Earth to Lend Helping Hand to Comet Craft

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NASA's Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft will fly past Earth this Sunday (June 27). Mission navigators have tailored this trajectory so the spacecraft can "hitch a ride" on Earth's gravity field, which will help propel the mission toward its appointment with comet Hartley 2 this fall. At time of closest approach to Earth, the spacecraft will be about 30,400 kilometers (18,900 miles) above the South Atlantic.

"Earth is a great place to pick up orbital velocity," said Tim Larson, the EPOXI project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This flyby will give our spacecraft a 1.5-kilometer-per-second [3,470 mph] boost, setting us up to get up close and personal with comet Hartley 2."

EPOXI is an extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft. Its name is derived from its two tasked science investigations -- the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh). On Nov. 4, 2010, the mission will conduct an extended flyby of Hartley 2 using all three of the spacecraft's instruments (two telescopes with digital color cameras and an infrared spectrometer).

The University of Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution. JPL manages EPOXI for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

For information about EPOXI, visit http://www.nasa.gov/epoxi or http://epoxi.umd.edu/.

The Coolest Stars Come Out of the Dark

2:03 AM sheldon , 0 Comments

Artist's concept of the brown dwarfs WISE is expected to find
This artist's concept shows simulated data predicting the hundreds of failed stars, or brown dwarfs, that NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is expected to add to the population of known stars in our solar neighborhood. › Full image and caption

Astronomers have uncovered what appear to be 14 of the coldest stars known in our universe. These failed stars, called brown dwarfs, are so cold and faint that they'd be impossible to see with current visible-light telescopes. Spitzer's infrared vision was able to pick out their feeble glow, much as a firefighter uses infrared goggles to find hot spots buried underneath a dark forest floor.

The brown dwarfs join only a handful of similar objects previously discovered. The new objects are between the temperatures of about 450 Kelvin to 600 Kelvin (350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit). As far as stars go, this is bitter cold -- as cold, in some cases, as planets around other stars.

These cool orbs have remained elusive for years, but will soon start coming out of the dark in droves. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which is up scanning the entire sky now in infrared wavelengths, is expected to find hundreds of objects of a similarly chilly disposition, if not even colder. WISE is searching a volume of space 40 times larger than that sampled in the recent Spitzer study, which concentrated on a region in the constellation Boötes. The Spitzer mission is designed to look at targeted patches of sky in detail, while WISE is combing the whole sky.

"WISE is looking everywhere, so the coolest brown dwarfs are going to pop up all around us," said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and lead author of a recent paper in the Astronomical Journal on the Spitzer discoveries. "We might even find a cool brown dwarf that is closer to us than Proxima Centauri, the closest known star."

Brown dwarfs form like stars out of collapsing balls of gas and dust, but they are puny in comparison, never collecting enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion and shine with starlight. The smallest known brown dwarfs are about 5 to 10 times the mass of our planet Jupiter -- that's as massive as some known gas-giant planets around other stars. Brown dwarfs start out with a bit of internal heat left over from their formation, but with age, they cool down. The first confirmed brown dwarf was announced in 1995.

"Brown dwarfs are like planets in some ways, but they are in isolation," said astronomer Daniel Stern, co-author of the Spitzer paper at JPL. "This makes them exciting for astronomers -- they are the perfect laboratories to study bodies with planetary masses."

Most of the new brown dwarfs found by Spitzer are thought to belong to the coolest known class of brown dwarfs, called T dwarfs, which are defined as being less than about 1,500 Kelvin (2,240 degrees Fahrenheit). One of the objects appears to be so cold that it may even be a long-sought Y dwarf -- a proposed class of even colder stars. The T and Y classes are part of a larger system categorizing all stars; for example, the hottest, most massive stars are O stars; our sun is a G star.

"Models indicate there may be an entirely new class of stars out there, the Y dwarfs, that we haven't found yet," said co-author Davy Kirkpatrick, a co-author of the study and a member of the WISE science team at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "If these elusive objects do exist, WISE will find them." Kirkpatrick is a world expert in brown dwarfs -- he came up with L, T and Y classifications for the cooler stars.

Kirkpatrick says that it's possible that WISE could find an icy, Neptune-sized or bigger object in the far reaches of our solar system -- thousands of times farther from the sun than Earth. There is some speculation amongst scientists that such a cool body, if it exists, could be a brown dwarf companion to our sun. This hypothetical object has been nicknamed "Nemesis."

"We are now calling the hypothetical brown dwarf Tyche instead, after the benevolent counterpart to Nemesis," said Kirkpatrick. "Although there is only limited evidence to suggest a large body in a wide, stable orbit around the sun, WISE should be able to find it, or rule it out altogether."

The 14 objects found by Spitzer are hundreds of light-years away -- too far away and faint for ground-based telescopes to see and confirm with a method called spectroscopy. But their presence implies that there are a hundred or more within only 25 light-years of our sun. Because WISE is looking everywhere, it will find these missing orbs, which will be close enough to confirm with spectroscopy. It's possible that WISE will even find more brown dwarfs within 25-light years of the sun than the number of stars known to exist in this space.

"WISE is going to transform our view of the solar neighborhood," said Eisenhardt. We'll be studying these new neighbors in minute detail -- they may contain the nearest planetary system to our own."

Other authors of the Spitzer paper are Roger Griffith and Amy Mainzer of JPL; Ned Wright, A.M. Ghez and Quinn Konopacky of UCLA; Matthew Ashby and Mark Brodwin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge; Mass., Michael Brown of Monash University, Australia; R.S. Bussmann of the University of Arizona, Tucson; Arjun Dey of National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson, Ariz.; Eilat Glikman of Caltech; Anthony Gonzalez and David Vollbach of the University of Florida, Gainesville; and Shelley Wright of the University of California, Berkeley.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer. More information about WISE is online at http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/wise.

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New Clues Suggest Wet Era on Early Mars Was Global

2:00 AM sheldon , 0 Comments

Lyot Crater on Mars
Lyot Crater, pictured here, is one of at least nine craters in the northern lowlands of Mars with exposures of hydrated minerals detected from orbit, according to a June 25, 2010, report. › Full image and caption
Minerals in northern Mars craters seen by two orbiters suggest that a phase in Mars' early history with conditions favorable to life occurred globally, not just in the south.

Southern and northern Mars differ in many ways, so the extent to which they shared ancient environments has been open to question.

In recent years, the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found clay minerals that are signatures of a wet environment at thousands of sites in the southern highlands of Mars, where rocks on or near the surface are about four billion years old. Until this week, no sites with those minerals had been reported in the northern lowlands, where younger volcanic activity has buried the older surface more deeply.

French and American researchers report in the journal Science this week that some large craters penetrating younger, overlying rocks in the northern lowlands expose similar mineral clues to ancient wet conditions.

"We can now say that the planet was altered on a global scale by liquid water about four billion years ago," said John Carter of the University of Paris, the report's lead author.

Other types of evidence about liquid water in later epochs on Mars tend to point to shorter durations of wet conditions or water that was more acidic or salty.

The researchers used the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), an instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, to check 91 craters in the northern lowlands. In at least nine, they found clays and clay-like minerals called phyllosilicates, or other hydrated silicates that form in wet environments on the surface or underground.

Earlier observations with the OMEGA spectrometer on Mars Express had tentatively detected phyllosilicates in a few craters of the northern plains, but the deposits are small, and CRISM can make focused observations on smaller areas than OMEGA.

"We needed the better spatial resolution to confirm the identifications," Carter said. "The two instruments have different strengths, so there is a great advantage to using both."

CRISM Principal Investigator Scott Murchie of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., a co-author of the new report, said that the findings aid interpretation of when the wet environments on ancient Mars existed relative to some other important steps in the planet's early history.

The prevailing theory for how the northern part of the planet came to have a much lower elevation than the southern highlands is that a giant object slammed obliquely into northern Mars, turning nearly half of the planet's surface into the solar system's largest impact crater. The new findings suggest that the formation of water-related minerals, and thus at least part of the wet period that may have been most favorable to life, occurred between that early giant impact and the later time when younger sediments formed an overlying mantle.

"That large impact would have eliminated any evidence for the surface environment in the north that preceded the impact," Murchie said. "It must have happened well before the end of the wet period."

The report's other two authors are Francois Poulet and OMEGA Principal Investigator Jean-Pierre Bibring, both of the University of Paris.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory provided and operates CRISM, one of six instruments on that orbiter.

For more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro.

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Earth-like Planets May Be Ready for Their Close-Up

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JPLers with the nulling interferometer testbed at JPL
From left to right: JPLers Felipe Santos Fregoso, Piotr Szwaykowski, Kurt Liewer and Stefan Martin with the nulling interferometer testbed at JPL, where the device is built and refined.

Many scientists speculate that our galaxy could be full of places like Pandora from the movie "Avatar" -- Earth-like worlds in solar systems besides our own.

That doesn't mean such worlds have been easy to find, however. Of the 400-plus planets so far discovered, none could support life as we know it on Earth.

"The problem with finding Earth-like planets," said Stefan Martin, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., "is that their host stars can emit 10 million times more infrared light than the planet itself. And because planets like ours are small and orbit very close to their respective stars, it makes Earths almost impossible to see."

Together with A.J. Booth (formerly at JPL and now at Sigma Space Corp., Lanham, Md.), Martin may have developed a way to make this almost impossible feat a reality.

Their instrument design, called a "nulling interferometer," observes planets in infrared light, where they are easier to detect. It is designed to combine starlight captured by four different telescopes, arranging the light waves from the star in such a way that they cancel each other out. "We're able to make the star look dimmer -- basically turning it off," Martin said.

Nulling interferometry is not a new idea, but what sets the results from Martin and Booth apart is how effective it turned out to be. "Our null depth is 10 to 100 times better than previously achieved by other systems," Martin said. "This is the first time someone has cross-combined four telescopes, set up in pairs, and achieved such deep nulls. It's extreme starlight suppression."

That suppression could allow scientists to get a better look at exoplanets than ever before. "We're able to make the planet flash on and off so that we can detect it," Martin said. "And because this system makes the light from the star appear 100 million times fainter, we would be able to see the planet we're looking for quite clearly."

Pandora, up close and personal

Nulling interferometry isn't the only way scientists can find other Earths. NASA's Kepler mission, currently in orbit, is looking for Earth-like planets by watching the light of faraway stars dim slightly as their planets pass in front of them. Another method of observing exoplanets is coronagraphy, which uses a mask to block the optical light of a star, making its surrounding planets more easily visible. And the proposed SIM Lite mission would also be able to find nearby planets by observing the gravity-induced "wobbling" of their host stars.

However, Martin and Booth's nulling interferometer could eventually give astronomers the ability to get up close and personal with Earth-like worlds, analyzing their atmospheres for signs of habitability or even possibly life. "We expect to eventually be able to see hundreds of planets with this technique," Martin said.

The technology that they've developed could be used on a follow-up space mission to SIM Lite and Kepler. Martin is now planning to test the system in conditions that better mimic a real-life mission.

Once considered the stuff of science fiction, it may not be long before Earth-like planets, or, in the case of Pandora, Earth-like moons of giant planets, are found to exist other places besides the silver screen.

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NASA Goes to the World Cup

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Jumbo Jellyfish or Massive Star?

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A sphere of stellar innards, blown out from a humongous star
A cloud of material shed by a massive star can be seen in red in this new image from WISE.
› Larger image
Some might see a blood-red jellyfish in a forest of seaweed, while others might see a big, red eye or a pair of lips. In fact, the red-colored object in this new infrared image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a sphere of stellar innards, blown out from a humongous star.

The star (white dot in center of red ring) is one of the most massive stellar residents of our Milky Way galaxy. Objects like this are called Wolf-Rayet stars, after the astronomers who found the first few, and they make our sun look puny by comparison. Called V385 Carinae, this star is 35 times as massive as our sun, with a diameter nearly 18 times as large. It's hotter, too, and shines with more than one million times the amount of light.

Fiery candles like this burn out quickly, leading short lives of only a few million years. As they age, they blow out more and more of the heavier atoms cooking inside them -- atoms such as oxygen that are needed for life as we know it.

The material is puffed out into clouds like the one that glows brightly in this WISE image. In this case, the hollow sphere showed up prominently only at the longest of four infrared wavelengths detected by WISE. Astronomers speculate this infrared light comes from oxygen atoms, which have been stripped of some of their electrons by ultraviolet radiation from the star. When the electrons join up again with the oxygen atoms, light is produced that WISE can detect with its 22-micron infrared light detector. The process is similar to what happens in fluorescent light bulbs.

Infrared light detected by WISE at 12 microns is colored green, while 3.4- and 4.6-micron light is blue. The green, kelp-looking material is warm dust, and the blue dots are stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

This image mosaic is made up of about 300 overlapping frames, taken as WISE continues its survey of the entire sky -- an expansive search, sure to turn up more fascinating creatures swimming in our cosmic ocean.

V385 Carinae is located in the Carina constellation, about 16,000 light-years from Earth.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu.

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Astronomers Discover Star-Studded Galaxy Tail

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A star-studded tail on a galaxy called IC 3418
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer found a tail behind a galaxy called IC 3418. The star-studded tail can be seen in the image on the left, as detected by the space telescope in ultraviolet light. The tail has escaped detection in visible light, as shown by the image on the right.
› Full image and caption
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has discovered a galaxy tail studded with bright knots of new stars. The tail, which was created as the galaxy IC 3418 plunged into the neighboring Virgo cluster of galaxies, offers new insight into how stars form.

"The gas in this galaxy is being blown back into a turbulent wake," said Janice Hester of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, lead author of a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "The gas is like sand caught up by a stiff wind. However, the particular type of gas that is needed to make stars is heavier, like pebbles, and can't be blown out of the galaxy. The new Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations are teaching us that this heavier, star-forming gas can form in the wake, possibly in swirling eddies of gas."

Collisions between galaxies are a fairly common occurrence in the universe. Our Milky Way galaxy will crash into the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years. Galaxies tangle together, kicking gas and dust all around. Often the battered galaxies are left with tails of material stripped off during the violence.

Hester and her team studied the tail of IC 3418, which formed in a very different way. IC 3418 is mingling not with one galaxy, but with the entire Virgo cluster of galaxies 54 million light-years away from Earth. This massive cluster, which contains about 1,500 galaxies and is permeated by hot gas, is pulling in IC 3418, causing it to plunge through the cluster's gas at a rate of 1,000 kilometers per second, or more than 2 million miles per hour. At this incredible speed, the little galaxy's gas is being shoved back into a choppy tail.

The astronomers were able to find this tail with the help of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Clusters of massive, young stars speckle the tail, and these stars glow with ultraviolet light that the space telescope can see. The young stars tell scientists that a crucial ingredient for star formation - dense clouds of gas called molecular hydrogen - formed in the wake of this galaxy's plunge. This is the first time astronomers have found solid evidence that clouds of molecular hydrogen can form under the violent conditions present in a turbulent wake.

"IC 3418's tail of star-formation demonstrates that strong turbulence promotes cloud formation," said Mark Seibert, a co-author of the paper and a member of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer science team at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Pasadena.

Hester added that galaxy tails provide the perfect environment for isolating the factors controlling star formation.

"These tails are unique, exotic locations where we can probe the precise mechanisms behind star formation," said Hester. "Understanding star formation is pivotal to understanding the lifecycles of galaxies and the dramatic transformations that some galaxies undergo. We can also study how the process affects the development of planets like our own."

Other authors of the paper are James D. Neill, Ted K. Wyder and Christopher Martin of Caltech; Armando Gil de Paz of the Universidad de Computense de Madrid, Spain; Barry F. Madore of the Carnegie Institute of Washington; David Schiminovich of Columbia University, N.Y., N.Y; and Michael Rich of UCLA.

Caltech leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission.

Graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer is online at http://www.nasa.gov/galex/ and http://www.galex.caltech.edu .

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NASA Ames Scientist Leslie Prufert-Bebout Receives Blue Marble Award

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Leslie Prufert-Bebout, a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is the recipient of the 2010 Blue Marble Award for Environmental and Energy Excellence, in recognition of exceptional leadership and professionalism in implementing NASA’s mission and vision of “understanding and protecting the home planet” and “improving the quality of life on Earth.”

NASA Headquarters’ Office of Infrastructure and Administration, Environmental Management Division presents the annual Blue Marble Awards. This year, the award will be presented at the NASA Environment and Energy Conference, June 16, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.

"Lee is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of microbial ecology. While studying algal communities, she has developed new methods for water remediation, carbon dioxide sequestration, green energy production and other high value products," said Orlando Santos, chief of the Exobiology Branch at NASA Ames. “Her work has not only benefited NASA missions, but will help our country meet some of its energy independence goals.”

Prufert-Bebout is a microbial ecologist who studies the symbiotic interactions of the many different species in natural biological communities. This work is critical for developing artificial systems potentially capable of generating diesel fuel, methane, hydrogen, or other commercial products. Her research provides answers to species selection, community structure of ecosystems, and optimal conditions for growth of desired biomass products. Her microbial work is critical to open pond systems and closed bioreactor systems that may be used on future NASA exploration missions.

Awarded a grant from the Department of Energy in 2008, she was made principle investigator for a “green” energy research project. Building on long term research performed at Ames on microbial mats, Lee optimized the growth of specific cyanobacterial species to identify the environmental controls on the seasonal occurrence of different communities. She also facilitated and developed collaborations with Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif. and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif. for the Ames research team to identify pathways of carbon and nitrogen cycling in complex microbial communities, and elucidate the mechanisms of hydrogen production and consumption.

To promote Ames’ green initiative, she established new relationships with industry, sharing NASA’s interest in microbiological technologies for future space flights, and identifying areas where NASA technologies could be of mutual benefit.

In addition to facilitating these collaborations, she initiated a project to study Bodega photo-bioreactors, and both promoted and participated in Ames’ RoboAlgae and Sunnyvale Water Pollution Control projects. Future projects will help establish Ames as a leader in the areas of remote monitoring for the algal biomass industry, local waste water assessment for biomass and energy use, and photo-bioreactor algal development for space operations, respectively.

With colleagues Jonathan Trent, John Hogan, Tori Hoehler and Brad Bebout at NASA Ames, she helped obtain funding to create awareness of green technology advancements in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

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NASA Releases Kepler Data on Potential Extrasolar Planets

3:05 AM sheldon , 0 Comments

Artist's concept of Kepler
Artist's concept of Kepler in the distant solar system.
NASA's Kepler Mission has released 43 days of science data on more than 156,000 stars. These stars are being monitored for subtle brightness changes as part of an ongoing search for Earth-like planets outside of our solar system.

Astronomers will use the new data to determine if orbiting planets are responsible for brightness variations in several hundred stars. These stars represent a full range of temperatures, sizes and ages. Many of them are stable, while others pulsate. Some show starspots, which are similar to sunspots, and a few produce flares that would sterilize their nearest planets.

Kepler, a space observatory, looks for the data signatures of planets by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars when planets cross in front of, or transit, them. The size of the planet can be derived from the change in the star's brightness.

The 28-member Kepler science team also is using ground-based telescopes and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope to perform follow-up observations on a specific set of 400 objects of interest. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations will determine which of the candidates can be identified as planets. That data will be released to the scientific community in February 2011.

Without the additional information, candidates that are actual planets cannot be distinguished from false alarms, such as binary stars -- two stars that orbit each other. The size of the planetary candidates also can be only approximated until the size of the stars they orbit is determined from additional spectroscopic observations made by ground-based telescopes.

"I look forward to the scientific community analyzing the data and announcing new exoplanet results in the coming months," said Lia LaPiana, Kepler's program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"This is the most precise, nearly continuous, longest and largest data set of stellar photometry ever," said Kepler Deputy Principal Investigator David Koch of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "The results will only get better as the duration of the data set grows with time."

Kepler will continue conducting science operations until at least November 2012, searching for planets as small as Earth, including those that orbit stars in a warm, habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet. Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take at least three years to locate and verify an Earth-size planet.

"The Kepler observations will tell us whether there are many stars with planets that could harbor life, or whether we might be alone in our galaxy," said the mission's science principal investigator, William Borucki of Ames.

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

To see the science data, visit: http://archive.stsci.edu/kepler. For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.

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NASAJPL Facebook Fans Design Fantasy Space Vacation

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Artist's concept of a family road trip through the universe
Some creative space vacation ideas from fans of the NASAJPL Facebook Page inspired an artist's concept of a family road trip through the universe.
We got some super-creative ideas from people on the NASAJPL Facebook page when we asked this question: "Planning a summer trip? Talk to your friends and family -- if you could design your dream space vacation, where would you go?"

As promised, we're posting a small sampling of comments here, but you can read all the comments, or post your own ideas at http://www.facebook.com/NASAJPL.

Eoghan Lappin: Moon for breakfast. Mars for lunch. Titan for dinner. Then all the way to Gliese 581d on a trip of a lifetime (Because it would take that long at least!) Epic road trip! :D

Brian Hinson: I'd barbecue kabobs on Pele on Io.

Adam Steineck: I'd go to a watery planet with lots of beaches orbiting a binary star system so the sun would never set :-)

Madhur Patel: My dream vacation would be the 'Asteroid belt' between Mars and Jupiter. It would be fun to go from Mars to Jupiter jumping on the asteroids on the way using a pogo-stick and taking breaks on some of the bigger asteroids like Ceres, 4 Vesta, 2 Pallas, and 10 Hygiea ! :)

Mike Kaberline: I would go to Mars to get Spirit unstuck and dust off the solar panels of Spirit and Opportunity.

Devon Sklair: I would go to Pluto. That way I could pass all the planets in the Solar System on my way there and hang out in the Kuiper Belt. Maybe I'd establish relations with some Plutonians. :)

Raees Kolah: I guess I would like to visit Andromeda galaxy and after that have a dinner with my best friends on Mars.

Grieg Pedersen: I used to have a photo of the Pleiades on my wall, framed in a window frame. I'd love to have that view from my bungalow.

Bob Breit: While my family is from Mintaka in Orion, that is a generational vacation. At this time I would enjoy a rip roarin' ski trip to Enceladus. The jets are fabulous in summer! I could spend the entire season roaming the Saturnian moons and the balloon trip around Saturn is quite a day I hear. I CAN'T WAIT!

Jeff Kuyken: How about a base jump from the Mars moon Phobos followed by a leisurely stroll up to the summit of Olympus Mons! ;-)

Sarah Hill: I'd go to Alpha Centauri to see if there are any planets there with a moon with tall blue people.

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NASA Dryden Hosts Radar Tests for Next Mars Landing

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Test at NASA Dryden of radar system for next Mars landing
This test of the radar system to be used during the August 2012 descent and landing of the NASA Mars rover Curiosity mounted an engineering test model of the radar system onto the nose of a helicopter. › Larger image
Engineers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are running diverse trials with a test version of the radar system that will enable NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission to put the Curiosity rover onto the Martian surface in August 2012.

One set of tests conducted over a desert lakebed at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., in May 2010 used flights with a helicopter simulating specific descent paths anticipated for Martian sites.

During the final stage of descent, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will use a "sky crane" maneuver to lower Curiosity on a bridle from the mission's rocket-powered descent stage. The descent stage will carry Curiosity's flight radar.

The testing at Dryden included lowering a rover mockup on a tether from the helicopter to assess how the sky crane maneuver will affect the radar's descent-speed determinations by the radar. The helicopter carried the test radar on a special nose-mounted gimbal.

Helicopter-flown testing has also been conducted at other desert locations for experience in an assortment of terrains. Later in 2010, the team plans to test the higher-altitude, higher-velocity part of Curiosity's radar-aided descent by flying the test radar on dives by an F/A-18 jet from Dryden.

For more information about the Mars Science Laboratory radar testing at Dryden, see http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/msl_rover_tests.html. More about the Mars Science Laboratory is at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

NASA Kicks Off New Summer of Innovation Initiative

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NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., hosts the national kickoff of NASA's Summer of Innovation
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., hosts the national kickoff of NASA's Summer of Innovation.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden kicked off the agency's new Summer of Innovation initiative today while at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calf.

The Summer of Innovation program will engage thousands of middle school students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) during the summer months when many students experience what's known as the "summer slide," a loss of skills acquired during the school year. The program is a cornerstone of the Educate to Innovate campaign announced by President Obama last November.

About 250 middle school students from the Los Angeles area participated in the kickoff festivities, which included an opportunity to interact with astronauts, NASA scientists and engineers, several hands-on educational activities; and a visit to the facility where the next Mars rover is being built. The students also were treated to musical entertainment provided by actor/rapper Daniel Curtis Lee.

"It is wonderful to feel the excitement generated by these students as they experienced first-hand what fascinating and challenging opportunities exist for students who follow STEM career paths," said Administrator Bolden. "I hope that by getting these students involved in NASA's missions and programs now, it may pave the way for a new generation of scientists and engineers, which is critically important to our nation's future."

NASA's Summer of Innovation program is a broad, nationwide effort that will leverage partnerships with academia, industry and government. This program and the agency's other education programs support NASA's commitment to excellence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which will play a key role in preparing, inspiring, encouraging and nurturing the nation's future work force.

To learn more about this program and the opportunities available, visit http://www.nasa.gov/soi . For information about NASA education programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/education .
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NASA Helps in Upcoming Asteroid Mission Homecoming

1:54 AM sheldon , 0 Comments

Artist's concept of the Hayabusa spacecraft (left) and sample return capsule (right)
This artist's concept depicts the Hayabusa spacecraft (left) and sample return capsule (right) entering the atmosphere over South Australia.

The space and astronomy worlds have June 13 circled on the calendar.

That's when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang back to Earth. The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, five years ago and has logged about 2 billion kilometers (1.25 billion miles) since its launch in May 2003.

With the return of the Hayabusa capsule, targeted for June 13 at Australia's remote Woomera Test Range in South Australia, JAXA will have concluded a remarkable mission of exploration -- one in which NASA scientists and engineers are playing a contributing role.

"Hayabusa will be the first space mission to have made physical contact with an asteroid and returned to Earth," said Tommy Thompson, NASA's Hayabusa project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The mission and its team have faced and overcome several challenges over the past seven years. This round-trip journey is a significant space achievement and one which NASA is proud to be part of."

Launched May 9, 2003, from the Kagoshima Space Center, Uchinoura, Japan, Hayabusa was designed as a flying testbed. Its mission: to research several new engineering technologies necessary for returning planetary samples to Earth for further study. With Hayabusa, JAXA scientists and engineers hoped to obtain detailed information on electrical propulsion and autonomous navigation, as well as an asteroid sampler and sample reentry capsule.

The 510-kilogram (950-pound) Hayabusa spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid Itokawa in September 2005. Over the next two-and-a-half months, the spacecraft made up-close and personal scientific observations of the asteroid's shape, terrain, surface altitude distribution, mineral composition, gravity, and the way it reflected the sun's rays. On Nov. 25 of that year, Hayabusa briefly touched down on the surface of Itokawa. That was only the second time in history a spacecraft descended to the surface of an asteroid (NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous-Shoemaker spacecraft landed on asteroid Eros on Feb. 12, 2001). Hayabusa marked the first attempt to sample asteroid surface material.

The spacecraft departed Itokawa in January 2007. The road home for the technology demonstrator has been a long one, with several anomalies encountered along the way. But now the spacecraft is three days away from its home planet, and the Australian government, working closely with JAXA, has cleared the mission for landing. A team of Japanese and American navigators is guiding Hayabusa on the final leg of its journey. Together, they calculate the final trajectory correction maneuvers Hayabusa's ion propulsion system must perform for a successful homecoming.

"We have been collaborating with the JAXA navigators since the launch of the mission," said Shyam Bhaskaran, a member of JPL's Hayabusa navigation team. "We worked closely with them during the descents to the asteroid, and now are working together to guide the spacecraft back home."

To obtain the data they need, the navigation team frequently calls upon JAXA's tracking stations in Japan, as well as those of NASA's Deep Space Network, which has antennas at Goldstone, in California's Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. In addition, the stations provide mission planners with near-continuous communications with the spacecraft to keep them informed on spacecraft health.

"Our task is to help advise JAXA on how to best get a spacecraft traveling at 12.2 kilometers per second (27,290 miles per hour) to intersect a very specific target point 200 kilometers (120 miles) above the Earth," said Bhaskaran. "Once that is done, and the heat shield of the sample return capsule starts glowing from atmospheric friction, our job is done."

While atmospheric entry may be the end of the line for the team that has plotted the spacecraft's every move for the past 2 billion kilometers, NASA's involvement continues for the craft's final 200 kilometers (120 miles), to the surface of the Australian Outback. A joint Japanese-U.S. team operating on the ground and in the air will monitor this most critical event to help retrieve the capsule and heat shield.

"This is the second highest velocity re-entry of a capsule in history," said Peter Jenniskens, a SETI Institute scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "This extreme entry speed will result in high heating rates and thermal loads to the capsule's heat shield. Such manmade objects entering with interplanetary speed do not happen every day, and we hope to get a ringside seat to this one."

Jenniskens is leading an international team as it monitor the final plunge of Hayabusa to Earth using NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory, which is managed and piloted by a crew from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. The DC-8 flies above most clouds, allowing an unfettered line of sight for its instrument suite measuring the shock-heated gas and capsule surface radiation emitted by the re-entry fireball.

The data acquired by the high-flying team will help evaluate how thermal protection systems behave during these super-speedy spacecraft re-entries. This, in turn, will help engineers understand what a sample return capsule returning from Mars would undergo. The Hayabusa sample return capsule re-entry observation will be similar to earlier observations by the DC-8 team of NASA's Stardust capsule return, and the re-entry of the European Space Agency's ATV-1 ("Jules Verne") automated transfer vehicle.

Soon after the sample return capsule touches down on the ground, Hayabusa team members will retrieve it and transport it to JAXA's sample curatorial facility in Sagamihara, Japan. There, Japanese astromaterials scientists, assisted by two scientists from NASA and one from Australia, will perform a preliminary cataloging and analysis of the capsule's contents.

"This preliminary analysis follows the basic protocols used for Apollo moon rocks, Genesis and Stardust samples," said Mike Zolensky, a scientist at NASA's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. "If this capsule contains samples from the asteroid, we expect it will take a year to determine the primary characteristics of the samples, and learn how to best handle them. Then the samples will be distributed to scientists worldwide for more detailed analysis."

"The Japanese and NASA engineers and scientists involved in Hayabusa's return from asteroid Itokawa are proud of their collaboration and their joint accomplishments," said Thompson. "Certainly, any samples retrieved from Itokawa will provide exciting new insights to understanding the early history of the solar system. This will be the icing on the cake, as this mission has already taught us so much. "

For more information about the Hayabusa mission, visit:
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/enterp/missions/hayabusa/index.shtml .

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Detailed Martian Scenes in New Images from Mars Orbiter

1:50 AM sheldon , 0 Comments

Northern hemisphere gullies on west-facing crater slope, Mars
This image shows the west-facing side of an impact crater in the mid-latitudes of Mars' northern hemisphere. › Full image and caption

Six hundred recent observations of the Mars landscape from an orbiting telescopic camera include scenes of sinuous gullies, geometrical ridges and steep cliffs.

Each of the 600 newly released observations from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter covers an area of several square miles on Mars and reveals details as small as desks.

The HiRISE images taken from April 5 to May 6, 2010, are now available on NASA's Planetary Data System and the camera team's website.

The camera is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in 2006. For more information about the mission, see http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/.

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NASA Chief Technology Officer for IT Honored by CIO Magazine

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Chris KempChris C. Kemp, NASA’s chief technology officer for Information Technology and ‘super star’ of IT innovation for the agency, has been recognized with CIO Magazine’s “CIO 100” award for his work done while he was chief information officer for NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., in 2009. Every year, CIO Magazine identifies and honors 100 organizations that have distinguished themselves through the effective and innovative use of information technology.

“I am honored to be recognized by CIO Magazine and to be the first honoree from Ames is truly humbling. The work that I did there in 2009 was meaningful to me and makes me extremely proud. I am inspired by NASA’s mission, and it’s been an honor to be a member of the team ” said Kemp.

The combination of Kemps’ enthusiasm for NASA and information technology has made him extremely successful at his job.

"This year's CIO 100 awards draws well-deserved attention to companies that are not only innovating with IT but creating genuine business value as well," said Maryfran Johnson, editor in chief of CIO Magazine. "These winning companies and their IT organizations are an inspiration to businesses everywhere."

Kemp is not afraid to venture into unchartered territory. In 2008, he began the Nebula Cloud Computing project (now a NASA-wide program) which uses open source software components to create a robust cloud environment where scientists can process and share data. Kemp also implemented an agency-wide IT Security Operations Center at Ames.

“The Nebula Platform allows scientists to focus on their research and spend less time and money on IT infrastructure. These researchers are doing amazing things, and it’s rewarding to create a platform that enables this innovation,” said Kemp.

Kemp is NASA’s first chief technology officer for IT, a new position established to lead IT innovation across the agency. "This move will leverage Chris’ creative talents and energies," said NASA Chief Information Officer Linda Cureton.

“I’m extremely excited about my new position. I’m thrilled to be involved in supporting many of the ground-breaking IT innovations happening here” Kemp said.

Kemp joined Ames as a successful entrepreneur, having helped create several companies including the third largest online community, Classmates.com. He also helped create the leading web-based vacation rental platform Escapia, and the first online grocery shopping platform for Kroger, the world’s largest grocery store chain.

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What is Consuming Hydrogen and Acetylene on Titan?

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Artist concept showing a lake on Saturn's moon Titan
This artist concept shows a mirror-smooth lake on the surface of the smoggy moon Titan.
› Full image and caption
Two new papers based on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft scrutinize the complex chemical activity on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. While non-biological chemistry offers one possible explanation, some scientists believe these chemical signatures bolster the argument for a primitive, exotic form of life or precursor to life on Titan's surface. According to one theory put forth by astrobiologists, the signatures fulfill two important conditions necessary for a hypothesized "methane-based life."

One key finding comes from a paper online now in the journal Icarus that shows hydrogen molecules flowing down through Titan's atmosphere and disappearing at the surface. Another paper online now in the Journal of Geophysical Research maps hydrocarbons on the Titan surface and finds a lack of acetylene.

This lack of acetylene is important because that chemical would likely be the best energy source for a methane-based life on Titan, said Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., who proposed a set of conditions necessary for this kind of methane-based life on Titan in 2005. One interpretation of the acetylene data is that the hydrocarbon is being consumed as food. But McKay said the flow of hydrogen is even more critical because all of their proposed mechanisms involved the consumption of hydrogen.

"We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth," McKay said. "If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth."

To date, methane-based life forms are only hypothetical. Scientists have not yet detected this form of life anywhere, though there are liquid-water-based microbes on Earth that thrive on methane or produce it as a waste product. On Titan, where temperatures are around 90 Kelvin (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), a methane-based organism would have to use a substance that is liquid as its medium for living processes, but not water itself. Water is frozen solid on Titan's surface and much too cold to support life as we know it.

The list of liquid candidates is very short: liquid methane and related molecules like ethane. While liquid water is widely regarded as necessary for life, there has been extensive speculation published in the scientific literature that this is not a strict requirement.

The new hydrogen findings are consistent with conditions that could produce an exotic, methane-based life form, but do not definitively prove its existence, said Darrell Strobel, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., who authored the paper on hydrogen.

Strobel, who studies the upper atmospheres of Saturn and Titan, analyzed data from Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer and ion and neutral mass spectrometer in his new paper. The paper describes densities of hydrogen in different parts of the atmosphere and the surface. Previous models had predicted that hydrogen molecules, a byproduct of ultraviolet sunlight breaking apart acetylene and methane molecules in the upper atmosphere, should be distributed fairly evenly throughout the atmospheric layers.

Strobel found a disparity in the hydrogen densities that lead to a flow down to the surface at a rate of about 10,000 trillion trillion hydrogen molecules per second. This is about the same rate at which the molecules escape out of the upper atmosphere.

"It's as if you have a hose and you're squirting hydrogen onto the ground, but it's disappearing," Strobel said. "I didn't expect this result, because molecular hydrogen is extremely chemically inert in the atmosphere, very light and buoyant. It should 'float' to the top of the atmosphere and escape."

Strobel said it is not likely that hydrogen is being stored in a cave or underground space on Titan. The Titan surface is also so cold that a chemical process that involved a catalyst would be needed to convert hydrogen molecules and acetylene back to methane, even though overall there would be a net release of energy. The energy barrier could be overcome if there were an unknown mineral acting as the catalyst on Titan's surface.

The hydrocarbon mapping research, led by Roger Clark, a Cassini team scientist based at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, examines data from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer. Scientists had expected the sun's interactions with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene that falls down to coat the Titan surface. But Cassini detected no acetylene on the surface.

In addition Cassini's spectrometer detected an absence of water ice on the Titan surface, but loads of benzene and another material, which appears to be an organic compound that scientists have not yet been able to identify. The findings lead scientists to believe that the organic compounds are shellacking over the water ice that makes up Titan's bedrock with a film of hydrocarbons at least a few millimeters to centimeters thick, but possibly much deeper in some places. The ice remains covered up even as liquid methane and ethane flow all over Titan's surface and fill up lakes and seas much as liquid water does on Earth.

"Titan's atmospheric chemistry is cranking out organic compounds that rain down on the surface so fast that even as streams of liquid methane and ethane at the surface wash the organics off, the ice gets quickly covered again," Clark said. "All that implies Titan is a dynamic place where organic chemistry is happening now."

The absence of detectable acetylene on the Titan surface can very well have a non-biological explanation, said Mark Allen, principal investigator with the NASA Astrobiology Institute Titan team. Allen is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Allen said one possibility is that sunlight or cosmic rays are transforming the acetylene in icy aerosols in the atmosphere into more complex molecules that would fall to the ground with no acetylene signature.

"Scientific conservatism suggests that a biological explanation should be the last choice after all non-biological explanations are addressed," Allen said. "We have a lot of work to do to rule out possible non-biological explanations. It is more likely that a chemical process, without biology, can explain these results - for example, reactions involving mineral catalysts."

"These new results are surprising and exciting," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. "Cassini has many more flybys of Titan that might help us sort out just what is happening at the surface."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

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

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NASA Langley to Break Ground on Hydro Impact Basin

1:54 AM sheldon , 0 Comments

What goes up must come down, and it will be NASA Langley Research Center's job to make sure that when astronauts return from space, they land safely.

On June 8, NASA Langley will break ground on a $1.7 million Hydro Impact Basin that will serve to validate and certify that future space vehicles, such as NASA's Orion crew module, are designed for safe water landings.

The water basin will be 115 feet (35 m) long, 90 feet (27.4 m) wide and 20 feet (6.1 m) deep and will be built at the west end of Langley's historic Landing and Impact Research Facility, also known as the Gantry, where Neil Armstrong trained for walking on the moon. Construction will begin mid-June and will be completed by December 2010.

A series of water impact tests will be conducted using Orion drop test articles beginning in the spring of 2011. These tests will initially validate and improve the computer models of impact and acoustic loads used in the design and engineering process, and will ultimately qualify the final vehicle design for flight.

"We are excited about being a part of the nation's next space vehicle and it's landing system," said Lynn Bowman, who is managing the series of tests for the Orion project. "Our team has been involved with furthering the knowledge and testing of space vehicle landing systems and their components for the past few years."

The skill sets that NASA Langley engineers and technicians bring to the table as well as the capability of the gantry are two of the reasons the basin is being built at the center.

Bowman explains: "The Gantry provides the ability to control the orientation of the test article while imparting a vertical and horizontal impact velocity, which is required for human rating vehicles."

"This existing capability when combined with the water basin will provide a complete facility needed for landing certification of any manned spacecraft for water landing," added Bowman. "Even vehicles that do not perform a nominal water landing will need to certify for launch abort landings into water."

Additionally, NASA Langley has more than 40 years experience with conducting controlled impact/landing tests of instrumented vehicles, said Lisa Jones, head of the Structural Testing Branch at NASA Langley.

NASA Langley's Gantry, built in 1963, was originally used to model lunar gravity. But after the Apollo program ended, it was transformed into the Impact Dynamics Research Facility and was used to test the crash worthiness of aircraft and rotorcraft.

In 2006 the Gantry experienced a revitalization as the country shifted its focus back to space exploration. The 240-foot (73 m) high Gantry provided engineers and astronauts a means to prepare for Orion's return to Earth.

When testing began in 2006, it was thought that a dry landing on Earth would be the preferred landing for the Orion capsule as it returned from space. During this phase, engineers studied the use of airbags during landings and dropped a total of 73 test articles, including a full-scale model of the Crew exploration vehicle, with different generations of airbags attached to the bottom.

More tests followed, including a series that evaluated the crew module's energy absorbing seat system, which protects the crew during a wide range of landing conditions. Langley engineers designed and built a 20,000-pound (9,072 kg) piece of steel hardware called the Crew Impact Attenuation System (CIAS) test article, which was dropped onto crushable honeycomb material sized to represent a broad range of landing conditions Orion could face.

In all, 117 drop tests were performed.

"This team really cranked out high quality testing and excellent analysis," said Bowman, who managed the Orion Landing System Team. "117 tests is a record."

Now that ground-landing tests are complete and the decision came to design Orion for landing in the water, the team at NASA Langley is ready to shift its focus to water. The team has already gotten its feet wet with a series of elemental water impact testing that began this past fall.

During these tests engineers dropped a 20-inch (50.8 cm) hemisphere from five feet (1.5 m) into a four-foot (1.2 m) deep pool so that they could build confidence in a design tool they might use to analyze data during the full-scale water impact tests to be done at the basin.

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NASA Rover Finds Clue to Mars' Past and Environment for Life

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Lengthy detective work with data NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit collected in late 2005 has confirmed that an outcrop called 'Comanche'
Lengthy detective work with data NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit collected in late 2005 has confirmed that an outcrop called "Comanche" contains a mineral indicating that a past environment was wet and non-acidic, possibly favorable to life.
› Full image and caption
Rocks examined by NASA's Spirit Mars Rover hold evidence of a wet, non-acidic ancient environment that may have been favorable for life. Confirming this mineral clue took four years of analysis by several scientists.

An outcrop that Spirit examined in late 2005 revealed high concentrations of carbonate, which originates in wet, near-neutral conditions, but dissolves in acid. The ancient water indicated by this find was not acidic.

NASA's rovers have found other evidence of formerly wet Martian environments. However the data for those environments indicate conditions that may have been acidic. In other cases, the conditions were definitely acidic, and therefore less favorable as habitats for life.

Laboratory tests helped confirm the carbonate identification. The findings were published online Thursday, June 3 by the journal Science.

"This is one of the most significant findings by the rovers," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for the Mars twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, and a co-author of the new report. "A substantial carbonate deposit in a Mars outcrop tells us that conditions that could have been quite favorable for life were present at one time in that place. "

Spirit inspected rock outcrops, including one scientists called Comanche, along the rover's route from the top of Husband Hill to the vicinity of the Home Plate plateau which Spirit has studied since 2006. Magnesium iron carbonate makes up about one-fourth of the measured volume in Comanche. That is a tenfold higher concentration than any previously identified for carbonate in a Martian rock.

"We used detective work combining results from three spectrometers to lock this down," said Dick Morris, lead author of the report and a member of a rover science team at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston."The instruments gave us multiple, interlocking ways of confirming the magnesium iron carbonate, with a good handle on how much there is."

Massive carbonate deposits on Mars have been sought for years without much success. Numerous channels apparently carved by flows of liquid water on ancient Mars suggest the planet was formerly warmer, thanks to greenhouse warming from a thicker atmosphere than exists now. The ancient, dense Martian atmosphere was probably rich in carbon dioxide, because that gas makes up nearly all the modern, very thin atmosphere.

It is important to determine where most of the carbon dioxide went. Some theorize it departed to space. Others hypothesize that it left the atmosphere by the mixing of carbon dioxide with water under conditions that led to forming carbonate minerals. That possibility, plus finding small amounts of carbonate in meteorites that originated from Mars, led to expectations in the 1990s that carbonate would be abundant on Mars. However, mineral-mapping spectrometers on orbiters since then have found evidence of localized carbonate deposits in only one area, plus small amounts distributed globally in Martian dust.

Morris suspected iron-bearing carbonate at Comanche years ago from inspection of the rock with Spirit's Moessbauerpectrometer, which provides information about iron-containing minerals. Confirming evidence from other instruments emerged slowly. The instrument with the best capability for detecting carbonates, the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer, had its mirror contaminated with dust earlier in 2005, during a wind event that also cleaned Spirit's solar panels.

"It was like looking through dirty glasses," said Steve Ruff of Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., another co-author of the report. "We could tell there was something very different about Comanche compared with other outcrops we had seen, but we couldn't tell what it was until we developed a correction method to account for the dust on the mirror."

Spirit's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer instrument detected a high concentration of light elements, a group including carbon and oxygen, that helped quantify the carbonate content.

The rovers landed on Mars in January 2004 for missions originally planned to last three months. Spirit has been out of communication since March 22 and is in a low-power hibernation status during Martian winter. Opportunity is making steady progress toward a large crater, Endeavour, which is about seven miles away.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about the rovers, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/rovers

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