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Thursday, August 30, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
What's Up in the September Skies?
Set your sights beyond the solar system, and take a late summertime road-trip along the Milky Way.
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Martian Skies Clearing over Opportunity Rover
Clearing skies allow Opportunity rover engineers to plan for the future.
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Tuesday, August 28, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA JPL latest news release
NASA's InSight Has a Thermometer for Mars

Ambitious climbers, forget Mt. Everest. Dream about Mars.

The Red Planet has some of the tallest mountains in the solar system. They include Olympus Mons, a volcano nearly three times the height of Everest. It borders a region called the Tharsis plateau, where three equally awe-inspiring volcanoes dominate the landscape.

But what geologic processes created these features on the Martian surface? Scientists have long wondered -- and may soon know more.

NASA and DLR (German Aerospace Center) plan to take the planet's temperature for the first time ever, measuring how heat flows out of the planet and drives this inspiring geology. Detecting this escaping heat will be a crucial part of a mission called InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

InSight will be the first mission to study Mars' deep interior, using its Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument to measure heat as it is conducted from the interior to the planet's surface. This energy was in part captured when Mars formed more than 4 billion years ago, preserving a record of its creation. That energy is also due to the decay of radioactive elements in the rocky interior.

The way heat moves through a planet's mantle and crust determines what surface features it will have, said Sue Smrekar of JPL, the mission's deputy principal investigator and the deputy lead for HP3.

"Most of the planet's geology is a result of heat," Smrekar said. "Volcanic eruptions in the ancient past were driven by the flow of this heat, pushing up and constructing the towering mountains Mars is famous for."

A mole for Mars

While scientists have modeled the interior structure of Mars, InSight will provide the first opportunity to find ground truth -- by literally looking below the ground.

HP3, built and operated by DLR, will be placed on the Martian surface after InSight lands on Nov. 26, 2018. A probe called a mole will pummel the ground, burying itself and dragging a tether behind it. Temperature sensors embedded in this tether will measure the natural internal heat of Mars.

That's no easy task. The mole has to burrow deep enough to escape the wide temperature swings of the Martian surface. Even the spacecraft's own "body heat" could affect HP3's super-sensitive readings.

"If the mole gets stuck higher up than expected, we can still measure the temperature variation," said HP3 investigation lead Tilman Spohn of DLR. "Our data will have more noise, but we can subtract out daily and seasonal weather variations by comparing it with ground-temperature measurements."

In addition to burrowing, the mole will give off heat pulses. Scientists will study how quickly the mole warms the surrounding rock, allowing them to figure out how well heat is conducted by the rock grains at the landing site. Densely packed grains conduct heat better -- an important piece of the equation for determining Mars' internal energy.

Cooking up a new planet

For an example of planetary heat flow, imagine a pot of water on a stove.

As water heats, it expands, becomes less dense, and rises. The cooler, denser water sinks to the bottom, where it heats up. This cycling of cool to hot is called convection. The same thing happens inside a planet, churning rock over millions of years.

Just as expanding bubbles can push off a pot lid, volcanoes are lids being blown off the top of a world. They shape a planet's surface in the process. Most of the atmosphere on rocky planets forms as volcanoes expel gas from deep below. Some of Mars' biggest dry river beds are believed to have formed when the Tharsis volcanoes spewed gas into the atmosphere. That gas contained water vapor, which cooled into liquid and may have formed the channels surrounding Tharsis.

The smaller the planet, the faster it loses its original heat. Since Mars is only one-third the size of Earth, most of its heat was lost early in its history. Most Martian geologic activity, including volcanism, occurred in the planet's first billion years.

"We want to know what drove the early volcanism and climate change on Mars," Spohn said. "How much heat did Mars start with? How much was left to drive its volcanism?"

NASA's orbiters have given scientists a "macro" view of the planet, allowing them to study Martian geology from above. HP3will offer a first look at the inside of Mars.

"Planets are kind of like an engine, driven by heat that moves their internal parts around," Smrekar said. "With HP3, we'll be lifting the hood on Mars' engine for the first time."

What scientists learn during the InSight mission won't just apply to Mars. It will teach them how all rocky planets formed -- including Earth, its Moon and even planets in other solar systems.

More information about InSight is at:

https://mars.nasa.gov/insight

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The InSight spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver.

 

Monday, August 27, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA JPL latest news release
JPL Roles in NASA's Sun-Bound Parker Solar Probe

The navigation for NASA's Parker Solar Probe is led by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which also has a role in two of the spacecraft's four onboard instrument suites. Parker Solar Probe will fly closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft and through the solar corona itself.

One instrument, called the Energetic Particle Instrument-Hi (EPI-Hi), will investigate the mysteries of high-speed solar particles that hurtle toward Earth at close to the speed of light. Observations by the Parker Solar Probe will lead to better predictions of space weather and address fundamental mysteries about the Sun's dynamic corona. EPI-Hi is part of the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun, led by Principal Investigator David McComas of Princeton University in New Jersey.

"We will be exploring a region of space that has never before been visited," said Mark Wiedenbeck, the lead investigator on the EPI-Hi instrument and a principal research scientist at JPL. "We have ideas about what will be found, but the most important results may well come from observations that are completely unexpected."

Of particular interest to the EPI-Hi team is the unsolved riddle of how a small fraction of the charged particles from the Sun reach near-light speeds. These particles, protons, electrons and heavy ions can reach Earth in less than an hour, creating space weather hazards to humans and hardware in space. Until now, scientists had been observing from a distance the effects of what is happening near the Sun. With the Parker Solar Probe now on its way to fly through the region where it is happening, scientists are confident they will obtain new clues and insight into the process.

The EPI-Hi instrument consists of stacks of silicon detectors designed to snag high-speed particles and measure their energies. Some of the detectors are very thin, with the thinnest being about one-eighth the thickness of a standard sheet of paper. For the detectors to make the required measurements, the thickness of these detectors could vary by no more than one-hundredth the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Another instrument on Parker Solar Probe -- the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe Plus (WISPR) - is the only camera aboard the spacecraft. It will take images of the Sun's corona and inner heliosphere. The imager has two telescopes that will capture images of the solar wind, shock waves and other coronal structures as they approach and pass the spacecraft.WISPR provides a very wide field-of-view, extending from 13 degrees away from the center of the Sun to 108 degrees away.

"If you saw the solar eclipse last August, you saw the Sun's corona. That is our destination. WISPR will be taking images of the corona as it flies through it. The images will help us understand the morphology, velocity, acceleration and density of evolving solar wind structures when they are close to the Sun," said JPL scientist Paulett Liewer, a member of the WISPR Science Team. The WISPR principal pnvestigator is Russell Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory.

In leading Parker's navigation efforts, JPL is helping to implement the mission's innovative trajectory, developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, which built and operates the spacecraft for NASA. The Parker Solar Probe will use seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shrink its orbit around the Sun, coming as close as 3.83 million miles (6.16 million kilometers) to the Sun, well within the orbit of Mercury and about seven times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before.

In addition, the Parker Solar Probe Observatory Scientist, Principal Investigator Marco Velli, a UCLA professor, holds a part-time appointment as Heliophysics Liaison to NASA at JPL.

The Parker Solar Probe lifted off on Aug. 12, 2018, on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The mission's findings will help researchers improve their forecasts of space weather events, which have the potential to damage satellites and harm astronauts on orbit, disrupt radio communications and, at their most severe, overwhelm power grids.

EPI-Hi is managed for NASA by Caltech in collaboration with JPL, which is a division of Caltech. The Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA's Living with a Star Program, or LWS, to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Johns Hopkins APL manages the Parker Solar Probe mission for NASA.

More information on Parker Solar Probe is available at:

 

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu

 

Friday, August 24, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
15 of Spitzer's Greatest Discoveries From 15 Years in Space
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spent 15 years in space. To mark the occasion, here are 15 of Spitzer's greatest discoveries.
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Digital Creators: Apply for NASA Mars Landing Event
Up to 30 multimedia participants will be selected for a special two-day event at JPL culminating in the InSight spacecraft's landing on Mars. Apply by Sept. 3.
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Multiple NASA Instruments Capture Hurricane Lane
Instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites were watching as Hurricane Lane -- a category 2 storm as of Friday, Aug. 24 -- made its way toward Hawaii.
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Thursday, August 23, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
15 Years in Space for NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope
Initially scheduled for a minimum 2.5-year primary mission, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has gone far beyond its expected lifetime and is still going strong after 15 years.
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'NASA Selfies' and TRAPPIST-1 VR Apps Now Available
The universe is at your fingertips with two new digital products from NASA.
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Monday, August 20, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA's InSight Passes Halfway to Mars, Instruments Check In
NASA's InSight spacecraft, en route to a Nov. 26 landing on Mars, passed the halfway mark on Aug. 6.
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NASA Gets Up Close with Greenland's Melting Ice
With a new research plane and a new base to improve its chances of outsmarting hurricanes, NASA's OMG campaign takes to the sky this week.
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Ice Confirmed at the Moon's Poles
A team of scientists used NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument data to identify three signatures that definitively prove there is water ice at the surface of the Moon.
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Thursday, August 16, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA JPL latest news release
Six Things About Opportunity's Recovery Efforts

NASA's Opportunity rover has been silent since June 10, when a planet-encircling dust storm cut off solar power for the nearly-15-year-old rover. Now that scientists think the global dust storm is "decaying" -- meaning more dust is falling out of the atmosphere than is being raised back into it -- skies might soon clear enough for the solar-powered rover to recharge and attempt to "phone home."

No one will know how the rover is doing until it speaks. But the team notes there's reason to be optimistic: They've performed several studies on the state of its batteries before the storm, and temperatures at its location. Because the batteries were in relatively good health before the storm, there's not likely to be too much degradation. And because dust storms tend to warm the environment -- and the 2018 storm happened as Opportunity's location on Mars entered summer -- the rover should have stayed warm enough to survive.

What will engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, be looking for -- and what will those signs mean for recovery efforts?

A tau below 2

Dust storms on Mars block sunlight from reaching the surface, raising the level of a measurement called "tau." The higher the tau, the less sunlight is available; the last tau measured by Opportunity was 10.8 on June 10. To compare, an average tau for its location on Mars is usually 0.5.

JPL engineers predict that Opportunity will need a tau of less than 2.0 before the solar-powered rover will be able to recharge its batteries. A wide-angle camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will watch for surface features to become visible as the skies clear. That will help scientists estimate the tau.

Updates on the dust storm and tau can be found here.

Two Ways to Listen for Opportunity

Several times a week, engineers use NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates between planetary probes and Earth, to attempt to talk with Opportunity. The massive DSN antennas ping the rover during scheduled "wake-up" times, and then search for signals sent from Opportunity in response.

In addition, JPL's radio science group uses special equipment on DSN antennas that can detect a wider range of frequencies. Each day, they record any radio signal from Mars over most of the rover's daylight hours, then search the recordings for Opportunity's "voice."

Rover faults out

When Opportunity experiences a problem, it can go into so-called "fault modes" where it automatically takes action to maintain its health. Engineers are preparing for three key fault modes if they do hear back from Opportunity.

  • Low-power fault: engineers assume the rover went into low-power fault shortly after it stopped communicating on June 10. This mode causes the rover to hibernate, assuming that it will wake up at a time when there's more sunlight to let it recharge.
  • Clock fault: critical to operating while in hibernation is the rover's onboard clock. If the rover doesn't know what time it is, it doesn't know when it should be attempting to communicate. The rover can use environmental clues, like an increase in sunlight, to make assumptions about the time.
  • Uploss fault: when the rover hasn't heard from Earth in a long time, it can go into "uploss" fault -- a warning that its communication equipment may not be functioning. When it experiences this, it begins to check the equipment and tries different ways to communicate with Earth.

What happens if they hear back?

After the first time engineers hear from Opportunity, there could be a lag of several weeks before a second time. It's like a patient coming out of a coma: It takes time to fully recover. It may take several communication sessions before engineers have enough information to take action.

The first thing to do is learn more about the state of the rover. Opportunity's team will ask for a history of the rover's battery and solar cells and take its temperature. If the clock lost track of time, it will be reset. The rover would take pictures of itself to see whether dust might be caked on sensitive parts, and test actuators to see if dust slipped inside, affecting its joints.

Once they've gathered all this data, the team would take a poll about whether they're ready to attempt a full recovery.

Not out of the woods

Even if engineers hear back from Opportunity, there's a real possibility the rover won't be the same.

The rover's batteries could have discharged so much power -- and stayed inactive so long -- that their capacity is reduced. If those batteries can't hold as much charge, it could affect the rover's continued operations. It could also mean that energy-draining behavior, like running its heaters during winter, could cause the batteries to brown out.

Dust isn't usually as much of a problem. Previous storms plastered dust on the camera lenses, but most of that was shed off over time. Any remaining dust can be calibrated out.

Send Opportunity a postcard

Do you miss Opportunity as much as the rover's team? You can write a message sharing your thoughts here.

Read more about Opportunity at:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/highlights/

 

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA JPL latest news release
Carbon Monoxide from California Wildfires Drifts East

California is being plagued by massive wildfires, and the effects on air quality from those fires can extend far beyond the state's borders. In addition to ash and smoke, fires release carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Carbon monoxide is a pollutant that can persist in the atmosphere for about a month and can be transported great distances.

New images made with data acquired by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua satellite show the high concentrations of carbon monoxide emitted from the fires (in orange/red) between July 29 and August 8. As the time series progresses, carbon monoxide high in the atmosphere is shown drifting east -- with one branch moving southward toward Texas and the other forking to the northeast.

From space, AIRS measures carbon monoxide high up in the atmosphere -- where it has little effect on the air we breathe. However, strong winds can carry this pollutant downward to where it can have significant effects on air quality. The time series of images shows just how far the carbon monoxide from California's wildfires has travelled eastward and what areas may be at greater risk of experiencing its effects.

Other NASA instruments contribute to the study of carbon monoxide as well, including the Measurement of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT), which looks at carbon monoxide in the lower atmosphere, and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) which can detect carbon monoxide (and provide other useful surface data) over large areas of land.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, AIRS, in conjunction with the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit, AMSU, senses emitted infrared and microwave radiation from Earth to provide a three-dimensional look at Earth's weather and climate. Working in tandem, the two instruments make simultaneous observations all the way down to Earth's surface, even in the presence of heavy clouds. With more than 2,000 channels sensing different regions of the atmosphere, the system creates a global, three-dimensional map of atmospheric temperature and humidity, cloud amounts and heights, greenhouse gas concentrations, and many other atmospheric phenomena. Launched into Earth orbit in 2002, the AIRS and AMSU instruments fly on board NASA's Aqua spacecraft and are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

For more information about AIRS, visit:

https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/

 

Thursday, August 9, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
Water Is Destroyed, Then Reborn in Ultrahot Jupiters
Ultrahot Jupiters are planets with scorching daysides, where water molecules are ripped apart, only to re-form on the planets' nightsides, according to a new study.
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NASA Finds Amazon Drought Leaves Long Legacy of Damage
A single season of drought in the Amazon rainforest can reduce the forest's carbon dioxide absorption for years after the rains return, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
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Wednesday, August 8, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA JPL latest news release
New Satellite Map Shows Ground Deformation After Indonesian Quake

Scientists with NASA/Caltech's Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis project (ARIA) used new satellite data to produce a map of ground deformation on the resort island of Lombok, Indonesia, following a deadly 6.9-magnitude earthquake on August 5.

The false-color map shows the amount of permanent surface movement that occurred, almost entirely due to the quake, over a 6-day period between satellite images taken on July 30 and August 5.

From the pattern of deformation in the map, scientists have determined that the earthquake fault slip was on a fault beneath the northwestern part of Lombok Island, and it caused as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) of uplift of the ground surface. White areas in the image are places where the radar measurement was not possible, largely due to dense forests in the middle of the islands.

Through these maps, NASA and its partners are contributing important observations and expertise that can assist with response to earthquakes and other natural or human-produced hazards.

The deformation map is produced from automated interferometric processing of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from the European Union's Copernicus Sentinel-1A and -1B satellites using the JPL-Caltech ARIA data system. The European Space Agency operates the Sentinel-1A and -1B satellites.

This and similar products were developed in support of the NASA Disasters Program. More information on them and on the Disasters Program is available at the following links:

https://disasters.nasa.gov/lombok-indonesia-earthquake-2018

https://disasters.nasa.gov

More information about ARIA is available here:

https://aria.jpl.nasa.gov/

 

Friday, August 3, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA JPL latest news release
New Study: The Arctic Carbon Cycle is Speeding Up

When people think of the Arctic, snow, ice and polar bears come to mind. Trees? Not so much. At least not yet.

A new NASA-led study using data from the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) shows that carbon in Alaska's North Slope tundra ecosystems spends about 13 percent less time locked in frozen soil than it did 40 years ago. In other words, the carbon cycle there is speeding up -- and is now at a pace more characteristic of a North American boreal forest than of the icy Arctic.

"Warming temperatures mean that essentially we have one ecosystem -- the tundra -- developing some of the characteristics of a different ecosystem -- a boreal forest," said study co-author Anthony Bloom of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "While various factors regulate how fast this transformation will continue to occur, studies using Landsat and MODIS satellite imagery with field measurements over the past decades have observed a northward migration of shrubs and trees."

And it's not just about the trees. The Arctic carbon cycle is a delicate balance of carbon being released into the atmosphere and carbon being removed from the atmosphere.Disruptions to this balance have implications well beyond the Arctic.

During Arctic summer, warmer temperatures thaw the uppermost layers of permafrost, allowing microbes to break down previously frozen organic matter.This process releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Plant growth also increases during this period - and plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. But as temperatures increase, the amount of time carbon is stored in the Arctic soil decreases.

"The balance between these two dynamics will determine whether Arctic ecosystems will ultimately remove or add atmospheric carbon dioxide in the future climate. Our study finds that the latter is more likely," said lead author and former JPL postdoctoral researcher Sujong Jeong of Seoul National University. "We anticipate that residence time of Arctic carbon will lead to faster and more pronounced seasonal and long-term changes in global atmospheric carbon dioxide."

The team combined data from more than 40 years of carbon dioxide surface measurements from NOAA's Barrow, Alaska Observatory with a standard ecosystem carbon balance model to determine the rate at which carbon is moving in and out of Alaska's North Slope. Models alone previously indicated an increase in the speed of the carbon cycle, but the addition of long-term satellite, airborne and surface data to the equation shows that those models were underestimating just how significant the increase was.

The study, titled "Accelerating Rates of Arctic Carbon Cycling Revealed by Long-Term Atmospheric CO2 Measurements" was recently published in the journal Science Advances.

 

Thursday, August 2, 2018

DAY IN REVIEW

 

DAY IN REVIEW
NASA's 'Space Botanist' Observes California, Nevada Wildfires
ECOSTRESS has captured new imagery of three wildfires burning in California and Nevada.
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Artistic Portrait of Jupiter
See tumultuous tempests in Jupiter's northern hemisphere in this portrait taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft.
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The Fading Ghost of a Long-Dead Star
Thin, red veins of energized gas mark the location of one of the larger supernova remnants in the Milky Way galaxy in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
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Meet the People Behind NASA's InSight Mars Lander
A series of NASA videos highlight scientists and engineers leading the next mission to Mars.
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