. 1.

NASA's Lunar Surface Manipulation System recently completed a successful June field test on the lunar-like landscape of Moses Lake, Wash. The system is a lifting and precision positioning device that will be used on items ranging from large airlocks and habitats to delicate scientific payloads. The robotic manipulator incorporates features that could help astronauts during early lunar outpost construction and follow-on operations. The principles behind the device also are directly applicable to future operations on the Martian surface.

The system reporters will be able to view is full-scale and sized for unloading a lunar lander. Designed by NASA engineers and controlled by a remote computer, the manipulator resembles a lightweight crane, but has more capabilities. It can be operated autonomously, remotely
or manually in a backup mode, and can be configured to perform a multitude of tasks.

Media interested in attending the presentation and briefing should phone Keith Henry by noon EDT, July 31, at 757-864-6120 or 757-344-7211. Reporters should arrive at the Langley front gate parking lot by 9:30 a.m. for escort to the briefing and lab demonstrations.

For more information and images, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/lsms.html

For more information about NASA's Constellation Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration

NASA SETS BRIEFINGS FOR HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE SHUTTLE MISSION

NASA will hold a series of news media briefings Sept. 8 - 9 to preview the space shuttle's fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA Television and the agency's Web site will provide live coverage of the briefings from the Johnson Space Center and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Questions also will be taken from other participating NASA locations.

Shuttle Atlantis' 11-day flight, designated STS-125, is targeted for launch Oct. 8 and will include five spacewalks to refurbish and upgrade the telescope with state-of-the-art science instruments. Replacing failed hardware on Hubble will extend the telescope's life into the next decade.

U.S. news media planning to attend the briefings at Johnson must contact the newsroom there at 281-483-5111 by Sept. 2 to arrange for credentials. All reporters who are foreign nationals must contact the newsroom by Aug. 8.

On Sept. 9, Atlantis' seven astronauts will be available for round-robin interviews at Johnson. Reporters planning to participate in-person or by phone must contact Gayle Frere at 281-483-8645 by Sept. 2 to reserve an interview opportunity.

Scott Altman will command Atlantis' crew, which includes Pilot Gregory C. Johnson, and Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, Megan McArthur and Mike Massimino. The spacewalkers are Good, Grunsfeld, Feustel and Massimino. McArthur is the flight engineer and lead for robotic arm operations.

Along with the briefings to preview the Hubble servicing mission at Johnson, media will have an opportunity during the afternoon of Sept. 8 to review new equipment being developed for NASA's Constellation Program. Constellation is building America's next human spacecraft,
which will fly astronauts to low Earth orbit, the moon and beyond. During the review, media will see items that include concepts of a new spacesuit, a pressurized rover vehicle for astronauts, and a mockup of the Orion crew capsule.

The schedule (all times are CDT) includes:

Monday, Sept. 8
7 a.m. - Video B-Roll Feed
8 a.m. - NASA Overview Briefing (from Goddard)
9 a.m. - Shuttle Program Overview Briefing (from Johnson)
10 a.m. - HST/SM 4 Program Overview (from Goddard)
11:30 a.m. - NASA TV Video File
Noon - HST/SM4 Science Overview (from Goddard)
1:30 p.m. - HST Program and Science Round-Robins (from Goddard; not on
NASA TV)
1:30 p.m. - Constellation Program Preview (from Johnson, not on NASA
TV)

Tuesday, Sept. 9
8 a.m. - Video B-Roll Feed
9 a.m. - STS-125 Mission Overview (from Johnson)
10:30 a.m. - STS-125 Spacewalk Overview (from Johnson)
Noon - NASA TV Video File
1 p.m. - STS-125 Crew News Conference (from Johnson)
2 - 6 p.m. - STS-125 Crew Round-Robins (from Johnson; not on NASA TV)

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information,
visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For the latest information about the STS-125 mission and its crew,
visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

NASA's Lander Collects Icy Soil But Needs to Work on Delivery

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm collected a more than adequate amount of icy soil for baking in one of the lander's ovens but will need to adjust how it delivers samples.

Engineers determined the rasping and scraping activity collected a total of 3 cubic centimeters of icy soil, more than enough to fill the tiny oven cell of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. However, images returned from the lander Saturday morning show that much of the soil remained lodged in the robotic arm's scoop after the attempt to deliver the sample to the TEGA.

"Very little of the icy sample made it into the oven," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We believe that the material that was intended for the targeted cell is the material that adhered to the back of the scoop."

Once the sample had been collected, the robotic arm tilted its scoop and ran the rasp motor several times in an attempt to sprinkle the sample into the oven whose doors were wide open. The final step was inverting the scoop directly over the doors. A screened opening over the oven measures about 10 centimeters (4 inches) long by 3 centimeters (1.5 inches) wide. The oven itself is roughly the size of an ink cartridge in a ballpoint pen.

The delivery sequence also included vibrating the screen several times, which would have aided delivery. TEGA detected that not enough sample was recorded as being in its oven, so the oven doors did not close.

The TEGA activities did not cause any short circuits with the equipment.

"The good news here is TEGA is functioning nominally, and we will adjust our sample drop-off strategy to run this again," Goldstein said.

Prior to the sample delivery, Phoenix's robotic arm made 16 holes in the hard ground with its motorized rasp tool and the scoop collected the rasped material and shavings left on the surface from the rasping action.

The lander conducted these activities overnight Friday to Saturday, Pacific Time, during Martian morning hours of the mission's 60th Martian day, or sol. The Phoenix team planned Saturday to send the spacecraft commands to take images on Sunday, the mission's Sol 61, of areas around and under the TEGA instrument. The images by the Robotic Arm Camera would be a way to check for additional material that might have been released by the scoop on Sol 60.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Aura Mission, Understanding and Protecting the Air We Breathe

The Llaima Volcano is one of Chile's most active volcanoes and has frequent but moderate eruptions. An eruption on January 1, 2008 forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from nearby villages.

The volcano at least erupted 60 times from Tuesday to Wednesday, while there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, officials said. The Llaima volcano in southern Chile erupted, sending a huge plume of smoke into the air, located some 850 km (528 miles) south of Santiago. The volcanic ash expelled by Llaima travelled east over the Andes into Argentina.

Aura's OMI instrument captured a near-real time image of the sulfer dioxide (SO2) plume from the Llaima volcanic eruption. The SO2 cloud (red color) off the coast of Argentina was from Aura overpass on January 2 and over South Atlantic on January 3.

This is the first eruption from Llaima since 1994. Chile, after Indonesia, has the world's second biggest and second most active chain of volcanoes.

+ Read More

Astro 2 - Mission

Following the scientific success of the Astro-1 mission, Astro-2 was approved as a follow-up flight. The three ultraviolet telescopes, which flew on Astro-1, were reassembled for Astro-2. These telescopes were (1) the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) operating in the 1200-3100 Angstrom range, (2) the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) operating from 425 to 1850 Angstroms, and (3) the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photopolarimetry Experiment (WUPPE) operating from 1250 to 3200 Angtroms. HUT was significantly upgraded for this second flight, with new optical coatings, which enhanced the telescope's performance by more than a factor of two. The three telescopes were planned to make simultaneous observations of objects such as stars, galaxies and quasars, since many science objectives and selected astronomical targets of the three instrument teams are interrelated. BBXRT, which was onboard ASTRO 1, was not flown on ASTRO 2.

The telescopes were mounted on a Spacelab pallet in the payload bay of the shuttle (flight STS-67). The Spacelab Instrument Pointing System (IPS), pallets, and avionics were utilized for attachment to the Shuttle and for control and data handling. The IPS provides a stable platform, keeps the telescopes aligned, and provides various pointing and tracking capabilities to the telescopes. The Astro observatory requires both mission specialists and payload specialists to control its operations from the Shuttle aft flight deck. Instrument monitoring and quick-look data analysis are planned for real-time ground operations.

The Guest Observer Program was included for Astro-2. The telescopes observed over 250 astronomical objects before returning to earth after a 16-day flight.

Astro 1 - Mission

The "Astro Observatory" was developed as a system of telescopes that could fly multiple times on the space shuttle. Astro-1 consisted of three ultraviolet telescopes and an X-ray telescope. The primary objectives of this observatory were to obtain (1) imagery in the spectral range 1200-3100 A (Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, UIT); (2) spectrophotometry in the spectral region 425 to 1850 A (Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope, HUT); (3)spectrapolarimetry from 1250 to 3200 A (Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photopolarimetry Experiment, WUPPE); and (4) X-ray data in the bandpass between 0.3 and 12 keV (Broad Band X-ray Telescope, BBXRT). Since many science objectives and selected astronomical targets of the three instrument teams were inter-related, simultaneous observations by all four instruments were planned.

The telescopes were mounted on a Spacelab pallet in the payload bay of the shuttle (flight STS-35). The Spacelab Instrument Pointing System (IPS), pallets, and avionics were utilized for attachment to the Shuttle and for control and data handling. Astro-1 required both mission specialists and payload specialists to control its operations from the Shuttle aft flight deck. Instrument monitoring and quick-look data analysis were performed for real-time ground operations. During the flight both on-board Digital Display Units malfunctioned, and the star guidance system calibration was not possible. The observing sequences were rescheduled during the flight, and instrument pointing was done by hand by the astronauts, and from the ground.

As a result of the numerous technical glitches, the returned data volume was less than half of that originally planned, and the scientific return was about 67% of the stated goals of the mission. Astro-1 was returned to earth 17:54 U.T., December 11, 1990. However, the mission was very successful in that 231 observations of 130 unique astronomical targetrs were made.

The follow-up flight, Astro-2, was dedicated to studies of many astronomical objects, and included increasing participation of guest investigators.

NASA Successfully Tests Parachute for Ares Rocket

Overview: Ares Launch Vehicles

NASA's Ares rockets, named for the Greek god associated with Mars, will return humans to the moon and later take them to Mars and other destinations.

Future astronauts will ride to orbit on Ares I, which uses a single five-segment solid rocket booster, a derivative of the space shuttle's solid rocket booster, for the first stage. A liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen J-2X engine derived from the J-2 engine used on Apollo's second stage will power the crew exploration vehicle's second stage. The Ares I can lift more than 55,000 pounds to low Earth orbit.

Planning and early design are under way for hardware, propulsion systems and associated technologies for NASA's Ares V cargo launch vehicle -- the "heavy lifter" of America’s next-generation space fleet. Ares V will serve as NASA's primary vessel for safe, reliable delivery of large-scale hardware to space -- from the lunar landing craft and materials for establishing a moon base, to food, fresh water and other staples needed to extend a human presence beyond Earth orbit.

ARCTAS - Forest Fire Smoke Plumes Probed

In a nondescript room on a Canadian Air Force Base, an international team of fire trackers, weather forecasters and various atmospheric scientists puzzle over computer models, satellite tracks and flight charts. Their goal is to find the best fire targets and tailor the flight path of NASA’s airborne laboratories to track and investigate the properties of smoke plumes.

The researchers are part of the summer deployment of NASA’s Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites, or ARCTAS, mission. The mission is just five days into its summer study of the smoke plumes from northern latitude forest fires, and already the choreographed effort between modelers and experimenters is producing a wealth of new data.

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WHAT IS AQUARIUS ?

Aquarius is a focused satellite mission to measure global Sea Surface Salinity (SSS). Scientific progress is limited because conventional in situ SSS sampling is too sparse to give the global view of salinity variability that only a satellite can provide. Aquarius is planning to launch in 2010. Aquarius/SAC-D is a space mission developed by NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, CONAE.)

MISSION STATUS & EVENTS

Aquarius passed Mission Confirmation Review on September 28, 2005. Thus the project has completed formulation activities (Phase B), during which the mission requirements, design and costs have been developed and reviewed, and has begun the implementation (Phases C & D), when the flight hardware is built, tested and readied for launch.
After a four-year development effort, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) delivered the Aquarius Radiometer to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California in January 2008. The Radiometer, built by an in-house team of scientists, engineers, and technicians at GSFC is part of the international Aquarius/SAC-D mission. The Radiometer will be integrated with the Aquarius instrument at JPL. (Click here to learn more)

Aqua Mission

Aqua is a major international Earth Science satellite mission centered at NASA. Launched on May 4, 2002, the satellite has six different Earth-observing instruments on board and is named for the large amount of information being obtained about water in the Earth system from its stream of approximately 89 Gigabytes of data a day. The water variables being measured include almost all elements of the water cycle and involve water in its liquid, solid, and vapor forms. Additional variables being measured include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.

Apollo: Expandng Our Knowledge of the Solar System

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of sending astronauts to the moon before the end of the decade. Coming just three weeks after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space, Kennedy's bold challenge set the nation on a journey unlike any before in human history.

Eight years of hard work by thousands of Americans came to fruition on July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong stepped out of the lunar module and took "one small step" in the Sea of Tranquility, calling it "a giant leap for mankind."

Innovation and even improvisation were necessary along the way. In December 1968, rather than letting lunar module delays slow the program, NASA changed plans to keep the momentum going. Apollo 8 would go all the way to the moon and orbit without a lunar module; it was the first manned flight of the massive Saturn V rocket.

Six of the missions -- Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 -- went on to land on the moon, studying soil mechanics, meteoroids, seismic, heat flow, lunar ranging, magnetic fields and solar wind. Apollos 7 and 9 tested spacecraft in Earth orbit; Apollo 10 orbited the moon as the dress rehearsal for the first landing. An oxygen tank explosion forced Apollo 13 to scrub its landing, but the "can-do" problem solving of the crew and mission control turned the mission into a "successful failure."

The program also drew inspiration from Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, who lost their lives in a fire during a launch pad test in 1967.

AIM-Mission, NASA Satellite Captures First View of 'Night-Shining Clouds'

The first observations of these "night-shining" clouds by a satellite named "AIM" which means Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, occurred above 70 degrees north latitude on May 25. People on the ground began seeing the clouds on June 6 over Northern Europe. AIM is the first satellite mission dedicated to the study of these unusual clouds.

These mystifying clouds are called Polar Mesospheric Clouds, or PMCs, when they are viewed from space and referred to as "night-shining" clouds or Noctilucent Clouds, when viewed by observers on Earth. The clouds form in an upper layer of the Earth’s atmosphere called the mesosphere during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer season which began in mid-May and extends through the end of August and are being seen by AIM’s instruments more frequently as the season progresses. They are also seen in the high latitudes during the summer months in the Southern Hemisphere.

Very little is known about how these clouds form over the poles, why they are being seen more frequently and at lower latitudes than ever before, or why they have been growing brighter. AIM will observe two complete cloud seasons over both poles, documenting an entire life cycle of the shiny clouds for the first time.

"It is clear that these clouds are changing, a sign that a part of our atmosphere is changing and we do not understand how, why or what it means," stated AIM principal investigator James Russell III of Hampton University, Hampton, Va. "These observations suggest a connection with global change in the lower atmosphere and could represent an early warning that our Earth environment is being changed."

AIM is providing scientists with information about how many of these clouds there are around the world and how different they are including the sizes and shapes of the tiny particles that make them up. Scientists believe that the shining clouds form at high latitudes early in the season and then move to lower latitudes as time progresses. The AIM science team is studying this new data to understand why these clouds form and vary, and if they may be related to global change.

Once the summer season ends in the Northern Hemisphere around mid- to late August, the Southern Hemisphere spring season starts about three months later in the period around mid- to late November. AIM will then be watching for shining clouds in the Southern Hemisphere from November through mid-March when that season ends.

AIM and is managed at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md and the AIM Project Data Center is located at Hampton University.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Hubble Instruments Slated for On-Orbit 'Surgery'

When astronauts visit the Hubble Space Telescope in October 2008 for its final servicing mission, they will be facing a task that has no precedence – performing on-orbit 'surgery' on two ailing science instruments that reside inside the telescope – the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

Hubble was designed with servicing in mind, so its instrument bay doors are lined with handrails and, with custom tools, are relatively easy to open for the astronauts. The same cannot be said for the instruments themselves.

"The repair of STIS and of ACS in particular, involves techniques that the astronauts have never performed on Hubble, possibly never before anywhere," explained HST senior scientist Dave Leckrone at Goddard. "That is, to open up an instrument that was not designed to be opened up and actually pull out electronic printed circuit boards and replace them with new boards."

To accommodate these groundbreaking repairs, Hubble engineers and astronauts worked diligently to design special tools and procedures. Like doctors performing surgeries, preparation is imperative for success.

The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph

Astronauts installed STIS in Hubble in 1997 during Servicing Mission 2. Its main function is spectroscopy -- the separation of light into its component colors, or wavelengths, to reveal information about the chemical content, temperature, and motion of stars and gas. Among its many accomplishments, STIS confirmed the existence of super-massive black holes and was the first instrument ever to detect and analyze the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.

Although spectrographs like STIS generally do not produce the beautiful images that Hubble is famous for, the data they provide are absolutely essential to understanding the physical properties of the universe. It could be said that they put the "physics" in astrophysics.

After a long life of scientific discovery, STIS experienced a power supply failure in August 2004, causing it to suspend operations. NASA engineers were able to pinpoint exactly where and how the failure occurred by examining data from STIS and determined that the inoperable power supply resides on a printed circuit board housed within the instrument.

The Advanced Camera for Surveys

Installed during Servicing Mission 3B in 2002, ACS quickly became Hubble’s workhorse imaging camera. Designed to survey large areas of the sky at visible and red wavelengths, it had twice the field-of-view and a finer resolution than its predecessor, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. It quickly became Hubble’s most heavily used instrument and was responsible for many of the telescope’s most popular and dramatic images.

It took three failures to put ACS out of commission -- the first two were recovered by operating the instrument in different ways. To protect against failures, all Hubble instruments have some degree of "redundancy," meaning that there are duplicate parts that can perform the same function. If one part fails, another can be activated to restore the function.

When the first two failures occurred in 2006, the ground operations team was able to keep the entire instrument fully operational by using a redundant power supply. The final failure came in January 2007 when the backup power supply failed.

With less than two years until the final servicing mission, there would have been little time to develop procedures and tools needed to repair ACS had the team not already been preparing for a very similar task involving the repair of STIS. Designing a repair process for ACS became very workable by adapting the processes already under development for STIS repair.

Tool and Procedure Development

The repair of STIS and ACS presented a multitude of challenges during the development process. Engineers needed to work around three major issues: (1) safely getting access to the failed boards; (2) figuring a way to pull them out wearing the pressurized gloves; and (3) closing out the worksite when repairs are complete.

Knowing exactly what needs to be fixed is not enough to make repairs a piece of cake. To access the failed circuit boards on these two instruments, astronauts will have to remove 111 screws from the cover of STIS, and 32 screws from ACS, a time-consuming process in an environment where time is a scarce commodity.

To confront this challenge, Goddard engineers developed a high-speed power screwdriver with low torque, or twisting force. This combination of operational abilities means that the drill will speed up the removal process without breaking the screws and fasteners.

The sheer number of screws to be removed is not the only issue with gaining access to the circuit boards. Despite its mammoth size and giant status in space discovery, Hubble’s instruments are extremely delicate. Floating debris pose the threat of contaminating exposed electronics, so as astronauts open Hubble’s outer shell to make their repairs they must exercise extreme caution. Even tiny metal shavings resulting from the removal of one screw could be kryptonite to this super telescope.

To avoid the debris issue, NASA engineers designed a fastener capture plate. Using the custom drill, astronauts will first remove four screws to install the transparent “capture plate” over the electronic access panel. Tiny, labeled holes in the plate will allow them to then insert the drill bit and remove screws as the capture plate contains them. When all of the screws have been removed, the entire capture plate can be released as one unit, safely taking the access panel and all debris with it.

The astronauts' second challenge is grasping the failed circuit boards once the access panel has been removed. The boards are thin and the astronaut’s suits, including their gloves, are bulky and pressurized to protect them from the space environment. If you were to put on a pair of thick, wool mittens and try to grab a single piece of paper from the middle of a stack, you might have some idea of how difficult and time-consuming the task is for astronauts. NASA engineers got around this issue by developing a special card extraction tool which will allow the astronauts to easily grab and remove the circuit boards using large handles made specifically for their gloves.

The last major challenge of the repair process involves closing the instruments back up after repairs are complete. To conserve time, engineers designed a simplified version of the access panels. Two lever-like latches will be all it takes for the astronauts to securely lock the new STIS cover into place. A new panel is not required for ACS because the new electronic cards have all been built into one box that easily slides into place and covers the open side of the instrument.

Appreciating a Complement

Because NASA will be installing similar instruments into Hubble during SM4, you may wonder what purpose it serves to fix STIS and ACS. The answer lies in their differing, but complementary, capabilities.

While the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) will expand Hubble’s high resolution and provide a wide field-of-view into the near ultra-violet and near infra-red regions of the spectrum, the ACS has a slightly higher discovery potential in the visible wavelengths of light. STIS is a two-dimensional spectrograph while the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is a point-source ultra-violet spectrograph. These two spectrographs working in tandem would give astronomers a full, spectroscopic suite of instruments.

The improvements will add years of science to Indexing Card Extraction Tool (ICET) and provide a full 'toolkit' to astronomers around the world. "Personally, I think that's where the more exciting results will come from after this servicing mission," explained Leckrone, “the new ideas that astronomers have about how to use these wonderful instruments now that they’re all together in a set that is internally complementary.”

Making History Again

Hubble has been arguably the most well-known and successful telescope in NASA history, but it is not solely a pathfinder for the science it has yielded over the years. The processes and procedures carried out during servicing missions have also always been innovative.

Before Hubble, nothing launched into space had even been built to be serviced and upgraded on orbit. The telescope is close to making history again with the first on-orbit repairs of existing instruments. Should these repair tasks be successful, Hubble is expected to be 90 times more powerful than ever before.

"At the end of SM4, when the astronauts leave Hubble for the last time, we have a very good prospect that Hubble will be at the apex of its capabilities. It will be better than it's ever been before, which is quite awesome when you realize that it will be over eighteen years old as an observatory," Leckrone said.

Related link:

> Read the other stories in the "Next Stop: Hubble" series

Phoenix Scoop Ready for Sampling

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm scoop is primed and ready to collect a soil sample from the northern region of Mars to analyze for the presence of water and other possible ingredients.

Scientists and engineers on the mission Friday prepared plans to send Phoenix later in the day that would command the robotic arm to rasp the hard soil in the trench informally named "Snow White," collect the shavings and deliver them to an oven for analysis.

Images received on Earth Friday morning confirmed that the scoop had been cleared of anything collected during previous days' testing. The scoop went through a sequence of moves to dump any remaining material. At the same time, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) was successfully prepared for the sample by purging it of any volatile materials.

"The successful completion of these preparatory activities clears the way for our next critical event, delivering the icy soil sample to TEGA," said Doug Ming, of NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, the team's science lead for today's planning.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

'Impressionist' Spacecraft to View Solar System's Invisible Frontier

At the edge of our solar system in December 2004, the Voyager 1 spacecraft encountered something never before experienced during its then 26-year cruise through the solar system — an invisible shock formed as the solar wind piles up against the gas in interstellar space. This boundary, called the termination shock, marks the beginning of our solar system's final frontier, a vast expanse of turbulent gas and twisting magnetic fields.

A NASA-sponsored team is developing a way to view this chaotic but unseen realm for the first time. Just as an impressionist artist makes an image from countless tiny strokes of paint, NASA’s new Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft will build up an image of the termination shock and areas beyond by using hits from high-speed atoms that are radiating out of this region.

"IBEX will let us make the first global observations of the region beyond the termination shock at the very edges of our solar system. This region is critical because it shields out the vast majority of the deadly cosmic rays that would otherwise permeate the space around the Earth and other planets," says Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas. "IBEX will let us visualize our home in the galaxy for the first time and explore how it may have evolved over the history of the solar system. Ultimately, by making the first images of the interstellar boundaries neighboring our solar system, IBEX will provide a first step toward exploring the galactic frontier."

Space is not empty. The sun exhales a thin, hot wind of electrically conducting gas, called plasma, into space at about a million miles per hour. This solar wind forms a large plasma bubble, called the heliosphere, in space around the Sun. Beyond the orbit of Pluto, the solar wind gradually slows as it interacts with inflowing neutral gases from interstellar space, and then abruptly drops in speed at a thin, invisible boundary around our solar system called the termination shock.

A simple kitchen demonstration illustrates how this shock forms. When water runs at high speed from a kitchen faucet down to the bottom surface of the sink, the water hitting this surface first flows quickly and smoothly away from the impact point, but then runs into a circular boundary with slower, more turbulent flow beyond this boundary.

In the kitchen sink demonstration, the circular boundary is the termination shock. The turbulent region beyond the shock boundary corresponds to a layer in the outer heliosphere of turbulent plasma flows and magnetic fields called the heliosheath. The boundary of this turbulent layer with the interstellar plasma environment, not so easily seen in the kitchen sink experiment because of the turbulence, is called the heliopause. The heliopause is the end of our solar system’s frontier. Beyond that is interstellar space.

IBEX will make pictures of the heliosheath region and determine the termination shock’s strength. It will also discover what happens when the solar wind clashes with interstellar space by observing how the solar wind is flowing in the heliosheath and how the interstellar gas interacts with the heliopause. IBEX will determine how high-speed atoms are accelerated within the termination shock and heliosheath.

A cosmic game of tag allows IBEX to make its pictures. First, some background on the players: an atom needs to be electrically charged to feel magnetic force and be influenced by the magnetic fields in space. Normally, the positive electric charges in the central part of the atom, called the nucleus, are balanced by an equal number of negatively charged electrons swirling around it. In this case, the atom is electrically neutral overall and does not respond to magnetic fields. However, sometimes an atom gains or loses an electron. The electric charges are no longer in balance; gaining an electron gives the atom an extra negative charge, while losing an electron leaves the atom with a positive charge. The charged atom, called an ion, can now be deflected or accelerated by magnetic fields.

Most of the ions in interstellar space are deflected around our solar system by the magnetic field carried by the solar wind. Energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) are created when low-energy neutral atoms floating in from the interstellar medium "tag" energetic protons that are gyrating around the magnetic field lines in the solar wind. They charge exchange (since opposite charges attract, an electron jumps from the neutral atom to the positively charged proton if the two pass each other very closely). The proton now has an electron to balance its charge, and it becomes an Energetic Neutral Atom. The ENAs that happen to be pointing in the direction of Earth at the moment of charge-exchange will then propagate back in toward the Earth where IBEX can detect them.

Since the ENAs no longer feel magnetic force, they travel in a nearly straight line, only slightly deflected by the sun's gravity. Their straightforward path allows ENAs that hit IBEX's two sensors to be traced back to their origin near the termination shock. This lets the IBEX team gradually build up a picture of the termination shock using the incoming neutral atoms, since the majority of Earthward-directed ENAs are believed to result from heating of the solar wind as it crosses the termination shock. Six months into the mission, IBEX will have observed the entire sky, and will reveal the global structure of the heliosheath and termination shock for the first time.

IBEX is scheduled to be launched on a Pegasus rocket on October 5, 2008. It needs to go beyond the region of space controlled by Earth's magnetic field, called the magnetosphere, because this region generates radiation and the same high-speed atoms (ENAs) that IBEX will use to make its pictures. To avoid contamination from local ENAs produced in the magnetosphere, IBEX's orbit will take it up to 200,000 miles from Earth.

"The solar system's frontier is billions of miles away, so it's difficult for us to go there, but interesting things happen at boundaries, and with IBEX, we will see them for the first time," said Dr. Robert MacDowall, IBEX Mission Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The IBEX mission is funded by NASA's Small Explorer program. It is a PI-led mission being run by SwRI, which is responsible for all aspects of the mission. Orbital Science Corporation in Dulles, Virginia, is SwRI’s sub-contractor for the IBEX spacecraft and also provides the Pegasus launch. The Explorer Project Office at NASA Goddard oversees all Small Explorer missions, including IBEX.

> IBEX News and Multimedia

Cassini-Huygens mission

The ringed planet sits in repose, the center of its own macrocosm of many rings and moons and one artificial satellite named Cassini. Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across) is visible at upper left. Although unseen in this view, Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) casts its shadow upon the planet. The rings also block the sun's light from the low latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

During Cassini's extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission, which begins on July 1, 2008, the ring shadows will slip past the planet's equator and into the southern hemisphere as Saturn passes through its northern vernal equinox on August 11, 2009, and the sun moves northward through the ring plane.

This view looks down on the un-illuminated side of the rings from about 22 degrees above (north of) the ring plane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 16, 2007, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (900,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 86 kilometers (53 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

Tectonics on Titan

A set of three parallel ridges was seen by the Cassini spacecraft's radar instrument during the latest Titan flyby on May 12, 2008. This combination is unlikely to be a coincidence -- the best explanation for these features is that they are tilted or separated blocks of broken or faulted crust, now exposed as high ridges. Their regular spacing is typical of regions that have been compressed or extended over large areas; as an example, the western United States Basin and Range Province was formed by extension. Such interactions are called tectonics, although they do not happen in the same way as plate tectonics, which is a process unique to Earth.

The ridges, which appear on the left side of the image, are rugged features and are elevated above surrounding terrain. The brightness patterns mean that the materials are fractured or blocky at the radar wavelength (2.17 centimeters, or about 1 inch). Along the south sides of the ridges are prominent cliffs, or scarps, present as thin, radar-dark lines trending west-to-east, and interpreted as faults. These features are dark due to shadowing from the radar illumination, and have heights up to a few hundred meters (several hundred feet), based on preliminary estimates of slopes.

The area shown here is located in the mountainous region called Xanadu. The ridges are similar in many ways to mountain chains seen at similar latitude but about 90 degrees to the west, just west of Shangri-La (observed during a flyby in October 2005, PIA08454). Both regions have mountain chains or ridges that are oriented west-to-east and are spaced about 50 kilometers (30 miles) apart. This indicates tectonic forces have acted in a north to south direction at Titan’s equatorial region and have resulted in regular effects in Titan’s crust, evidence that will help scientists better understand Titan’s crust and interior.

Other linear features, probably related to the formation of the ridges, and circular features, perhaps eroded impact craters now filled with radar-dark (smooth) material, are also seen in the image. The largest circular feature, at bottom center, is about 20 km in diameter.

The image is centered at 2 degrees south, 127 degrees west and was obtained on May 12, 2008, with a resolution of about 300 meters (980 feet). The open arrow indicates the direction of radar illumination. The dashed white line in the upper portion is an artifact of the SAR processing and will be removed in later versions.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.

Impact Craters

This side-by-side view shows a newly discovered impact crater (at left) compared with a previously discovered crater (at right). The new crater was just discovered by the Cassini spacecraft's radar instrument during its most recent Titan flyby on May 12, 2008. This makes the fourth feature definitely identified as an impact crater so far on Titan -- fewer than 100 features are regarded as possible impacts. Compared with Saturn's other moons, which have many thousands of craters, Titan's surface is very sparsely cratered. This is in part due to Titan's dense atmosphere, which burns up the smaller impacting bodies before they can hit the surface. Geological processes, such as wind-driven motion of sand and icy volcanism, may also wipe out craters.

Both images are about 350 kilometers (217 miles) in width. The crater on the right was discovered by Cassini in 2005 and is shown here for comparison. It is 80 kilometers (50 miles) in diameter (see PIA07368), with the radar illumination from above. Called Sinlap, this crater is estimated to be about 1,300 meters (984 feet) deep. The new feature pictured on the left, which has not been named yet, is bigger than the Sinlap crater with a diameter of about 112 kilometers (70 miles).

The new crater is located at about 26 degrees north latitude, 200 degrees west longitude, in the bright region known as Dilmun, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) north of the Huygens landing site. In its image, also illuminated from above, it appears slightly irregular, suggesting that it was modified after it was formed, perhaps by collapses of segments of its rim onto the floor. The crater floor appears flat, and two small bright spots indicate a likely central peak complex. The ejecta blanket (surrounding material) from this crater is less prominent than that of the Sinlap crater. The crater's more degraded character suggests it could be older than Sinlap (assuming that erosive processes are the same at both locations, which are at similar latitudes).

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.

Map of Dione - May 2008

This global map of Saturn's moon Dione was created using images taken during Cassini spacecraft flybys, with Voyager images filling in the gaps in Cassini's coverage.

An extensive system of bright ice cliffs created by tectonic fractures adorns the moon's trailing hemisphere.

The map is a simple cylindrical (equidistant) projection and has a scale of 614 meters (2,014 feet) per pixel at the equator. The mean radius of Dione used for projection of this map is 562 kilometers (349 miles). This updated map has been shifted west by 0.6 degrees of longitude, compared to the previously released Cassini product (PIA08341), in order to conform to the International Astronomical Union longitude system convention for Dione.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Saturn's Infrared Temperature Snapshot

Scientists have discovered a wave pattern, or oscillation, in Saturn's atmosphere only visible from Earth every 15 years. The pattern ripples back and forth like a wave within Saturn's upper atmosphere. In this region, temperatures switch from one altitude to the next in a candy cane-like, striped, hot-cold pattern. The temperature "snapshot" shown in these two images captures two different phases of this wave oscillation: the temperature at Saturn's equator switches from hot to cold, and temperatures on either side of the equator switch from cold to hot every Saturn half-year.

The image on the left was taken in 1997 and shows the temperature at the equator is colder than the temperature at 13 degrees south latitude. Conversely, the image on the right taken in 2006 shows the temperature at the equator is warmer.

Unrolling the F-ring

The complex structure of Saturn's quirky F ring is unfurled in this mosaic made up of images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The mosaic covers 255 degrees of longitude within the F ring, which represents about 70 percent of the ring's circumference around Saturn. From top to bottom, the mosaic represents an area 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) in radial width.

The 107 images used to create the mosaic were processed to make the ring appear as if it has been straightened, making it easier to see the ring's structure. Here, the vertical axis represents distance from Saturn and the horizontal axis represents longitude around Saturn. This frame of reference is centered on the bright core of the F ring, at the vertical center of the mosaic. In this system, the core is considered to be stationary; objects closer to Saturn (or below vertical center) move toward right, and objects farther from Saturn (here, above the core) move toward left.

Ring scientists now understand a great deal about what causes the various features in the ring. In addition to the powerful perturbing effect of the moon Prometheus (see PIA07750, there is thought to be a population of small objects in the F-ring region that interact with the ring's core to produce the structures seen (see PIA07716). Two of the images had flaws, which caused the vertical lines seen on the right side of the mosaic. There is also a faint, roughly vertical, wavelike pattern in the view, which is an artifact of the process used to straighten the ring's shape.

The clear spectral filter images in this mosaic were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 31, 2007, at a distance of about 2 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Saturn.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Hissing Storm

A bright, powerful, lightning-producing storm churns and coasts along the lane of Saturn's southern hemisphere nicknamed "Storm Alley" by scientists.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected this particular tempest after nearly two years during which Saturn did not appear to produce any large electrical storms of this kind. The storm appears as a bright, irregular splotch on the planet near lower right.

Lightning flashes within the persistent storm produce radio waves, called Saturn Electrostatic Discharges, which the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected on Nov. 27, 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras then spotted the storm, taking the images used to create this color view about a week later on Dec. 6.

This electrical storm is similar in appearance and intensity to those previously monitored by Cassini. All of these powerful electrostatic producing storms appeared at about 35 degrees south latitude on Saturn. (See PIA07788, PIA08142 and PIA06197 for additional images of Saturn's electrical storms imaged by Cassini.)

This storm has now been continuously tracked by Cassini for several months, whereas previous storms observed by the spacecraft lasted for less than 30 days: See PIA08411 for images of the storm acquired three months after this view. The view looks toward the un-illuminated side of the rings from about 5 degrees above the ringplane. Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across) is seen here in the foreground, and casts its shadow onto the high northern latitudes.

Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.7 million kilometers (1 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 97 kilometers (60 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Saturn's Long-lived Storm

It is no Great Red Spot, but these two side-by-side views show the longest-lived electrical storm yet observed on Saturn by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

The views were acquired more than three months after the storm was first detected from its lightning-produced radio discharges on Nov. 27, 2007. See PIA08410 for an earlier color view of this storm. Cassini imaging scientists believe the storm to be a vertically extended disturbance that penetrates from Saturn's lower to upper troposphere.

The view at left was created by combining images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters, and shows Saturn in colors that approximate what the human eye would see. The storm stands out with greater clarity in the sharpened, enhanced color view at right. This view combines images taken in infrared, green and violet light at 939, 567 and 420 nanometers respectively and represents an expansion of the wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum visible to human eyes. This view looks toward the un-illuminated side of the rings from about 3 degrees above the ringplane. Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) appears as a dark speck just beneath the rings in both images.

These images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 4, 2008, at a distance of approximately 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 74 kilometers (46 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Trench on Mars Ready for Next Sampling by NASA Lander

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has groomed the bottom of a shallow trench to prepare for collecting a sample to be analyzed from a hard subsurface layer where the soil may contain frozen water.

Images received Thursday morning confirmed that the lander's robotic arm had scraped the top of the hard layer clean during activities of Phoenix's 58th Martian day, or sol, corresponding to overnight Wednesday to Thursday.

The Phoenix team developed commands for sending to the spacecraft Thursday to complete two remaining preparations necessary before collecting a sample and delivering it to the lander's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). One part of the plan for Sol 59 (overnight Thursday to Friday) would assure that the scoop is empty of any soil collected earlier. Another would complete a final cleaning of any volatile materials from the oven that will receive the sample.

In the past two weeks, the team has refined techniques for using a powered rasp on the back of the arm's scoop to cut and collect shavings of material from the bottom of the trench. The trench, informally named "Snow White," is 4 to 5 centimeters deep (about 2 inches), about 23 centimeters wide (9 inches), and about 60 centimeters long (24 inches) long.

"The rasped material ends up in the back of the scoop, and we have to transfer it to the front through a pathway. That takes a series of arm moves to be sure the material gets through the pathway," said Robert Bonitz of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manager for the robotic arm. "The reason we're doing it today is we want to be sure the pathway is free of any material collected previously before we collect the next sample for delivery to TEGA."

The planned activity would repeat the series of pathway-clearing moves twice, and check visually to be sure the front of the scoop is empty. It is also important to get the background counts as low as possible in TEGA's evolved-gas analyzer, which receives vapors emitted from the oven. The instrument was heated repeatedly before launch and during the flight to Mars to drive off any volatile material in it, such as water and carbon-dioxide gases that tend to stick on surfaces. It got another heating on Sol 58.

"The baking last night was to remove background volatiles stuck on the walls of the instrument," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead scientist for TEGA. "What we're planning today is pumping out any gas we might have released with the baking."

Other activities in the plan for the sol beginning today include weather monitoring and photography of several areas. Some planned use of the Surface Stereo Imager would record the same view consecutively through 15 different filters. Each filter lets through only a limited band of wavelengths of visible or infrared light. Using just red, green and blue filters allows the team to make full-color images. Using the additional filters provides more information useful for interpreting geological or atmospheric qualities of the image target.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

NASA SUCCESSFULLY TESTS PARACHUTE FOR ARES ROCKET

NASA and industry engineers have successfully completed the first drop test of a drogue parachute for the Ares I rocket. The drogue parachute is designed to slow the rapid descent of the spent first-stage motor, cast off by the Ares I rocket during its climb to space.

The successful test is a key early milestone in development and production of the Ares I rocket, the first launch vehicle for NASA's Constellation Program that will send explorers to the International Space Station, the moon and beyond in coming decades. The drogue parachute is a vital element of the Ares I deceleration system and will permit recovery of the reusable first-stage motor for use on future Ares I flights.

Engineers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., managed the team that conducted the first Ares I drogue chute test on July 24 at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground near Yuma, Ariz. This is the sixth in an ongoing series of tests supporting development of the Ares I parachute recovery system, which includes a pilot chute, drogue and three main parachutes. The next drogue parachute test is scheduled for October, and testing will continue through 2010. The drogue parachute also will be used during NASA's first test flight for the Ares rocket, the Ares I-X, scheduled to take place in 2009.

Researchers dropped the 68-foot-diameter drogue parachute and its 36,000-pound load -- simulating the first-stage motor -- from a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft flying at an altitude of 25,000 feet. The parachute and all test hardware functioned properly and landed safely.

The parachutes that serve as the Ares I recovery system are similar to the four-segment space shuttle boosters, but they have been redesigned to accommodate new requirements of the Ares I first stage. Dramatically larger and more powerful than the shuttle's boosters, the Ares I will have a five-segment solid rocket booster -- causing it to fall faster from a much higher altitude after separation from the launch vehicle.

During launch, the Ares I first-stage booster will separate from the upper stage at an elevation of 189,000 feet, approximately 126 seconds into flight. After freefalling to approximately 15,740 feet, the booster's nose cap will be jettisoned, releasing the pilot parachute, which in turn releases the drogue, slowing the stage's descent from 402 mph to 210 mph and maneuvering the booster into a vertical position. Finally, a cluster of three main parachutes, each 150 feet in diameter, will be deployed. The main parachutes continue to slow the booster to splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

Beginning in 2015, the Ares I rocket will launch the Orion crew capsule and six astronauts, and small pressurized cargo payloads, to the International Space Station. The Ares I rocket, an in-line, two-stage rocket configuration, will be powered by the first stage solid rocket motor for the first two minutes of launch.

ATK Launch Systems near Promontory, Utah, is the prime contractor for the first stage booster. ATK's subcontractor, United Space Alliance of Houston, is responsible for design, development and testing of the parachutes at its facilities at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston manages the Constellation Program, which includes the Ares I rocket, the Ares V heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Orion crew capsule, the Altair lunar lander. Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Ares Projects. The U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Ground provides the test range, support facilities and equipment to NASA for parachute testing.

Video of the drogue test will be available Monday, July 28, on NASA Television's Video File. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For information about NASA's Constellation Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/constellation

NASA SATELLITES DISCOVER WHAT POWERS NORTHERN LIGHTS

Researchers using a fleet of five NASA satellites have discovered that explosions of magnetic energy a third of the way to the moon power substorms that cause sudden brightenings and rapid movements of the aurora borealis, called the Northern Lights.

The culprit turns out to be magnetic reconnection, a common process that occurs throughout the universe when stressed magnetic field lines suddenly snap to a new shape, like a rubber band that's been stretched too far.

"We discovered what makes the Northern Lights dance," said Dr. Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles. Angelopoulos is the principal investigator for the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission, or THEMIS.

Substorms produce dynamic changes in the auroral displays seen near Earth's northern and southern magnetic poles, causing a burst of light and movement in the Northern and Southern Lights.

Substorms often accompany intense space storms that can disrupt radio communications and global positioning system signals and cause power outages. Solving the mystery of where, when, and how substorms occur will allow scientists to construct more realistic substorm models and
better predict a magnetic storm's intensity and effects.

"As they capture and store energy from the solar wind, the Earth's magnetic field lines stretch far out into space. Magnetic reconnection releases the energy stored within these stretched
magnetic field lines, flinging charged particles back toward the Earth's atmosphere," said David Sibeck, THEMIS project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "They create halos of shimmering aurora circling the northern and southern poles."

Scientists directly observe the beginning of substorms using five THEMIS satellites and a network of 20 ground observatories located throughout Canada and Alaska. Launched in February 2007, the five identical satellites line up once every four days along the equator
and take observations synchronized with the ground observatories. Each ground station uses a magnetometer and a camera pointed upward to determine where and when an auroral substorm will begin. Instruments measure the auroral light from particles flowing along Earth's magnetic field and the electrical currents these particles generate.

During each alignment, the satellites capture data that allow scientists to precisely pinpoint where, when, and how substorms measured on the ground develop in space. On Feb. 26, 2008, during one such THEMIS lineup, the satellites observed an isolated substorm begin in space, while the ground-based observatories recorded the intense auroral brightening and space currents over North America.

These observations confirm for the first time that magnetic reconnection triggers the onset of substorms. The discovery supports the reconnection model of substorms, which asserts a substorm starting to occur follows a particular pattern. This pattern consists of a period of reconnection, followed by rapid auroral brightening and rapid expansion of the aurora toward the poles. This culminates in a redistribution of the electrical currents flowing in space around Earth.

THEMIS is the fifth medium-class mission under NASA's Explorer Program. The program, managed by the Explorers Program Office at Goddard provides frequent flight opportunities for world-class space investigations in heliophysics and astrophysics. The University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., managed the project development and is currently operating the THEMIS mission. ATK Space (formerly Swales Aerospace) of Beltsville, Md., built the THEMIS satellites.

The THEMIS team's findings will appear online July 24 in Science Express and Aug. 14 in the journal science. For more information about the THEMIS mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/themis

NASA AND INTERNET ARCHIVE LAUNCH CENTRALIZED RESOURCE FOR IMAGES

NASA and Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library based in San Francisco, made available the most comprehensive compilation ever of NASA's vast collection of photographs, historic film and video Thursday. Located at www.nasaimages.org, the Internet site combines for the first time 21 major NASA imagery collections into a single, searchable online resource. A link to the Web site will appear on the http://www.nasa.gov home page.

The Web site launch is the first step in a five-year partnership that will add millions of images and thousands of hours of video and audio content, with enhanced search and viewing capabilities, and new user features on a continuing basis. Over time, integration of
www.nasaimages.org with http://www.nasa.gov will become more seamless and comprehensive.

"This partnership with Internet Archive enables NASA to provide the American public with access to its vast collection of imagery from one searchable source, unlocking a new treasure trove of discoveries for students, historians, enthusiasts and researchers," said NASA
Deputy Administrator Shana Dale. "This new resource also will enable the agency to digitize and preserve historical content now not available on the Internet for future generations."

Through a competitive process, NASA selected Internet Archive to manage the NASA Images Web site under a non-exclusive Space Act agreement, signed in July 2007. The five-year project is at no cost to the taxpayer and the images are free to the public.

"NASA's media is an incredibly important and valuable national asset. It is a tremendous honor for the Internet Archive to be NASA's partner in this project," says Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive. "We are excited to mark this first step in a long-term collaboration to create a rich and growing public resource."

The content of the Web site covers all the diverse activities of America's space program, including imagery from the Apollo moon missions, Hubble Space Telescope views of the universe and experimental aircraft past and present. Keyword searching is available with easy-to-use resources for teachers and students.

Internet Archive is developing the NASA Images project using software donated by Luna Imaging Inc. of Los Angeles and with the generous support of the Kahle-Austin Foundation of San Francisco.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

For more information about Internet Archive, visit:

http://www.archive.org

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Tropical Storm Dolly, Here You Come Again…

Like the number one song by Dolly Parton, "Here You Come Again," six years ago, there was a tropical storm Dolly, now the name has returned on the official six year name hurricane list. Dolly is the name of the Atlantic Hurricane Season's fourth named storm and she means business in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dolly started out as a tropical depression on Sunday, July 20th and by 11:45 a.m. EDT that day, she strengthened into a tropical storm and got her name.

By 8:00 a.m. EDT on Monday, July 21, 2008, Dolly had moved off the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, and is located between there and Cuba. She's now poised to enter the Gulf of Mexico's warm waters and could become a hurricane by Tuesday, July 22.

At 8:00 a.m. EDT on July 21, Dolly's center was located near 21.6 degrees north latitude and 88.7 degrees west longitude, or 65 miles (105 km) east-northeast of Progreso, Mexico. Dolly is moving toward the west-northwest near 16 mph (26 km/hour), and a west-northwest motion is expected over the next couple of days. She's also expected to slow down in forward speed.

Dolly's maximum sustained winds are near 50 mph (85 km/hour) with higher gusts, and the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico will strengthen her into a hurricane over the next day. Her estimated minimum central pressure is 1005 millibars.

She's expected to produce a good amount of rainfall across the northern Yucatan and western Cuba, between 4 and 6 inches. There will also be areas that could receive as much as 10 inches of rain.

This infrared image of Dolly was created by data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), an instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The image was created on July 21 at 7:23 UTC (3:23 a.m. EDT) and Dolly is located between the Yucatan and Cuba poised to enter the Gulf of Mexico.

The AIRS images show the temperature of the cloud tops or the surface of the Earth in cloud-free regions. The lowest temperatures (in purple) are associated with high, cold cloud tops that make up the top of Dolly. The AIRS data creates an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, all of which are helpful to forecasters.

The infrared signal of the AIRS instrument does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds the AIRS instrument reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red.

Dolly Eyeing Landfall Wednesday at Texas/Mexico Border as a Hurricane

Tropical Storm Dolly is strengthening in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and is expected to become a hurricane by Wednesday, July 23. The National Hurricane Center is forecasting landfall that day near Brownsville, Texas, which is on the border between Texas and Mexico.

Where is Dolly Now?
At 5:00 a.m. EDT (4:00 a.m. CDT) on Tuesday, July 22, the center of Tropical Storm Dolly was located near latitude 23.3 north and longitude 93.8 west or about 295 miles (475 km) southeast of Brownsville, Texas. Dolly's maximum sustained winds are near 60 mph (95 km/hr) with higher gusts. Additional strengthening is forecast, and Dolly is expected to become a hurricane prior to landfall.

Dolly is moving toward the west near 15 mph (24 km/hr). Later today, July 22, she's expected to turn to the west-northwest is expected later today, then veer northwest on the 23rd. Minimum central pressure is 997 millibars.

Where Are The Warnings Posted?
A hurricane warning is in effect for the coast of Texas from Brownsville to Port O'Connor. There's a warning also for the northeast coast of Mexico from Rio San Fernando, northward to the border between Mexico and the U.S. A hurricane warning means that hurricane conditions are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.

A tropical storm warning is in effect from north of Port O'Connor to San Luis Pass. A tropical storm warning means that tropical storm conditions (winds between 39-73 mph) are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.

What Will Dolly Bring to Texas and Mexico?
Like the Dolly Parton song "Wild Texas Wind" from her "Something Special" album of 1995, Texas and Mexico will likely be experiencing hurricane force winds over the next few days.

The National Hurricane Center expects Dolly to produce total rain accumulations of 4 to 8 inches with isolated amounts of up to 15 inches over much of south Texas and northeastern Mexico over the next few days. Dolly is expected to produce additional amounts of 1 to 3 inches over the Northern Yucatan Peninsula.

Dangerous coastal conditions are expected as Dolly approaches the coast. Coastal storm surge flooding of 4 to 6 feet above normal tide levels along with large and dangerous battering waves can be expected near and to the north of where the center makes landfall.

What Does This NASA Satellite Image Show?
This infrared image of Dolly was created by data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), an instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The image was created on July 22 at 8:05 UTC (4:05 a.m. EDT) and Dolly is located in the Gulf of Mexico, some 275 miles southeast of Brownsville, Texas (at the southern-most tip of the state).

The AIRS images show the temperature of the cloud tops or the surface of the Earth in cloud-free regions. The lowest temperatures (in purple) are associated with high, cold cloud tops that make up the top of Dolly. The AIRS data creates an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, all of which are helpful to forecasters.

The infrared signal of the AIRS instrument does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds the AIRS instrument reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red.

Dolly Poised to Hit South Texas, Northern Mexico as Hurricane

The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season has become a lot more active recently, first with the formation of Tropical Storm Cristobal off of the Carolina coast and now with Tropical Storm Dolly in the Gulf of Mexico poised to strike near the border between Texas and Mexico. Dolly, which became a tropical storm in the western Caribbean on the morning (local time) of 20 July 2008, originated from an African easterly wave that had emerged off of the coast of Africa back on the 12th of July before propagating westward across the tropical Atlantic and into the Caribbean. After forming in the western Caribbean, Tropical Storm Dolly maintained a generally west-northwestward track, which took the center across the very northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula early on the morning (local time) of July 21st. Despite passing over land and being somewhat disorganized, Dolly maintained moderate tropical storm intensity with sustained winds estimated at 45 knots (52 mph) by the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Dolly re-emerged over the warm open waters of the western Gulf of Mexico later on the morning of the 21st. Combined with low atmospheric wind shear, conditions were favorable for intensification. The only real inhibiting factor was the sprawling nature of the storm itself. Without a well-organized core, storms take longer to respond to favorable conditions. None-the-less, Dolly began to slowly strengthen as is took aim at the Texas-Mexico border.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite (also known as TRMM) has been in service for over 10 years now and continues to provide valuable images and information on tropical cyclones around the Tropics using a combination of passive microwave and active radar sensors, including the first precipitation radar in space. These unique images were captured by TRMM at 12:44 UTC (7:44 am CDT) 22 July 2008 while Dolly was in the western Gulf of Mexico. The first image shows the horizontal pattern of rain intensity within the storm. Rain rates in the center swath are based on the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR), and those in the outer swath on the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI). The rain rates are overlaid on infrared (IR) data from the TRMM Visible Infrared Scanner (VIRS). TRMM reveals that Dolly has a rather large wavy eye with most of the moderate to heavy rain (green and red areas, respectively) wrapping around the southern side of the storm.

The second image was collected at the same time and shows a 3D perspective of the storm via the TRMM PR. The eye is clearly visible by the deep center (in blue), which is completely surrounded by a ring of moderately high precipitation areas (green). A few somewhat taller towers are visible in red within the eastern eyewall. At the time of these images, Dolly was a moderate tropical storm with maximum sustained winds reported at 55 knots (63 mph) by NHC. Dolly is expected to continue off to the west-northwest and make landfall in the vicinity of Brownsville, TX as a minimal hurricane before turning more westward over central northern Mexico.

TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.

Hurricane Dolly Already Making Landfall; Tornado Reported in South Texas

Tropical Storm Dolly strengthened into a Category One Hurricane with 85 mph maximum sustained winds and may get even stronger before her eye makes landfall this morning (July 23, 2008). Dolly's center will be along the coast near the Texas/Mexico border around midday today, according to the National Hurricane Center, but she's already generated one tornado in south Texas this morning.

At 7:00 a.m. EDT, tropical storm force winds were already affecting coastal Texas and northeastern Mexico. The center of hurricane Dolly was located near latitude 25.8 north and longitude 96.6 west or about 55 miles (90 km) east of Brownsville, Texas.

Dolly is moving toward the northwest near 8 mph (13 km/hr) and northwestward to west-northwestward motion with a slight decrease in forward speed is expected today. Minimum central pressure is 972 millibars.

Where are the Warnings and Watches?

A hurricane warning remains in effect for the coast of Texas from Brownsville to Corpus Christi and for the northeastern coast of Mexico from Rio San Fernando northward to the border between Mexico and the U.S. Tropical Storm Warnings are posted for areas north and south of the hurricane warning area.

What Weather Conditions Are Expected?

At 8:00 a.m. EDT, the city of Brownsville, Texas was under a Flood Watch, Hurricane Wind Warning, Tornado Watch, and already a Tornado Warning.

At 7:04 a.m. CDT, The National Weather Service doppler radar indicated a tornado 7 miles north of Harlingen Valley Airport and moving southwest at 46 mph.

In the warning areas, Dolly is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 6 to 10 inches, with isolated amounts of 15 inches over portions of south Texas and northeastern Mexico over the next few days. These rains will likely cause widespread flooding across portions of south Texas and northeast Mexico.

Coastal flooding is another problem. Dolly's storm surge along the coasts will range from 4 to 6 feet above normal tide levels. There will also be large and dangerous battering waves near and north of the center's landfall point.

As with any land-falling hurricane, isolated tornadoes are also possible. Portions of south Texas and northern Mexico may experience isolated tornadoes today and tonight.

For Current Radar out of Brownsville, Texas, visit:

http://radar.weather.gov/radar.php?rid=BRO&product=NCR&overlay=11111111&loop=yes

What Does This NASA Satellite Image Show?

This infrared image of Dolly was created by data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), an instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The image was created on July 22 at 19:05 UTC (3:05 p.m. EDT) and Dolly was located in the Gulf of Mexico headed toward the Texas/Mexico border. Dolly is seen to the left side of this image.

The AIRS images show the temperature of the cloud tops or the surface of the Earth in cloud-free regions. The lowest temperatures (in purple) are associated with high, cold cloud tops that make up the top of Dolly. The AIRS data creates an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, all of which are helpful to forecasters.

The infrared signal of the AIRS instrument does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds the AIRS instrument reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red.

Hurricane Season 2008: Tropical Storm Dolly (Gulf of Mexico)

Hurricane Dolly Already Making Landfall; Tornado Reported in South Texas

Dolly Poised to Hit South Texas, Northern Mexico as Hurricane

Dolly Eyeing Landfall Wednesday at Texas/Mexico Border as a Hurricane

Tropical Storm Dolly, Here You Come Again…

NASA Phoenix Lander Completes Longest Work Shift

Phoenix early Tuesday finished its longest work shift of the mission. The lander stayed awake for 33 hours, completing tasks that included rasping and scraping by the robotic arm, in addition to atmosphere observations in coordination with simultaneous observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"Our rasping test yesterday gave us enough confidence that we're now planning for the next use of the rasp to be for acquiring a sample to be delivered to TEGA," said Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. TEGA is Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, an instrument that heats samples in small ovens and uses a mass spectrometer to study the vapors driven off by the heating.

As preparation for that sample delivery in coming days, the Phoenix team developed plans to command the lander Tuesday evening to conduct 80 scrapings of the bottom of a trench informally named "Snow White." The scraping is designed to freshly expose frozen material and ready the surface for using the rasp.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Prepares for Next Sample Analysis

The latest activities of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have moved the mission closer to analyzing a sample of material, possibly icy soil, from a hard layer at the bottom of a shallow trench beside the lander.

Overnight Tuesday to Wednesday, during Phoenix's 57th Martian day, or sol, since landing, Phoenix used its robotic arm to scrape the top of the hard layer in the trench informally named "Snow White."

The Phoenix team prepared commands to send to the spacecraft Wednesday telling it to take color stereo images minutes after each of five more rounds of scraping during Sol 58.

"We are monitoring changes between the scrapes," said Doug Ming of NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, the team's science lead for Sol 58 plans. "It appears that there is fairly rapid sublimation of some of the ice after scraping exposes fresh material, leaving a thin layer of soil particles that had been mixed with the ice. There's a color change from darker to bluer to redder. We want to characterize that on Sol 58 to know what to expect when we scrape just before collecting the next sample."

Within a few sols, the team plans to collect a sample from the hard layer of Snow White for delivery to one of the eight ovens of Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA). Doors to the oven have been opened to receive the sample.

The TEGA completed one checkout during Sol 57. Another preparation step by the instrument, a heater characterization, is planned for Sol 58, to verify that pressure sensors can be warmed enough to operate properly early in the Mars morning.

"For the next sample, we will be operating the instrument earlier in the morning than we have before," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for TEGA. "It will be almost the coldest part of the day, because we want to collect the sample cold and deliver it cold."

On the day when Phoenix will deliver the next sample to TEGA, the team plans to have lander activities begin about three hours earlier than the usual start time of about 9 a.m. local solar time.

One set of imaging commands developed for use on Sol 58 or soon afterwards will check a northwestern portion of the horizon repeatedly during early afternoon to see whether any dust devils can be seen. This will be the first systematic check by Phoenix for dust devils. Similar imaging sequences have observed dust devils near NASA's Mars Rover Spirit, south of Mars' equator.

Students from Boulder Creek High School, Anthem, Ariz., worked with Phoenix team members to plan the first monitoring for dust devils by the lander's Surface Stereo Imager. They and students from SciTech High School, San Diego, are interns at the Phoenix mission's Science Operations Center in Tucson this week, part of a series of internship visits from 12 schools this summer by schools in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Texas.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

International Astronautical Congress 2008 Glasgow

29 September 2008 - 03 October 2008

The 59th International Astronautical Congress will be held in Glasgow between 29 September and 3 October 2008

IAC 2008 will provide an international focus for the global space industry, academic researchers and students worldwide through the presentation of the latest ideas, current activities and future ambitions across a diverse range of space-related topics together with a public exhibition.

Ian Pearson, Science and Innovation Minister, offers a message of support. To hear what he says, click on the podcast below.
Ian Pearson Podcast

The venue for this event is Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and the Crowne Plaza Hotel, situated on the banks of the River Clyde.

For further information, please visit the IAC 2008 website.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Nasa's Spitzer Reveals 'No Organics' Zone Around Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel galaxy is gussied up in infrared light in a new picture from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The fluffy-looking galaxy, officially named Messier 101, is dominated by a mishmash of spiral arms. In Spitzer's new view, in which infrared light is color coded, the galaxy sports a swirling blue center and a unique, coral-red outer ring.

A new paper appearing July 20 in the Astrophysical Journal explains why this outer ring stands out. According to the authors, the red color highlights a zone where organic molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are present throughout most of the galaxy, suddenly disappear.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are dusty, carbon-containing molecules found in star nurseries, and on Earth in barbeque pits, exhaust pipes and anywhere combustion reactions take place. Scientists believe this space dust has the potential to be converted into the stuff of life.

"If you were going look for life in Messier 101, you would not want to look at its edges," said Karl Gordon of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. "The organics can't survive in these regions, most likely because of high amounts of harsh radiation." To view Spitzer's Pinwheel, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/20080721a.html

The Pinwheel galaxy is located about 27 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It has one of the highest known gradients of metals (elements heavier than helium) of all nearby galaxies in our universe. In other words, its concentrations of metals are highest at its center, and decline rapidly with distance from the center. This is because stars, which produce metals, are squeezed more tightly into the galaxy's central quarters.

Gordon and his team used Spitzer to learn about the galaxy's gradient of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The astronomers found that, like the metals, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons decrease in concentration toward the outer portion of the galaxy. But, unlike the metals, these organic molecules quickly drop off and are no longer detected at the very outer rim.

"There's a threshold at the rim of this galaxy, where the organic material is getting destroyed," said Gordon.

The findings also provide a better understanding of the conditions under which the very first stars and galaxies arose. In the early universe, there were not a lot of metals or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons around. The outskirt of the Pinwheel galaxy therefore serves as a close-up example of what the environment might look like in a distant galaxy.

In this image, infrared light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns is colored blue; 8-micron light is green; and 24-micron light is red. All three of Spitzer instruments were used in the study: the infrared array camera, the multiband imaging photometer and the infrared spectrograph.

Other authors of the paper include Charles Engelbracht, George Rieke, Karl A. Misselt, J.D. Smith and Robert Kennicutt, Jr. of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Smith is also associated with the University of Toledo, Ohio, and Kennicutt is also associated with the University of Cambridge, England.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared array camera was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The instrument's principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Spitzer's infrared spectrograph was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development was led by Jim Houck of Cornell. The multiband imaging photometer for Spitzer was built by Ball Aerospace Corporation, Boulder, Colo., and the University of Arizona, Tucson. Its principal investigator is George Rieke of the University of Arizona.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Works Through the Night

To coordinate with observations made by an orbiter flying repeatedly overhead, NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is working a schedule Monday that includes staying awake all night for the first time.

Phoenix is using its weather station, stereo camera and conductivity probe to monitor changes in the lower atmosphere and ground surface at the same time NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter studies the atmosphere and ground from above.

The lander's fork-like thermal and conductivity probe was inserted into the soil Sunday for more than 24 hours of measurements coordinated with the atmosphere observations. One goal is to watch for time-of-day changes such as whether some water alters from ice phase to vapor phase and enters the atmosphere from the soil.

"We are looking for patterns of movement and phase change," said Michael Hecht, lead scientist for Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, which includes the conductivity probe. "The probe is working great. We see some changes in soil electrical properties, which may be related to water, but we're still chewing on the data."

The extended work shift for the lander began Sunday afternoon Pacific Time. In Mars time at the landing site, it lasts from the morning of Phoenix's 55th Martian day, or sol, to the afternoon of its 56th sol.

The Phoenix team's plans for Sol 56 also include commanding the lander to conduct additional testing of the techniques for collecting a sample of icy soil. When the team is confident about the collecting method, it plans to use Phoenix's robotic arm to deliver an icy sample to an oven of the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA).

The TEGA instrument successfully opened both doors Saturday for the oven chosen to get the first icy sample. Images from the Surface Stereo Camera confirmed that the doors are wide open.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Hubble Equipment Being Processed

Work on space shuttle Atlantis' thermal protection system continued over the weekend in NASA Kennedy Space Center's Orbiter Processing Facility.

Three of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's payload carriers, the Flight Support System, the Super Lightweight Interchangeable Carrier and the Orbital Replacement Unit Carrier were delivered to Kennedy's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility and are now undergoing a highly sensitive cleaning process to prepare them for integration with the science payload.

At the end of July a fourth and final canister, the Multi-Use Lightweight Equipment carrier will join the others.

Repair of Launch Pad 39A's flame trench is right on schedule. All materials needed for the refurbishment have arrived and fireproofing begin this week with the application of Fondu Fyre, a heat resistant concrete developed during the Apollo space program.

The STS-125 flight is the final shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA astronauts will install new instruments, gyros, batteries and other components crucial to the telescope’s continued success through the year 2013.

Monday, July 21, 2008

NASA Conducts Full-Scale Test Firing of Orion Jettison Motor

NASA completed a full-scale rocket motor test on Thursday, July 17, to further development of the Orion jettison motor, which will separate the spacecraft's launch abort system from the crew module during launch. Orion, the Constellation Program's crew exploration vehicle now under development, will fly to the International Space Station and be part of the spaceflight system to conduct sustained human exploration of the moon.

NASA and Aerojet successfully fired the jettison motor at the Aerojet facility in Sacramento, Calif. The demonstration is part of a series of developmental tests that pave the way for delivery of the motor to be used for the first full-scale test of the launch abort system at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico late this year.

Engineers will use the test firing to verify that the motor meets specification requirements and to help define induced acoustic, vibration and shock loads caused by the motor. The successful test firing of the jettison motor increases the technical readiness of the launch abort system and is the first full-scale rocket propulsion element qualified to proceed into a system-level demonstration. The test firing also verified that the system’s design criteria and manufacturing processes are in place.

This test and others like it are critical milestones in NASA's preparations for a series of flight tests of the full Orion abort system. The launch abort system will provide a safe escape for the crew in an emergency on the launch pad or during the climb to orbit.

NASA has partnered with Lockheed Martin Corporation and Aerojet to supply the jettison motor. NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., manages the Orion launch abort system design and development effort with partners and team members from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

> View Motor Test (Windows Media, 9 MB)

Crew Reconfigures Station for Post-Spacewalk Activities

Cosmonauts Sergei Volkov, station commander, and Oleg Kononenko, flight engineer, performed two spacewalks in less than a week. They outfitted Russian station components and inspected their docked Soyuz vehicle. The spacewalkers also retrieved a Soyuz separation bolt for analysis on the ground.

The Soyuz vehicle was readied as a lifeboat in case the Pirs docking compartment failed to repressurize after completing the spacewalks. Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff occupied the Soyuz during the spacewalks. The Soyuz has now been reconfigured to its normal state.

A docked Progress cargo craft will be deactivated and will repressurize the station’s atmosphere. The Progress was prepared for an undocking during the spacewalks in the unlikely event Volkov and Kononenko were forced to enter their Soyuz, undock and redock at another port.

The cosmonauts spoke with the Russian lead spacewalk officer on the ground about their activities. They are also completing recharging the Orlan spacesuit batteries.

+ Read more about the spacewalk

Friday, July 18, 2008

Ocean Surface a Boon for Extreme Event Forecasts, Warnings

For humans in the path of destructive hurricanes and tsunamis, an accurate warning of the pending event is critical for damage control and survival. Such warnings, however, require a solid base of scientific observations, and a new satellite is ready for the job.

The Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason 2 adds to the number of eyes in the sky measuring sea surface and wave heights across Earth's oceans. The increased coverage will help researchers improve current models for practical use in predicting hurricane intensity, while providing valuable data that can be used to improve tsunami warning models.

"When it comes to predicting hurricane intensity, the curve in the last 40 years has been somewhat flat, with little advance in how to reduce error in predicted intensity," said Gustavo Goni, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Miami. Maps of sea surface height created from Space station satellites, however, could help change the curve.

Space Station Satellites that measure sea surface height have been running operationally nonstop since November 1992. But more than one is needed to fly at the same time in order to identify all the features that could be responsible for intensification of tropical cyclones all over Earth. The OSTM/Jason 2 mission will help make the additional coverage possible.

NASA, university and NOAA investigators, including Goni, work to transform sea surface height information obtained from Space station satellites, such as OSTM/Jason 2, into maps of ocean heat content. Forecasters can use the maps to develop models to predict how hurricanes will strengthen.

Determining heat content from sea surface height is possible because warm water is less dense and hence sits higher than cooler water. In some regions, such as inside and outside the Gulf Stream current, the temperature differences result in more than a one-meter (three-foot) difference in sea surface height. Goni and colleagues use this established concept to estimate from sea level variations how much heat is stored in the upper ocean in areas where hurricanes typically develop and intensify.

While sea surface height may not necessarily be the most significant parameter for hurricane intensity forecasts, researchers now know that if sea surface height is accounted for in current forecast models, errors in forecasts for the most intense storms are reduced. For weak storms, the reduction in error is not very significant. However, for storms in the strongest category 5 range, the heat content in the upper ocean derived from sea surface height becomes increasingly important. "This is a good thing, because these are the storms that produce the most damage," Goni said.

"OSTM/Jason 2 will help us to keep the necessary coverage that we need to identify ocean features that can be linked to tropical cyclone intensification, because with only one satellite we may miss some of them," Goni said.

Upper ocean heat content derived from sea surface height is now used in operational and experimental forecast models in all seven ocean basins where tropical cyclones exist.

In December 2004, two satellites happened to be in the right place at the right time, capturing the first space-based look at a major tsunami in the open ocean. Within two hours of a magnitude 9 earthquake in the Indian Ocean southwest of Sumatra, the Jason 1 and Topex/Poseidon satellites fortuitously passed over the path of the resulting tsunami as it traveled across the ocean. It measured the leading wave, traveling hundreds of miles per hour in the open ocean, at about 0.5 meters (1.6 feet) tall.

Wave height measurements like those of the Indian Ocean tsunami do not provide an early warning because the information is not relayed to ground stations in real time. That's the job of early warning systems operated by NOAA and other global organizations that currently employ a network of open-ocean buoys and coastal tide gauges. Sea surface height measurements of tsunamis can, however, help scientists test and improve ground-based models used for early warning. One such system developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., and undergoing tests at NOAA's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, Ewa Beach, Hawaii, could become operational within about three years.

Most tsunamis are caused by undersea earthquakes. Using the JPL-developed system, when seismometers first identify and locate a large earthquake, scientists can use GPS measurements to search around the earthquake's source to see if land has shifted, potentially spurring a tsunami. Scientists can then immediately compile the earthquake's size, location, and land movement into a computer program that generates a model tsunami to determine the risk of a dangerous wave. After the wave passes, scientists can search through wave height data from satellites and verify what the model predicted.

"Satellite data play the crucial role of verifying tsunami models by testing real tsunami events," said JPL research scientist Tony Song. "If an earthquake generates a tsunami, does the satellite data match observations on the ground and model predictions?"

"One of the unique pieces of satellite observations is the large-scale perspective," said JPL research scientist Philip Callahan. Tsunamis can have waves more than 161 kilometers (100 miles) long. Such a wave would likely go unnoticed by an observer in a boat on the ocean's surface. But satellite altimeters like OSTM/Jason 2 can see this very long wave and measure its height to an accuracy of about 2.5 centimeters (one inch).

Scientists' ability to test tsunami warning models will be aided by OSTM/Jason 2. With the Topex/Poseidon mission now ended, the currently orbiting Jason 1 has now been joined by and will eventually be replaced by OSTM/Jason 2. This will help ensure that future tsunamis will also be observed by satellites as well as by buoys and tide gauges.

"The biggest value in satellite measurements of sea surface height is not in direct warning capability, but in improving models so when an earthquake is detected, you can make reliable predictions and reduce damage to property and people," Callahan said.

For more information on OSTM/Jason 2, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ostm .

For more information on JPL's climate change research programs, visit: http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov .

A New Way to Weigh Giant Black Holes

How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists have determined the mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the first time, gives results that are consistent with a traditional technique.

Space Station Astronomers have been seeking out different, independent ways of precisely weighing the largest supermassive black holes, that is, those that are billions of times more massive than the Sun. Until now, methods based on observations of the motions of stars or of gas in a disk near such large black holes had been used.

"This is tremendously important work since black holes can be elusive, and there are only a couple of ways to weigh them accurately," said Philip Humphrey of the University of California at Irvine, who led the study. "It's reassuring that two very different ways to measure the mass of a big black hole give such similar answers."

NGC 4649 is now one of only a handful of Solar System galaxies for which the mass of a supermassive black hole has been measured with two different methods. In addition, this new X-ray technique confirms that the supermassive black hole in NGC 4649 is one of the largest in the local universe with a mass about 3.4 billion times that of the Sun, about a thousand times bigger than the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

The new technique takes advantage of the gravitational influence the black hole has on the hot gas near the center of the Space galaxy. As gas slowly settles towards the black hole, it gets compressed and heated. This causes a peak in the temperature of the gas right near the center of the Space galaxy. The more massive the black hole, the bigger the temperature peak detected by Chandra.

This effect was predicted by two of the co-authors -- Fabrizio Brighenti from the University of Bologna, Italy, and William Mathews from the University of California at Santa Cruz -- almost 10 years ago, but this is the first time it has been seen and used.

"It was wonderful to finally see convincing evidence of the effects of the huge black hole that we expected," said Brighenti. "We were thrilled that our new technique worked just as well as the more traditional approach for weighing the black hole."

The black hole in NGC 4649 is in a state where it does not appear to be rapidly pulling in material towards its event horizon or generating copious amounts of light as it grows. So, the presence and mass of the central black hole has to be studied more indirectly by tracking its effects on stars and gas surrounding it. This technique is well suited to black holes in this condition.

"Monster black holes like this one power spectacular light shows in the distant, early universe, but not in the local universe," said Humphrey. "So, we can’t wait to apply our new method to other nearby space galaxies harboring such inconspicuous black holes."

These results will appear in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Additional information and images are available at:

http://chandra.harvard.edu

Three Red Spots Mix it Up on Jupiter

This sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among three red spots clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere.

The time series shows the passage of the "Red Spot Jr." in a band of clouds below (south) of the Great Red Spot (GRS). "Red Spot Jr." first appeared on Jupiter in early 2006 when a previously white storm turned red. This is the second time, since turning red, it has skirted past its big brother apparently unscathed.

But this is not the fate of "baby red spot," which is in the same latitudinal band as the GRS. This new red spot first appeared earlier this year. The baby red spot gets ever closer to the GRS in this picture sequence until it is caught up in the anticyclonic spin of the GRS. In the final image the baby spot is deformed and pale in color and has been spun to the right (east) of the GRS. (Amateur astronomers' observations confirm that this is the baby spot that migrated around the GRS.) The prediction is that the baby spot will now get pulled back into the GRS "Cuisinart" and disappear for good. This is one possible mechanism that has powered and sustained the GRS for at least 150 years.

These three natural-color Jupiter images were made from data acquired on May 15, June 28, and July 8, 2008 by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Each one covers 58 degrees of Jovian "latitude" and 70 degrees of "longitude" (centered on 5 degrees South latitude and 110, 121 and 121 degrees West longitude, respectively).

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

For more images, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/27/

NASA's Deep Impact Films Earth as an Alien World

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has created a video of the moon transiting (passing in front of) Earth as seen from the spacecraft's point of view 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds.

"Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the Universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us," said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A’Hearn, principal investigator for the Deep Impact extended mission, called EPOXI.

Deep Impact made history when the mission team directed an impactor from the spacecraft into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005. NASA recently extended the space station mission, redirecting the spacecraft for a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010.

EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two extended mission components: a search for alien (extrasolar) planets during the cruise to Hartley 2, called Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI).

During a full Earth rotation, images obtained by Deep Impact at a 15-minute cadence have been combined to make a color video. During the video, the moon enters the frame (because of its orbital motion) and transits Earth, then leaves the frame. Other spacecraft have imaged Earth and the moon from space, but Deep Impact is the first to show a transit of Earth with enough detail to see large craters on the moon and oceans and continents on Earth.

"To image Earth in a similar fashion, an alien civilization would need technology far beyond what Earthlings can even dream of building," said Sara Seager, a planetary theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and a co-investigator on EPOXI. "Nevertheless, planet-characterizing space telescopes under study by NASA would be able to observe an Earth twin as a single point of light -- a point whose total brightness changes with time as different land masses and oceans rotate in and out of view. The video will help us connect a varying point of planetary light with underlying oceans, continents, and clouds -- and finding oceans on extrasolar planets means identifying potentially habitable worlds." said Seager.

"Our video shows some specific features that are important for observations of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars," said Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Deming is deputy principal investigator for EPOXI, and leads the EPOCh observations. "A 'sun glint' can be seen in the movie, caused by light reflected from Earth's oceans, and similar glints to be observed from extrasolar planets could indicate alien oceans. Also, we used infrared light instead of the normal red light to make the color composite images, and that makes the land masses much more visible." That happens because plants reflect more strongly in the near-infrared, Deming explained. Hence the video illustrates the potential for detecting vegetated land masses on extrasolar planets by looking for variations in the intensity of their near-infrared light as the planet rotates.

The University of Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution, leading the overall EPOXI mission, including the flyby of comet Hartley 2. NASA Goddard leads the extrasolar planet observations. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages EPOXI for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.Read more...>

3-D Views Posted From NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander

NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission has released stereo images of the Martian surface near the Phoenix lander. The images in the new 3-D Gallery combine views from the left and right "eyes" of the lander's Surface Stereo Imager (SSI) so that they appear three-dimensional when viewed through red-blue glasses.

The first 14 images in the gallery were handpicked by Mark Lemmon, SSI lead scientist from Texas A&M University, College Station. The camera took them images between the eighth Martian day, or sol, of the mission (June 2, 2008) and the 36th sol (July 1, 2008).

Red and blue 3D glasses (red for left eye, blue for right eye) are needed to properly view these stereo images

The Solar System Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Health and Usage Monitoring Systems 2009

Sixth DSTO International Conference on Health and Usage Monitoring

Dates:	9 March 2009	10-11 March 2009	12 March 2009
Location:	Welcome Reception	Melbourne Convention Centre	Avalon Airport

Increasingly, mechanical devices whether fixed systems, land vehicles, marine vehicles (including submarines) or aircraft (including helicopters), are being managed using various Condition Monitoring (CM) or Condition- Based Maintenance (CBM) approaches. All these approaches rely on health (condition) and usage monitoring systems and are most suited to ensuring availability, reliability and safety of critical and high-value assets.

The DSTO series of International Conferences on Health and Usage Monitoring is an established conference in this area and has been run in conjunction with every Australian International Air Show since 1999. Since 2005, it has also formed part of the Australian International Aerospace Congress.

Accordingly, HUMS2009 will form part of the Thirteenth Australian International Aerospace Congress (AIAC13) and will include sessions at the Australian International Air Show. All submissions of abstracts and papers will be handled electronically via the AIAC13 website.

Conference details will be added to this website as they become available and conference documents will be available from the right-hand column of this page. A newsletter will be sent at specific times during the lead up to the conference. You may subscribe to this newsletter by clicking here.

A range of Sponsorship Packages for HUMS2009 are available now - please click to request the document.

The Call for Abstracts is now open. We are seeking abstracts in any area appropriate to health and usage monitoring whether relating to the technology or to the use of the technology. This includes, but is not limited to, health/condition and usage monitoring strategies including Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM), HUMS technologies, HUMS and other monitoring programs, monitoring techniques for Propeller/Rotor Track and Balance (RTB), monitoring techniques for engine & transmission vibration analysis, structural loads monitoring, cost-benefit analysis and data management as these apply in areas such as helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, land vehicles, marine vehicles, fixed machinery or other or multiple areas.

The newsletter #3 in the right hand-column includes more details on the abstract submission process and the template for the abstracts is also available there as a .DOC file. Submissions are to be made electronically via the AIAC13 website.

NOTE: Due to a conflict with the new dates of the Australian Formula 1 motor race, the Airshow, and hence the Australian International Aeospace Congress, have been moved two weeks earlier than originally announced. The venue has been changed to the Melbourne Convention Centre on the corner of Flinders and Spencer Streets (this is not the new Convention Centre in Southbank which is not yet open). The Monday prior to the Conference (9th March) is a public holiday in Melbourne.

Small Planet, Small Star

Space Station Astronomers have discovered an extrasolar planet only three times more massive than our own, the smallest yet observed orbiting a normal star. The star itself is not large, perhaps as little as one twentieth the mass of our Solar System Sun, suggesting to the research team that relatively common low-mass stars may present good candidates for hosting Earth-like planets.

Led by David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame, the international research team presents its findings in a press conference Monday, June 2, 2008, at 11:30 a.m. CDT at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in St. Louis, Mo.

"Our discovery indicates that that even the lowest mass stars can host planets," says Bennett. "No planets have previously been found to orbit stars with masses less than about 20 percent that of the Sun, but this finding indicates that even the smallest stars can host planets."

The astronomers used a technique called gravitational microlensing to find the planet, a method that can potentially find planets one-tenth the mass of our own.

The gravitational microlensing technique, which came from Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, relies upon observations of stars that brighten when an object such as another star passes directly in front of them (relative to an observer, in this case on Earth). The gravity of the passing star acts as a lens, much like a giant magnifying glass. If a planet is orbiting the passing star, its presence is revealed in the way the background star brightens. A full explanation of the technique follows this release.

"This discovery demonstrates the sensitivity of the microlensing method for finding low-mass planets, and we are hoping to discover the first Earth-mass planet in the near future," said Bennett.

Using standard nomenclature, the star hosting the newly discovered planet is dubbed MOA-2007-BLG-192L with MOA indicating the observatory, 2007 designating the year the microlensing event occurred, BLG standing for bulge, 192 indicating the 192^nd microlensing observation by MOA in that year and the L indicating the lens star as opposed to the background star further in the distance. The planet maintains the name but adds a letter designating it as an additional object in the star's solar system, so it is called MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb.

MOA-2007-BLG-192L resides 3,000 light years away and is classified as either a low-mass hydrogen burning star, one that sustains nuclear reactions in its core as our Sun does, or a brown dwarf, an object like a star yet without the mass to sustain nuclear reactions in its core. The researchers were unable to confirm which category the star fits into due to the nature of the observations and the margin of error.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Bennett has been one of the pioneers in using gravitational microlensing for detecting low mass planets. He has been working with collaborators around the world to find a number of planets that are ever closer in size to our own.

For the most recent discovery, the research collaborators took advantage of two international telescope collaborations: Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA), which includes Bennett, and the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE).

Researchers in New Zealand made the initial measurements of the new planet and its star using the new MOA-II telescope at the Mt. John Observatory. The observatory's MOA-cam3 camera, in one observation, can capture an image of the sky 13 times larger than the area of the full moon. Researchers in Chile made follow-up observations using high angular resolution adaptive optics images at the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory. Data from the observations was analyzed by scientists around the world hailing from five continents.

"This discovery is very exciting because it implies Earth-mass planets can form around low-mass stars, which are very common," said Michael Briley, NSF astronomer and the officer who oversees Bennett's grant. "It is another important step in the search for terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of other Solar system stars, and it would not have been possible without the international collaboration of professional and amateur astronomers devoted to measuring these signals."

The team has written a paper about the new planet discovery and it has been accepted for publication in the Sept. 1, 2008, issue Astrophysical Journal. In addition to NSF support, Bennett is also funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In addition to Bennett, the MOA group is made up of astronomers from Nagoya University, Konan University, Nagano National College of Technology, and Tokyo Metropolitan College of Aeronautics in Japan, as well as Massey University, the University of Auckland, Mt. John Observatory, the University of Canterbury, and Victoria University in New Zealand. The OGLE group is comprised of astronomers from Warsaw University Observatory in Poland, the Universidad de Concepción in Chile, and the University of Cambridge in England. Additional collaborators who provided the VLT data and analysis are from the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, the Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, and the Observatoire de Paris in France, the European Southern Observatory in Chile, and Heidelberg University in Germany.

Exoplanet count tops 300 with discovery of 'super-Earths'

Just a few decades ago, scientists wondered if anyone would be able to find planets orbiting other stars - much less ones that could support life.

Now, just 13 years after the discovery of the first planet orbiting a sun-like star, scientists have found more than 300 exoplanets, from char-broiled "hot Jupiters" that orbit their stars in a matter of days, to planets closer in size and composition to our own.

Within the past week, scientists have announced nine new exoplanet discoveries, including five "super-Earths" - small, possibly rocky planets just a few times larger than our own.

These miniature planets range in size from 4.2 to 22 times the mass of Earth and were found during a five-year survey by the European Southern Observatory telescope in Chile, which can observe how stars wobble back and forth as they are pulled by the gravity of the planets that orbit them.

None of the new exoplanets would make a good travel destination - they all orbit very close to their host stars and would be far too hot to support life as we know it.

Sill, the findings - along with 40 other possible "super-Earths" identified by the study -- suggest that exoplanets , including small ones like ours, are more common than originally thought.

Considering that scientists have been able to find this many planets with very limited tools, "you may well arrive at the conclusion that planets are ubiquitous," said the ESO's Stéphane Udry.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

NASA Spacecraft Shows Diverse, Wet Environments on Ancient Mars

Two studies based on data from NASA's Space Station Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed that the Red Planet once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life.

One study, published in the July 17 issue of Nature, shows that vast regions of the ancient highlands of Space station Mars, which cover about half the Solar system planet, contain clay minerals, which can form only in the presence of water. Volcanic lavas buried the clay-rich regions during subsequent, drier periods of the planet's history, but Space technology impact craters later exposed them at thousands of locations across Space station Mars. The data for the study derives from images taken by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, and other instruments on the orbiter.

"The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars' water was, and how diverse the wet environments were," said Scott Murchie, CRISM principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

The clay-like minerals, called phyllosilicates, preserve a record of the interaction of water with rocks dating back to what is called the Noachian period of Space station Mars' history, approximately 4.6 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. This period corresponds to the earliest years of the solar system, when Earth, the moon and Mars sustained a cosmic bombardment by comets and Solar system asteroids. Rocks of this age have largely been destroyed on Earth by plate tectonics. They are preserved on the Solar system moon, but were never exposed to liquid water. The phyllosilicate-containing rocks on Mars preserve a unique record of liquid water environments possibly suitable for life in the early solar system.

"The minerals present in Mars' ancient crust show a variety of wet environments," said John Mustard, a member of the CRISM team from Brown University, and lead author of the Nature study. "In most locations the rocks are lightly altered by liquid water, but in a few locations they have been so altered that a great deal of water must have flushed though the rocks and soil. This is really exciting because we're finding dozens of sites where future missions can land to understand if Mars was ever habitable and if so, to look for signs of past life."

Another study, published in the June 2 issue of Nature Geosciences, finds that the wet conditions on solar system Mars persisted for a long time. Thousands to millions of years after the clays formed, a system of river channels eroded them out of the highlands and concentrated them in a delta where the river emptied into a crater lake slightly larger than California's Lake Tahoe, approximately 25 miles in diameter.

"The distribution of clays inside the ancient lakebed shows that standing water must have persisted for thousands of years," says Bethany Ehlmann, another member of the CRISM team from Brown. Ehlmann is lead author of the study of an ancient lake within a northern-Mars impact basin called Jezero Crater. "Clays are wonderful at trapping and preserving organic matter, so if life ever existed in this region, there's a chance of its chemistry being preserved in the delta."

CRISM's high spatial and spectral resolutions are better than any previous Space spectrometer sent to Mars and reveal variations in the types and composition of the phyllosilicate minerals. By combining data from CRISM and the orbiter's Context Imager and High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, the team identified three principal classes of water-related minerals dating to the early Noachian period. The classes are aluminum-phyllosilicates, hydrated silica or opal, and the more common and widespread iron/magnesium-phyllosilicates. The variations in the minerals suggest that different processes, or different types of watery environments, created them.

"Our whole team is turning our findings into a list of sites where future missions could land to look for organic chemistry and perhaps determine whether life ever existed on Mars," said Murchie.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Applied Physics Laboratory operates the CRISM instrument in coordination with an international team of researchers from universities, government and the private sector.

For more information on the new studies, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mro

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Rasps Frozen Layer, Collects Sample

A powered rasp on the back of the robotic arm scoop of NASA's Space station Phoenix Mars Lander successfully drilled into the frozen soil and loosened material that was collected in the lander's scoop.

Images and data sent from Phoenix early Wednesday indicated the shaved material in the scoop had changed slightly over time during the hours after it was collected.

The motorized rasp -- located on the back of the lander's robotic arm scoop -- made two distinct holes in a trench informally named "Snow White." The material loosened by the rasp was collected in the scoop and documented by the Robotic Arm Camera. The activity was a test of the rasping method of gathering an icy sample, in preparation for using that method in coming days to collect a sample for analysis in an oven of Space Craft Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer.

"This was a trial that went really well," said Richard Morris, a Phoenix science team member from NASA's Johnson Space station Center, Houston. "While the putative ice sublimed out of the shavings over several hours, this shows us there will be a good chance ice will remain in a sample for delivery" to Phoenix's laboratory ovens.

Phoenix on Wednesday will be commanded to continue scraping and enlarging the "Snow White" trench and to conduct another series of rasp tests. The lander's cameras will again be used to monitor the sample in the scoop after its collection.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International Sapce Station contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Brightest Star in the Galaxy Has New Competition

A contender for the title of brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy has been unearthed in the dusty metropolis of the galaxy's center.

Nicknamed the "Peony nebula star," the bright stellar bulb was revealed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and other ground-based telescopes. It blazes with the light of an estimated 3.2 million suns.

The reigning "brightest star" champion is Eta Carina, with a whopping solar wattage of 4.7 million suns. But according to astronomers, it's hard to pin down an exact brightness, or luminosity, for these scorching stars, so they could potentially shine with a similar amount of light.

"The Peony nebula star is a fascinating creature. It appears to be the second-brightest star that we now know of in the galaxy, and it's located deep into the galaxy's center," said Lidia Oskinova of Potsdam University in Germany. "There are probably other stars just as bright if not brighter in our galaxy that remain hidden from view." Oskinova is principal investigator for the research and second author of a paper appearing in a future issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Scientists already knew about the Peony nebula star, but because of its sheltered location in the dusty central hub of our galaxy, its extreme luminosity was not revealed until now. Spitzer's dust-piercing infrared eyes can see straight into the heart of our galaxy, into regions impenetrable by visible light. Likewise, infrared data from the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope in Chile were integral in calculating the Peony nebula star's luminosity.

"Infrared astronomy opens extraordinary views into the environment of the central region of our galaxy," said Oskinova.

The brightest stars in the universe are also the biggest. Astronomers estimate the Peony nebula star kicked off its life with a hefty mass of roughly 150 to 200 times that of our sun. Stars this massive are rare and puzzle astronomers because they push the limits required for stars to form. Theory predicts that if a star starts out too massive, it can't hold itself together and must break into a double or multiple stars instead.

Not only is the Peony nebula star hefty, it also has a wide girth. It is a type of giant blue star called a Wolf-Rayet star, with a diameter roughly 100 times that of our sun. That means this star, if placed where our sun is, would extend out to about the orbit of Mercury.

With so much mass, the star barely keeps itself together. It sheds an enormous amount of stellar matter in the form of strong winds over its relatively short lifetime of a few million years. This matter is pushed so hard by strong radiation from the star that the winds speed up to about 1.6 million kilometers per hour (one million miles per hour) in only a few hours.

Ultimately, the Peony nebula star will blow up in a fantastic explosion of cosmic proportions called a supernova. In fact, Oskinova and her colleagues say that the star is ripe for exploding soon, which in astronomical terms mean anytime from now to millions of years from now.

"When this star blows up, it will evaporate any planets orbiting stars in the vicinity," said Oskinova. "Farther out from the star, the explosion could actually trigger the birth of new stars."

In addition to the star itself, the astronomers noted a cloud of dust and gas, called a nebula, surrounding the star. The team nicknamed this cloud the Peony nebula because it resembles the ornate flower.

"The nebula was probably created from the spray of dust leaking off the massive Peony nebula star," said Andreas Barniske of Potsdam University, lead author of the study.

Wolf-Rainer Hamann, also of Potsdam University, is another co-author of the paper and the principal investigator of a Spitzer program enabling this research.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared spectrograph, which was used to determine the luminosity of the Peony nebula star, was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development was led by Jim Houck of Cornell. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander to Begin Rasping Frozen Layer

A powered rasp on the back of the robotic arm scoop of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is being tested for the first time on Mars in gathering sample shavings of ice.

The lander has used its arm in recent days to clear away loose soil from a subsurface layer of hard-frozen material and create a large enough area to use the motorized rasp in a trench informally named "Snow White."

The Phoenix team prepared commands early Tuesday for beginning a series of tests with the rasp later in the day. Engineers and scientists designed the tests to lead up to, in coming days, delivering a sample of icy soil into one of the lander's laboratory ovens.

"While Phoenix was in development, we added the rasp to the robotic arm design specifically to grind into very hard surface ice," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This is the exactly the situation we find we are facing on Mars, so we believe we have the right tool for the job. Honeybee Robotics in New York City did a heroic job of designing and delivering the rasp on a very short schedule."

The rasp bit extends at a shallow angle out of an opening on the back of the scoop at the end of the 2.35-meter-long (7.7-foot-long) robotic arm. To use it, the back surface of the scoop is placed on the ground, and a motor rotates the rasp. The angle of the rasp is increased from nearly horizontal to slightly steeper while it is rotating, so the tool kicks shavings sideways onto a collection surface just inside the opening. After the rasp stops, a series of moves by the scoop then shifts the collected shavings from the back of the scoop, past baffles, to the front of the scoop. The baffles serve to keep material from falling out of the rasp opening when the scoop is used as a front loader.

The commands prepared for Phoenix's activities Tuesday called for rasping into the hard material at the bottom of the Snow White trench at two points about one centimeter (0.4 inch) apart. The lander's Surface Stereo Imager and robotic arm camera will be used to check the process at several steps and to monitor any resulting sample in the scoop for several hours after it is collected.

Collecting an icy sample for an oven of Phoenix's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) may involve gathering shavings collected at the rasp opening and scooping up additional shavings produced by the rasp. The Phoenix team has been testing this combination on simulated Martian ice with a near-replica model of Phoenix in a test facility at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Extending Trench

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is using its Robotic Arm to enlarge an exposure of hard subsurface material expected to yield a sample of ice-rich soil for analysis in one of the lander's ovens.

The trench was about 20 by 30 centimeters (8 by 12 inches) after work by the arm on Saturday. The team sent commands today to extend the longer dimension by about 15 centimeters (6 inches).

Experiments with a near-duplicate of the lander in Tucson during the past week indicate that the bigger surface is needed to allow steps planned for collecting an icy sample from the Martian trench informally named "Snow White."

"Right now, there is not enough real estate of dark icy soil in the trench to do a sample acquisition test and later a full-up acquisition" for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, said Ray Arvidson, Phoenix's "dig czar," from Washington University in St. Louis. The arm's rasp will kick the icy soil into the scoop through a special capture mechanism, and scientists also want to scoop up any loose material left in the trench from the rasping activity, Arvidson said.

Samples of shallower, non-icy soil from the Snow White trench have already been examined in Phoenix's wet chemistry laboratory and optical microscope, and a fork-like probe has checked how well nearby soil conducts electricity and heat.

"The Phoenix science team is working diligently to analyze the results of the tests from these various instruments," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith. "The preliminary signatures we are seeing are intriguing. Before we release results, we want to verify that our interpretations are correct by conducting laboratory tests."

As the Robotic Arm was extracting the fork-like conductivity probe from the soil on Saturday, the arm contacted a rock called "Alice," near the "Snow White" trenching area. The arm is programmed to stop activity when it encounters an obstacle. The team assessed the arm's status on Sunday and decided to resume use of the arm on Monday. Today's commands call for the Robotic Arm to move away from the rock, dump out soil that is in the scoop and extend the Snow White trench approximately 15 centimeters (6 inches) toward the lander.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

For Toy-Like NASA Robots in Arctic, Ice Research Is Child's Play

Several snowmobiles navigated speedily over arctic ice and snow in Alaska's outback in late June. This scene might seem ordinary except that the recently unveiled snowmobiles are unmanned, autonomous, toy-size robots called SnoMotes – the first prototype network of their kind envisioned to rove treacherous areas of the Arctic and Antarctic capturing more accurate measurements that will help scientists better understand what is causing the well-documented melting of ice in those regions.

Ayanna Howard, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, worked with scientists at Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pa., to create the toy-like robots. The robots are designed to traverse terrain often too dangerous for scientists, in pursuit of barometric pressure, temperature, and relative humidity measurements that will help scientists improve climate models. Howard, a former member of NASA's Mars technology program team who developed SmartNav, an autonomous, next-generation Mars rover, believed that science-driven robotics could be just as useful of a vehicle to new discoveries on Earth as it has been in the quest to learn more about Mars.

"After working with robots for the Mars technology program, I thought a similar type of rover could be used to collect multiple science measurements on this planet," said Howard. She is lead on the SnoMotes project funded by the Advanced Information Systems Technology program in NASA's Earth Science Technology Office, a NASA Headquarters office located at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"My research colleagues at Penn State agreed that we could possibly advance what we know about how changes in climate affect ice sheets and glaciers using robots to trek landscapes with volatile cracking or shifting ice where scientists have difficulty going to gather important measurements. The robots could also fill gaps in the existing network of satellites and weather station sensors that occurs due to immobility of the grounded station sensors or remote location and limited resolution of the satellites. Essentially, the robots could act as ‘mobile weather stations,' able to travel to capture real-time data at the spot where change is occurring."

In June, Howard and researchers from the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau completed the first tests of the SnoMotes' capabilities on the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau. To test the basic ability of the SnoMotes to navigate the terrain and communicate with the science console and the team's base, Howard and others released three SnoMotes into a multi-textured environment on the glacier that featured ice, deep snow, crevices and "sun cups," rough patches that develop when the sun partially melts icy areas.

“Though our analysis of the data from the field test will not be complete until this fall, the robots did well spanning the terrain without difficulty and we were able to communicate with them from the ‘base camp’ without any noticeable errors,” said Howard.

The current SnoMotes are a prototype of what Howard expects will be a full-scale system about twice the size of the current robots that are two feet long and one foot wide. With the intent to use low-cost materials, the three prototypes were developed from discontinued remote-controlled plastic snowmobile-shaped toys that Howard and her team adapted with sensors, microprocessors, and cameras for autonomy that expand upon rover innovations from Howard’s SmartNav robot developed for NASA in 2004. NASA's Earth Science Technology Office cultivates technologies like the SnoMotes that offer scientific measurements and practical applications that benefit society in tangible ways.

"This is the third rendition of the robot," said Howard. "In the development stage, I considered the nature of ice and snow and how people actually walk on both. The first version of the robot had legs. We then shifted to a hybrid leg and wheel design that allowed the wheels to maneuver out of snow patches if the legs became stuck. We finally thought about the other ways in which scientists travel on the icy arctic terrain, and decided to use a snowmobile-type design to solve the maneuverability problems."

Howard and colleagues Derrick Lampkin of Penn State and Magnus Egerstedt of Georgia Tech hope to create a low-cost final model of the SnoMotes that will be scalable into a network that institutions can use, with 30-40 mobile robots located across the Arctic. During future field tests on the next generation of SnoMotes, Howard plans to assess whether multiple SnoMotes can use advanced artificial intelligence skills and enhanced mobility to navigate at the same time, distinguish varying types of terrain, and communicate with one another, and whether a full set of finely-tuned sensors can capture barometric pressure, temperature, and relative humidity while also being durable enough to sustain extremely cold temperatures. To this end, Howard and her team have begun thinking of ways to add a heating mechanism to preserve the robots' sensitive internal instruments.

"With a comprehensive system that boasts a communications infrastructure, mobile sensors with moving data streams, plus existing weather stations and Global Positioning System measurements of glacier motion, the entire network will be able to alert scientists, in real time, about what may be happening, let's say, when an Arctic lake is draining," said Matt Heavner, director of the Southeast Alaska Monitoring Network for Science, Telecommunications, Education and Research at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau. Howard plans to work with Heavner to eventually broadcast SnoMote data on the Web for easy access by scientists.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Three Planets Charm the Sky This Week

Jupiter Arrives at Opposition, and Saturn and Mars Pose Together

A trio of planets, all visited by NASA robotic missions, is visible in the summer sky this week. Mars and Saturn can be spotted low in the west-northwest for a couple hours after sunset. Jupiter rises low in the southeast at sunset.

On July 10, Saturn and Mars appear so close together that they can be spotted in the same binocular view. They are not actually close to each other except in our line of sight. Saturn is about 1.5 billion kilometers (about 930 million miles) from Earth, and Mars is about 330 million kilometers (about 205 million miles) away. Saturn is largest of the two and, therefore, brighter. Note the subtle color difference between creme-colored Saturn and ruddy Mars.

Jupiter reaches opposition on July 9. Opposition is when the sun and another heavenly body are on opposite sides of Earth. We see an opposition every month, when the sun and the moon are on opposite sides of Earth. When the sun sets, the full moon rises, and when the sun rises, the full moon sets. As the sun sets in the west, Jupiter rises in the southeast. At opposition, when Jupiter is closest to Earth, it is a mere 774 million kilometers (481 million miles) away.

Though visible with the unaided eye as a bright "star-like" object, Jupiter and its wonders are best revealed through a telescope. The largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter is a giant ball of hydrogen and helium cloaked in multicolored clouds. Through a telescope the alternating stripes of dark belts and light zones are visible.

Often up to four of Jupiter's moons can be seen lined up on the east and west of the planet. Three of the four -- Io, Ganymede and Callisto -- are larger than our own moon. Only Europa is slightly smaller. These moons' orbits around Jupiter take from three days for Io up to 14 days for Callisto. So on any given night, some of the moons are lined up east or west of Jupiter's equator while others are hidden in front of or behind the planet. Look again the next night and there will be a different lineup.

When viewing Jupiter through a telescope while the planet is low on the horizon, note that its appearance will be affected by the Earth's atmosphere. The telescope eyepiece not only magnifies the planet's size, but also it magnifies the turbulence in the atmosphere. So Jupiter will look somewhat soft and fuzzy for the first couple hours after sunset. The best time to see the king of planets through a telescope is a few hours after sunset, when Jupiter is higher in the sky and there is less atmosphere in the way.

A Telescope Made of Moondust

A gigantic telescope on the Moon has been a dream of astronomers since the dawn of the space age. A lunar telescope the same size as Hubble (2.4 meters across) would be a major astronomical research tool. One as big as the largest telescope on Earth—10.4 meters across—would see far more than any Earth-based telescope because the Moon has no atmosphere. But why stop there? In the Moon's weak gravity, it might be possible to build a telescope with a mirror as large as 50 meters across, half the length of a football field—big enough to analyze the chemistry on planets around other stars for signs of life.

That's the dream of Peter C. Chen, astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. And he wants to build it using lunar dust—because that might just be the most economical approach.

"If we lift all materials from Earth, we're limited by what a rocket can carry to the Moon," Chen explains. "But on the Moon, you're absolutely surrounded by lunar dust"—a prized natural resource in the eyes of Chen, an expert in composite materials.

Composite materials are synthetic materials made by mixing fibers or granules of various materials into epoxy and letting the mixture harden. Composites combine two valuable properties: ultralight weight and extraordinary strength. On Earth, for example, bicycle frames made of a composite of carbon fibers and epoxy are favorites of racing cyclists.

"Why not make a composite using lunar dust?" asks Chen, who is also adjunct research professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. So in his laboratory, he mixed NASA's simulated lunar dust called JSC-1A Coarse Lunar Regolith Simulant with epoxy and a small quantity of carbon nanotubes, a relatively recently discovered form of carbon that has many unusual and useful properties. The result? "It came out as hard, dense, and strong as concrete."

Excited, Chen made a small telescope mirror using a long-known technique called spin-casting. First he formed a 12-inch (30-cm) diameter disk of lunar-simulant/epoxy composite. Then he poured a thin layer of straight epoxy on top, and spun the mirror at a constant speed while the epoxy hardened. The top surface of the epoxy assumed a parabolic shape—just the shape needed to focus an image. When the epoxy hardened, Chen inserted it into a vacuum chamber to deposit a thin layer of reflective aluminum onto the parabolic surface to create a 12-inch telescope mirror.

The carbon nanotubes make the composite a conductor. Conductivity would allow a large lunar telescope mirror to reach thermal equilibrium quickly with the monthly cycle of lunar night and day. Conductivity would also allow astronomers to apply an electric current as needed through electrodes attached to the back of the mirror, to maintain the mirror's parabolic shape against the pull of lunar gravity as the large telescope was tilted from one part of the sky to another.

To make a Hubble-sized moondust mirror, Chen calculates that astronauts would need to transport only 130 pounds (60 kg) of epoxy to the Moon along with 3 pounds (1.3 kg) of carbon nanotubes and less than 1 gram of aluminum. The bulk of the composite material—some 1,300 pounds (600 kilograms) of lunar dust—would be lying around on the Moon for free.

"I think we've discovered a simple method of making big astronomical telescopes on the Moon at 'non-astronomical' prices," Chen declares. "Building a large space-based astronomical observatory using locally available material is something that is possible only on the Moon. That capability can be a major scientific justification for a return to the Moon."

"It’s a great idea in principle, but nothing is simple on the Moon," cautions physicist James F. Spann, who leads the Space and Exploration Research Office at Marshall Space Flight Center. "Launching a big spinning table to the Moon would be a challenge. If we got the machine spinning in the Moon's dusty environment, how long would it take the dust to settle?" he asks.

Sputtering aluminum vapor onto a large mirror in the presence of ambient dust would be another challenge, because "coating mirrors on Earth is done in a clean environment. There are practical issues about manufacturability that must be resolved."

Despite his concerns, Spann sees real promise in Chen's work and he's enthusiastic about starting out to make simple composite structures on the Moon, such as casting basic blocks from epoxy and lunar dust. "The blocks could be useful for building igloos or habitats for the lunar astronauts," he points out. Then astronauts could work up to making rods, tubes, and other composite structures, to learn how epoxy cures in the Moon's vacuum, and how robust the composites are under solar ultraviolet light. In the end, telescopes might prove practical. "We have a lot of work to do to find out what's possible," he says.

One thing is clear: The sky's the limit, especially when you have so much moondust to work with.

Friday, July 11, 2008

What's Wrong with the Sun?

Stop the presses! The sun is behaving normally.

So says NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "There have been some reports lately that Solar Minimum is lasting longer than it should. That's not true. The ongoing lull in sunspot number is well within historic norms for the solar cycle."

This report, that there's nothing to report, is newsworthy because of a growing buzz in lay and academic circles that something is wrong with the sun. Sun Goes Longer Than Normal Without Producing Sunspots declared one recent press release. A careful look at the data, however, suggests otherwise.

But first, a status report: "The sun is now near the low point of its 11-year activity cycle," says Hathaway. "We call this 'Solar Minimum.' It is the period of quiet that separates one Solar Max from another."

During Solar Max, huge sunspots and intense solar flares are a daily occurance. Auroras appear in Florida. Radiation storms knock out satellites. Radio blackouts frustrate hams. The last such episode took place in the years around 2000-2001.

During Solar Minimum, the opposite occurs. Solar flares are almost non-existant while whole weeks go by without a single, tiny sunspot to break the monotony of the blank sun. This is what we are experiencing now.

Although minima are a normal aspect of the solar cycle, some observers are questioning the length of the ongoing minimum, now slogging through its 3rd year.

"It does seem like it's taking a long time," allows Hathaway, "but I think we're just forgetting how long a solar minimum can last." In the early 20th century there were periods of quiet lasting almost twice as long as the current spell. Most researchers weren't even born then.

Hathaway has studied international sunspot counts stretching all the way back to 1749 and he offers these statistics: "The average period of a solar cycle is 131 months with a standard deviation of 14 months. Decaying solar cycle 23 so far lasted 142 months--well within the first standard deviation and thus not at all abnormal. The last available 13-month smoothed sunspot number was 5.70. This is bigger than 12 of the last 23 solar minimum values."

In summary, "the current minimum is not abnormally low or long."

The longest minimum on record, the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715, lasted an incredible 70 years. Sunspots were rarely observed and the solar cycle seemed to have broken down completely. The period of quiet coincided with the Little Ice Age, a series of extraordinarily bitter winters in Earth's northern hemisphere. Many researchers are convinced that low solar activity, acting in concert with increased volcanism and possib

For reasons no one understands, the sunspot cycle revived itself in the early 18th century and has carried on since with the familiar 11-year period. Because solar physicists do not understand what triggered the Maunder Minimum or exactly how it influenced Earth's climate, they are always on the look-out for signs that it might be happening again.

The quiet of 2008 is not the second coming of the Maunder Minimum, believes Hathaway. "We have already observed a few sunspots from the next solar cycle," he says. "This suggests the solar cycle is progressing normally."

What's next? Hathaway anticipates more spotless days, maybe even hundreds, followed by a return to Solar Max conditions in the years around 2012.

What's My Age? Mystery Star Cluster Has 3 Different Birthdays

Imagine having three clocks in your house, each chiming at a different time.

Astronomers have found the equivalent of three out-of-sync "clocks" in the ancient open star cluster NGC 6791. The dilemma may fundamentally challenge the way astronomers estimate cluster ages, researchers said.

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study the dimmest stars in the cluster, astronomers uncovered three different age groups. Two of the populations are burned-out stars called white dwarfs. One group of these low-wattage stellar remnants appears to be 6 billion years old, another appears to be 4 billion years old. The ages are out of sync with those of the cluster's normal stars, which are 8 billion years old.

"The age discrepancy is a problem because stars in an open cluster should be the same age. They form at the same time within a large cloud of interstellar dust and gas. So we were really puzzled about what was going on," explained astronomer Luigi Bedin, who works at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

Ivan King of the University of Washington and leader of the Hubble study said: "This finding means that there is something about white dwarf evolution that we don't understand."

After extensive analysis, members of the research team realized how the two groups of white dwarfs can look different and yet have the same age.

It is possible that the younger-looking group consists of the same type of stars, but the stars are paired off in binary-star systems, where two stars orbit each other. Because of the cluster's great distance, astronomers see the paired stars as a brighter single star.

"It is their brightness that makes them look younger," said team member Maurizio Salaris of Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom.

Binary systems are also a significant fraction of the normal stellar population in NGC 6791, and are also observed in many other clusters. This would be the first time they have been found in a white-dwarf population.

"Our demonstration that binaries are the cause of the anomaly is an elegant resolution of a seemingly inexplicable enigma," said team member Giampaolo Piotto the University of Padova in Italy.

Bedin and his colleagues are relieved that they now have only two ages to reconcile: an 8-billion-year age of the normal stellar population and a 6-billion-year age for the white dwarfs. All that is needed is a process that slows down white-dwarf evolution, the researchers said.

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys analyzed the cooling rate of the entire population of white dwarfs in NGC 6791, from brightest to dimmest. Most star clusters are too far away and the white dwarfs are too faint to be seen by ground-based telescopes, but Hubble's powerful vision sees many of them.

White dwarfs are the smoldering embers of Sun-like stars that no longer generate nuclear energy and have burned out. Their hot remaining cores radiate heat for billions of years as they slowly fade into darkness. Astronomers have used white dwarfs as a reliable measure of the ages of star clusters, because they are the relics of the first cluster stars that exhausted their nuclear fuel.

White dwarfs have long been considered dependable because they cool down at a predictable rate-the older the dwarf, the cooler it is, making it a seemingly perfect clock that has been ticking for almost as long as the cluster has existed.

For more images and information, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/25/full/

Russian Spacewalkers Retrieve Soyuz Pyro Bolt

International Space Station Commander Sergei Volkov and Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko wrapped up a 6-hour, 18-minute spacewalk at 9:06 p.m. EDT Thursday. They inspected their Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft and retrieved a pyro bolt from it.

The spacewalk comes in the wake of ballistic entries by the two most recent Soyuz spacecraft, entries that while safe resulted in high-G rides for the crews and landings hundreds of miles short of the planned recovery area. Russian engineers say they have evidence that failed explosive bolts that help separate two modules likely are responsible.

The spacewalk, the 113th for assembly and maintenance of the station, focused on the area between the Soyuz return and propulsion modules.

Volkov and Kononenko left the Pirs docking compartment and moved to the Strela hand-powered crane mounted nearby. Volkov, wearing the red-striped Orlan spacesuit and designated EV1 or lead spacewalker, and Kononenko mounted a foot restraint on the end of Strela.

Kononenko, EV2 in the blue-striped suit, was unable to secure himself to the foot restraint, so he tethered himself to Strela and held on. Volkov maneuvered him to the Soyuz docked to the Earth-facing port on Pirs.

After taking photos and installing covers to protect nearby thrusters, Kononenko cut and secured insulation and inspected the area behind it. Then Volkov moved along the Strela to join Kononenko.

They demated electrical connectors and cut a wire tie between adjacent pyro bolts in the suspect position. Volkov unscrewed and retrieved one of the pyro bolts there. With help from Kononenko he stowed it in a protective blast-proof cylindrical case. The spacewalkers installed a thermal blanket over their work area and took photos of the site.

Kononenko and Volkov moved back to the Strela controls and maneuvered the crane back to its stowage position on Pirs. They stowed a bag with the container holding the pyro bolt in the airlock. It will be returned to Earth for examination.

Installation of a docking target, a get-ahead task on this spacewalk, will be scheduled for the Tuesday spacewalk.

The cosmonauts returned to Pirs, entered the airlock and closed the hatch.

Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff remained in the Soyuz during the spacewalk, part of the contingency plan for the unlikely event the Pirs airlock could not be repressurized. Otherwise he would not have had access to the station's lifeboat through a depressurized Pirs.

Volkov and Kononenko will conduct another spacewalk July 15 to outfit the Russian segment's exterior, install one scientific experiment and retrieve another.

Rare 'Star-Making Machine' Found in Distant Universe

Astronomers have uncovered an extreme stellar machine -- a galaxy in the very remote universe pumping out stars at a surprising rate of up to 4,000 per year. In comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy turns out an average of just 10 stars per year.

The discovery, made possible by several telescopes including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, goes against the most common theory of galaxy formation. According to the theory, called the Hierarchical Model, galaxies slowly bulk up their stars over time by absorbing tiny pieces of galaxies -- and not in one big burst as observed in the newfound "Baby Boom" galaxy.

"This galaxy is undergoing a major baby boom, producing most of its stars all at once," said Peter Capak of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "If our human population was produced in a similar boom, then almost all of the people alive today would be the same age." Capak is lead author of a new report detailing the discovery in the July 10th issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Baby Boom galaxy, which belongs to a class of galaxies called starbursts, is the new record holder for the brightest starburst galaxy in the very distant universe, with brightness being a measure of its extreme star-formation rate. It was discovered and characterized using a suite of telescopes operating at different wavelengths. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Japan's Subaru Telescope, atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii, first spotted the galaxy in visible-light images, where it appeared as an inconspicuous smudge due to is great distance.

It wasn't until Spitzer and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, also on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, observed the galaxy at infrared and submillimeter wavelengths, respectively, that the galaxy stood out as the brightest of the bunch. This is because it has a huge number of youthful stars. When stars are born, they shine with a lot of ultraviolet light and produce a lot of dust. The dust absorbs the ultraviolet light but, like a car sitting in the sun, it warms up and re-emits light at infrared and submillimeter wavelengths, making the galaxy unusually bright to Spitzer and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.

To learn more about this galaxy's unique youthful glow, Capak and his team followed up with a number of telescopes. They used optical measurements from Keck to determine the exact distance to the galaxy -- a whopping12.3 billion light-years. That's looking back to a time when the universe was 1.3 billion years old (the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old today).
"If the universe was a human reaching retirement age, it would have been about 6 years old at the time we are seeing this galaxy," said Capak.

The astronomers made measurements at radio wavelengths with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array in New Mexico. Together with Spitzer and James Clerk Maxwell data, these observations allowed the astronomers to calculate a star-forming rate of about 1,000 to 4,000 stars per year. At that rate, the galaxy needs only 50 million years, not very long on cosmic timescales, to grow into a galaxy equivalent to the most massive ones we see today.

While galaxies in our nearby universe can produce stars at similarly high rates, the farthest one known before now was about 11.7 billion light-years away, or a time when the universe was 1.9 billion years old.

"Before now, we had only seen galaxies form stars like this in the teenaged universe, but this galaxy is forming when the universe was only a child," said Capak. "The question now is whether the majority of the very most massive galaxies form very early in the universe like the Baby Boom galaxy, or whether this is an exceptional case. Answering this question will help us determine to what degree the Hierarchical Model of galaxy formation still holds true."

"The incredible star-formation activity we have observed suggests that we may be witnessing, for the first time, the formation of one of the most massive elliptical galaxies in the universe," said co-author Nick Scoville of Caltech, the principal investigator of the Cosmic Evolution Survey, also known as Cosmos. The Cosmos program is an extensive survey of a large patch of distant galaxies across the full spectrum of light.

"The immediate identification of this galaxy with its extraordinary properties would not have been possible without the full range of observations in this survey," said Scoville.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

Thursday, July 10, 2008

TopSat, Proving UK technology

Proving UK technology

Operational
Launched 2005
First in a new generation of small satellites

TopSat was conceived as part of a Government-funded small satellite programme called MOSAIC (Microsatellite Applications in Collaboration programme). The satellite is known as a ‘technology demonstrator’ and has been built to show that even a small box-shaped spacecraft of roughly 80 cm across can deliver impressive results.

Costing £14 million, TopSat is many times cheaper than traditional satellite missions. The single instrument on board is an extremely powerful camera designed to provide visual images from space with a resolution of 2.8 m. This is good enough to pick out individual houses, or even vehicles, from orbit.

TopSat images can be used for a variety of applications including mapping or land-use monitoring. Images are used by a variety of customers including the Ministry of Defence and UK universities. TopSat images are also being provided free of charge to relief agencies responding to disasters anywhere in the world.

The spacecraft operates within the International Charter: Space and Major Disasters, which enables satellite data to be used to help those affected by natural or man made disasters.

The spacecraft is only one part of the TopSat mission. As the aim is to deliver high resolution images to any area on Earth, the project also includes a special lightweight portable ground station.

TopSat has proved that a simple, economically built spacecraft can achieve the same calibre of results as traditional satellites. The basic design can be readily adapted for different instruments or applications.

Mission facts

TopSat was launched on 27 October 2005 from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northern Russia.
By tilting the satellite within its orbit, the operations team can image the same target anywhere on the Earth within three days. Creating a constellation of several TopSat spacecraft would reduce this time even further.
TopSat has been built to show that smaller, cheaper satellites can deliver the same high-level results as larger, more complex spacecraft.
If results are as good as expected, these new micro-satellites could become a key part of providing better value Earth observation applications.
The TopSat platform is already being developed for future projects such as RapidEye. This is the world's first commercial Earth observation constellation of satellites.

Technology

The secret of keeping the cost down was in the design of the craft itself. To ensure it stays as compact as possible, TopSat has no extendable solar panels and very few moving parts.

The team building the satellite were able to re-use parts of previous spacecraft. This helped to reduce the cost of the mission even further.

The primary instrument on board TopSat is an extremely powerful camera capable of providing a resolution of 2.8 m from TopSat's orbit of 686 km above the Earth. Normally a camera this powerful would have to be very long so would not fit into a spacecraft just 80 cm wide. However, the designers at STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory managed to create a compact, box-like design by including three mirrors in the instrument.

TopSat could also carry other payloads. Rather than a camera it might be an alternative imaging device, monitoring or communications equipment.

UK involvement

TopSat was conceived, designed and built in the UK. It was jointly funded by BNSC and the Ministry of Defence. The following companies all had key involvement in the project:

QinetiQ developed the initial concept for the mission, and helped to build the consortium of organisations that worked on it. QinetiQ was also the mission's prime contractor and was involved in providing the on board payload control and parts of the mission control system. QinetiQ now owns the satellite and is responsible for its day-to-day operations.
Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) built the spacecraft platform which uses controlled spacecraft manoeuvres to increase the exposure time of images. This ensures high-resolution images can be obtained, even in poor light. SSTL also provides the command and control services for daily operations.
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory developed the state-of-the-art lightweight camera.
Infoterra, a subsidiary of Astrium Limited, has worked on image improvements and marketing of TopSat.

SMOS, Studying the Earth’s salt and water

Studying the Earth’s salt and water

European Space Agency mission
In development
Scheduled for launch end of 2008

SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) will make global observations of the Earth’s surface soil water content and the salt in the oceans. Both are linked to the Earth’s climate and water cycle. A greater understanding of soil moisture and ocean salinity will lead to better forecasting of weather and extreme-weather events.

Soil moisture and humidity are connected. If soil becomes dry, due to drought, then less water evaporates into our atmosphere. More moisture raises humidity and also lowers temperatures.

The salinity of the sea affects ocean currents. The salt content varies due to the addition or removal of fresh water through evaporation and rain and from melting ice in polar regions.

SMOS is the second Earth Explorer Opportunity mission and is part of ESA’s (European Space Agency) Living Planet Programme. Its data will contribute to seasonal climate forecasting and will also help studies of regions of snow and ice.

For more information, visit the ESA website.

Mission facts

SMOS will be launched on a modified Russian Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
Its main instrument MIRAS (Microwave Imaging Radiometer using Aperture Synthesis) can measure as little as 4 per cent soil moisture from space.
The satellite will be able to make observations over a hexagonal area of almost 1,000 km across.
SMOS will be able to achieve global coverage every three days.

Technology

MIRAS is a new type of instrument that can observe both soil moisture and ocean salinity by imaging emitted microwave radiation at a frequency of around 1.4 GHz.

The Y-shaped antenna on MIRAS has 69 small receivers – 23 on each arm.

A 2-D measurement image will be taken every 1.2 seconds.

UK involvement

SciSys UK Limited is a member of the SMOS Payload Module Team and developed the on board software that controls one of the instruments. ComDev developed the X-band filter while Chelton Antennas was involved in the manufacture of the antennas.

Two Principal Investigators involved in SMOS are from the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton and De Monfort University’s Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing Laboratory, Leicester.

Project for On-board Autonomy (Proba)

A European imaging mission

Proba is a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite that was only designed with a one-year life span. It recently celebrated its sixth anniversary in space and has produced some of the best images of Earth of any satellite in recent years.

Proba stands for PRoject for On Board Autonomy. It was built to demonstrate a range of new technologies. The main instrument on board is the Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS).

Funded by BNSC and built in the UK, the CHRIS imager has found a wide variety of uses from mapping ancient Roman remains to monitoring pollution in Hong Kong. There are currently more than 80 scientists using this data.

The spacecraft has also been deployed in combination with other satellites to help provide emergency relief following natural disasters (see also DMC). Proba’s continued success means that a successor, Proba-2, will be launched in the next few years.

Mission facts

Proba was the first ever microsatellite launched by ESA. The size of a large TV set, it weighs in at just 94 kg.
One of Proba's most recent successes came late in 2005, when it was used by teams in the Sahara looking at how to make the best use of a water supply buried deep underneath the desert. This ‘fossil water’ came from the Ice Age 10,000 years ago. It has been used to support population growth.

Technology

Proba has successfully tested a range of new technologies as well as providing some fantastic images of Earth.

The CHRIS instrument is the highest resolution imager of its type currently operating in space.

The spacecraft also carries two other cameras and a range of other instruments. Full details are are available on ESA's Proba web pages.

UK involvement

Although the Belgian company Verhaert led the design and development of Proba, there was considerable input from UK companies:

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) provided a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver for the satellite that can determine the latitude and longitude of a point on Earth.

Sira Space (now part of SSTL) built the Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS), one of the two instruments on board.

For more information about Proba, visit the ESA website.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

MetOp-A, Long-term monitoring of the weather and climate

Long-term monitoring of the weather and climate

In operation
First satellite launched 19 October 2006
Two further satellites planned

MetOp-A is Europe’s first operational polar-orbiting weather satellite. The satellite carries instruments to monitor the atmosphere and ocean surface.

The satellite is measuring atmospheric temperature and humidity with unprecedented accuracy. It can measure profiles of atmospheric ozone and other trace gases, as well as wind speed and direction over the oceans.

The information it provides is used to improve the accuracy of weather forecasts. It will also help us to assess long-term changes in the Earth’s climate. Future missions are under development to ensure continuity of satellite coverage.

Under a new system, MetOp-A shares a common set of core instruments with polar-orbiting meteorological satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States.

The MetOp payload includes tried and tested instruments from the US with innovative technology developed in Europe. The NOAA satellite carries some of the European instruments.

In approximately five years, MetOp-A will be replaced by MetOp-B and then, eventually, MetOp-C. This series of satellites should therefore deliver continuous, high-quality global meteorological data until at least 2020.

Mission facts

MetOp-A was launched on 19 October 2006 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.
The satellite is monitored and controlled from a ground station on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway.
Data from MetOp-A is used on a daily basis by Met Office weather forecasters. Information from the satellite is incorporated into computer simulations of the weather to improve the accuracy of the weather forecast. One and two day forecasts have benefited significantly from the satellite.
Unlike other weather satellites which maintain a high geostationary orbit, such as Meteosat, MetOp-A is a polar orbiting satellite. The spacecraft loops around the Earth some 800 km above the surface and is therefore able to observe the planet in closer detail.

Technology

Of the instruments on board, five are new generation European instruments, whilst the others have a well-proven heritage and have been provided by NOAA and the French Space Agency (CNES).

MetOp-A can measure temperature and humidity, ocean surface wind speed and direction as well as concentrations of ozone and other trace gases.

The satellite includes a data relay system, linking up to buoys and other data collection devices.

UK involvement

Data from MetOp-A is used by UK meteorologists and scientists on a daily basis.

Astrium Limited designed and built the Microwave Humidity Sounder, which measures surface temperatures on Earth and the humidity in our atmosphere.

The company also built the service module mechanical system for the spacecraft, including the structure and propulsion system.

Meteosat Second Generation (MSG)

Europe’s latest weather satellites

In operation
First launch 2002
Due to be replaced by 2018

Observations of the Earth from space have transformed the way we forecast the weather. By using satellite data in computer models, weather can be predicted, with increasing accuracy, several days ahead. Satellites are used to monitor weather as it develops, as well as for long-term studies of the weather and climate.

The MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) weather satellites are providing an unprecedented degree of accuracy. Every 15 minutes they take an image of Europe and Africa showing cloud, land, sea and snow to a resolution as small as one kilometre.

The satellites can also detect infrared wavelengths to produce an accurate picture of the temperature of clouds, land and sea surfaces at all times of the day and night. Because the images are taken so frequently, weather conditions can be monitored as they develop.

The operation of Europe’s weather satellites is co-ordinated by EUMETSAT with BNSC partner the Met Office representing the UK. EUMETSAT has a close working relationship with the European Space Agency (ESA) which has responsibility for initial satellite development on MSG.

The MSG satellites have provided experimental evidence for the greenhouse effect. The GERB instrument on board has been measuring the difference between the radiation entering and radiation leaving the atmosphere.

The first MSG satellite was launched in 2002 and, following in-orbit testing, was renamed Meteosat 8. Meteosat 9, launched in December 2005, is now the prime satellite for European weather services. Meteosat 8 has been redeployed as the back-up satellite and will operate in ‘rapid scanning’ mode to give five minute updates over a smaller area.

The replacement for the MSG satellites, Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) will be needed by 2015 and is already under development.

Mission facts

Europe has operated a series of weather satellites for more than 30 years. The first Meteosat was launched from Cape Canaveral in November 1977. These spacecraft have transformed the accuracy of the weather forecast.
The MSG satellites are stationed high above the Earth in geostationary orbit. This means they rotate around the Earth at the same speed as the planet spins. So effectively they remain over the same part of the globe.
The satellites send back images and measurements of the atmosphere. This is incorporated into computer models to enable forecasters to make predictions of what the weather has in store.
Because the images are taken so frequently, weather conditions can be monitored as they develop. This has led to the advent of what forecasters call the ‘nowcast’ allowing, for example, warnings to be given to aircraft about an approaching thunderstorm or to help government agencies prepare for heavy flooding.
Unlike previous weather satellites, MSG can monitor ‘low-visibility’ weather such as fog or thunderstorms.

Technology

Weather satellites use a range of different cameras and detectors to view the Earth. As well as transmitting visible images, instruments can measure infrared (heat) and solar radiation.

Instruments:

SEVIRI (Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager) is the main instrument on the MSG satellites. It scans the Earth's surface every 15 minutes to send back data concerning heat and weather patterns.

GERB (Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget) measures the amount of solar radiation arriving on Earth and the amount leaving or being scattered. GERB has provided experimental evidence for climate change. It has also helped improve climate forecasts by monitoring the greenhouse effect of small dust particles over the Western Sahara and by reassessing the brightness of clouds.

MCP (Mission Communication Payload) communicates data collected by SEVIRI and GERB back to Earth.

S&R (Search and Rescue transponder) receives distress signals from any mobile unit within the MSG coverage zone of Europe, Africa and the Atlantic Ocean.

UK involvement

The MSG project has seen involvement from more than 50 science and industry partners in the UK.

Management:

The Government contributed directly more than £6 million towards programme development.

The Met Office has put £89 million into the project, funding operating costs.

Research and Operation:

AEA Technology Space developed infrared calibration systems for both the GERB and SEVERI instruments. AEA Technology, European Space Tribology Laboratory worked in both a developmental and consultative role on the SEVERI and GERB instruments.

Astrium Limited provided the key link between MSG in space and end users: The Image Processing Facility (IMPF).

BAE Systems supplied infrared detectors under contract with Astrium Limited.

COMDEV Europe Limited produced pre-amplifiers for the SEVIRI instrument under contract to Astrium Limited. These units amplify small signals from infrared detectors for transmission to the ground.

Imperial College London calibrated the GERB instrument.

Leicester University built the detector and associated electronics for GERB.

LogicaCMG delivered a new processing system for MSG known as the Meteorological Products Extraction Facility (MPEF).

MT Satellite Products Ltd. tested and produced filters that prevented particles from reaching thrusters on MSG.

Oxford University provided flexible cabling for SEVERI.

The STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory has provided overall management of the GERB instrument as well as the system design, integration and testing. It also led the overall design of the ground segment.

VEGA Group plc supports all of the MSG operations team and aids with the procurement of the MSG system including the systems architects, consultants and engineers.

Ocean Wind Power Maps Reveal Possible Wind Energy Sources

Efforts to harness the energy potential of Earth's ocean winds could soon gain an important new tool: global satellite maps from NASA. Scientists have been creating maps using nearly a decade of data from NASA's QuikSCAT satellite that reveal ocean areas where winds could produce energy.

The new maps have many potential uses including planning the location of offshore wind farms to convert wind energy into electric energy. The research, published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, was funded by NASA's Earth Science Division, which works to advance the frontiers of scientific discovery about Earth, its climate and its future.

"Wind energy is environmentally friendly. After the initial energy investment to build and install wind turbines, you don't burn fossil fuels that emit carbon," said study lead author Tim Liu, a senior research scientist and QuikSCAT science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Like solar power, wind energy is green energy."

QuikSCAT, launched in 1999, tracks the speed, direction and power of winds near the ocean surface. Data from QuikSCAT, collected continuously by a specialized microwave radar instrument named SeaWinds, also are used to predict storms and enhance the accuracy of weather forecasts.

Wind energy has the potential to provide 10 to 15 percent of future world energy requirements, according to Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at JPL. If ocean areas with high winds were tapped for wind energy, they could potentially generate 500 to 800 watts of energy per square meter, according to Liu's research. Dimotakis notes that while this is slightly less than solar energy (which generates about one kilowatt, or 1,000 watts, of energy per square meter), wind power can be converted to electricity more efficiently than solar energy and at a lower cost per watt of electricity produced.

According to Liu, new technology has made floating wind farms in the open ocean possible. A number of wind farms are already in operation worldwide. Ocean wind farms have less environmental impact than onshore wind farms, whose noise tends to disturb sensitive wildlife in their immediate area. Also, winds are generally stronger over the ocean than on land because there is less friction over water to slow the winds down -- there are no hills or mountains to block the wind's path.

Ideally, offshore wind farms should be located in areas where winds blow continuously at high speeds. The new research identifies such areas and offers explanations for the physical mechanisms that produce the high winds.

An example of one such high-wind mechanism is located off the coast of Northern California near Cape Mendocino. The protruding land mass of the cape deflects northerly winds along the California coast, creating a local wind jet that blows year-round. Similar jets are formed from westerly winds blowing around Tasmania, New Zealand and Tierra del Fuego in South America, among other locations. Areas with large-scale, high wind power potential also can be found in regions of the mid-latitudes of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, where winter storms normally track.

The new QuikSCAT maps, which add to previous generations of QuikSCAT wind atlases, also will be beneficial to the shipping industry by highlighting areas of the ocean where high winds could be hazardous to ships, allowing them to steer clear of these areas.

Scientists use the QuikSCAT data to examine how ocean winds affect weather and climate, by driving ocean currents, mixing ocean waters and affecting the carbon, heat and water interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere. JPL manages QuikSCAT for NASA. For more information about QuikSCAT, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov .

NASA Mission to be Crystal Ball into Oceans' Future, Mirror to the Past

Imagine the lives that could be saved from flash floods and drought, the millions of dollars in fuel costs that could be avoided for fishing vessels, and the homes that could be spared from the effects of coastline erosion if only scientists could more accurately predict the dynamics of Earth's often unpredictable oceans. Armed with increasingly more accurate forecasts, weather services in countries across the globe are improving time-sensitive warnings of cyclones, flooding and high sea winds, as well as information about when it's safe to scuba dive, sail, or fish 48 kilometers (30 miles) or more beyond coastlines.

NASA and several other international organizations have joined forces to launch into space a "crystal ball" to give scientists an extended satellite data record. The data can be used to improve ocean forecasting and to test the accuracy of climate and weather models using knowledge of past ocean conditions.

The newly-launched Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 is made up of next-generation, state-of-the-art, satellite-based instruments that will provide a global view of Earth's sea surface height every 10 days. Scientists will use these data to create complex simulations of how ocean currents, tides and eddies might behave. Similarly, the data will also allow scientists to "hindcast" -- that is, to test how accurate the simulations of past ocean forecasts were.

"To borrow from an old saying, 'it's the motion of the ocean' that is of most interest to us as scientists, and our ability to forecast it and learn lessons from it," said one of the mission's science team members, Robert Leben, an associate research professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "The further we can look into the past with the record of ocean measurements, the better we can predict future events. That is to say, if one day we can look back at a 20- or 30-year data record, we can more accurately say what will happen in the next 10 or 15 years because we will have a data record that indicates trends or correlations that lead to specific or expected outcomes. OSTM/Jason 2 is going to add to knowledge we've gained from the Topex/Poseidon and Jason 1 missions and put us closer to this goal."

To create the simulations, also called models, that predict ocean behavior, scientists combine information about factors such as wind speed, wave height, sea level pressure, temperature and air pressure with data gathered by satellite altimeters that measure the height of the oceans' surface (more commonly known as sea level). Radar altimeters, like those on OSTM/Jason 2, measure sea level by sending a radar pulse to the sea surface and clocking the time it takes for the signal to reflect back. All these data are fed into a computer program, allowing scientists to see into the future or to gain further insight from simulations of the past when hindcasting.

OSTM/Jason 2 is slated to orbit Earth and collect this important data set for at least three to five years. It will provide scientists with significantly more data to test their models, and extend the record of information available about ocean circulation and how the ocean affects global climate. During the mission's lifetime, scientists hope to add to what they currently understand about weather phenomena like El Niño and La Niña. During an El Niño, the eastern Pacific Ocean temperatures near the equator are warmer than normal, while during La Niña the same waters are colder than normal. These fluctuations in the Pacific Ocean temperatures can wreak havoc on climate conditions around the Pacific and beyond, leading to increased rainfall or drought.

"A longer period of data from the OSTM/Jason 2 mission can tell scientists more about how El Niño and La Niña are coupled not only to seasonal or yearly changes but to decade-to-decade oscillations of the Pacific Ocean," said Leben. "Owing to data from the mission's forerunner Topex/Poseidon and Jason 1 missions, scientists have already determined that decadal fluctuations in the Pacific enhance the frequency and intensity of shorter-term ocean events such as El Niño and La Niña. Just think of what more we'll learn as we collect future data from OSTM/Jason 2."

Knowing more about the oceans' behavior, including what El Niño and La Niña climate conditions may bring, will improve our quality of life and benefit industry. "For example, forecasts of ocean currents can predict the oceans' salt balance, which can be used to study the global water cycle," said science team member Yi Chao, a satellite oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Water evaporates from the ocean surface, and water from rivers and land-runoff cycle back into the ocean, so more precise forecasts of these movements will boost our knowledge of and ability to manage our most precious natural resource. This mission can help us determine the role of ocean circulation in completing the global water cycle."

"On the commercial front, offshore industries such as oil and gas exploration and production require accurate information about ocean circulation to minimize the impacts from strong currents and eddies," said Leben. "Search and rescue officials, marine operators, recreational boaters, and marine animal researchers all benefit from increasingly more accessible near real-time data."

"The Topex/Poseidon and Jason 1 missions got us off to a great start," said Chao. "When the two missions operated together in tandem, they doubled the coverage area and sharpness of the resolution of the sea level data so that we could 'see' more detail. This higher resolution is critical for extending the global sea level data into coastal zones, which of course are regions of great societal importance. OSTM/Jason 2 will provide another opportunity for a tandem mission with Jason-1."

Leben pointed out that with this new mission, the focus moves from research objectives to practical ways to apply the data that benefit society in tangible and essential ways.

For more information on OSTM/Jason 2, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ostm .

NASA's Phoenix Lander Delivers Soil-Chemistry Sample

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander used its Robotic Arm to deliver a second sample of soil for analysis by the spacecraft's wet chemistry laboratory, data received from Phoenix on Sunday night confirmed.

Results from testing this sample will be compared in coming days to the results from the first Martian soil analyzed by the wet chemistry laboratory two weeks ago. That laboratory is part of Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer.

The main activity on the lander's schedule for today is testing a method for scraping up a sample of icy material and getting it into the scoop at the end of the Robotic Arm. Photography before, during and after the process will allow evaluation of this method. If the test goes well, the science team plans to use this method for gathering the next sample to be delivered to Phoenix's bake-and-sniff instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of The University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, located in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more information on the Phoenix, visit http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Sample-Collection Tests by NASA's Phoenix Lander Continue

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander's science and engineering teams are testing methods to get an icy sample into the Robotic Arm scoop for delivery to the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA).

Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, Phoenix's "dig czar," said the hard Martian surface that Phoenix has reached proved to be a difficult target, comparing the process to scraping a sidewalk.

"We have three tools on the scoop to help access ice and icy soil," Arvidson said. "We can scoop material with the backhoe using the front titanium blade; we can scrape the surface with the tungsten carbide secondary blade on the bottom of the scoop; and we can use a high-speed rasp that comes out of a slot at the back of the scoop."

"We expected ice and icy soil to be very strong because of the cold temperatures. It certainly looks like this is the case and we are getting ready to use the rasp to generate the fine icy soil and ice particles needed for delivery to TEGA," he said.

Scraping action produced piles of scrapings at the bottom of a trench on Monday, but did not get the material into its scoop, information returned from Mars on Monday night confirmed. The piles of scrapings produced were smaller than previous piles dug by Phoenix, which made it difficult to collect the material into the Robotic Arm scoop.

"It's like trying to pick up dust with a dustpan, but without a broom," said Richard Volpe, an engineer from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., on Phoenix's Robotic Arm team.

Images from the lander's Robotic Arm Camera showed that the scoop remained empty after two sets of 50 scrapes performed earlier Monday were collected into two piles in the trench informally named "Snow White." These activities were a test of possible techniques for collecting a sample of ice or ice-rich soil for analysis.

The mission teams are now focusing on use of the motorized rasp within the Robotic Arm scoop to access the hard icy soil and ice deposits. They are conducting tests on Phoenix's engineering model in the Payload Interoperability Testbed in Tucson to determine the optimum ways to rasp the hard surfaces and acquire the particulate material produced during the rasping. The testbed work and tests on Mars will help the team determine the best way to collect a sample of Martian ice for delivery to TEGA.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. For more about Phoenix, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix and http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu.

Monday, July 7, 2008

GOCE, Measuring the Earth’s gravity

Measuring the Earth’s gravity

European Space Agency mission
The first core mission to be developed as part of ESA’s Living
Planet Programme
Launch scheduled 2008

GOCE (Gravity Field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer) is a two year mission that will measure the Earth’s gravitational field and help advance our understanding of ocean circulation and climate.

Gravity is not constant for the entire planet. It is weaker at the equator for instance, than at the poles. This is due to the Earth’s rotation and other factors such as its uneven surface and geology.

By measuring tiny variations in the Earth’s gravitational field, scientists will gain a greater insight into how the Earth works; the physics of its interior and changes in sea levels.

The data will be combined with information about sea surface height from other satellites to track the direction and speed of ocean currents.

For more information, visit ESA’s GOCE homepage.

Mission facts

GOCE is a 5 m long octagonal spacecraft, one metre in diameter.
The spacecraft will orbit just 250 km above the Earth’s surface.
GOCE will carry three pairs of instruments known as 3-axis electrostatic gravity gradiometers which will measure differences in the Earth’s gravitational field in all directions.
GOCE will provide an accurate and detailed global model of the Earth’s gravitational field. The spacecraft will also investigate volcanic regions and provide an estimate of the thickness of polar ice sheets.

Technology

The different sides of the spacecraft will vary in temperature from 140°C to -160°C. GOCE has been tested thoroughly with 400 temperature sensors, 24 hours a day for two weeks, to ensure it can withstand the harsh space environment.

Unlike most satellites, GOCE has no moving parts. This will give it increased stability when making gravity measurements.

GOCE will use two ion thrusters instead of burning fuel. Electricity from the spacecraft’s solar panels is used to produce charged particles or ions from an inert gas and these ions propel the spacecraft.

UK involvement

QinetiQ has supplied the two ion thrusters for the spacecraft.

SciSys Limited developed a satellite simulator for the mission to support satellite operations.

ERS-1 and ERS-2

ERS stands for European Remote Sensing satellites. Between them, ERS-1 and ERS-2 have been watching over the Earth for more than 16 years. The European Space Agency

(ESA) mission has proved incredibly successful and is still producing useful results.

The satellites have provided scientists with vital information about Earth's land, oceans and polar caps. The two satellites have monitored our planet’s changing climate and measured the rise in sea levels. They have tracked pollution and assessed the hole in the ozone layer.

As well as gathering information on the Earth’s environment, the ERS satellites have been used to monitor natural disasters. Following the eruption of Mount Etna in 2001, for example, images from the satellites were used to help ensure the safety of people living in nearby villages.

The ERS programme laid the foundations for the Envisat mission. Instruments on Envisat are an advance on those flown on ERS. With Envisat due to remain operational until at least 2010, scientists will eventually have almost 20 years of continuous data. Already there is sufficient satellite information to show long-term trends in sea level rise and reduced ice cover in the Arctic.

Mission facts

ERS-1 was the first satellite launched by ESA to monitor Earth from space. It was taken out of action in 2000 after nine years of service.
Launched in 1995, ERS-2 has now been in orbit for more than 12 years. ERS-2 continues to provide information about our planet's behaviour and how it's changing.
The two satellites operated in tandem for nine months during 1995-96 to provide scientists with an accurate 3-D digital map of Earth.

Technology

Both satellites carry the same basic set of radars and infrared sensors. ERS-2 is also fitted with an ultraviolet spectrometer that allows it to monitor the ozone layer.

As ERS-2 was based largely on existing technology, it cost 60% less to develop and launch than ERS-1. ERS-2 has already been in service for longer than its predecessor, and should continue to work for a number of years to come.

For more information on ERS see the ERS webpages.

UK involvement

The ATSR (Along Track Scanning Radiometer) instruments on ERS, which provide images of the Earth's surface from space, were designed and developed by a consortium of research institutes. They were led and supported by BNSC partners STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Science teams across the UK continue to rely on information obtained by the ERS mission. Much of this work is carried out by the Data Assimilation Research Centre at the University of Reading (DARC).

Envisat, A health check for our planet

A health check for our planet

In operation
Launched in 2002
Due extended until 2010

Envisat is Europe’s largest and most sophisticated Earth observation satellite. The spacecraft is around the size of a double-decker bus and has ten instruments on board monitoring everything from air to agriculture, oceans to ozone. Day and night, whatever the weather, Envisat is providing information on the state of the planet we live on.

Operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), Envisat is designed to answer some of the key questions about our environment. Its instruments measure parts of the Earth system - from the oceans and atmosphere to land and areas covered with ice. Over the duration of the mission, Envisat will be able to spot any changes and examine the effect of those changes on the Earth.

Many of Envisat’s instruments are a development of those that flew on ESA’s Earth Observation missions of the 1990s: ERS-1 & -2. This means that scientists now have satellite readings stretching back more than 15 years.

Envisat’s sensors are mapping the world’s oceans to monitor changes in sea level and produce accurate maps of ice coverage. Sea surface temperatures are also being recorded. The distribution of phytoplankton is being observed using the MERIS (Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer) imaging instrument. There is now sufficient data from space missions to show long-term trends in sea level rise and reduced sea ice cover in the Arctic.

A key part of the Envisat mission is to investigate the extent and impact of pollution. The suite of sensors on board the spacecraft is able to see the holes in the ozone layer, the plumes of aerosols hanging over major cities or burning forests and the exhaust trails deposited in the high atmosphere by commercial airliners. Over the longer term, Envisat is collecting data to monitor the greenhouse effect so future trends can be predicted.

For the latest news on the mission visit the Envisat website.

Mission facts

Envisat is the largest Earth observation spacecraft ever built and had a launch weight of 8.2 tonnes.
Envisat was launched on 1 March 2002 from Kourou, French Guiana. Its mission was originally intended to last five years.
Envisat flies in a polar orbit, so over a three day period the satellite’s instruments can monitor the entire globe.
Envisat data has become increasingly valuable for monitoring disasters such as volcanic eruptions, floods and fires. The satellite was able to monitor smoke from Europe's largest peacetime fire at the Buncefield oil storage depot near London and the floods in northern and south west England in 2007.
The satellite has been taking annual measurements of the ozone hole over Antarctica. Any gap in the stratospheric ozone layer leaves us unprotected from harmful UV radiation. In 2007, data from Envisat showed the hole had shrunk by a third compared to the previous year's record size.
Envisat’s radar has been used to monitor shifts in the Earth’s crust. Scientists at Oxford University are studying seismic belts across the world in the hope of using Envisat data to help predict future earthquakes.

Technology

Envisat carries ten instruments to study the air, land and sea. These instruments operate at visible, infrared, ultraviolet and microwave wavelengths.

Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) measures surface temperature. It is studying changes that have taken place in sea surface temperature over a decade.

Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) is the largest of Envisat's instruments. ASAR bounces microwave signals off Earth's surface to monitor any shifts in the Earth’s crust. It is also used to study ocean waves and monitor deforestation.

Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars (GOMOS) instrument provides valuable information about the Earth’s ozone layer.

Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) measures solar radiation reflected by the Earth's surface and clouds. MERIS is used to monitor coastal pollution and chlorophyll levels in water by studying ocean colour.

Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) keeps track of air pressure and ozone concentration.

MicroWave Radiometer (MWR) measures the amount of atmospheric water vapour and liquid water in clouds.

Radar Altimeter- 2 (RA-2) measures the height of water in the world's oceans as well as looking at wind speed.

Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) provides measurements of trace gases, aerosols and cloud height in the atmosphere. This is vital for measuring emissions of greenhouse gases and industrial pollutants.

Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) pinpoints Envisat's orbital location. This data is used to help monitor glaciers, landslides and volcanoes.

UK involvement

From conception to design, building and operation of Envisat, UK scientists and industry partners have been at the forefront of the satellite's progress.

Many UK teams are involved in collecting and analysing results from Envisat with more than 1,200 scientific projects across Europe currently using data from this mission.

UK science groups include:

UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Data Assimilation Research Centre at the University of Reading (DARC)
University of Leicester
Oxford University
STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)

Astrium Limited was the prime contractor for the satellite platform.

BAE Systems developed the eight infrared detectors and pre-amplifiers for the MIPAS instrument.

COM DEV Europe Limited produced the pre-amplifier warm unit for MIPAS. This unit takes output from infrared detectors and amplifies this for the data processing unit.

Infoterra (part of EADS Astrium) developed the archive facility and is overseeing the running of the UK data processing and archive centre.