Ulysses Spacecraft Ends Historic Mission of Discovery

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 PHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

DC Agle/Mark Petrovich 818-393-9011/393-4359
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov / mark.petrovich@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Monica Talevi 31-71-565-3223
European Space Agency Communications, The Netherlands
monica.talevi@esa.int

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-104 June 30, 2009

Ulysses Spacecraft Ends Historic Mission of Discovery

PASADENA, Calif. -- Ulysses, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, officially
ceased operations today, after receiving commands from ground controllers to do so. The spacecraft,
which operated for more than 18 years, charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of
the sun.

As planned via commands beamed to the spacecraft earlier in the day, Ulysses switched to its low-
gain antenna at 1:09 p.m. PDT (4:09 p.m. EDT, or 2009 UTC). As a result, ground controllers were
no longer able to pick up a signal from Ulysses, which had also been commanded to switch off its
transmitter completely at 1:15 p.m. PDT (4:15 p.m. EDT, or 2015 UTC).

When space shuttle Discovery launched Ulysses on Oct. 6, 1990, it had an expected lifetime of five
years. The mission gathered unique information about the heliosphere, the bubble in space carved by
the solar wind, for nearly four times longer than expected.

"This has been a remarkable scientific endeavor," said Richard Marsden, Ulysses mission manager
and project scientist at the European Space Agency. "The results Ulysses obtained have exceeded
our wildest dreams many times over."

Ulysses made nearly three complete orbits of the sun. The probe revealed for the first time the three-
dimensional character of galactic cosmic radiation, energetic particles produced in solar storms and
the solar wind. Not only has Ulysses allowed scientists to map constituents of the heliosphere in
space, its longevity enabled them to observe the sun over a longer period of time than ever before.

"The sun's activity varies with an 11-year cycle, and now we have measurements covering almost two
complete cycles," said Marsden. "This long observation has led to one of the mission's key
discoveries, namely that the solar wind has grown progressively weaker during the mission and is
currently at its weakest since the start of the Space Age."

In addition to measuring the solar wind and charged particles, Ulysses instruments measured small
dust particles and neutral gases from local interstellar space that penetrate into the heliosphere.
Ulysses had an unprecedented three chance encounters with comet tails, registered more than 1,800
cosmic gamma-ray bursts, and provided findings for more than 1,000 scientific articles and two
books.

"The breadth of science addressed by Ulysses is truly astonishing," said Ed Smith, Ulysses project
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The data acquired during the long
lifetime of this mission have provided an unprecedented view of the solar activity cycle and its
consequences and will continue to keep scientists busy for many years to come."

Ulysses' successes have not been confined to scientific data. The extended mission presented
significant challenges to the NASA-European operations team. In particular, critical parts of the
spacecraft became progressively colder with time. In recent years, a major effort was needed to
prevent the onboard hydrazine fuel from freezing. The operations team continually created methods
to allow the aging space probe to continue its scientific mission.

Earlier this month, the Ulysses mission team received a NASA Group Achievement Award. Another
milestone was reached on June 10 when Ulysses became the longest-running ESA-operated
spacecraft, overtaking the International Ultraviolet Explorer which logged 18 years and 246 days of
operations.

"The Ulysses team performed exceptionally by building and operating a research probe that would
return scientific data for analysis no matter what challenges it encountered," said Arik Posner,
Ulysses program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The knowledge gained from
Ulysses proves what can be achieved through international cooperation in space research."

The Ulysses orbital path is carrying the spacecraft away from Earth. The ever-widening gap has
progressively limited the amount of data transmitted. Ulysses project managers, with the concurrence
of ESA and NASA, decided it was an appropriate time to end this epic scientific adventure.

ESA Ulysses Mission Operations Manager Nigel Angold points out that more than a year ago, "We
had estimated Ulysses would not survive further than July 2008. However, the spacecraft didn't
stop surprising us and kept working a full year, collecting invaluable science data. It's nice to be
going out in style."

After the spacecraft was placed into low Earth orbit in 1990, a combination of solid fuel motors
propelled Ulysses toward Jupiter. Ulysses swung by Jupiter on Feb. 8, 1992. The giant planet's
gravity bent the spacecraft's flight path southward and away from the ecliptic plane, putting the
probe into a final orbit that would take it over the sun's south and north poles.

The European Space Agency's European Space Research and Technology Centre and European
Space Operations Centre managed the mission in coordination with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Ulysses is tracked by NASA's Deep Space Network. A joint ESA/NASA team at JPL oversaw
spacecraft operations and data management. Teams from universities and research institutes in
Europe and the United States provided the 10 instruments on board.

More information about the mission is available at http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov .
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NASA, Japan Release Most Complete Topographic Map of Earth

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Alan Buis 818-354-0474
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Cole 202-358-0918
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-103 June 29, 2009

NASA, Japan Release Most Complete Topographic Map of Earth

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA and Japan released a new digital topographic map of Earth Monday
that covers more of our planet than ever before. The map was produced with detailed measurements
from NASA's Terra spacecraft.

The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-
pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection
Radiometer, or Aster, instrument aboard Terra. NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and
Industry, known as METI, developed the data set. It is available online to users everywhere at no
cost.

"This is the most complete, consistent global digital elevation data yet made available to the world,"
said Woody Turner, Aster program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This unique
global set of data will serve users and researchers from a wide array of disciplines that need elevation
and terrain information."

According to Mike Abrams, Aster science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., the new topographic information will be of value throughout the Earth sciences and
has many practical applications. "Aster's accurate topographic data will be used for engineering,
energy exploration, conserving natural resources, environmental management, public works design,
firefighting, recreation, geology and city planning, to name just a few areas," Abrams said.

Previously, the most complete topographic set of data publicly available was from NASA's Shuttle
Radar Topography Mission. That mission mapped 80 percent of Earth's landmass, between 60 degrees
north latitude and 57 degrees south. The new Aster data expand coverage to 99 percent, from 83
degrees north latitude and 83 degrees south. Each elevation measurement point in the new data is 30
meters (98 feet) apart.

"The Aster data fill in many of the voids in the shuttle mission's data, such as in very steep terrains
and in some deserts," said Michael Kobrick, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission project scientist at
JPL. "NASA is working to combine the Aster data with that of the Shuttle Radar Topography
Mission and other sources to produce an even better global topographic map."

NASA and METI are jointly contributing the Aster topographic data to the Group on Earth
Observations, an international partnership headquartered at the World Meteorological Organization in
Geneva, Switzerland, for use in its Global Earth Observation System of Systems. This "system of
systems" is a collaborative, international effort to share and integrate Earth observation data from
many different instruments and systems to help monitor and forecast global environmental changes.

NASA, METI and the U.S. Geological Survey validated the data, with support from the U.S.
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and other collaborators. The data will be distributed by
NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center at the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth
Resources Observation and Science Data Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., and by METI's Earth Remote
Sensing Data Analysis Center in Tokyo.

Aster is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched on Terra in December 1999. Aster acquires
images from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, with spatial resolutions ranging
from about 15 to 90 meters (50 to 300 feet). A joint science team from the U.S. and Japan validates
and calibrates the instrument and data products. The U.S. science team is located at JPL.

For visualizations of the new Aster topographic data, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20090629.html .

Data users can download the Aster global digital elevation model at:
https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/~wist/api/imswelcome and http://www.gdem.aster.ersdac.or.jp .

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

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

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QuikScat Finds Tempests Brewing in ‘Ordinary’ Storms

Feature June 25, 2009

QuikScat Finds Tempests Brewing in 'Ordinary' Storms

Satellite, Now Entering Its Second Decade, Has Revolutionized Marine Weather
Forecasts

"June is busting out all over," as the song says, and with it, U.S. residents along the Atlantic
and Gulf coasts begin to gaze warily toward the ocean, aware that the hurricane season is
revving up. In the decade since NASA's QuikScat satellite and its SeaWinds scatterometer
launched in June 1999, the satellite has measured the wind speed and wind direction of
these powerful storms, providing data that are increasingly used by the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Hurricane Center and other world
forecasting agencies. The data help scientists detect these storms, understand their wind
fields, estimate their intensity and track their movement.

But tropical cyclones aren't the only storms that generate hurricane-force winds. Among
others that do is a type of storm that dominates the weather in parts of the United States
and other non-tropical regions every fall, winter and into spring: extratropical cyclones.

Extratropical Cyclones: Meteorological 'Bombs'

Scientists have long known that extratropical cyclones (also known as mid-latitude or
baroclinic storms) sometimes produce hurricane-force winds. But before QuikScat,
hurricane-force extratropical cyclones were thought to be relatively rare. Thanks to
QuikScat, we now know that such storms occur much more frequently than previously
believed, and the satellite has given forecasters an effective tool for routinely and
consistently detecting and forecasting them.

These storms, which occur near busy trans-oceanic shipping lanes, pose a significant threat
to life and property for those on the high seas, generating high winds and waves up to 30
meters (100 feet) high. When they make landfall, in areas like Alaska, the Pacific Northwest,
New England and the U.S. mid-Atlantic coast, they produce strong winds, high surf, coastal
flooding, heavy rains, river flooding and even blizzard conditions.

Take the "Hanukkah Eve" extratropical cyclone of Dec. 14-15, 2006, for example. That
storm viciously raked the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia with torrential rainfall
and hurricane-force winds exceeding 87 knots (100 miles per hour) in spots. Dozens of
people were injured and 18 people lost their lives, while thousands of trees were downed,
power was knocked out for more than 1.5 million residents and structural damage topped
$350 million.

NOAA defines an extratropical cyclone as "a storm system that primarily gets its energy
from the horizontal temperature contrasts that exist in the atmosphere." These low pressure
systems have associated cold fronts, warm fronts and occluded fronts. Tropical cyclones, in
contrast, don't usually vary much in temperature at Earth's surface, and their winds are
generated by the energy released as clouds and rain form in warm, moist, tropical air. While
a tropical cyclone's strongest winds are near Earth's surface, the strongest winds in
extratropical cyclones are about 12 kilometers (8 miles) up, in the tropopause. Tropical
cyclones can become extratropical, and vice versa.

Extratropical cyclones occur in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific year-round. Those
with hurricane-force winds have been observed from September through May. Their
frequency typically begins to increase in October, peaks in December and January, and
tapers off sharply after March. They can range from less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) in
diameter to more than 4,000 kilometers (nearly 2,500 miles) across. They typically last
about five days, but their hurricane-force winds are usually short-lived--just 24 hours or less.
Because they can intensify rapidly, they're often referred to as meteorological "bombs."
Wind speeds in extratropical cyclones can vary from just 10 or 20 knots (12 to 23 miles per
hour) to hurricane-force (greater than 63 knots, or 74 miles per hour). During their
development, they can trek along at more than 30 knots (35 miles per hour), but they slow
down as they mature. At their seasonal peak, up to eight such storms of varying intensity
have been observed at once in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific.

Early work by scientists at NASA, NOAA and other organizations demonstrated the
effectiveness of using scatterometers for detecting these powerful and destructive winds.
Scatterometers work by sending radar signals to the ocean surface and measuring the
strength of the radar signals that bounce back. The higher the wind speed, the more the
ocean surface is disturbed, and the stronger the reflection that is bounced back to the
satellite.

Among those who pioneered these efforts at NASA was Senior Research Scientist Timothy
Liu of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who used data from the NASA
Scatterometer, the predecessor to QuikScat, to study the transition of tropical cyclones into
extratropical storms in 1997. In addition, Robert Atlas of NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md., demonstrated that scatterometer data were able to improve
predictions of extratropical storm strength and location.

Raising Forecaster Awareness

Joe Sienkiewicz, chief of the Ocean Applications Branch at NOAA's Ocean Prediction
Center, Camp Springs, Md., says QuikScat data have raised the awareness of forecasters
to the occurrence of hurricane-force intensity conditions in extratropical cyclones and have
significantly advanced their short-term wind warning and forecast processes.

"QuikScat winds have given forecasters at NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center a high level of
situational awareness over the data-sparse waters of the North Atlantic and North Pacific
Oceans," he said. "Ocean Prediction Center forecasters daily examine every QuikScat pass
and patch of wind and frequently base wind warning and forecast decisions solely on
QuikScat winds. Through confidence gained from QuikScat, the National Weather Service
began issuing warnings for dangerous hurricane-force winds in extratropical cyclones in
December 2000.

"From 10 years of QuikScat, we have learned that hurricane force winds in extratropical
cyclones occur more frequently than thought, are most frequent in winter months, and the
conditions are most often observed south of the cyclone center," he added.

Over the years, the number of storms observed with hurricane-force winds has steadily
increased due to forecasters gaining confidence using the data, and improvements to the
QuikScat data. From the fall of 2006 through 2008, NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center
identified and issued warnings for 115 separate extratropical cyclones (64 in the Atlantic
and 51 in the Pacific) that reached hurricane force.

As confirmed in a 2008 study, QuikScat substantially extends the ability of forecasters to
detect hurricane-force wind events in extratropical storms. For the studied case, QuikScat
was able to identify more than three-and-a-half times as many hurricane-force events as
combined data from the European ASCAT sensor on the METOP-A satellite, directly-
measured buoy and ship information, and model predictions.

Another study in 2002 found that incorporating QuikScat data increased the number of wind
warnings the Ocean Prediction Center issued for extratropical cyclones by 30 percent in the
North Atlantic and by 22 percent in the North Pacific. Between 2003 and 2006, the Ocean
Prediction Center's forecasters successfully predicted hurricane-force winds two days in
advance 58 percent of the time in the Atlantic and 44 percent in the Pacific. Considering that
a successful forecast of hurricane-force winds requires accurate prediction of the timing and
intensity of an explosive deepening cyclone, these numbers are impressive.

QuikScat data have been instrumental in the ability to forecast hurricane-force extratropical
cyclones several days in advance, while they are still well out over the ocean. Forecasters
can use the data to determine which numerical weather prediction models are handling a
storm the best, thereby improving the accuracy of forecasts and increasing warning lead
times. QuikScat data are available to forecasters within three hours of acquisition.

The availability of a consistent observing capability for extratropical cyclones from QuikScat
has allowed NOAA to add a third "hurricane-force" warning category for extratropical
cyclone winds, in addition to gale and storm, providing better warnings of a coming storm's
severity. The U.S. Coast Guard broadcasts these warnings by radiofax, and they are posted
online at: http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov .

A Boon to Shipping

These extratropical cyclone warnings have a great economic impact on the $200 billion
global marine shipping industry. A recent study estimates improvements to warning and
forecast services due to QuikScat save the container and bulk shipping industry $135
million a year by reducing their exposure to hurricane-force wind conditions in non-tropical
storms over the North Pacific and North Atlantic. Without QuikScat, the severity of many
extratropical cyclones would not be determined. The data are also vital to the fishing
industry, offshore energy industries, search and rescue organizations, and agencies that
track and manage marine hazards like oil spills.

Paul Chang, ocean winds science team lead at NOAA's National Environmental Satellite,
Data and Information Service/Center for Satellite Applications and Research, Camp
Springs, Md., said ocean vector wind measurements from QuikScat have become a basic
part of NOAA's day-to-day forecasting and warning processes.

"The 10 years of observations from the QuikScat mission have provided critical information
for the monitoring, modeling, forecasting and research of the atmosphere, oceans and
climate," he said.

For more information about QuickScat, visit http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/.

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Mars Rover Yielding New Clues While Lodged in Martian Soil

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-102 June 25, 2009

MARS ROVER YIELDING NEW CLUES WHILE LODGED IN MARTIAN SOIL

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Spirit, lodged in Martian soil that is causing traction
trouble, is taking advantage of the situation by learning more about the Red Planet's environmental
history.

In April, Spirit entered an area composed of three or more layers of soil with differing pastel hues
hiding beneath a darker sand blanket. Scientists dubbed the site "Troy." Spirit's rotating wheels dug
themselves more than hub deep at the site. The rover team has spent weeks studying Spirit's situation
and preparing a simulation of this Martian driving dilemma to test escape maneuvers using an
engineering test rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

A rock seen beneath Spirit in images from the camera on the end of the rover's arm may be touching
Spirit's belly. Scientists believe it appears to be a loose rock not bearing the rover's weight. While
Spirit awaits extraction instructions, the rover is keeping busy examining Troy, which is next to a low
plateau called Home Plate, approximately 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) southeast of where Spirit landed in
January 2004.

"By serendipity, Troy is one of the most interesting places Spirit has been," said Ray Arvidson of
Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is deputy principal investigator for the science
payloads on Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity. "We are able here to study each layer, each
different color of the interesting soils exposed by the wheels."

One of the rover's wheels tore into the site, exposing colored sandy materials and a miniature cliff of
cemented sands. Some disturbed material cascaded down, evidence of the looseness that will be a
challenge for getting Spirit out. But at the edge of the disturbed patch, the soil is cohesive enough to
hold its shape as a steep cross-section.

Spirit has been using tools on its robotic arm to examine tan, yellow, white and dark-red sandy soil at
Troy. Stretched-color images from the panoramic camera show the tints best.

"The layers have basaltic sand, sulfate-rich sand and areas with the addition of silica-rich materials,
possibly sorted by wind and cemented by the action of thin films of water. We're still at a stage of
multiple working hypotheses," said Arvidson. "This may be evidence of much more recent processes
than the formation of Home Plate…or is Home Plate being slowly stripped back by wind, and we
happened to stir up a deposit from billions of years ago before the wind got to it?"

Team members from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston feel initial readings suggest that iron
is mostly present in an oxidized form as ferric sulfate and that some of the differences in tints at Troy
observed by the panoramic camera may come from differences in the hydration states of iron sulfates.

While extraction plans for the rover are developed and tested during the coming weeks, the team
plans to have Spirit further analyze the soil from different depths. This research benefits from having
time and power. In April and May, winds blew away most of the dust that had accumulated on Spirit's
solar panels.

"The exceptional amount of power available from cleaning of Spirit's solar arrays by the wind enables
full use of all of the rover's science instruments," said Richard Moddis of the Johnson team. "If your
rover is going to get bogged down, it's nice to have it be at a location so scientifically interesting."

The rover team has developed a soil mix for testing purposes that has physical properties similar to
those of the soil under Spirit at Troy. This soil recipe combines diatomaceous earth, powdered clay
and play sand. A crew is shaping a few tons of that mix this week into contours matching Troy's. The
test rover will be commanded through various combinations of maneuvers during the next few weeks
to validate the safest way to proceed on Mars.

Spirit's right-front wheel has been immobile for more than three years, magnifying the challenge.
While acknowledging a possibility that Spirit might not be able to leave Troy, the rover team remains
optimistic. Diagnostic tests on Spirit in early June provided encouragement that the left-middle wheel
remains useable despite an earlier stall.

"With the improved power situation, we have the time to explore all the possibilities to get Spirit
out," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. "We are optimistic. The last
time Spirit spun its wheels, it was still making progress. The ground testing will help us avoid doing
things that could make Spirit's situation worse."

Images and further information about Spirit and Opportunity are available at:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

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Salt Finding From NASA's Cassini Hints at Ocean Within Saturn Moon

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-101 June 24, 2009

Salt Finding From NASA's Cassini Hints at Ocean Within Saturn Moon

PASADENA, Calif. -- For the first time, scientists working on NASA's Cassini mission have
detected sodium salts in ice grains of Saturn's outermost ring. Detecting salty ice indicates that
Saturn's moon Enceladus, which primarily replenishes the ring with material from discharging jets,
could harbor a reservoir of liquid water -- perhaps an ocean -- beneath its surface.

Cassini discovered the water-ice jets in 2005 on Enceladus. These jets expel tiny ice grains and vapor,
some of which escape the moon's gravity and form Saturn's outermost ring. Cassini's cosmic dust
analyzer has examined the composition of those grains and found salt within them.

"We believe that the salty minerals deep inside Enceladus washed out from rock at the bottom of a
liquid layer," said Frank Postberg, Cassini scientist for the cosmic dust analyzer at the Max Planck
Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. Postberg is lead author of a study that appears
in the June 25 issue of the journal Nature.

Scientists on Cassini's cosmic dust detector team conclude that liquid water must be present because
it is the only way to dissolve the significant amounts of minerals that would account for the levels of
salt detected. The process of sublimation, the mechanism by which vapor is released directly from
solid ice in the crust, cannot account for the presence of salt.

"Potential plume sources on Enceladus are an active area of research with evidence continuing to
converge on a possible salt water ocean," said Linda Spilker, Cassini deputy project scientist at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Our next opportunity to gather data on
Enceladus will come during two flybys in November."

The makeup of the outermost ring grains, determined when thousands of high-speed particle hits were
registered by Cassini, provides indirect information about the composition of the plume material and
what is inside Enceladus. The outermost ring particles are almost pure water ice, but nearly every time
the dust analyzer has checked for the composition, it has found at least some sodium within the
particles.

"Our measurements imply that besides table salt, the grains also contain carbonates like soda. Both
components are in concentrations that match the predicted composition of an Enceladus ocean,"
Postberg said. "The carbonates also provide a slightly alkaline pH value. If the liquid source is an
ocean, it could provide a suitable environment on Enceladus for the formation of life precursors when
coupled with the heat measured near the moon's south pole and the organic compounds found within
the plumes."

However, in another study published in Nature, researchers doing ground-based observations did not
see sodium, an important salt component. That team notes that the amount of sodium being expelled
from Enceladus is actually less than observed around many other planetary bodies. These scientists
were looking for sodium in the plume vapor and could not see it in the expelled ice grains. They argue
that if the plume vapor does come from ocean water, the evaporation must happen slowly deep
underground, rather than as a violent geyser erupting into space.

"Finding salt in the plume gives evidence for liquid water below the surface," said Sascha Kempf,
also a Cassini scientist for the cosmic dust analyzer from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear
Physics. "The lack of detection of sodium vapor in the plume gives hints about what the water
reservoir might look like."

Determining the nature and origin of the plume material is a top priority for Cassini during its
extended tour, called the Cassini Equinox Mission.

"The original picture of the plumes as violently erupting Yellowstone-like geysers is changing," said
Postberg."They seem more like steady jets of vapor and ice fed by a large water reservoir. However,
we cannot decide yet if the water is currently 'trapped' within huge pockets in Enceladus' thick ice
crust or still connected to a large ocean in contact with the rocky core."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the
Italian Space Agency. The Cassini cosmic dust analyzer was provided by the German Aerospace
Center. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL manages the mission
for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

More information about the Cassini mission is available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

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NASA's Mars Odyssey Alters Orbit to Study Warmer Ground

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Carolina Martinez/Guy Webster 818-354-9382/6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov / guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-100 June 22, 2009

NASA's Mars Odyssey Alters Orbit to Study Warmer Ground

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's long-lived Mars Odyssey spacecraft has completed an eight-month
adjustment of its orbit, positioning itself to look down at the day side of the planet in mid-afternoon
instead of late afternoon.

This change gains sensitivity for infrared mapping of Martian minerals by the orbiter's Thermal
Emission Imaging System camera. Orbit design for Odyssey's first seven years of observing Mars
used a compromise between what worked best for the infrared mapping and for another onboard
instrument.

"The orbiter is now overhead at about 3:45 in the afternoon instead of 5 p.m., so the ground is
warmer and there is more thermal energy for the camera's infrared sensors to detect," said Jeffrey
Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project scientist for Mars Odyssey.

Some important mineral discoveries by Odyssey stem from mapping done during six months early in
the mission when the orbit geometry provided mid-afternoon overpasses. One key example: finding
salt deposits apparently left behind when large bodies of water evaporated.

"The new orbit means we can now get the type of high-quality data for the rest of Mars that we got
for 10 or 20 percent of the planet during those early six months," said Philip Christensen of Arizona
State University, Tempe, principal investigator for the Thermal Emission Imaging System.

Here's the trade-off: The orbital shift to mid-afternoon will stop the use of one of three instruments in
Odyssey's Gamma Ray Spectrometer suite. The new orientation will soon result in overheating a
critical component of the suite's gamma ray detector. The suite's neutron spectrometer and high-
energy neutron detector are expected to keep operating. The Gamma Ray Spectrometer provided a
dramatic 2002 discovery of water-ice near the Martian surface in large areas. The gamma ray detector
has also mapped global distribution of many elements, such as iron, silicon and potassium.

Last year, before the start of a third two-year extension of the Odyssey mission, a panel of planetary
scientists assembled by NASA recommended the orbit adjustment to maximize science benefits from
the spacecraft in coming years.

Odyssey's orbit is synchronized with the sun. Picture Mars rotating beneath the polar-orbiting
spacecraft with the sun off to one side. The orbiter passes from near the north pole to near the south
pole over the day-lit side of Mars. At each point on the Mars surface that turns beneath Odyssey, the
solar time of day when the southbound spacecraft passes over is the same. During the five years prior
to October 2008, that local solar time was about 5 p.m. whenever Odyssey was overhead. (Likewise,
the local time was about 5 a.m. under the track of the spacecraft during the south-to-north leg of each
orbit, on the night side of Mars.)

On Sept. 30, 2008, Odyssey fired thrusters for six minutes, putting the orbiter into a "drift" pattern of
gradually changing the time-of-day of its overpasses during the next several months. On June 9,
Odyssey's operations team at JPL and at Denver-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems commanded
the spacecraft to fire the thrusters again. This five-and-a-half-minute burn ended the drift pattern and
locked the spacecraft into the mid-afternoon overpass time.

"The maneuver went exactly as planned," said JPL's Gaylon McSmith, Odyssey mission manager.

In another operational change motivated by science benefits, Odyssey has begun in recent weeks
making observations other then straight downward-looking. This more-flexible targeting allows
imaging of some latitudes near the poles that are never directly underneath the orbiter, and allows
faster filling-in of gaps not covered by previous imaging.

"We are using the spacecraft in a new way," McSmith said.

In addition to extending its own scientific investigations, the Odyssey mission continues to serve as
the radio relay for almost all data from NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.
Odyssey's new orbital geometry helps prepare the mission to be a relay asset for NASA's Mars
Science Laboratory mission, scheduled to put the rover Curiosity on Mars in 2012.

Mars Odyssey, launched in 2001, is managed by JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin
Space Systems is the prime contractor for the project. Investigators at Arizona State University
operate the Thermal Emission Imaging System. Investigators at the University of Arizona, Tucson,
head operation of the Gamma Ray Spectrometer. Additional science partners are located at the
Russian Aviation and Space Agency, which provided the high-energy neutron detector, and at Los
Alamos National Laboratories, New Mexico, which provided the neutron spectrometer.

For more about the Mars Odyssey mission, visit: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey .

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NASA Scientists Bring Light to Moon's Permanently Dark Craters

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Grey Hautaluoma 202-358-0668
Headquarters, Washington
grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov
Image advisory: 2009-099 June 18, 2009

NASA Scientists Bring Light to Moon's Permanently Dark Craters

PASADENA, Calif. -- A new lunar topography map with the highest resolution of the
moon's rugged south polar region provides new information on some of our natural
satellite's darkest inhabitants -- permanently shadowed craters.

The map was created by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif., who collected the data using the Deep Space Network's Goldstone Solar System
Radar located in California's Mojave Desert. The map will help Lunar Crater
Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission planners as they target for an
encounter with a permanently dark crater near the lunar South Pole.

"Since the beginning of time, these lunar craters have been invisible to humanity,"
said Barbara Wilson, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif., and manager of the study. "Now we can see detailed topography inside these
craters down to 40 meters [132 feet] per pixel, with height accuracy of better than 5
meters [16 feet]."

The terrain map of the moon's south pole is online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/moon-20090618.html .

Scientists targeted the moon's south polar region using Goldstone's 70-meter (230-
foot) radar dish. The antenna, three-quarters the size of a football field, sent a 500-
kilowatt-strong, 90-minute-long radar stream 373,046 kilometers (231,800 miles) to the
moon. Signals were reflected back from the rough-hewn lunar terrain and detected by
two of Goldstone's 34-meter (112-foot) antennas on Earth. The roundtrip time, from the
antenna to the moon and back, was about two-and-a-half seconds.

The scientists compared their data with laser altimeter data recently released by the
Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kaguya mission to position and orient the
radar images and maps. The new map provides contiguous topographic detail over a
region approximately 500 kilometers (311 miles) by 400 kilometers (249 miles).

Funding for the program was provided by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission
Directorate. JPL manages the Goldstone Solar System Radar and the Deep Space
Network for NASA. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena.

More information about the Goldstone Solar System Radar and Deep Space Network
is at http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn . More information about NASA's exploration
program to return humans to the moon is at http://www.nasa.gov/exploration .

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JPL Instrument Set for Lunar Orbiter Mission

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Grey Hautaluoma 202-358-0668
NASA Headquarters, Washington
grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov

Stuart Wolpert 310-206-0511
UCLA, Los Angeles
swolpert@support.ucla.edu
News Release: 2009-098 June 17, 2009

JPL Instrument Set for Lunar Orbiter Mission

NASA is scheduled to launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, an unmanned
mission to comprehensively map the entire moon, tomorrow, June 18. One of the
instruments aboard, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, will make the first
global survey of the temperature of the lunar surface while the orbiter circles some 50
kilometers (31 miles) above the moon.

"The terrain on the far side of the moon is quite different from that of the near side of
the moon," said David Paige, principal investigator for the Diviner instrument at UCLA.
"The more we learn about the moon, the better scientific questions we can pose, and
the better locations we can find for future lunar landings for robotic and human
explorers. By getting a comprehensive view, NASA can tailor future landing sites to
specific goals."

The Diviner instrument is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif.

A focus of the mission will be to study the moon's polar regions, which are relatively
unexplored and extremely cold, because they do not receive direct sunlight. Their
temperatures of approximately 370 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit (minus 223 degrees
Celsius) are cold enough to trap water ice. Temperatures on the moon, as on Earth,
vary depending on the season, the time of day and other factors. At the moon's
equator, it can heat up to more than 116 degrees Celsius (240 degrees Fahrenheit) in
the sunlight, and get as cold as 270 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit (minus 168 Celsius).

"We don't really know what we will find when we explore the polar regions thoroughly,"
Paige said.

Will they find deposits of water ice in the polar regions? NASA's Apollo missions
revealed that lunar rocks are very dry, but did not provide information about the polar
regions, where water is most likely to exist. There is indirect evidence for water at the
moon's poles. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter may find more evidence for it. The
orbiters's scientific instruments, including Diviner, have been tailored to learn more
about the potential for water.

Based largely on the Mars Climate Sounder Instrument flying aboard the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter, Diviner is a nine-channel radiometer that will make the first
maps of the temperature on the surface of the lunar polar regions. The instrument will
have the capability of measuring very cold temperatures, and will, for the first time,
characterize the entire thermal environment of the moon. Diviner will also produce a
map showing the composition of the moon, and a map showing how rocky the moon
is.

"With this instrument's unprecedented capabilities, we are looking forward to helping
not only rewrite the moon's history, but its future," said Wayne Hartford, project
manager for the Diviner instrument at JPL.

In addition to creating a comprehensive atlas of the moon's features with detailed
information about surface and subsurface temperatures, Diviner will identify cold traps
and potential ice deposits, as well as landing hazards such as rough terrain or rocks to
be avoided by future manned missions to the moon.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is the first mission in NASA's Vision for Space
Exploration program, a plan to return to the moon and then to travel to Mars and
beyond. The mission will gather crucial data on the lunar environment that will help
astronauts prepare for long-duration lunar expeditions.

JPL designed, built and manages the Diviner instrument for NASA's Exploration
Science Mission Directorate, Washington. UCLA is home institution of Diviner's
principal investigator, David Paige. NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt,
Maryland manages the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It is a NASA mission with
international participation from the Institute for Space Research in Moscow.

More information about NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission is at
http://www.nasa.gov/lro . More information about the Diviner instrument is at
http://diviner.ucla.edu .

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Scientists Search for a Pulse in Skies Above Earthquake Country

Feature June 17, 2009

Scientists Search for a Pulse in Skies Above Earthquake Country

NASA Gives California's San Andreas, Other Faults a 3-D Close-up

Story Highlights

- New NASA 3-D airborne radar to study California's earthquake faults.
- Radar sees below the surface to measure buildup and release of strain along
faults.
- Data can be used to guide rescue and damage assessment efforts after a
quake.
- LA basin, San Francisco Bay among areas to be studied.

When a swarm of hundreds of small to moderate earthquakes erupted beneath
California's Salton Sea in March, sending spasms rumbling across the desert floor, it set
off more than just seismometers. It also raised the eyebrows of quite a few concerned
scientists. The reason: lurking underground, just a few kilometers to the northeast, lays a
sleeping giant: the 160-kilometer-(100-mile) long southern segment of the notorious 1,300-
kilometer- (800-mile) long San Andreas fault. Scientists were concerned that the recent
earthquake swarm at the Salton Sea's Bombay Beach could perhaps be the straw that
broke the camel's back, triggering "the big one," a huge earthquake that could devastate
Southern California.

The southern end of the San Andreas has remained silent, at least for now. But the
earthquake swarm and more recent, widely felt earthquakes in the Los Angeles area have
stirred renewed interest in earthquake research. A multi-year project currently under way at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is seeking to improve our
understanding of these mysterious and sometimes deadly natural hazards by using a
groundbreaking, JPL-developed airborne radar to study earthquake processes along the
San Andreas and other California faults.

The 'Mother of California Faults'

Formed 15 to 20 million years ago, the San Andreas has defined California's seismic
history and dramatically altered its landscape. It serves as the boundary between the two
massive tectonic plates upon which the Golden State rides: the Pacific and North
American plates.

Grinding horizontally past each other in a roughly north-south direction at up to 3.5
centimeters (1.4 inches) a year, the fault is a battle zone of pulverized rock, extending to
depths of at least 16 kilometers (10 miles). In some places, the plates "creep" quietly past
each other, producing small to moderate earthquakes, in a process known as aseismic
creep.

But other parts of the fault get "stuck." They lock in place for sometimes hundreds of years
before eventually releasing their pent-up frustrations in epic lunges, such as those
responsible for the large magnitude 7.9 earthquakes that struck a then sparsely populated
Southern California near Fort Tejon in 1857, and San Francisco in 1906.

From San Luis Obispo south to the Cajon Pass near San Bernardino, the San Andreas
forms a largely unbroken line that is often clearly visible from the ground and air. South of
Cajon Pass, however, the fault zone becomes more complex. Here, several different faults
share the "burden" of moving the tectonic plates, including the San Andreas and the
parallel and intersecting San Jacinto and southern San Andreas faults, among others.
North of San Luis Obispo, the fault zone similarly splits into nearly parallel faults, with the
Hayward and Calaveras faults sharing the plate motion with the San Andreas in the San
Francisco Bay area.

Paleoseismological studies dating back 1,500 years have shown that large earthquakes
occur on the southern San Andreas about every 250 to 300 years, on average. Yet the
extreme southern segment of the fault hasn't budged for about 320 years. It is apparently
overdue, primed for another large event.

Last year, the United States Geological Survey estimated that such a large earthquake,
originating near the Salton Sea and rupturing the ground northward to near Lake Hughes
in Los Angeles County, could devastate an eight-county region, killing up to 1,800, injuring
50,000, displacing a quarter million people, significantly damaging 300,000 buildings and
causing an estimated $213 billion in damage.

Searching for Clues From Above and Below

Like doctors assessing the health of a patient, scientists use a broad array of tools to
"listen" to the San Andreas and other faults, looking for clues about their past, present and
future behavior. They dig trenches across faults, and place instruments, such as
seismographs, creep meters and stress meters, into the ground to try to detect any changes
that might be occurring above or below Earth's surface.

Increasingly, they also rely on space-based technologies, such as those being developed
at JPL. Space-based instruments can image minute Earth movements to within a few
centimeters (fractions of an inch), measuring the slow buildup of deformation along faults
and mapping ground deformation after earthquakes occur. Among these tools are the
Global Positioning System and interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR.

Until recently, the only InSAR data available for the San Andreas and other California
faults have come from European Space Agency, Canadian and Japanese radar satellites.
But those satellites aren't dedicated to or optimized for studying earthquakes, and the
availability of their data is limited.

A New 3-D Radar Tool

Now, JPL scientists have added a new airborne radar tool to their arsenal. Called the
Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, this L-band wavelength
radar flies aboard a modified NASA Gulfstream III aircraft from NASA's Dryden Flight
Research Center, Edwards, Calif. The compact, reconfigurable radar, housed in a pod
under the aircraft's fuselage, uses pulses of microwave energy to detect and measure very
subtle deformations in Earth's surface, such as those caused by earthquakes, volcanoes,
landslides and glacier movements.

UAVSAR works like this: flying at a nominal altitude of 13,800 meters (45,000 feet), the
radar collects data over a selected region. It then flies over the same region again, minutes
to months later, using the aircraft's advanced navigation system to precisely fly over the
same path to an accuracy of within 4.6 meters (15 feet). By comparing these camera-like
images, called interferograms, over time, scientists can measure the slow surface
deformations involved with the buildup and release of strain along earthquake faults.

(UAVSAR is currently wrapping up a two-month expedition in Greenland and Iceland to
study the flow of glaciers and ice streams. See
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-075 and
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2156 ).

'Mowing the Lawn'

Last November, JPL scientists began conducting a series of UAVSAR flights over regions
of Northern and Southern California that are actively deforming and are marked by
frequent earthquakes. About every six months for the next several years, the scientists will
precisely repeat the same flight paths to produce interferograms. From these data, 3-D
maps will be created for regions of interest, including the mighty San Andreas and other
California faults, extending from the Mexican border to Santa Rosa in the northern San
Francisco Bay. Last month, the scientists completed their first full map of the San Andreas.
Some regions, such as Parkfield on the central San Andreas, and the Hayward fault, have
already had more than one flyover.

"We'll be 'mowing the lawn,' so to speak, mapping the San Andreas and adjacent faults,
segment by segment, and then periodically repeating the same radar observations," said
Andrea Donnellan, one of three JPL principal investigators on the UAVSAR fault mapping
project, and program area lead for Natural Disasters in NASA Headquarters' Science
Mission Directorate, Washington.

"By comparing these repeat-pass radar observations, we hope to measure any crustal
deformations that may occur between observations, allowing us to 'see' the amount of
strain building up in the San Andreas and adjoining faults," Donnellan said. "This will give
us a much clearer picture of which faults are active and at what rates they're moving, both
before earthquakes and after them."

Donnellan said the UAVSAR fault mapping data will substantially improve our knowledge
of regional earthquake hazards in California. "The 3-D UAVSAR data will allow scientists
to bring entire faults into focus, allowing them to see the faults not just at their surfaces, but
also at depth," she said. "When integrated into computer models, the data should give
scientists a much clearer picture of California's complex fault systems, such as those in
the Los Angeles basin and in the area around the Salton Sea."

The scientists will estimate the total displacement occurring in each region. As more
observations are collected, they expect to be able to determine how strain is partitioned
between individual faults. They'll also be able to measure ground signals caused by
human activities, such as pumping water into or out of the ground or drilling for oil.

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

"Airborne UAVSAR mapping can allow a rapid response after an earthquake to determine
what fault was the source and which parts of the fault slipped during the earthquake," said
Eric Fielding, another JPL principal investigator on the UAVSAR project. "Information
about the earthquake source can be used to estimate what areas were most affected by the
earthquake shaking to guide rescue and damage assessment response."

The UAVSAR data will also be used to test the earthquake forecasting methodology
developed by UC Davis scientist John Rundle under NASA's QuakeSim project (see
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2003/-074 ). The experiment identifies
regions that have a high probability for earthquakes in the near future.

Mapping Faults from the Salton Sea to Santa Rosa

Donnellan's research will focus on Southern California between the Salton Sea and the
Pacific coast, along with the Los Angeles basin, the seismically active Transverse Ranges
(the east-west-oriented mountain ranges located between San Diego and Santa Barbara),
and the San Francisco Bay area up through Santa Rosa.

Meanwhile, JPL colleagues Paul Lundgren and Zhen Liu will focus on the central San
Andreas fault between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. This area is a transition zone
between the creeping part of the fault north of the Parkfield segment, which has
experienced fairly regular moderate earthquakes of around magnitude 6, and the Carrizo
Plain segment, which ruptured in the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake. They will also integrate
UAVSAR with GPS and satellite InSAR data to form more complete models of how the
fault slips over time.

JPL's Eric Fielding will focus on the Hayward fault along the east side of San Francisco
Bay, identified as having the highest risk of a damaging earthquake in the Bay Area. The
Hayward fault creeps in some parts, but also ruptured in a magnitude 6.8 to 7.0 earthquake
in 1868 that caused extensive damage due to its location in the heart of the Bay Area.
Fielding will analyze this creep to determine how much of the fault's overall motion is
being released gradually, without large earthquakes, and estimate how much of the fault
has accumulated stress since the 1868 quake that could rupture again. From these data,
Fielding's team hopes to develop models of how stress and strain is evolving on the fault
system and infer properties of the fault zone.

"Previous studies of the Hayward fault using satellite InSAR were limited by fixed satellite
orbits and shorter radar wavelengths that only provided useful measurements in the
urbanized areas of the San Francisco Bay," said Fielding. "UAVSAR will give us a
complete picture of the 3-D deformation and map much finer details than are possible from
space."

Initial science results from the UAVSAR fault mapping project will be available some time
after the second round of mapping flights are completed. In the meantime, the science
team is busy constructing computer models to compare with the actual UAVSAR data once
they become available.

What's Next?

Donnellan said UAVSAR is also serving as a flying testbed to evaluate the tools and
technologies for future space-based radars, such as those planned for a NASA mission
currently in formulation called the Deformation, Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics of Ice,
or DESDynI. That mission, which will study hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes and
landslides, as well as global environmental change, will use both a light detection and
ranging sensor, or lidar, and an L-band radar that is very similar to UAVSAR's but with a
much wider ground swath. DESDynI will be capable of providing repeat-pass
interferometric data every eight days.

Once DESDynI is in orbit, UAVSAR will be used to calibrate its data and will complement
its measurements by filling in gaps in its coverage.

"The Earth science community is anxiously awaiting the launch of DESDynI in a few
years," Donnellan said. "In the meantime, UAVSAR data will give us a head start on better
understanding California's complex fault systems. Its data will also help state and local
governments mitigate losses from future earthquakes, including the inevitable 'big one' we
all know is in our future."

To learn more about UAVSAR, visit: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov .

To learn more about other ongoing JPL earthquake research programs, visit:
http://quakesim.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

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WISE Mission Assembled and Preparing for Launch

Feature June 10, 2009

WISE Mission Assembled and Preparing for Launch

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has
been assembled and is undergoing final preparations for a planned Nov. 1
launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

The mission will survey the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, creating a
cosmic clearinghouse of hundreds of millions of objects -- everything from
the most luminous galaxies, to the nearest stars, to dark and potentially
hazardous asteroids. The survey will be the most detailed to date in
infrared light, with a sensitivity hundreds of times better than that of its
predecessor, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite.

"Most of the sky has never been imaged at these infrared wavelengths with
this kind of sensitivity," said Edward Wright, the mission's principal
investigator at UCLA. "We are sure to find many surprises."

On May 17, the mission's science instrument was delivered to Ball Aerospace
& Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., where it was attached to the
spacecraft, built by Ball. The assembled unit was then blasted by sound to
simulate the effects of launch. Tests for electronic "noise" in the
detectors will be performed next.

The science instrument is a 40-centimeter (16-inch) telescope with four
infrared cameras. A cryostat, or cooler, uses frozen hydrogen to chill the
sensitive megapixel infrared detectors down to seven Kelvin (minus 447
degrees Fahrenheit). The instrument was built by Space Dynamics Laboratory
in Logan, Utah.

Among expected finds from WISE are hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our
solar system's asteroid belt, and hundreds of additional asteroids that come
near Earth. Many asteroids have gone undetected because they don't reflect
much visible light, but their heat makes them glow in infrared light that
WISE can see. By cataloguing the objects, the mission will provide better
estimates of their sizes, a critical step for assessing the risk associated
with those that might impact Earth.

"We know that asteroids occasionally hit Earth, and we'd like to have a
better idea of how many there are and their sizes," said Amy Mainzer of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., the mission's deputy
project scientist. "Whether they are dark or shiny, they all emit infrared
light. They can't hide from WISE."

The mission is also expected to find the coldest stars -- dim orbs called
brown dwarfs that are too small to have ignited like our sun. Brown dwarfs
are littered throughout our galaxy, but because they are so cool, they are
often too faint to see in visible light. The infrared detectors on WISE will
pick up the glow of roughly 1,000 brown dwarfs in our galaxy, including
those coldest and closest to our solar system. In fact, astronomers say the
mission could find a brown dwarf closer to us than the nearest known star,
Proxima Centauri, located approximately 4 light-years away.

"We've been learning that brown dwarfs may have planets, so it's possible
we'll find the closest planetary systems," said Peter Eisenhardt, the
mission's project scientist at JPL. "We should also find many hundreds of
brown dwarfs colder than 480 degrees Celsius (900 degrees Fahrenheit), a
group that as of now has only nine known members."

In addition, the survey will reveal the universe's most luminous galaxies
seen long ago in the dusty throes of their formation, disks of
planet-forming material around stars, and other cosmic goodies. The
observations will guide other infrared telescopes to the most interesting
objects for follow-up studies. For example, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope,
the Herschel observatory just launched by ESA with significant NASA
participation, and NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will direct
their gaze at objects uncovered by WISE.

WISE will lift off from Vandenberg aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II
rocket. It will orbit Earth, mapping the entire sky in six months after a
one-month checkout period. Its frozen hydrogen is expected to last several
months longer, allowing WISE to map much of the sky a second time and see
what has changed.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate. The mission's principal investigator, Edward Wright, is
at UCLA. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorer Program managed by
the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was
built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory and the spacecraft was built by Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp. Science operations and data processing will
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://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/mission.html .

The Infrared Astronomical Satellite, launched in 1983, was a joint mission
between NASA, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

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Baby Stars Finally Found in Jumbled Galactic Center

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-097 June 10, 2009

Baby Stars Finally Found in Jumbled Galactic Center

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have at last uncovered newborn stars at the frenzied center
of our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery was made using the infrared vision of NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope.

The heart of our spiral galaxy is cluttered with stars, dust and gas, and at its very center, a
supermassive black hole. Conditions there are harsh, with fierce stellar winds, powerful shock
waves and other factors that make it difficult for stars to form. Astronomers have known that
stars can form in this chaotic place, but they're baffled as to how this occurs. Confounding the
problem is all the dust standing between us and the center of our galaxy. Until now, nobody had
been able to definitively locate any baby stars.

"These stars are like needles in a haystack," said Solange Ramirez, the principal investigator of
the research program at NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena. "There's no way to find them using optical light, because dust gets in the
way. We needed Spitzer's infrared instruments to cut through the dust and narrow in on the
objects."

The team plans to look for additional baby stars in the future, and ultimately to piece together
what types of conditions allow stars to form in such an inhospitable environment as our galaxy's
core.

"By studying individual stars in the galactic center, we can better understand how stars are
formed in different interstellar environments," said Deokkeun An of the Infrared Processing and
Analysis Center at Caltech, lead author of a paper submitted for publication in the Astrophysical
Journal. "The Milky Way galaxy is just one of more than hundreds of billions of galaxies in the
visible universe. However, our galaxy is so special because we can take a closer look at its
individual stellar components." An started working on this program while a graduate student at
Ohio State University, Columbus, under the leadership of Ohio State astronomer Kris Sellgren,
the co-investigator on the project.

The core of the Milky Way is a mysterious place about 600 light-years across (light would take
600 years to travel from one end to the other). While this is just a fraction of the size of the entire
Milky Way, which is about 100,000 light-years across, the core is stuffed with 10 percent of all
the gas in the galaxy -- and loads and loads of stars.

Before now, there were only a few clues that stars can form in the galaxy's core. Astronomers
had found clusters of massive adolescent stars, in addition to clouds of charged gas -- a sign that
new stars are beginning to ignite and ionize surrounding gas. Past attempts had been unsuccessful
in finding newborn stars, or as astronomers call them, young stellar objects.

Ramirez and colleagues began their search by scanning large Spitzer mosaics of our galactic
center. They narrowed in on more than 100 candidates, but needed more detailed data to confirm
the stars' identities. Young stellar objects, when viewed from far away, can look a lot like much
older stars. Both types of stars are very dusty, and the dust lying between us and them obscures
the view even further.

To sort through the confusion, the astronomers looked at their candidate stars with Spitzer's
spectrograph – an instrument that breaks light apart to reveal its rainbow-like array of infrared
colors. Molecules around stars leave imprints in their light, which the spectrograph can detect.

The results revealed three stars with clear signs of youth, for example, certain warm, dense gases.
These youthful features are found in other places in the galaxy where stars are being formed.

"It is amazing to me that we have found these stars," said Ramirez. "The galactic center is a very
interesting place. It has young stars, old stars, black holes, everything. We started mining a
catalog of about 1 million sources and managed to find three young stars -- stars that will help
reveal the secrets at the core of the Milky Way."

The young stellar objects are all less than about 1 million years old. They are embedded in
cocoons of gas and dust, which will eventually flatten to disks that, according to theory, later
lump together to form planets.

Other collaborators include Richard Arendt of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt,
Md.; A. C. Adwin Boogert of NASA's Herschel Science Center, Caltech in Pasadena; Mathias
Schultheis of the Besancon Observatory in France; Susan Stolovy of NASA's Spitzer Science
Center, Caltech in Pasadena; Angela Cotera of SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.; and
Thomas Robitaille and Howard Smith of Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Cambridge, Mass.

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 Caltech 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 .

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Mars Orbiter Resumes Science Observations

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. June 9, 2009
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER MISSION STATUS REPORT

Mars Orbiter Resumes Science Observations

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is examining Mars again with its
scientific instruments after successfully transitioning out of a precautionary standby mode
triggered by an unexpected June 3 rebooting of its computer.

Engineers brought the spacecraft out of the standby mode on June 6. Cameras and other
scientific instruments resumed operation June 9.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached Mars in 2006 and has returned more data about the
planet than all other Mars missions combined.

The June 3 rebooting resembled a Feb. 23 event on the spacecraft. Engineers are re-
investigating possible root causes for both events. The new investigation includes
reconsidering the likelihood of erroneous voltage readings resulting from cosmic rays or solar
particles hitting an electronic component.

#2009-096

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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s Rebooting Resembles February Event

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. June 4, 2009
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission Status Report

Rebooting Resembles February Event

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is in safe mode and in
communications with Earth after an unexpected rebooting of its computer Wednesday
evening, June 3.

The spontaneous reboot resembles a Feb. 23 event on the spacecraft. Engineers concluded the
most likely cause for that event was a cosmic ray or solar particle hitting electronics and
causing an erroneous voltage reading.

Jim Erickson, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said, "The spacecraft is sending down high-rate engineering
data, power positive, batteries fully charged, sun pointed and thermally safe. The flight team
is cautiously bringing the orbiter back to normal operations. We should be resuming our
exploration of Mars by next week."

The reboot occurred at approximately 6:10 p.m. PDT (9:10 p.m. EDT) on June 3. This is the
sixth time since the spacecraft's August 2005 launch that it has entered safe mode, which is its
programmed precaution when it senses a condition for which it does not know a more specific
response.

#2009-095

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Cassini Finds Titan's Clouds Hang on to Summer

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2009-093 June 3, 2009

Cassini Finds Titan's Clouds Hang on to Summer

Cloud chasers studying Saturn's moon Titan say its clouds form and move much like those on
Earth, but in a much slower, more lingering fashion.

Their forecast for Titan's early autumn -- warm and wetter.

Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have monitored Titan's atmosphere for three-and-a-half
years, between July 2004 and December 2007, and observed more than 200 clouds. They found
that the way these clouds are distributed around Titan matches scientists' global circulation
models. The only exception is timing -- clouds are still noticeable in the southern hemisphere
while fall is approaching.

"Titan's clouds don't move with the seasons exactly as we expected," said Sebastien Rodriguez
of the University of Paris Diderot, in collaboration with Cassini visual and infrared mapping
spectrometer team members at the University of Nantes, France. "We see lots of clouds during
the summer in the southern hemisphere, and this summer weather seems to last into the early fall.
It looks like Indian summer on Earth, even if the mechanisms are radically different on Titan
from those on Earth. Titan may then experience a warmer and wetter early autumn than
forecasted by the models."

On Earth, abnormally warm, dry weather periods in late autumn occur when low-pressure
systems are blocked in the winter hemisphere. By contrast, scientists think the sluggishness of
temperature changes at the surface and low atmosphere on Titan may be responsible for its
unexpected warm and wet, hence cloudy, late summer.

The new infrared images showing the global cloud pattern are now available at:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .

As summer changes to fall at the equinox in August 2009, Titan's clouds are expected to
disappear altogether. But, circulation models of Titan's weather and climate predict that clouds
at the southern latitudes don't wait for the equinox and should have already faded out since
2005. However, Cassini was still able to see clouds at these places late in 2007, and some of
them are particularly active at mid-latitudes and the equator.

Titan is the only moon in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere, and its climate shares
Earth-like characteristics. Titan's dense, nitrogen-methane atmosphere responds much more
slowly than Earth's atmosphere, as it receives about 100 times less sunlight because it is 10 times
farther from the sun. Seasons on Titan last more than seven Earth years.

Scientists will continue to observe the long-term changes during Cassini's extended mission,
which runs until the fall of 2010. Cassini is set to fly by Titan on May 5.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini orbiter was
designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team
is based at the University of Arizona.

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International Year of Astronomy Event Comes to Pasadena

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE 818-354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

TIP SHEET: 2009-092 June 1, 2009

International Year of Astronomy Event Comes to Pasadena

WHAT: The public is invited to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy 2009 at the
Pasadena Convention Center on June 6. The event includes a variety of fun, family-
oriented, hands-on activities and exhibit booths, such as a telescope for observing the sun
and a 100-foot scale model of our solar system. Special indoor presentations will be made
using a portable planetarium and a digital data immersion environment from the
Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. The event is presented by organizations
attending the subsequent summer meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

A stargazing party will follow that evening. Saturn, in particular, will be well positioned
for viewing. Small telescopes will be provided by the Old Town Sidewalk Astronomers.

WHO: The event is organized by representatives of the International Year of Astronomy 2009,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the Rochester Institute of
Technology/NASA AstroZone team. Exhibitors include the popular Astronomy Cast
podcast and the Galaxy Zoo citizen-science.

WHEN: Saturday, June 6, from 4 to 8 p.m., followed by a stargazing party ending around 9:30
p.m. The telescope viewing and some of the afternoon outdoor activities are subject to
weather conditions.

WHERE: Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green St. in Pasadena. Phone number: (626) 793-
2122. Driving directions and parking information are available online at
http://www.pasadenacenter.com/-directions.html . A street map posted on that site
includes a rose and purple background, which indicates where the outdoor astronomy
activities and bazaar will be held.

More information about the event is online at http://astronomy2009.us/newscenter/ . More information
about IYA2009 is at www.astronomy2009.org . Additional information on the U.S. plans and
programs for IYA is at www.astronomy2009.us .

The U.S. IYA2009 program is supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA, and by
private donations. The American Astronomical Society is the U.S. liaison to the IYA2009 program via
the International Astronomical Union. Key U.S. partners include the Astronomical Society of the
Pacific, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
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