'Mount Sharp' on Mars Links Geology's Past and Future

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

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

News feature: 2012-090 March 28, 2012

'Mount Sharp' on Mars Links Geology's Past and Future

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-090&cid=release_2012-090

One particular mountain on Mars, bigger than Colorado's grandest, has been beckoning
would-be explorers since it was first sighted from orbit in the 1970s. Scientists have
ideas about how it took shape in the middle of ancient Gale Crater and hopes for what
evidence it could yield about whether conditions on Mars have favored life.

No mission to Mars dared approach it, though, until NASA's Mars Science Laboratory
mission, which this August will attempt to place its one-ton rover, Curiosity, at the foot of
the mountain. The moat of flatter ground between the mountain and the crater rim
encircling it makes too small a touchdown target to have been considered safe without
precision-landing innovations used by this mission.

To focus discussions about how Curiosity will explore the mountain during a two-year
prime mission after landing, the mission's international Project Science Group has
decided to call it Mount Sharp. This informal naming pays tribute to geologist Robert P.
Sharp (1911-2004), a founder of planetary science, influential teacher of many current
leaders in the field, and team member for NASA's first few Mars missions. Sharp taught
geology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in Pasadena, from 1948 until
past his retirement. Life magazine named him one of the 10 best college teachers in the
nation.

"Bob Sharp was one of the best field geologists this country has ever had," said Michael
Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, principal investigator for two of
Curiosity's 10 science instruments and a former student of Sharp's.

"We don't really know the origins of Mount Sharp, but we have plans for how to go there
and test our theories about it, and that's just how Bob would have wanted it," Malin said.

Caltech Provost Edward Stolper, former chief scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory,
said, "For much of his more than 50 years at Caltech, Bob Sharp was the central figure
in its programs in the geological and planetary sciences. One of his major contributions
was the building of a program in planetary sciences firmly rooted in the principles and
approaches of the geological sciences.

"Moreover, through his own work on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's early missions to
Mars and the work of others that he influenced, he also had a major influence on
planetary science and exploration at JPL. Recognition of this remarkable scientist and
leader by the naming of Mount Sharp is highly fitting, and I hope it will serve to
perpetuate his legacy."

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft was launched Nov. 26, 2011, bound for
landing beside Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater on the evening of Aug. 5, PST (early
Aug. 6, EST and Universal Time). The mission will use Curiosity to investigate whether
the area has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for fostering microbial life,
including chemical ingredients for life and energy for life.

Mount Sharp rises about 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the landing target on the crater
floor, higher than Mount Rainier above Seattle, though broader and closer. It is not
simply a rebound peak from the asteroid impact that excavated Gale Crater. A rebound
peak may be at its core, but the mountain displays hundreds of flat-lying geological
layers that may be read as chapters in a more complex history billions of years old.

Twice as tall as the sequence of colorful bands exposed in Arizona's Grand Canyon, the
stack of layers in Mount Sharp results from changing environments in which layers are
deposited, younger on top of older, eon after eon, and then partially eroded away.

Several craters on Mars contain mounds or mesas that may have formed in ways
similar to Mount Sharp, and many other ancient craters remain filled or buried by rock
layers. Some examples, including Gale, hold a mound higher than the surrounding
crater rim, indicating that the mounds are remnant masses inside once completely filled
craters. This presents a puzzle about how environmental conditions on Mars evolved.

"This family of craters that were filled or buried and then exhumed or partially exhumed
raises the question of what changed," said Ken Edgett of Malin Space Sciences,
principal investigator for one of Curiosity's instruments. "For a long time, sedimentary
materials enter the crater and stay. Then, after they harden into rock, somehow the rock
gets eroded away and transported out of the crater."

Some lower layers of Mount Sharp might tell of a lake within Gale Crater long ago, or
wind-delivered sediments subsequently soaked by groundwater. Orbiters have mapped
water-telltale minerals in those layers. Liquid water is a starting point in describing
conditions favorable for life, but just the beginning of what Curiosity can investigate.
Higher layers may be deposits of wind-blown dust after a great drying-out on Mars.

"Mount Sharp is the only place we can currently access on Mars where we can
investigate this transition in one stratigraphic sequence," said Caltech's John
Grotzinger, chief scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory. "The hope of this mission is
to find evidence of a habitable environment; the promise is to get the story of an
important environmental breakpoint in the deep history of the planet. This transition
likely occurred billions of years ago -- maybe even predating the oldest well-preserved
rocks on Earth."

Possible explanations for how erosion shaped the mountain after layers were deposited
include swirling winds carving away the edges, and perhaps later wet episodes leaving
channels down the sides and fresher sediments on the crater floor. Clues about those
episodes present Curiosity with other potentially habitable environments to investigate.

The Mars Science Laboratory is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., a division of Caltech. For more information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/msl .

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Flying Formation - Around the Moon at 3,600 MPH

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

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

News feature: 2012-089 March 27, 2012

Flying Formation – Around the Moon at 3,600 MPH

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-089&cid=release_2012-089

The act of two or more aircraft flying together in a disciplined, synchronized manner is
one of the cornerstones of military aviation, as well as just about any organized air
show. But as amazing as the U.S. Navy's elite Blue Angels or the U.S. Air Force's
Thunderbirds are to behold, they remain essentially landlocked, anchored if you will, to
our planet and its tenuous atmosphere. What if you could take the level of precision of
these great aviators to, say, the moon?

"Our job is to ensure our two GRAIL spacecraft are flying a very, very accurate trail
formation in lunar orbit," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We need to do this so our scientists can get
the data they need."

Essentially, trail formation means one aircraft (or spacecraft in this case), follows
directly behind the other. Ebb and Flow, the twins of NASA's GRAIL (Gravity Recovery
And Interior Laboratory) mission, are by no means the first to synch up altitude and "air"
speed while zipping over the craters, mountains, hills and rills of Earth's natural
satellite. That honor goes to the crew of Apollo 10, who in May 1969 performed a dress
rehearsal for the first lunar landing. But as accurate as the astronauts aboard lunar
module "Snoopy" and command module "Charlie Brown" were in their piloting, it is hard
to imagine they could keep as exacting a position as Ebb and Flow.

"It is an apples and oranges comparison," said Lehman. "Lunar formation in Apollo was
about getting a crew to the lunar surface, returning to lunar orbit and docking, so they
could get back safely to Earth. For GRAIL, the formation flying is about the science, and
that is why we have to make our measurements so precisely."

As the GRAIL twins fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity at 3,600 mph (5,800
kilometers per hour), surface features such as mountains and craters, and masses
hidden beneath the lunar surface, can influence the distance between the two
spacecraft ever so slightly.

How slight a distance change can be measured by the science instrument beaming
invisible microwaves back and forth between Ebb and Flow?

How about one-tenth of one micron? Another way to put it is that the GRAIL twins can
detect a change in their position down to one half of a human hair (0.000004 inches, or
0.00001 centimeters). For those of you who are hematologists or vampires (we are not
judging here), any change in separation between the two twins greater than one half of
a red corpuscle will be duly noted aboard the spacecraft's memory chips for later
downlinking to Earth. Working together, Ebb and Flow will make these measurements
while flying over the entirety of the lunar surface.

This begs the question, why would scientists care about a change of distance between
two spacecraft as infinitesimal as half a red corpuscle a quarter million miles from
Earth?

"Mighty oaks from little acorns grow – even in lunar orbit," said Maria Zuber, principal
investigator of the GRAIL mission from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge. "From the data collected during these minute distance changes between
spacecraft, we will be able to generate an incredibly high-resolution map of the moon's
gravitational field. From that, we will be able to understand what goes on below the
lunar surface in unprecedented detail, which will in turn increase our knowledge of how
Earth and its rocky neighbors in the inner solar system developed into the diverse
worlds we see today."

Getting the GRAIL twins into a hyper-accurate formation from a quarter million miles
away gave the team quite a challenge. Launched together on Sept. 10, 2011, Ebb and
Flow went their separate ways soon after entering space. Three-and-a-half months and
2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) later, Ebb entered lunar orbit. Flow followed the
next day (New Year's Day 2012).

"Being in lunar orbit is one thing, being in the right lunar orbit for science can be
something else entirely," said Joe Beerer, GRAIL's mission manager from JPL. "The
twins initial orbit carried them as close to the lunar surface as 56 miles (90 kilometers)
and as far out as 5,197 miles (8,363 kilometers), and each revolution took
approximately 11.5 hours to complete. They had to go from that to a science orbit of 15
by 53 miles (24.5 by 86 kilometers) and took all of 114 minutes to complete."

To reduce and refine Ebb and Flow's orbits efficiently and precisely required the GRAIL
team to plan and execute a series of trajectory modification burns for each spacecraft.
And each maneuver had to be just right.

"Because each one of these maneuvers was so important, we did a lot of planning and
testing for each," said Beerer. "Over eight weeks, we did nine maneuvers with Ebb and
10 with Flow to establish the science formation. We would literally be watching our
screens for a signal telling us about an Ebb rocket burn, then go into a meeting about
the next burn for Flow. Our schedule was very full."

Today, the calendar for GRAIL's flight team remains a busy one with the day-to-day
operations of keeping NASA's lunar twins in synch. But as busy as the team gets, they
still have time to peer skyward.

"Next time you look up and see the moon, you might want to take a second and think
about our two little spacecraft flying formation, zooming from pole to pole at 3,600
mph," said Lehman. "They're up there, working together, flying together, getting the data
our scientists need. As far as I'm concerned, they're putting on quite a show."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber.
The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built
the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about the GRAIL mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/grail or
http://grail.nasa.gov .

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Cassini Mission Receives Air and Space Museum Award

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

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2012-085 March 22, 2012

Cassini Mission Receives Air and Space Museum Award

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-085&cid=release_2012-085

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has bestowed its highest
group honor, the Trophy for Current Achievement, on NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn. The
annual award recognizes outstanding achievements in the fields of aerospace science and
technology.

The trophy was presented Wednesday, March 21, during an evening ceremony at the museum in
Washington. Established in 1985, the award has been presented to seven NASA planetary mission
teams.

"This joint mission has produced an unprecedented science return," said William Knopf,
Cassini program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Missions like Cassini pave the
way for future robotic and human exploration throughout our solar system and beyond."

Launched in 1997, the Cassini spacecraft entered Saturn's orbit in June 2004 with the European
Space Agency's (ESA) Huygens probe bolted to its side. In December 2004, the spacecraft
successfully released Huygens, which entered the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
Cassini completed its prime mission in 2008 and has been extended twice. It is now in its so-called
solstice mission, which will enable scientists to observe seasonal changes in Saturn and its moons
during the planet's northern summer solstice. The mission will last through September 2017.

"We look forward to sailing around the Saturn system for several more years to see how our views
of the planet and its magnificent moons change as we get into northern summer solstice," said
Robert Mitchell, the Cassini program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif., who accepted the award on behalf of the team.

The Cassini spacecraft carries 12 science instruments and investigations, with an additional six
aboard Huygens. Cassini mission highlights to date include the discovery of four new moons and
two new rings around Saturn. Cassini observed spraying water vapor and icy particle jets from the
moon Enceladus. In Saturn's northern hemisphere, the spacecraft watched the evolution of a monster
storm, a sign of seasonal change from northern winter into northern spring.

Cassini and Huygens has also revealed new characteristics about Titan, the only body in the solar
system other than Earth with stable liquid on its surface.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and the Italian Space
Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL is
managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information about the mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

Images of the award and a Cassini historical video are available at:

http://go.nasa.gov/GH6qbA

For a full listing of previous awardees, visit:

http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/trophy/nasm.cfm

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NASA's 'Eyes on the Earth' Gets Sharper Vision

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.D.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Internet advisory: 2012-084 March 22, 2012

NASA's 'Eyes on the Earth' Gets Sharper Vision

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-084&cid=release_2012-084

NASA's Webby Award-winning Global Climate Change website has introduced a new
version of its popular "Eyes on the Earth" interactive virtual reality visualization, which
delivers data and images from NASA's fleet of Earth satellites to home computers.

It can be found online at: http://climate.nasa.gov or directly at
http://climate.nasa.gov/Eyes/ . "Eyes on the Earth 2.0" incorporates a host of new features,
including a sleek and simplified interface. New capabilities include event timelines, an
image gallery and more up-to-date data on global sea level height and surface
temperatures.

A highlight of the enhancements is an Image of the Day feature, developed as a
collaboration between the visualization team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., and NASA's Earth Observatory website, managed by NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"The Image of the Day has long been one of the most popular features of the NASA
Earth Observatory," said Kevin Ward of Goddard, team leader and
technical/development lead for the Earth Observatory. "Now we're enhancing the
experience for users by allowing them to see these spectacular images in context in a
virtual 3-D environment."

"Eyes on the Earth 2.0 gives cyber explorers daily glimpses of our dynamic planet from
space," said Michael Greene, manager for public engagement formulation and strategic
alliances at JPL. "On any given day, visitors might see anything from a wall of gray
smoke more than 10 miles long from a major wildfire, a phytoplankton bloom exploding
in brilliant shades of blue and green off the coast of Norway, or a typhoon half as wide as
North America churning across the South China Sea."

Developed using a state-of-the-art, browser-based visualization technology, "Eyes on the
Earth 2.0" also displays the location of all of NASA's 15 currently operating Earth-
observing satellite missions in real time. These missions constantly monitor our planet's
vital signs, such as sea level height, concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere,
global temperatures and extent of sea ice in the Arctic, to name a few.

Visitors to "Eyes on the Earth 2.0" can also:

- Ride along with a satellite, observing Earth as it sweeps below in accelerated time.
- View authentic data maps of ozone, carbon dioxide distribution and global temperature
mapped onto the surface of the globe.
- Compare the size of each satellite to a school bus or a scientist.
- View satellites and data globes in stereographic 3-D (anaglyph 3-D glasses are required).

NASA's Global Climate Change website is devoted to improving the public's
understanding of Earth's changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information
about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it. For more on
NASA's Earth Science Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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NASA GRAIL Returns First Student-Selected Moon Images

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

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

Caroline McCall 617-253-1682
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
cmccall5@mit.edu

News release: 2012-083 March 22, 2012

NASA GRAIL Returns First Student-Selected Moon Images

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-083&cid=release_2012-083

PASADENA, Calif. -- One of two NASA spacecraft orbiting the moon has beamed back the first
student-requested pictures of the lunar surface from its onboard camera. Fourth grade students from
the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., received the honor of making the first
image selections by winning a nationwide competition to rename the two spacecraft.

The image was taken by the MoonKam, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students.
Previously named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) A and B, the twin spacecraft
are now called Ebb and Flow. Both washing-machine-sized orbiters carry a small MoonKAM
camera. Over 60 student–requested images were taken by the Ebb spacecraft from March 15-17 and
downlinked to Earth March 20.

"MoonKAM is based on the premise that if your average picture is worth a thousand words, then a
picture from lunar orbit may be worth a classroom full of engineering and science degrees," said
Maria Zuber, GRAIL mission principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in Cambridge, Mass. "Through MoonKAM, we have an opportunity to reach out to the next
generation of scientists and engineers. It is great to see things off to such a positive start."

GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission to carry instruments fully dedicated to education and
public outreach. Students will select target areas on the lunar surface and request images to study
from the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego.

The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, and her team at Sally
Ride Science in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California in San
Diego. More than 2,700 schools spanning 52 countries are using the MoonKAM cameras.

"What might seem like just a cool activity for these kids may very well have a profound impact on
their futures," Ride said. "The students really are excited about MoonKAM, and that translates into
an excitement about science and engineering."

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow will answer longstanding questions about the moon and
give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system
formed.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber. GRAIL is part of the Discovery
Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin
Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena
manages JPL for NASA.

To view the student-requested images, visit:

http://images.moonkam.ucsd.edu

For more information about MoonKAM, visit:

https://moonkam.ucsd.edu

For more information about GRAIL, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/grail

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Dawn Sees New Surface Features on Giant Asteroid

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

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2012-082 March 21, 2012

Dawn Sees New Surface Features on Giant Asteroid

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-082&cid=release_2012-082

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Dawn spacecraft has revealed unexpected details on the surface of
the giant asteroid Vesta. New images and data highlight the diversity of Vesta's surface and reveal
unusual geologic features, some of which were never previously seen on asteroids.

These results were discussed today at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The
Woodlands, Texas.

Vesta is one of the brightest objects in the solar system and the only asteroid in the so-called main
belt between Mars and Jupiter visible to the naked eye from Earth. Dawn has found that some areas
on Vesta can be nearly twice as bright as others, revealing clues about the asteroid's history.

"Our analysis finds this bright material originates from Vesta and has undergone little change since
the formation of Vesta over 4 billion years ago," said Jian-Yang Li, a Dawn participating scientist at
the University of Maryland, College Park. "We're eager to learn more about what minerals make up
this material and how the present Vesta surface came to be."

Bright areas appear everywhere on Vesta but are most predominant in and around craters. The areas
vary from several hundred feet to around 10 miles (16 kilometers) across. Rocks crashing into the
surface of Vesta seem to have exposed and spread this bright material. This impact process may
have mixed the bright material with darker surface material.

While scientists had seen some brightness variations in previous images of Vesta from NASA's
Hubble Space Telescope, Dawn scientists also did not expect such a wide variety of distinct dark
deposits across its surface. The dark materials on Vesta can appear dark gray, brown and red. They
sometimes appear as small, well-defined deposits around impact craters. They also can appear as
larger regional deposits, like those surrounding the impact craters scientists have nicknamed the
"snowman."

"One of the surprises was the dark material is not randomly distributed," said David Williams, a
Dawn participating scientist at Arizona State University, Tempe. "This suggests underlying geology
determines where it occurs."

The dark materials seem to be related to impacts and their aftermath. Scientists theorize carbon-rich
asteroids could have hit Vesta at speeds low enough to produce some of the smaller deposits without
blasting away the surface.

Higher-speed asteroids also could have hit Vesta's surface and melted the volcanic basaltic crust,
darkening existing surface material. That melted conglomeration appears in the walls and floors of
impact craters, on hills and ridges, and underneath brighter, more recent material called ejecta,
which is material thrown out from a space rock impact.

Vesta's dark materials suggest the giant asteroid may preserve ancient materials from the asteroid
belt and beyond, possibly from the birth of the solar system.

"Some of these past collisions were so intense they melted the surface," said Brett Denevi, a Dawn
participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
"Dawn's ability to image the melt marks a unique find. Melting events like these were suspected, but
never before seen on an asteroid."

Dawn launched in September 2007. It will reach its second destination, Ceres, in February 2015.

"Dawn's ambitious exploration of Vesta has been going beautifully," said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief
engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "As we continue to gather a
bounty of data, it is thrilling to reveal fascinating alien landscapes."

To view the new images, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn
is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences
Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max
Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National
Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. JPL is managed for NASA by
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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NASA's New 'Earth Now' App: Your World, Unplugged

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.D.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov

Internet advisory: 2012-080 March 19, 2012

NASA's New 'Earth Now' App: Your World, Unplugged

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-080&cid=release_2012-080

A free, new iPhone app from NASA literally puts the whole world in the palm of your
hands. "Earth Now" immerses cyber explorers in dazzling visualizations of near-real-
time global climate data from NASA's fleet of Earth science satellites.

Available at the iTunes Store or by visiting http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/apps , Earth Now
displays data on many of the key vital signs of our planet that NASA satellites track.
Whether your interest is current surface air temperatures over Australia, carbon dioxide
or carbon monoxide levels over Canada, ozone over Oman, water vapor over Wales,
gravity anomalies in Greenland or sea level height anomalies at St. Petersburg, Earth
Now brings a world of ever-changing climate data to your fingertips.

The regularly updated data are displayed as color maps projected over a 3D Earth model
that can be rotated by a single finger stroke, or zoomed in and out by the pinch or spread
of two fingers. Color-coded legends indicate the relative strength or weakness of
environmental conditions. Helpful descriptions provide background information on each
data set.

"Earth Now is a great resource for students, teachers and anyone interested in Earth's
changing climate," said Michael Greene, manager for public engagement formulation and
strategic alliances at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Since its debut
last month, it's already been downloaded nearly 170,000 times. Plans are in place for
development of an Android version and for the addition of new NASA Earth science data
sets over time."

Earth Now is closely integrated with NASA's Webby Award-winning Global Climate
Change website, http://climate.nasa.gov , which is devoted to educating the public about
Earth's changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and
effects of climate change and how NASA studies it. The app was developed by the Earth
Science Communications, Visualization Technology Applications and Development
Teams at JPL, with support from NASA Headquarters.

For more on NASA's Earth Science Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov. For a
comprehensive list of NASA apps and other tools to connect and collaborate, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/connect .

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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Launch of NASA's NuSTAR Mission Postponed

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

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

Trent J. Perrotto 202-358-0321
NASA Headquarters, Washington
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

George Diller 321-861-7643
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
george.h.diller@nasa.gov

News release: 2012-076 March 16, 2012

Launch of NASA's NuSTAR Mission Postponed

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-076&cid=release_2012-076

PASADENA, Calif. -- The planned launch of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array
(NuSTAR) mission has been postponed after a March 15 launch status meeting. The launch will
be rescheduled to allow additional time to confirm the flight software used by the launch
vehicle's flight computer will issue commands to the rocket as intended.

The spacecraft will lift off on an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket, which will be released
from an aircraft taking off from the Reagan Test Site on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall
Islands. The time required to complete the software review has moved NuSTAR beyond the
March timeframe currently available on the range at Kwajalein. In the interim, NASA will
coordinate with the launch site to determine the earliest possible launch opportunity. This is
expected to be within the next two months.

NuSTAR will use advanced optics and detectors, allowing astronomers to observe the high-
energy X-ray sky with much greater sensitivity and clarity than any mission flown before. The
mission will advance our understanding of how structures in the universe form and evolve. It will
observe some of the hottest, densest and most energetic objects in the universe, including black
holes, their high-speed particle jets, ultra-dense neutron stars, supernova remnants and our sun.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology and managed
by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument
was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley;
Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the
Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif.; and
ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the
Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The
mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Calif. NASA's Explorer
Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/ .

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Astronomers Find Cosmic Lenses with Feeding Black Holes

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

Feature: 2012-075 March 15, 2012

Astronomers Find Cosmic Lenses with Feeding Black Holes

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-075&cid=release_2012-075

In space, it sometimes happens that two galaxies are aligned in just the right way that the closer galaxy distorts and magnifies the appearance of the one behind it. For astronomers, finding these alignments is like coming across giant, cosmic magnifying glasses.

Now, a team of astronomers, including Daniel Stern from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has found several rare examples of this phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, in which the foreground galaxy hosts an actively accreting supermassive black hole.

Such feeding black holes, called quasars, are among the brightest objects in the universe, far outshining the total starlight of their host galaxies. Because they are so bright, it is hard for astronomers to measure the mass of their host galaxies. However, gravitational lenses are invaluable for estimating the mass of a quasar's host galaxy. The amount of the background galaxy's distortion can be used to accurately measure the lensing galaxy's mass.

The team hopes to build an even bigger catalog of these quasar lenses, and to use these data to better understand the interplay between black hole feeding and star formation in galaxy evolution.

Read the full Hubble release at http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/14 .

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Student-designed Robots Take on March Madness

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

Priscilla Vega 818 354-1357
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Priscilla.r.vega@jpl.nasa.gov

Feature: 2012-074 March 15, 2012

Student-designed Robots Take on March Madness

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-074&cid=release_2012-074

Sixty-six national and international high school teams will take their robots to the courts
this weekend to compete in the 21st season of the Los Angeles regional FIRST (For
Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. This
year's theme is "Rebound Rumble."

Students, teachers and fans will gather at the Long Beach Arena on Friday, March 16 and
Saturday, March 17 to watch the robots in action. Preliminary matches are from 9 a.m. to
5 p.m. PDT on Friday, March 16, and pick up again Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to
noon. The final round to determine the winning team will begin at 1:30 p.m. Saturday and
conclude at 4:45 p.m. The winning team will advance to the FIRST Robotics national
championship.

The event is open to the public and admission is free. Parking fees may apply.

This year's game pits two competing teams, each with three robots, on a flat 27-by-54-
foot (18.3-by-16.5-meter) field. Teams compete to score as many basketballs in the hoops
as they can during a two minute and 15 second match. The higher the hoop in which the
basketball is scored, the more points the team receives. The match begins with a 15-
second bonus Hybrid Period in which robots operate independently of driver inputs.
During this Hybrid Period, one robot from each team may be controlled using a
Microsoft Kinect. The match ends with robots attempting to balance on bridges located in
the middle of the field.

Students have six weeks to design, build, program and test their robots to meet the
season's engineering challenge. In this time, students tackle real-world engineering
obstacles in teams of 15 to 25 high-school-aged peers – with the help of engineers from
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., aerospace and other companies,
and higher-education institutions. JPL is sponsoring seven of the robotics teams.

The students are among 51,000 students on more than 2,400 teams from around the world
vying to compete in the FIRST championships, to be held April 25 to 29 in St. Louis. The
FIRST robotics competition is part of NASA's Robotics Alliance Project, which aims to
expand the number of robotics systems experts available to NASA.

For more information about FIRST Robotics, visit: http://www.usfirst.org .
More information on NASA's Robotics Alliance Project is at http://robotics.nasa.gov/ .

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NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog of Entire Infrared Sky

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

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
NASA Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

News release: 2012-072 March 14, 2012

NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog of Entire Infrared Sky

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-072&cid=release_2012-072

PASADENA -- NASA unveiled a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky today showing
more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer (WISE) mission.

"Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community," said Edward
Wright, WISE principal investigator at UCLA, who first began working on the mission with other
team members in 1998.

WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, and mapped the entire sky in 2010 with vastly better sensitivity than
its predecessors. It collected more than 2.7 million images taken at four infrared wavelengths of light,
capturing everything from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies. Since then, the team has been
processing more than 15 trillion bytes of returned data. A preliminary release of WISE data,
covering the first half of the sky surveyed, was made last April.

The WISE catalog of the entire sky meets the mission's fundamental objective. The individual WISE
exposures have been combined into an atlas of more than 18,000 images covering the sky and a
catalog listing the infrared properties of more than 560 million individual objects found in the
images. Most of the objects are stars and galaxies, with roughly equal numbers of each. Many of
them have never been seen before.

WISE observations have led to numerous discoveries, including the elusive, coolest class of stars.
Astronomers hunted for these failed stars, called "Y-dwarfs," for more than a decade. Because they
have been cooling since their formation, they don't shine in visible light and could not be spotted
until WISE mapped the sky with its infrared vision.

WISE also took a poll of near-Earth asteroids, finding there are significantly fewer mid-size objects
than previously thought. It also determined NASA has found more than 90 percent of the largest
near-Earth asteroids.

Other discoveries were unexpected. WISE found the first known "Trojan" asteroid to share the same
orbital path around the sun as Earth. One of the images released today shows a surprising view of an
"echo" of infrared light surrounding an exploded star. The echo was etched in the clouds of gas and
dust when the flash of light from the supernova explosion heated surrounding clouds. At least 100
papers on the results from the WISE survey already have been published. More discoveries are
expected now that astronomers have access to the whole sky as seen by the spacecraft.

"With the release of the all-sky catalog and atlas, WISE joins the pantheon of great sky surveys that
have led to many remarkable discoveries about the universe," said Roc Cutri, who leads the WISE
data processing and archiving effort at the Infrared and Processing Analysis Center at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It will be exciting and rewarding to see the innovative ways
the science and educational communities will use WISE in their studies now that they have the data
at their fingertips."

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

For a collection of WISE images released to date, visit:

http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery_images.html

An introduction and quick guide to accessing the WISE all-sky archive for astronomers is online at:

http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/allsky/

For more information about WISE, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

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Cassini Garners Top Honor From Air and Space Museum

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

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2012-071 March 14, 2012

Cassini Garners Top Honor From Air and Space Museum

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-071&cid=release_2012-071

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's Cassini mission to Saturn, managed by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has received the top group honor from the Smithsonian's
National Air and Space Museum – the Trophy for Current Achievement. Representatives
for Cassini will receive the trophy on March 21 at a black-tie dinner in Washington, D.C.

"Here we are some 15 years since Cassini launched and it's amazing how well the
spacecraft has operated," said Charles Elachi, director of JPL. "Thanks to the superb
work of both the development team and the operations team, Cassini has been able to
show us the beauty and diversity of the Saturn system and, beyond that, to study what is
really a miniature solar system in its own right."

The trophies for current and lifetime achievement are the National Air and Space
Museum's most prestigious awards. They recognize outstanding achievements in the
fields of aerospace science, technology and their history.

"The National Air and Space Museum Trophy is among the most prestigious awards
given by the Smithsonian, it recognizes significant aerospace accomplishments," said
National Air and Space Museum Director Jack Dailey. "We are pleased to present it to
the Cassini-Huygens Flight Team in the Current Achievement category."

The Cassini-Huygens mission, a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Italian Space Agency, launched in 1997. It performed a dramatic burn in
June 2004 to slide into orbit around Saturn and, in December of that year, the spacecraft
successfully released ESA's Huygens probe to pass down through the atmosphere of
Saturn's largest moon Titan.

Mission highlights include discovering a plume of water ice and organic particles
spraying from the icy moon Enceladus and watching signs of seasonal change from
northern winter into northern spring, such as the evolution of a monster storm in Saturn's
northern hemisphere. Cassini and Huygens have also revealed just how Earth-like Titan
is, as the only body in the solar system other than Earth that has stable liquid on the
surface. The mission has discovered two new rings around Saturn and four new moons.

The Cassini spacecraft has also been navigating the Saturn system for nearly eight years
with accuracies often better than half a mile (kilometer) while 700 to 800 million miles
(1.2 to 1.3 billion kilometers) away from Earth. Cassini has also flown within 16 miles
(25 kilometers) of the surface of Enceladus and many times through the upper
atmosphere of Titan

The project completed its original prime mission in 2008 and has been extended twice. It
is now in its solstice mission, which will enable scientists to observe seasonal change in
the Saturn system through the northern summer solstice.

"We are very proud of what Cassini has accomplished," said Robert Mitchell, Cassini
program manager based at JPL. "But our workhorse spacecraft still has much work left to
do. We can't wait to see what Saturn, its rings and photogenic moons will reveal to us
next."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's
Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard
cameras were 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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Cassini Spies Wave Rattling Jet Stream on Jupiter

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

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Elizabeth Zubritsky 301-614-5438
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
elizabeth.a.zubritsky@nasa.gov

News release: 2012-070 March 13, 2012

Cassini Spies Wave Rattling Jet Stream on Jupiter

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-070&cid=release_2012-070

PASADENA, Calif. -- New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up
one of the giant planet's jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth's atmosphere and
influences the weather. The movies, made from images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft
when it flew by Jupiter in 2000, are part of an in-depth study conducted by a team of scientists
and amateur astronomers led by Amy Simon-Miller at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md., and published in the April 2012 issue of Icarus.

"This is the first time anyone has actually seen direct wave motion in one of Jupiter's jet
streams," says Simon-Miller, the paper's lead author. "And by comparing this type of interaction
in Earth's atmosphere to what happens on a planet as radically different as Jupiter, we can learn a
lot about both planets."

Like Earth, Jupiter has several fast-moving jet streams that circle the globe. Earth's strongest and
best known jet streams are those near the north and south poles; as these winds blow west to east,
they take the scenic route, wandering north and south. What sets these jet streams on their
meandering paths—and sometimes makes them blast Florida and other warm places with frigid
air—are their encounters with slow-moving waves in Earth's atmosphere, called Rossby waves.

In contrast, Jupiter's jet streams "have always appeared to be straight and narrow," says co-author
John Rogers, who is the Jupiter Section Director of the British Astronomical Association,
London, U.K., and one of the amateur astronomers involved in this study.

Rossby waves were identified on Jupiter about 20 years ago, in the northern hemisphere. Even
so, the expected meandering winds could not be traced directly, and no evidence of them had
been found in the southern hemisphere, which puzzled planetary scientists.

To get a more complete view, the team analyzed images taken by NASA's Voyager spacecraft,
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and Cassini, as well as a decade's worth of observations made
by amateur astronomers and compiled by the JUPOS project.

The movies zoom in on a single jet stream in Jupiter's southern hemisphere. A line of small,
dark, v-shaped "chevrons" has formed along one edge of the jet stream and zips along west to
east with the wind. Later, the well-ordered line starts to ripple, with each chevron moving up and
down (north and south) in turn. And for the first time, it's clear that Jupiter's jet streams, like
Earth's, wander off course.

"That's the signature of the Rossby wave," says David Choi, the postdoctoral fellow at NASA
Goddard who strung together about a hundred Cassini images to make each time-lapse movie.
"The chevrons in the fast-moving jet stream interact with the slower-moving Rossby wave, and
that's when we see the chevrons oscillate."

The team's analysis also reveals that the chevrons are tied to a different type of wave in Jupiter's
atmosphere, called a gravity inertia wave. Earth also has gravity inertia waves, and under proper
conditions, these can be seen in repeating cloud patterns.

"A planet's atmosphere is a lot like the string of an instrument," says co-author Michael D.
Allison of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "If you pluck the string,
it can resonate at different frequencies, which we hear as different notes. In the same way, an
atmosphere can resonate with different modes, which is why we find different kinds of waves."

Characterizing these waves should offer important clues to the layering of the deep atmosphere
of Jupiter, which has so far been inaccessible to remote sensing, Allison adds.

Crucial to the study was the complementary information that the team was able to retrieve from
the detailed spacecraft images and the more complete visual record provided by amateur
astronomers. For example, the high resolution of the spacecraft images made it possible to
establish the top speed of the jet stream's wind, and then the amateur astronomers involved in the
study looked through the ground-based images to find variations in the wind speed.

The team also relied on images that amateur astronomers had been gathering of a large, transient
storm called the South Equatorial Disturbance. This visual record dates back to 1999, when
members of the community spotted the most recent recurrence of the storm just south of Jupiter's
equator. Analysis of these images revealed the dynamics of this storm and its impact on the
chevrons. The team now thinks this storm, together with the Great Red Spot, accounts for many
of the differences noted between the jet streams and Rossby waves on the two sides of Jupiter's
equator.

"We are just starting to investigate the long-term behavior of this alien atmosphere," says co-
author Gianluigi Adamoli, an amateur astronomer in Italy. "Understanding the emerging
analogies between Earth and Jupiter, as well as the obviously profound differences, helps us
learn fundamentally what an atmosphere is and how it can behave."

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
mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

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

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Periodic Table Workshop This Weekend at NASA/JPL's Educator Resource Center

Upcoming Educator Workshop March 12, 2012

This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

Periodic Table

Date: Saturday, March 17, 2012, 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Target audience:Formal and informal educators (all grades)

Location:NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center, Pomona, Calif.

Overview: Do you have trouble understanding the Periodic Table of Elements? This California standards-based workshop will teach you basic principles of what the table represents by using our solar system as an exciting basis for understanding. You will be able to use these activities as a terrific way for students to review for the fifth grade state science test. These activities are easily understood by most third grades. All educators are welcome.This workshop is being offered at the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center located in Pomona, please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot.

For more information and directions, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=115

JPL Educator Resource Center workshops are offered on Saturdays at the NASA/JPL Educator Resource Center in Pomona, Calif. from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Please call 909-397-4420 to reserve your spot. For a full list of professional development workshops from NASA/JPL Education, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=110.

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Cassini Captures New Images of Icy Moon

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

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jia-rui.c.cook@jpl.nasa.gov

News feature: 2012-069 March 12, 2012

Cassini Captures New Images of Icy Moon

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-069&cid=release_2012-069

These raw, unprocessed images of Saturn's second largest moon, Rhea, were taken on
March 10, 2012, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This was a relatively distant flyby with a
close-approach distance of 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers), well suited for global geologic
mapping.

During the flyby, Cassini captured these distinctive views of the moon's cratered surface,
creating a 30-frame mosaic of Rhea's leading hemisphere and the side of the moon that
faces away from Saturn. The observations included the large Mamaldi (300 miles, or 480
kilometers, across) and Tirawa (220 miles, or 360 kilometers, across) impact basins and
the 29-kilometer (47-kilometer) ray crater Inktomi, one of the youngest surface features on
Rhea (about 950 miles, or 1,530 kilometers, across).

All of Cassini's raw images can be seen at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/ .

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

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

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NASA to Hold Media Briefing About Upcoming NuSTAR Mission

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

News release: 2012-067 March 8, 2012

NASA to Hold Media Briefing About Upcoming NuSTAR Mission

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-067&cid=release_2012-067

NASA will hold a media briefing at 9 a.m. PDT (12 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, March 13, to discuss
the upcoming launch of the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). The mission
will use advanced optics and detectors, allowing astronomers to observe the high-energy X-ray
sky with much greater sensitivity and clarity than any mission flown to-date. The televised
briefing will take place at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Live streaming video of the briefing will be available at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv or at
http://ustream.tv/nasajpl2.

NuSTAR will advance our understanding of how structure in the universe forms and evolves. It
will observe some of the hottest, densest and most energetic objects in the universe, including
black holes, their high-speed particle jets, ultra-dense neutron stars, supernova remnants, and our
sun.

NuSTAR is targeted for launch no earlier than 8:30 a.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. EDT) on March 22.
The launch window extends to 12:30 p.m. PDT (3:30 p.m. EDT). The spacecraft will liftoff on
an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL launch vehicle, released from an aircraft originating from the
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Briefing Participants are:
-- Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington
-- Fiona Harrison, NuSTAR principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, Calif.
-- Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
Calif.
-- Yunjin Kim, NuSTAR project manager at JPL

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology and
managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its
instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California,
Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley,
with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya.
The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Calif. NASA's Explorer
Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/ .

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NASA's Kepler Mission Wins Aviation Week Award

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

News release: 2012-065 March 7, 2012

NASA's Kepler Mission Wins Aviation Week Award

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-065&cid=release_2012-065

NASA's Kepler mission has been named the winner of the 2012 Aviation Week Laureate Award in
the Space category, announced last night at the 55th annual black-tie awards dinner in Washington.

Accepting the award on behalf of the Kepler mission team were Roger Hunter, Kepler project
manager at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.; and James Fanson, who was the
Kepler project manager during mission development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. Fanson is currently the assistant director for JPL's Optical Systems, Astronomy,
Physics and Space Technology Directorate.

"With nearly 1,000 scientists throughout the world actively engaged in investigating the bounty of
Kepler data, the team is honored to marshal in a new age of planetary discovery," said William
Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at Ames. "We are delighted by the results and of the promise
of Kepler's most profound discoveries that await."

Aviation Week's annual Laureate Awards recognize individuals and teams for their extraordinary
accomplishments. Their achievements embody the spirit of exploration, innovation, vision or any
combination of these attributes that inspire others to strive for significant, broad-reaching progress in
aviation and aerospace.

Previous winners in the Space category include the Radar Imaging Commercialization Team; the
International Space Station program managers; Elon Musk, co-founder of SpaceX; and Yoshisada
Takizawa, Selene project manager, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Launched on March 6, 2009, the Kepler spacecraft has detected more than 2,300 planet candidates
and confirmed 61 as planets. The early findings contain more than 200 Earth-size planet candidates
and more than 900 that are smaller than two times the size of Earth. Of the 46 planet candidates
found in the habitable zone, the region in the planetary system where liquid water could exist, 10 of
these candidates are smaller than twice the size of Earth.

Kepler is a space observatory trailing Earth around the sun, currently at a distance of more than 30
million miles (48 million kilometers). Kepler's task is to measure the change in brightness of more
than 150,000 stars looking for the telltale signature of a planet passing, or transiting, in front of its
host star. Three transits are required to verify a signal as a planet.

Kepler also recently won the Space Foundation's John L. "Jack" Swigert, Jr., Award for Space
Exploration (see
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2012/kepler_spacefoundation_award.html).

Ames Research Center manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and
science data analysis. JPL managed the Kepler mission's development.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and
supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the
University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science
data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission
Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

More information about Kepler is online at http://www.nasa.gov/kepler and
http://www.kepler.nasa.gov .

More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Registration Deadline Extended for International Space Station Workshop at JPL

March 08, 2012

This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

UPDATE: Registration deadline extended to Friday, March 16.

International Space Station - Engaging Your Audiences in Low-Earth Orbit

Date: March 24-25, 2012

When: Saturday, March 24, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. & Sunday, March 25, 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Target audience: Informal educators (formal educators are welcome to attend)

Location: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Von Karman Auditorium, Pasadena, Calif.

Overview: NASA's International Space Station (ISS) and the ISS National Laboratory provide unparalleled opportunities for informal and formal educators to connect students and other audiences directly to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. On March 24-25, 2012, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. will host an informal educator workshop that will include science presentations by NASA experts, demonstrations of hands-on activities, ISS Live! website activities, educational resources and best practices for creating content and educational activities in informal settings. Additionally, participants will have the opportunity to network with fellow participants to enable future collaborations.

Register by March 16, 2012 to attend! A $35 registration fee includes continental breakfast, beverages, snacks, a box lunch and incidentals.

For more information, directions and to register visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=329
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Citizen Scientists Reveal a Bubbly Milky Way

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

Written by Adam Hadhazy

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

News feature: 2012-062 March 7, 2012

Citizen Scientists Reveal a Bubbly Milky Way

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-062&cid=release_2012-062

A team of volunteers has pored over observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and
discovered more than 5,000 "bubbles" in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy. Young, hot stars
blow these bubbles into surrounding gas and dust, indicating areas of brand new star formation.

Upwards of 35,000 "citizen scientists" sifted through the Spitzer infrared data as part of the
online Milky Way Project to find these telltale bubbles. The volunteers have turned up 10 times
as many bubbles as previous surveys so far.

"These findings make us suspect that the Milky Way is a much more active star-forming galaxy
than previously thought," said Eli Bressert, an astrophysics doctoral student at the European
Southern Observatory, based in Germany, and the University of Exeter, England, and co-author
of a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"The Milky Way's disk is like champagne with bubbles all over the place," he said.

Computer programs struggle at identifying the cosmic bubbles. But human eyes and minds do an
excellent job of noticing the wispy arcs of partially broken rings and the circles-within-circles of
overlapping bubbles. The Milky Way Project taps into the "wisdom of crowds" by requiring that
at least five users flag a potential bubble before its inclusion in the new catalog. Volunteers mark
any candidate bubbles in the infrared Spitzer images with a sophisticated drawing tool before
proceeding to scour another image.

"The Milky Way Project is an attempt to take the vast and beautiful data from Spitzer and make
extracting the information a fun, online, public endeavor," said Robert Simpson, a postdoctoral
researcher in astronomy at Oxford University, England, principal investigator of the Milky Way
Project and lead author of the paper.

The data come from the Spitzer Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire
(GLIMPSE) and Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer Galactic (MIPSGAL) surveys.
These datasets cover a narrow, wide strip of the sky measuring 130 degrees wide and just two
degrees tall. From a stargazer's perspective, a two-degree strip is about the width of your index
finger held at arm's length, and your arms opened to the sky span about 130 degrees. The
surveys peer through the Milky Way's disk and right into the galaxy's heart.

The bubbles tagged by the volunteers vary in size and shape, both with distance and due to local
gas cloud variations. The results will help astronomers better identify star formation across the
galaxy. One topic under investigation is triggered star formation, in which the bubble-blowing
birth of massive stars compresses nearby gas that then collapses to create further fresh stars.

"The Milky Way Project has shown that nearly a third of the bubbles are part of 'hierarchies,'
where smaller bubbles are found on or near the rims of larger bubbles," said Matthew Povich, a
National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at Penn State,
University Park, and co-author of the paper. "This suggests new generations of star formation are
being spawned by the expanding bubbles."

Variations in the distribution pattern of the bubbles intriguingly hint at structure in the Milky
Way. For example, a rise in the number of bubbles around a gap at one end of the survey could
correlate with a spiral arm. Perhaps the biggest surprise is a drop-off in the bubble census on
either side of the galactic center. "We would expect star formation to be peaking in the galactic
center because that's where most of the dense gas is," said Bressert. "This project is bringing us
way more questions than answers."

In addition, the Milky Way Project users have pinpointed many other phenomena, such as star
clusters and dark nebulae, as well as gaseous "green knots" and "fuzzy red objects." Meanwhile,
the work with the bubbles continues, with each drawing helping to refine and improve the
catalog.

For those interested in counting bubbles and contributing to the Milky Way Project, visit the
following link: www.milkywayproject.org . To learn of other citizen science-based efforts,
check out the Zooniverse: https://www.zooniverse.org/ .

Other authors of the paper include Sarah Kendrew of the Max Planck Institute, Heidelberg,
Germany; Chris Lintott and Arfon Smith, also of the University of Oxford and the Adler
Planetarium in Chicago, Ill.; Kim Arvidsson, also of the Adler Planetarium; Grace Wolf-Chase,
also of the Adler Planetarium and the University of Chicago; Reid Sherman, also of the
University of Chicago; Claudia Cyganowski of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astronomy,
Cambridge, Mass. and a National Science Foundation Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral
Fellow; Sarah Maddison of Swinburne University, Hawthorn, Australia; and Kevin Schawinski
of Yale University, New Haven, Conn. and an Einstein Fellow.

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

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Elementary, Middle Schools Invited to Submit Questions for Young Scientists Webcast

March 7, 2012

This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

Young Scientists and Engineers Panel Webcast

Date: Thursday, March 8, 2012, 9:45 - 10:45 a.m.

Target audience: Elementary and middle school classes

Location: Online (visit http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-dlinfo or http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/dln/webcast/webcast.html to watch live.)

Overview: In honor of Women's History Month, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is hosting a live webcast on March 8, 2012 featuring young female scientists and engineers at JPL discussing their career paths, starting from their experiences in elementary school. Elementary and middle school classes are encouraged to watch the webcast and submit questions for the panelists during the live stream on Thursday from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m. PST. Viewers will be prompted to send their questions via email during the live event.

To join the webcast and submit your questions, visit: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-dlinfo or http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/dln/webcast/webcast.html on Thursday, March 8.

For more information on the panelists and JPL's Women's History Month celebration, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/whm/event.php

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NASA's Twin GRAIL Spacecraft Begin Collecting Lunar Science Data

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

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

Caroline McCall 617-253-1682
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
cmcall5@mit.edu

News release: 2012-061 March 7, 2012

NASA's Twin GRAIL Spacecraft Begin Collecting Lunar Science Data

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-061&cid=release_2012-061

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft
orbiting the moon officially have begun their science collection phase. During the next 84 days,
scientists will obtain a high-resolution map of the lunar gravitational field to learn about the moon's
internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. The data also will provide a better
understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved.

"The initiation of science data collection is a time when the team lets out a collective sigh of relief
because we are finally doing what we came to do," said Maria Zuber, principal investigator for the
GRAIL mission at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, "but it is also a time
where we have to put the coffee pot on, roll up our sleeves and get to work."

The GRAIL mission's twin, washing-machine-sized spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, entered lunar
orbit on New Year's Eve and New Years Day. GRAIL's science phase began yesterday at 5:15 p.m.
PST (8:15 p.m. EST). During this mission phase, the spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely
defining the rate of change of distance between the two. The distance between the spacecraft will
change slightly as they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features such as
mountains, craters and masses hidden beneath the lunar surface. Science activities are expected to
conclude on May 29, after GRAIL maps the gravity field of the moon three times.

"We are in a near-polar, near-circular orbit with an average altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers)
right now," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "During the science phase, our spacecraft will orbit the moon as high as 31
miles (51 kilometers) and as low as 10 miles (16 kilometers). They will get as close to each other as
40 miles (65 kilometers) and as far apart as 140 miles (225 kilometers)."

The two spacecraft were previously named GRAIL A and B. The names Ebb and Flow were the
result of a nationwide student contest to choose new names for them. The winning entry was
submitted by fourth graders from the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont. Nearly
900 classrooms with more than 11,000 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of
Columbia, participated in the contest.

JPL manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The
GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

For more information about GRAIL, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/grail .

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