Mars Rovers Near Five Years of Science and Discovery

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

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

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-243 December 29, 2008

Mars Rovers Near Five Years of Science and Discovery

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity may still have big achievements ahead as
they approach the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars.

Of the hundreds of engineers and scientists who cheered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2004, when Spirit landed safely, and 21 days later when Opportunity
followed suit, none predicted the team would still be operating both rovers in 2009.

"The American taxpayer was told three months for each rover was the prime mission plan," said Ed
Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in
Washington. "The twins have worked almost 20 times that long. That's an extraordinary return of
investment in these challenging budgetary times."

The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars.
They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed
a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust
storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the
rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them.

"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences
every day," said John Callas, JPL project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. "We realize that a
major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance
notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime
missions on each rover in the year ahead."

Occasional cleaning of dust from the rovers' solar panels by Martian wind has provided unanticipated
aid to the vehicles' longevity. However, it is unreliable aid. Spirit has not had a good cleaning for
more than 18 months. Dust-coated solar panels barely provided enough power for Spirit to survive its
third southern-hemisphere winter, which ended in December.

"This last winter was a squeaker for Spirit," Callas said. "We just made it through."

With Spirit's energy rising for spring and summer, the team plans to drive the rover to a pair of
destinations about 183 meters (200 yards) south of the site where Spirit spent most of 2008. One is a
mound that might yield support for an interpretation that a plateau Spirit has studied since 2006,
called Home Plate, is a remnant of a once more-extensive sheet of explosive volcanic material. The
other destination is a house-size pit called Goddard.

"Goddard doesn't look like an impact crater," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, in Ithaca,
N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for the rover science instruments. "We suspect it might be a
volcanic explosion crater, and that's something we haven't seen before."

A light-toned ring around the inside of the pit might add information about a nearby patch of bright,
silica-rich soil that Squyres counts as Spirit's most important discovery so far. Spirit churned up the
silica in mid-2007 with an immobile wheel that the rover has dragged like an anchor since it quit
working in 2006. The silica was likely produced in an environment of hot springs or steam vents.

For Opportunity, the next major destination is Endeavour Crater. It is approximately 22 kilometers
(14 miles) in diameter, more than 20 times larger than another impact crater, Victoria, where
Opportunity spent most of the past two years. Although Endeavour is about 12 kilometers (7 miles)
from Victoria, it is considerably farther as the rover drives on a route evading major obstacles.

Since climbing out of Victoria four months ago, Opportunity has driven more than a mile of its route
toward Endeavour and stopped to inspect the first of several loose rocks the team plans to examine
along the way. High-resolution images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached
Mars in 2006, are helping the team plot routes around potential sand traps that were not previously
discernable from orbit.

"We keep setting the bar higher for what these rovers can do," said Frank Hartman, a JPL rover
driver. "Once it seemed like a crazy idea to go to Endeavour, but now we're doing it."

Squyres said, "The journeys have been motivated by science, but have led to something else
important. This has turned into humanity's first overland expedition on another planet. When people
look back on this period of Mars exploration decades from now, Spirit and Opportunity may be
considered most significant not for the science they accomplished, but for the first time we truly went
exploring across the surface of Mars."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration
Rovers for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about Spirit
and Opportunity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

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NASA Study Links Severe Storm Increases, Global Warming

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. December 19, 2008
Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-242

NASA Study Links Severe Storm Increases, Global Warming

PASADENA, Calif. -- The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type
associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to
a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

In a presentation today to the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, JPL
Senior Research Scientist Hartmut Aumann outlined the results of a study based on five years of data
from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft. The AIRS
data were used to observe certain types of tropical clouds linked with severe storms, torrential rain
and hail. The instrument typically detects about 6,000 of these clouds each day. Aumann and his team
found a strong correlation between the frequency of these clouds and seasonal variations in the
average sea surface temperature of the tropical oceans.

For every degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average ocean surface temperature,
the team observed a 45-percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds. At the present rate
of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the team inferred
the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by six percent per decade.

Climate modelers have long speculated that the frequency and intensity of severe storms may or may
not increase with global warming. Aumann said results of the study will help improve their models.

"Clouds and rain have been the weakest link in climate prediction," said Aumann. "The interaction
between the daytime warming of the sea surface under clear-sky conditions and increases in the
formation of low clouds, high clouds and, ultimately, rain is very complicated. The high clouds in our
observations—typically at altitudes of 20 kilometers (12 miles) and higher—present the greatest
difficulties for current climate models, which aren't able to resolve cloud structures smaller than
about 250 kilometers (155 miles) in size."

Aumann said the results of his study, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, are
consistent with another NASA-funded study by Frank Wentz and colleagues in 2005. That study
found an increase in the global rain rate of 1.5 percent per decade over 18 years, a value that is about
five times higher than the value estimated by climate models that were used in the 2007 report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

JPL manages the AIRS project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more
information on AIRS, visit http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

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

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Scientists Find 'Missing' Mineral and Clues to Mars Mysteries

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

Steve Cole 202-657-2194
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Jennifer Huergo 240-228-5618/443-778-5618
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.
jennifer.huergo@jhuapl.edu

News release: 2008-239 December 18, 2008

Scientists Find 'Missing' Mineral and Clues to Mars Mysteries

PASADENA, Calif. -- Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
have found a long-sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red
Planet's watery past.

Surveying intact bedrock layers with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM,
scientists found carbonate minerals, indicating that Mars had neutral to alkaline water when the minerals
formed at these locations more than 3.6 billion years ago. Carbonates, which on Earth include limestone and
chalk, dissolve quickly in acid. Therefore, their survival until today on Mars challenges suggestions that an
exclusively acidic environment later dominated the planet. Instead, it indicates that different types of watery
environments existed. The greater the variety of wet environments, the greater the chances one or more of
them may have supported life.

"We're excited to have finally found carbonate minerals because they provide more detail about conditions
during specific periods of Mars' history," said Scott Murchie, principal investigator for the instrument at the
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

The findings will appear in the Dec. 19 issue of Science magazine and were announced Thursday at a briefing
at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Carbonate rocks are created when water and carbon dioxide interact with calcium, iron or magnesium in
volcanic rocks. Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere becomes trapped within the rocks. If all of the carbon
dioxide locked in Earth's carbonates were released, our atmosphere would be thicker than that of Venus.
Some researchers believe that a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere kept ancient Mars warm and kept
water liquid on its surface long enough to have carved the valley systems observed today.

"The carbonates that CRISM has observed are regional rather than global in nature, and therefore, are too
limited to account for enough carbon dioxide to form a thick atmosphere," said Bethany Ehlmann, lead author
of the article and a spectrometer team member from Brown University, Providence, R.I.

"Although we have not found the types of carbonate deposits which might have trapped an ancient
atmosphere," Ehlmann said, "we have found evidence that not all of Mars experienced an intense, acidic
weathering environment 3.5 billion years ago, as has been proposed. We've found at least one region that was
potentially more hospitable to life."

The researchers report clearly defined carbonate exposures in bedrock layers surrounding the 1,489-
kilometer-diameter (925-mile) Isidis impact basin, which formed more than 3.6 billion years ago. The best-
exposed rocks occur along a trough system called Nili Fossae, which is 666 kilometers (414 miles) long, at the
edge of the basin. The region has rocks enriched in olivine, a mineral that can react with water to form
carbonate.

"This discovery of carbonates in an intact rock layer, in contact with clays, is an example of how joint
observations by CRISM and the telescopic cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are revealing details
of distinct environments on Mars," said Sue Smrekar, deputy project scientist for the orbiter at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander discovered carbonates in soil samples. Researchers had previously found them
in Martian meteorites that fell to Earth and in windblown Mars dust observed from orbit. However, the dust and
soil could be mixtures from many areas, so the carbonates' origins have been unclear. The latest observations
indicate carbonates may have formed over extended periods on early Mars. They also point to specific
locations where future rovers and landers could search for possible evidence of past life.

The Applied Physics Laboratory led the effort to build the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for
Mars and operates the instrument in coordination with an international team of researchers from universities,
government and the private sector. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. For
more information about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

Additional public affairs contacts: Richard Lewis, Brown University, Providence, R.I., 401-863-3766 or
richard_lewis@brown.edu. Rachel Prucey, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-0643 or rachel.l.prucey@nasa.gov .

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NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Ready to Ship to Florida

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

Michael Mewhinney 650-604-3937
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
Michael.mewhinney@nasa.gov

News release: 2008-240 Dec. 18, 2008

NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Ready to Ship to Florida

PASADENA, Calif. -- Engineers are getting ready to pack NASA's Kepler spacecraft into a
container and ship it off to its launch site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

The mission, scheduled to launch on March 5, will seek to answer an age-old question -- are there
other Earths in space?

"Kepler is ready to begin its journey to its launch site, and ultimately to space, where it will answer
a question that has been pondered by humankind at least as long ago as the ancient Greeks,"
said James Fanson, the project manager for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.

Kepler will monitor more than 100,000 stars for signatures of planets of various sizes and orbital
distances. It has the ability to locate rocky planets like Earth, including those that lie in a star's
"habitable zone," a region where liquid water, and perhaps life, could exist. If these Earth-size
worlds do exist around stars like our sun, Kepler is expected to be the first to find them, and the
first to measure their frequency.

"Kepler's mission is to determine whether Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of other stars
are frequent or rare; whether life in our Milky Way galaxy is likely to be frequent or rare," said
William Borucki, the Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in
Moffett Field, Calif.

Kepler is currently at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. It passed all its
environmental tests ensuring that it is prepared for the harsh trip to space. It also passed what's
called the "pre-ship review," meaning that it is ready to be shipped via convoy to Florida in early
January. Its first stop will be Astrotech in Titusville, Fla., where the spacecraft will be processed
before being carried to its launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Kepler will launch atop a Delta II rocket.

"An outstanding team of engineers overcame some difficult hurdles to achieve this considerable
milestone," said Ball Aerospace Program Manager John Troeltzsch. "The culmination of this effort
will put a spectacular mission in orbit designed to increase our understanding of the cosmos."

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. In addition to being the home organization of the science
principal investigator, NASA Ames Research Center is responsible for the ground system
development, mission operations and science data analysis. Kepler mission development is
managed by JPL. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. is responsible for developing the Kepler
flight system and supporting mission operations.

More information about the Kepler mission is at http://www.nasa.gov/kepler . More information
about extrasolar planets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

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NASA Instrument Inaugurates 3-D Moon Imaging

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

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2008-239 Dec. 17, 2008

NASA Instrument Inaugurates 3-D Moon Imaging

PASADENA, Calif. – Different wavelengths of light provide new information about the Orientale Basin region of
the moon in a new composite image taken by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a guest instrument aboard
the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper is the first instrument to provide highly uniform imaging of the lunar surface.
Along with the length and width dimensions across a typical image, the instrument analyzes a third dimension
– color.

This two-image figure, and other data from NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper Instrument can be found at:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11727 .

The composite image consists of a subset of Moon Mineralogy Mapper data for the Orientale region. The
image strip on the left is a color composite of data from 28 separate wavelengths of light reflected from the
moon. The blue to red tones reveal changes in rock and mineral composition, and the green color is an
indication of the abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. The image strip on the right is from a
single wavelength of light that contains thermal emission, providing a new level of detail on the form and
structure of the region's surface.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper provides scientists their first opportunity to examine lunar mineralogy at high
spatial and spectral resolution.

"The Moon Mineralogy Mapper provides us with compositional information across the moon that we have
never had access to before," said Carle Pieters, the instrument's principal investigator, from Brown University
in Providence, R.I. "Our ability to now identify and map the composition of the surface in geologic context
provides a new level of detail needed to explore and understand Earth's nearest neighbor."

The Orientale Basin is located on the moon's western limb. The data for this composite were captured by the
Moon Mineralogy Mapper during the commissioning phase of Chandrayaan-1 as the spacecraft orbited the
moon at an altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles).

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper was selected as a Mission of Opportunity through the NASA Discovery
Program. Carle Pieters of Brown University is the principal investigator and has oversight of the instrument as
a whole as well as the Moon Mineralogy Mapper Science Team. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., designed and built the Moon Mineralogy Mapper and is home to its project manager, Mary
White. JPL manages the project for NASA's Discovery Program in the Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was constructed, launched, and is operated by the Indian Space
Research Organization.

More information about Chandrayaan-1 is at : http://www.isro.org/Chandrayaan . More information about
NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper is at : http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Planets Living on the Edge

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

Dec. 16, 2008

Planets Living on the Edge

Some stars have it tough when it comes to raising planets. A new image from NASA's Spitzer
Space Telescope shows one unlucky lot of stars, born into a dangerous neighborhood. The stars
themselves are safe, but the material surrounding them -- the dusty bits of what might have been
future planets -- can be seen blowing off into space.

The hazard in this particular nook of space is a group of behemoth stars. Radiation and winds
from the massive stars are wiping smaller, sun-like stars clean of their planet-making material.

"We are seeing the effects that massive stars have on smaller stars that are trying to form
planets," said Xavier Koenig, lead author of a paper about the discovery, recently published in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters. "These stars may or may not go on to form small, inner planets like
the Earth, but it's probable that outer planets like Uranus and Neptune would never come to be."

The Spitzer picture can be seen at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/20081216.html .

Many stars and planets do in fact grow up and survive the harsh environments of massive stars.
Some astronomers say our middle-aged sun, though now sitting in a tranquil patch of space,
once resided in a raucous, massive star-forming cloud. Over time, stars in these turbulent regions
disperse and spread out, spending their later years in relative solitude.

The new Spitzer observations illustrate just how nasty these massive star-forming regions can be.
It shows a portion of an active star-forming nebula called W5, located about 6,500 light-years
away in the constellation Cassiopeia. Radiation and winds from a hub of four stars, each about 20
times as massive as our sun, are stripping the planet-forming material right off of three young,
sun-like stars about one light-year away.

The sun-like stars are about two to three million years old -- the age when stars are thought to
begin forming planets out of disks of gas and dust that swirl around them. The dust from these
disks is visible in the Spitzer image as comet-like tails pointing away from the destructive massive
stars.

Spitzer, an infrared observatory, can see this dust from the disks because the dust is warm and
glows with infrared light. Since the telescope was launched more than five years ago, it has
identified a handful of disks being blown from their stars.

"On astronomical timescales, these events are probably fairly short-lived," said Koenig. "It
probably takes about one million years for the disks to completely disappear."

Koenig said that the dust being swiped away is from the outer portion of the stars' planet-forming
disks -- around where Uranus and Neptune would orbit in our solar system and beyond. That
means it's possible that any baby Earths forming in these faraway systems would grow up safely.
Outer planets, on the other hand, might be nothing more than dust in the wind.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope
mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted
at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech
manages JPL for NASA. The multiband imaging photometer for Spitzer, which made the new
observations, was built by Ball Aerospace Corporation, Boulder, Colo., and the University of
Arizona, Tucson. Its principal investigator is George Rieke of the University of Arizona.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and
http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer . More information about extrasolar planets and NASA's planet-
finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

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New Oceanography Mission Data Now Available

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

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

News release: 2008-238 Dec. 16, 2008

New Oceanography Mission Data Now Available

PASADENA, Calif. -- Oceanography data that will help scientists around the world better understand climate
change are now available. The data come from the Ocean Surface Topography Mission, also known as
OSTM/Jason-2, a spacecraft developed jointly by NASA and the French space agency.

Launched June 20, 2008, the mission's first validated data products in support of improved weather, climate
and ocean forecasts are now being distributed to the public within a few hours of observation. Beginning in
2009, other data products for climate research will be available a few days to a few weeks after observations
are taken by the satellite.

The satellite is monitoring 95 percent of the world's ice-free oceans every 10 days from its low Earth orbit. Like
its predecessor satellites, Topex/Poseidon and Jason-1, OSTM/Jason-2 is extending the climate data record
by providing a long-term survey of Earth's ocean. It tracks ocean circulation patterns and measures sea-
surface height and the rate of sea-level rise, which are critical factors in understanding climate change.

The mission is a joint effort among NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA,
France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of
Meteorological Satellites, or EUMETSAT. An international science team of more than 200 investigators will
use data obtained from the satellite's instruments to study the world's ocean and its effect on our society.

"The joint development by NASA and CNES during the past 20 years of an effective technique for measuring
sea level from space is a tremendous success story for both agencies and the international science
community," said Lee-Lueng Fu, OSTM/Jason-2 project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. "With the successful transition of this important measurement to our partners, NOAA and
EUMETSAT, a new era has dawned in humankind's long-term monitoring of this vital barometer of our
changing climate."
"Sea level is rising at a rate of 0.13 inches per year, nearly twice as fast as the previous 100 years," said Laury
Miller, chief of NOAA's Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry in Silver Spring, Md. "If this rate continues unchanged
during the coming decades, it will have a huge impact on erosion and flooding in coastal regions. We need the
OSTM/Jason-2 data to help us monitor what is happening."

Throughout the mission, CNES will continue to monitor and evaluate the spacecraft and instruments it
provided. The French space agency also will process, distribute and archive the research-quality data
products that will become available next year. EUMETSAT will process and distribute operational data
received by its ground station to users in Europe and will archive the data. NOAA will process and distribute
operational data received by its ground stations to non-European users and archive that data along with the
CNES data products.

NOAA will operate the satellite. NASA will evaluate the performance of its instruments: the advanced
microwave radiometer, the Global Positioning System payload, and the laser retroreflector assembly. In
addition, NASA and CNES will validate scientific data products.

CNES provided the OSTM/Jason 2 spacecraft, and NASA and CNES jointly provided the primary payload
instruments. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington.

To learn more about the ocean monitoring mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ostm .

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Titan's Volcanoes Give NASA Spacecraft Chilly Reception

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

News release: 2008-237 Dec. 15, 2008

Titan's Volcanoes Give NASA Spacecraft Chilly Reception

PASADENA, Calif. -- Data collected during several recent flybys of Titan by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have put another arrow in the quiver of scientists who think the Saturnian moon contains active cryovolcanoes spewing a super-chilled liquid into its atmosphere. The information was released today during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Calif.

"Cryovolcanoes are some of the most intriguing features in the solar system," said Rosaly Lopes, a Cassini radar team investigation scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "To put them in perspective -- if Mount Vesuvius had been a cryovolcano, its lava would have frozen the residents of Pompeii."

Rather than erupting molten rock, it is theorized that the cryovolcanoes of Titan would erupt volatiles such as water, ammonia and methane. Scientists have suspected cryovolcanoes might inhabit Titan, and the Cassini mission has collected data on several previous passes of the moon that suggest their existence. Imagery of the moon has included a suspect haze hovering over flow-like surface formations. Scientists point to these as signs of cryovolcanism there.

"Cassini data have raised the possibility that Titan's surface is active," said Jonathan Lunine, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson. "This is based on evidence that changes have occurred on the surface of Titan, between flybys of Cassini, in regions where radar images suggest a kind of volcanism has taken place."

What led some Cassini scientists to believe that things are happening now were changes in brightness and reflectance detected at two separate and distinct regions of Titan. Reflectance is the ratio of light that radiates onto a surface to the amount reflected back. These changes were documented by Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer data collected on Titan flybys from July 2004 to March 2006. In one of the two regions, the reflectance of the surface surged upward and remained higher than expected. In the other region, the reflectance shot up but then trended downward. There is also evidence that ammonia frost is present at one of the two changing sites. The ammonia was evident only at times when the region was inferred to be active.

"Ammonia is widely believed to be present only beneath the surface of Titan," said Robert M. Nelson of JPL, a scientist for Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team. "The fact that we found it appearing at times when the surface brightened strongly suggests that material was being transported from Titan's interior to its surface."

Some Cassini scientists indicate that such volcanism could release methane from Titan's interior, which explains Titan's seemingly continuous supply of fresh methane. Without replenishment, scientists say, Titan's original atmospheric methane should have been exhausted long ago.

But other scientists familiar with the spectrometer data argue that the ammonia identification is not certain, and that the purported brightness changes might not be associated with changes on Titan's surface. Instead they might result from the transient appearances of ground "fogs" of ethane droplets very near Titan's surface, driven by atmospheric rather than geophysical processes. Nelson has considered the ground fog option, stating, "There remains the possibility that the effect is caused by a local fog, but if so, we would expect it to change in size over time due to wind activity, which is not what we see."

The chilly volcanoes of Titan are not a fait accompli. An alternative hypothesis to an active Titan suggests the Saturnian moon could be taking its landform evolution cues from a moon of Jupiter.

"Like Callisto, Titan may have formed as a relatively cold body, and may have never undergone enough tidal heating for volcanism to occur," said Jeffrey Moore, a planetary geologist at the NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "The flow-like features we see on the surface may just be icy debris that has been lubricated by methane rain and transported downslope into sinuous piles like mudflows."

More revelations may be forthcoming. Scientists are still analyzing the data from Cassini's most recent flyby on Dec. 5. Cassini's next Titan flyby is scheduled in 11 days, when the spacecraft will come within 970 kilometers (603 miles) of its cloud-shrouded surface.

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

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

The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona.



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Phoenix Site on Mars May be in Dry Climate Cycle Phase

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

Rachel Prucey 650-604-0643
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
rachel.l.prucey@nasa.gov

Lori Stiles 520-626-4402
University of Arizona, Tucson
lstiles@u.arizona.edu

News release: 2008-236 December 15, 2008

Phoenix Site on Mars May Be in Dry Climate Cycle Phase

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Martian arctic soil that NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander dug into this year is very cold
and very dry. However, when long-term climate cycles make the site warmer, the soil may get moist enough to
modify the chemistry, producing effects that persist through the colder times.

Phoenix found clues increasing scientists' confidence in predictive models about water vapor moving through
the soil between the atmosphere and subsurface water-ice. The models predict the vapor flow can wet the soil
when the tilt of Mars' axis, the obliquity, is greater than it is now.

The robot worked on Mars for three months of prime mission, plus two months of overtime, after landing on
May 25. The Phoenix science team will be analyzing data and running comparison experiments for months to
come. With some key questions still open, team members at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union
today reported on their progress.

"We have snowfall from the clouds and frost at the surface, with ice just a few inches below, and dry soil in
between," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "During a
warmer climate several million years ago, the ice would have been deeper, but frost on the surface could have
melted and wet the soil."

With no large moon like Earth's to stabilize it, Mars goes through known periodic cycles when its tilt becomes
much greater than Earth's. During those high-tilt periods, the sun rises higher in the sky above the Martian
poles than it does now, and the arctic plain where Phoenix worked experiences warmer summers.

"The ice under the soil around Phoenix is not a sealed-off deposit left from some ancient ocean," said Ray
Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, lead scientist for the lander's robotic arm. "It is in equilibrium
with the environment, and the environment changes with the obliquity cycles on scales from hundreds of
thousands of years to a few million years. There have probably been dozens of times in the past 10 million
years when thin films of water were active in the soil, and probably there will be dozens more times in the next
10 million years."

Cloddy texture of soil scooped up by Phoenix is one clue to effects of water. The mission's microscopic
examination of the soil shows individual particles characteristic of windblown dust and sand, but clods of the
soil hold together more cohesively than expected for unaltered dust and sand. Arvidson said, "It's not strongly
cemented. It would break up in your hand, but the cloddiness tells us that something is taking the windblown
material and mildly cementing it."

That cementing effect could result from water molecules adhering to the surfaces of soil particles. Or it could
be from water mobilizing and redepositing salts that Phoenix identified in the soil, such as magnesium
perchlorate and calcium carbonate.

The Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe on Phoenix detected electrical-property changes consistent
with accumulation of water molecules on surfaces of soil grains during daily cycles of water vapor moving
through the soil, reported Aaron Zent of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., lead scientist for
that probe.

"There's exchange between the atmosphere and the subsurface ice," Zent said. "A film of water molecules
accumulates on the surfaces of mineral particles. It's not enough right now to transform the chemistry, but the
measurements are providing verification that these molecular films are occurring when you would expect them
to, and this gives us more confidence in predicting the way they would behave in other parts of the obliquity
cycles."

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver.
International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland;
the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish
Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College, London. For more about Phoenix, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix.

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Saturn's Dynamic Moon Enceladus Shows More Signs of Activity

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

Steve Cole 202-657-2194
Headquarters, Washington
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

News release: 2008-235 Dec. 15, 2008

Saturn's Dynamic Moon Enceladus Shows More Signs of Activity

PASADENA, Calif. -- The closer scientists look at Saturn's small moon Enceladus, the more they find evidence
of an active world. The most recent flybys of Enceladus made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have provided
new signs of ongoing changes on and around the moon. The latest high-resolution images of Enceladus show
signs that the south polar surface changes over time.

Close views of the southern polar region, where jets of water vapor and icy particles spew from vents within
the moon's distinctive "tiger stripe" fractures, provide surprising evidence of Earth-like tectonics. They yield
new insight into what may be happening within the fractures. The latest data on the plume -- the huge cloud of
vapor and particles fed by the jets that extend into space -- show it varies over time and has a far-reaching
effect on Saturn's magnetosphere.

"Of all the geologic provinces in the Saturn system that Cassini has explored, none has been more thrilling or
carries greater implications than the region at the southernmost portion of Enceladus," said Carolyn Porco,
Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

A panel of Cassini scientists, including Porco, presented these new findings today in a news briefing at the
American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

"Enceladus has Earth-like spreading of the icy crust, but with an exotic difference -- the spreading is almost all
in one direction, like a conveyor belt," said panelist Paul Helfenstein, Cassini imaging associate at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Asymmetric spreading like this is unusual on Earth and not well understood."

"Enceladus has asymmetric spreading on steroids," Helfenstein added. "We are not certain about the
geological mechanisms that control the spreading, but we see patterns of divergence and mountain-building
similar to what we see on Earth, which suggests that subsurface heat and convection are involved."

The tiger stripes are analogous to the mid-ocean ridges on Earth's seafloor where volcanic material wells up
and creates new crust. Using Cassini-based digital maps of the south polar region of Enceladus, Helfenstein
reconstructed a possible history of the tiger stripes by working backward in time and progressively snipping
away older and older sections of the map. Each time he found that the remaining sections fit together like
puzzle pieces.

Images from recent close Enceladus flybys also have bolstered an idea the Cassini imaging team has that
condensation from the jets erupting from the surface may create ice plugs that close off old vents and force
new vents to open. The opening and clogging of vents also corresponds with measurements indicating the
plume varies from month to month and year to year.

"We see no obvious distinguishing markings on the surface in the immediate vicinity of each jet source, which
suggests that the vents may open and close and thus migrate up and down the fractures over time," Porco
said. "Over time, the particles that rain down onto the surface from the jets may form a continuous blanket of
snow along a fracture."

Enceladus' output of ice and vapor dramatically impacts the entire Saturnian system by supplying the ring
system with fresh material and loading ionized gas from water vapor into Saturn's magnetosphere.

"The ions added to the magnetosphere are spun up from Enceladus' orbital speed to the rotational speed of
Saturn," said Cassini magnetometer science team member Christopher Russell of the University of California,
Los Angeles. "The more material is added by the plume, the harder this is for Saturn to do, and the longer it
takes to accelerate the new material."

With water vapor, organic compounds and excess heat emerging from Enceladus' south polar terrain,
scientists are intrigued by the possibility of a liquid-water-rich habitable zone beneath the moon's south pole.

Cassini's flybys on Aug. 11 and Oct. 31 of this year targeted Enceladus' fractured southern region. An Oct. 9
flyby took the spacecraft deep into the plume of water vapor and ice shooting out of the moon's vents.
Cassini's next flyby of Enceladus will be in November 2009.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian
Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini
orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is
based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The magnetometer team is based at Imperial College in
London, working with team members from the United States and several European countries.

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

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Mars Orbiter Completes Prime Mission

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
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Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-234 Dec. 11, 2008

Mars Orbiter Completes Prime Mission

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year
science phase. The spacecraft has found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that
produced a diversity of past watery environments.

The orbiter has returned 73 terabits of science data, more than all earlier Mars missions combined.
The spacecraft will build on this record as it continues to examine Mars in unprecedented detail
during its next two-year phase of science operations.

Among the major findings during the primary science phase is the revelation that the action of water
on and near the surface of Mars occurred for hundreds of millions of years. This activity was at least
regional and possibly global in extent, though possibly intermittent. The spacecraft also observed that
signatures of a variety of watery environments, some acidic, some alkaline, increase the possibility
that there are places on Mars that could reveal evidence of past life, if it ever existed.

Since moving into position 186 miles above Mars' surface in October 2006, the orbiter also has
conducted 10,000 targeted observation sequences of high-priority areas. It has imaged nearly 40
percent of the planet at a resolution that can reveal house-sized objects in detail, with one percent in
enough detail to see desk-sized features. This survey has covered almost 60 percent of Mars in
mineral mapping bands at stadium-size resolution. The orbiter also assembled nearly 700 daily global
weather maps, dozens of atmospheric temperature profiles, and hundreds of radar profiles of the
subsurface and the interior of the polar caps.

"These observations are now at the level of detail necessary to test hypotheses about when and where
water has changed Mars and where future missions will be most productive as they search for
habitable regions on Mars," said Richard Zurek, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project scientist at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Included in the observations are hundreds of stereo pairs used to make detailed topography maps and
classic images in support of other Mars missions. One image showed the Mars rover Opportunity
poised on the rim of Victoria Crater, and another was of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander during its
descent to the surface. Orbiter data prompted the Phoenix team to change the spacecraft's landing site,
and are being used to select the landing location for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, which is
scheduled for launch in 2011. For five months of Phoenix operations on Mars that ended in
November, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter shared the vital
communications roles of relaying commands to the lander, and data from Phoenix back to Earth.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has found repetitive layering in Mars' permanent polar ice caps.
The patterns suggest climate change cycles continuing to the present. They may record possible
effects of cyclical changes in Mars' tilt and orbit on global sunlight patterns. Recent climate cycles
are indicated by radar detection of subsurface icy deposits outside the polar regions, closer to the
equator, where near-surface ice is not permanently stable. Other results reveal details of ancient
streambeds, atmospheric hazes and motions of water, along with the ever-changing weather on Mars.

Most observations from the orbiter will be discontinued for a few weeks while the sun is between
Earth and Mars, which will disrupt communications. This month, the orbiter will begin a new phase,
with science observations continuing as Mars makes another orbit around the sun, which takes
approximately two Earth years.

"This spacecraft truly exemplifies the best in capabilities to support science and other Martian
spacecraft activities," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "MRO has exceeded its own goals and our expectations. We look
forward to more discoveries as we continue to look at the Red Planet in spectacular detail."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the
prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. For more information about the mission,
visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

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Astronomers Find the Two Dimmest Stellar Bulbs

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

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-232 Dec. 10, 2008

Astronomers Find the Two Dimmest Stellar Bulbs

It's a tie! The new record-holder for dimmest known star-like object in the universe goes to twin
"failed" stars, or brown dwarfs, each of which shines feebly with only one millionth the light of
our sun.

Previously, astronomers thought the pair of dim bulbs was just one typical, faint brown dwarf
with no record-smashing titles. But when NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed the brown
dwarf with its heat-seeking infrared vision, it was able to accurately measure the object's extreme
faintness and low temperature for the first time. What's more, the Spitzer data revealed the brown
dwarf is, in fact, twins.

"Both of these objects are the first to break the barrier of one millionth the total light-emitting
power of the sun," said Adam Burgasser of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge. Burgasser is lead author of a new paper about the discovery appearing in the
Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Brown dwarfs are the misfits of the cosmos. They are compact balls of gas floating freely in
space, but they are too cool and lightweight to be stars, and too warm and massive to be planets.
The name "brown dwarf" comes from the fact that these small, star-like bodies change color over
time as they cool, and thus have no definitive color. In reality, most brown dwarfs would appear
reddish if they could be seen with the naked eye. Their feeble light output also means they are
hard to find. The first brown dwarf wasn't discovered until 1995. While hundreds are known
today, astronomers say there are many more in space still waiting to be discovered.

The newfound dim duo of brown dwarfs, while notable for their exceptional faintness, will
probably not be remembered for their name. They are called 2MASS J09393548-2448279 after
the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, or "2MASS," the mission partially funded by NASA that first
detected the object in 1999.

Astronomers recently used Spitzer's ultrasensitive infrared vision to learn more about the object,
which was still thought to be a solo brown dwarf. These data revealed a warm atmospheric
temperature of 565 to 635 Kelvin (560 to 680 degrees Fahrenheit). While this is hundreds of
degrees hotter than Jupiter, it's still downright cold as far as stars go. In fact, 2MASS J09393548-
2448279, or 2M 0939 for short, is one of the coldest star-like bodies measured so far.

To calculate the object's brightness, the researchers had to first determine its distance from Earth.
After three years of precise measurements with the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Australia,
they concluded that 2M 0939 is the fifth-closest known brown dwarf to us, 17 light-years away
toward the constellation Antlia. This distance, together with Spitzer's measurements, told the
astronomers the object was both cool and extremely dim.

But something was puzzling. The brightness of the object was twice what would be expected for
a brown dwarf with its particular temperature. The solution? The object must have twice the
surface area. In other words, it's twins, with each body shining only half as bright, and each with
a mass of 30 to 40 times that of Jupiter. Both bodies are one million times fainter than the sun in
total light, and at least one billion times fainter in visible light alone.

"These brown dwarfs are the lowest power stellar light bulbs in the sky that we know of," said
Burgasser. "And like low-energy fluorescent light bulbs, they emit most of their light in a narrow
range of wavelengths, in this case in the infrared."

According to the authors, there are even dimmer brown dwarfs scattered throughout the universe,
most too faint to see with current sky surveys. NASA's upcoming Wide-Field Infrared Survey
Explorer mission will scan the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, and is expected to uncover
hundreds of these inconspicuous characters.

"The holy grail in the study of brown dwarfs is to find out how low you can go in terms of
temperature, mass and brightness," said Davy Kirkpatrick, a co-author of the paper at NASA's
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
"This will tell us more about how brown dwarfs form and evolve."

Other authors of this paper are Chris Tinney of the University of New South Wales, Australia;
Michael C. Cushing of the University of Hawaii, Manoa; Didier Saumon of the Los Alamos
National Laboratory, NM; Mark S. Marley, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.;
and Clara S. Bennett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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

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Oscillation Rules as the Pacific Cools

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

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

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2008-231 Dec. 9, 2008

Oscillation Rules as the Pacific Cools

PASADENA, Calif. -- The latest image of sea-surface height measurements from the
U.S./French Jason-1 oceanography satellite shows the Pacific Ocean remains locked in a
strong, cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a large, long-lived pattern of
climate variability in the Pacific associated with a general cooling of Pacific waters. The
image also confirms that El Niño and La Niña remain absent from the tropical Pacific.

The new image is available online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20081209.html .

The image is based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Nov. 15, 2008,
compared to the long-term average of observations from 1993 through 2008. In the
image, places where the Pacific sea-surface height is higher (warmer) than normal are
yellow and red, and places where the sea surface is lower (cooler) than normal are blue
and purple. Green shows where conditions are near normal. Sea-surface height is an
indicator of the heat content of the upper ocean.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a long-term fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean that
waxes and wanes between cool and warm phases approximately every five to 20 years. In
the present cool phase, higher-than-normal sea-surface heights caused by warm water
form a horseshoe pattern that connects the north, west and southern Pacific. This is in
contrast to a cool wedge of lower-than-normal sea-surface heights spreading from the
Americas into the eastern equatorial Pacific. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the
Pacific was locked in the oscillation's warm phase, during which these warm and cool
regions are reversed. For an explanation of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and its present
state, see: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ and http://www.esr.org/pdo_index.html .

Sea-surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration mirror Jason sea-surface height measurements, clearly showing a cool
Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif .

"This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation 'cool' trend can cause La Niña-like impacts
around the Pacific basin," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The present cool phase of the
Pacific Decadal Oscillation will have significant implications for shifts in marine
ecosystems, and for land temperature and rainfall patterns around the Pacific basin."

According to Nathan Mantua of the Climate Impacts Group at the University of
Washington, Seattle, whose research contributed to the early understanding of the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation, "Even with the strong La Niña event fading in the tropics last spring,
the North Pacific's sea surface temperature anomaly pattern has remained strongly
negative since last fall. This cool phase will likely persist this winter and, perhaps,
beyond. Historically, this situation has been associated with favorable ocean conditions
for the return of U.S. west coast Coho and Chinook salmon, but it translates to low odds
for abundant winter/spring precipitation in the southwest (including Southern
California)."

Jason's follow-on mission, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, was
successfully launched this past June and will extend to two decades the continuous data
record of sea surface heights begun by Topex/Poseidon in 1992. The new mission has
produced excellent data, which have recently been certified for operational use. Fully
calibrated and validated data for science use will be released next spring.

JPL manages the U.S. portion of the Jason-1 mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.

For more information on NASA's ocean surface topography missions, visit
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/ . To view the latest Jason-1 data, visit
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/jason1-quick-look/ .

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Hubble Telescope Finds Carbon Dioxide on an Extrasolar Planet

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

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

Ray Villard 410-338-4514
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
villard@stsci.edu

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2008-230 Dec. 9, 2008

Hubble Telescope Finds Carbon Dioxide on an Extrasolar Planet

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough is an important step toward finding
chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life.

The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, is too hot for life. But the Hubble observations are a
proof-of-concept demonstration that the basic chemistry for life can be measured on planets orbiting
other stars. Organic compounds also can be a by-product of life processes, and their detection on an
Earthlike planet someday may provide the first evidence of life beyond our planet.

Previous observations of HD 189733b by Hubble and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found water
vapor. Earlier this year, Hubble found methane in the planet's atmosphere.

"Hubble was conceived primarily for observations of the distant universe, yet it is opening a new era
of astrophysics and comparative planetary science," said Eric Smith, Hubble Space Telescope
program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These atmospheric studies will begin to
determine the compositions and chemical processes operating on distant worlds orbiting other stars.
The future for this newly opened frontier of science is extremely promising as we expect to discover
many more molecules in exoplanet atmospheres."

Mark Swain, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used
Hubble's near-infrared camera and multi-object spectrometer to study infrared light emitted from the
planet, which lies 63 light-years away. Gases in the planet's atmosphere absorb certain wavelengths
of light from the planet's hot glowing interior. Swain identified carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.
The molecules leave a unique spectral fingerprint on the radiation from the planet that reaches Earth.
This is the first time a near-infrared emission spectrum has been obtained for an exoplanet.

"The carbon dioxide is the main reason for the excitement because, under the right circumstances, it
could have a connection to biological activity as it does on Earth," Swain said. "The very fact we are
able to detect it and estimate its abundance is significant for the long-term effort of characterizing
planets to find out what they are made of and if they could be a possible host for life."

This type of observation is best done on planets with orbits tilted edge-on to Earth. They routinely
pass in front of and then behind their parent stars, phenomena known as eclipses. The planet HD
189733b passes behind its companion star once every 2.2 days. The eclipses allow an opportunity to
subtract the light of the star alone, when the planet is blocked, from that of the star and planet
together prior to eclipse. That isolates the emission of the planet and makes possible a chemical
analysis of its atmosphere.

"In this way, we are using the eclipse of the planet behind the star to probe the planet's day side,
which contains the hottest portions of its atmosphere," said team member Guatam Vasisht of JPL.
"We are starting to find the molecules and to figure out how many there are to see the changes
between the day side and the night side."

This successful demonstration of looking at near-infrared light emitted from a planet is very
encouraging for astronomers planning to use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope after it is
launched in 2013. These biomarkers are best seen at near-infrared wavelengths. Astronomers look
forward to using the Webb telescope to look spectroscopically for biomarkers on a terrestrial planet
the size of Earth or a "super-Earth" several times our planet's mass.

"The Webb telescope should be able to make much more sensitive measurements of these primary
and secondary eclipse events," Swain said.

More information about the Hubble space telescope is at http://www.nasa.gov/hubble .

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Rivers of Gas Flow Around Stars in New Space Image

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

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

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2008-228 Dec. 8, 2008

Rivers of Gas Flow Around Stars in New Space Image

A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a turbulent star-forming
region, where rivers of gas and stellar winds are eroding thickets of dusty material.

The picture provides some of the best examples yet of the ripples of gas, or bow shocks,
that can form around stars in choppy cosmic waters.

"The stars are like rocks in a rushing river," said Matt Povich of the University of
Wisconsin, Madison. "Powerful winds from the most massive stars at the center of the
cloud produce a large flow of expanding gas. This gas then piles up with dust in front of
winds from other massive stars that are pushing back against the flow." Povich is lead
author of a paper describing the new findings in the Dec. 10 issue of the Astrophysical
Journal.

Spitzer's new infrared view of the stormy region, called M17, or the Swan nebula, is
online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/20081208.html .
The Swan is located about 6,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.

Dominating the center of the Swan is a group of massive stars, some exceeding 40 times
the mass of our sun. These central stars are 100,000 to one million times as bright as the
sun, and roar with radiation and fierce winds made of charged particles that speed along
at up to 7.2 kilometers per hour (4.5 million miles per hour). Both the wind and radiation
carve out a deep cavity at the center of the picture -- an ongoing process thought to
trigger the birth of new stars.

The growth of this cavity pushes gas up against winds from other massive stars, causing
"smiley-faced" bow shocks -- three of which can be seen in the new picture. The
direction of the bow shocks tells researchers exactly which way the "wind is blowing."

"The bow shocks are like interstellar weather vanes, indicating the direction of the stellar
winds in the nebula," said Povich.

Povich and his colleagues also used Spitzer to take an infrared picture of a star-forming
region called RCW 49. Both photographs are described in the same Astrophysical Journal
paper, and both provide the first examples of multiple bow shocks around the massive
stars of star-forming regions.

Spitzer was able to spot the bow shocks because its infrared eyes can pierce intervening
dust, and because it can photograph large swaths of sky quickly.

Ultimately, the new observations will help researchers understand how solar systems like
our own are able to form and persist in the rough, celestial seas of space.

"The gas being lit up in these star-forming regions looks very wispy and fragile, but looks
can be deceiving," said co-author Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin,
Whitewater. "These bow shocks serve as a reminder that stars aren't born in quiet
nurseries but in violent regions buffeted by winds more powerful than anything we see on
Earth."

Other authors include Barbara A. Whitney of the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.;
Brian L. Babler, Marilyn R. Meade and Ed Churchwell of the University of Wisconsin,
Madison; and Remy Indebetouw of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space
Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science
operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of
Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared array
camera was built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The
instrument's principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center
for Astrophysics.

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

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Next NASA Mars Mission Rescheduled for 2011

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

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

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2008-226 December 4, 2008

Next NASA Mars Mission Rescheduled for 2011

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will launch two years later than previously
planned, in the fall of 2011. The mission will send a next-generation rover with unprecedented
research tools to study the early environmental history of Mars.

A launch date of October 2009 no longer is feasible because of testing and hardware challenges that
must be addressed to ensure mission success. The window for a 2009 launch ends in late October.
The relative positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to Mars only a few weeks every two
years. The next launch opportunity after 2009 is in 2011.

"We will not lessen our standards for testing the mission's complex flight systems, so we are
choosing the more responsible option of changing the launch date," said Doug McCuistion, director
of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Up to this point, efforts
have focused on launching next year, both to begin the exciting science and because the delay will
increase taxpayers' investment in the mission. However, we've reached the point where we can not
condense the schedule further without compromising vital testing."

The Mars Science Laboratory team recently completed an assessment of the progress it has made in
the past three months. As a result of the team's findings, the launch date was changed.

"Despite exhaustive work in multiple shifts by a dedicated team, the progress in recent weeks has not
come fast enough on solving technical challenges and pulling hardware together," said Charles
Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The right and smart course
now for a successful mission is to launch in 2011."

The advanced rover is one of the most technologically challenging interplanetary missions ever
designed. It will use new technologies to adjust its flight while descending through the Martian
atmosphere, and to set the rover on the surface by lowering it on a tether from a hovering descent
stage. Advanced research instruments make up a science payload 10 times the mass of instruments on
NASA's Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers. The Mars Science Laboratory is engineered to drive
longer distances over rougher terrain than previous rovers. It will employ a new surface propulsion
system.

Rigorous testing of components and systems is essential to develop such a complex mission and
prepare it for launch. Tests during the middle phases of development resulted in decisions to re-
engineer key parts of the spacecraft.

"Costs and schedules are taken very seriously on any science mission," said Ed Weiler, associate
administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "However, when it's
all said and done, the passing grade is mission success."

The mission will explore a Mars site where images taken by NASA's orbiting spacecraft indicate
there were wet conditions in the past. Four candidate landing sites are under consideration. The rover
will check for evidence of whether ancient Mars environments had conditions favorable for
supporting microbial life and preserving evidence of that life if it existed there.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Mars Science Laboratory project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the Mars Science Laboratory, visit: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

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Educator Professional Development Opportunities

Life in Extreme Environments Educator Conference
January 24-25, 2009, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA

Who: All educators (including museum staff) and students in high school or above interested in Earth and space science, and exploration. The conference content is generally non-technical but does include some detailed scientific and engineering content. The objective of the conference is to tell the exciting tale of real-life exploration and new discovery in a way that will excite and inspire students. Students under 18 years of age must be accompanied by a registered adult.

What: Join astrobiologists, planetary scientists and astronomers for a presentation on the latest information on our expanding understanding of the abodes of life on our planet and the prospects for the development of life elsewhere in our solar system and much farther beyond.

When: All day Saturday, January 24, and the morning of Sunday, January 25, 2009. Check-in begins at 8:00 am. On Saturday the conference will conclude by 5:00 pm. On Sunday the conference will end at noon for a total of 12 hours of professional development time.

Where: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's von Kármán Auditorium. JPL is located in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena. For directions please visit http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about_JPL/maps.cfm (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about_JPL/maps.cfm). Note that pre-registration is required. Walk-up registration will not be possible for this conference.

How: To register for this conference please send a check postmarked by January 16, 2009, for $40.00 payable to "Jet Propulsion Laboratory" to:

Life Educator Conference
Attn: Mary Kay Kuehn
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
M/S 180-109
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109

Please provide the following information:

Name_______________________________
Title________________________________
Organization/School_______________________________________
Address________________________________ State___ Zip______
Citizenship_________________________ (Please bring a photo ID)
Grade(s) Taught__________________________________________
Subject(s) Taught_________________________________________
Contact info for confirmation & last minute changes:
E-mail: _____________________________
Phone: _____________________________

Please register by Friday, January 16, 2009. The $40 registration fee includes continental breakfast and breaks both days and a box lunch on Saturday. For registration questions please call the JPL Education Office at 818-393-0561. For other questions please call the JPL Educator Resource Center at 909-397-4420.

Our next conference will be during the spring semester and will feature 2009 as the "International Year of Astronomy" (http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/ (http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov/)) and the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope (http://hubblesite.org/ (http://hubblesite.org/)).

Conference updates will be at: http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/events/conference20090124.html (http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/events/conference20090124.html)




Deep Space Mission Educator Workshops

* Kepler Pre-Launch Educator Workshop, Saturday, January 31, 2009 -- JPL, Pasadena, CA.
http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/ed/workshops.html#20090131 (http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/ed/workshops.html#20090131)

The Kepler mission is set to launch in March 2009 on a search for habitable planets. It will look at the very slight dimming of starlight as a planet passes in front of it. It could find hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets. This workshop will feature standards-based classroom-ready activities.

For more information and to register please visit: http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/ed/workshops.html#20090131 (http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/ed/workshops.html#20090131)

* Dawn Mars Flyby Educator Workshop, Saturday, March 7, 2009
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/getInvolved/mga_ed_conf.asp (http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/getInvolved/mga_ed_conf.asp)

This workshop will take place at four locations: Pasadena, California; Portland, Oregon; Denver, Colorado; and Fairmont, West Virginia.

Dawn is an ion engine-powered spacecraft in route to two main belt asteroids, Vesta and Ceres (the dwarf planet!). It uses Mars' gravity to change speed and direction during a mid-February flyby that will help speed it along to its August 2011 arrival at Vesta. We're taking this opportunity to look at the mission, its unique propulsion system, Dawn's science at Mars and the educational materials to bring this into the classroom.

For more information and to register please visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/getInvolved/mga_ed_conf.asp (http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/getInvolved/mga_ed_conf.asp)




Upcoming Educator Launch Conferences -- Conducted by the Endeavour Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California
http://endeavours.org/sec/ (http://endeavours.org/sec/)

These educational programs are geared to K-16 educators and administrators and will provide a general introduction to the specific NASA mission and a variety of K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education workshops and specific science behind the satellites. All K-12 educators will be provided learning opportunities as well as a teacher's guide, a classroom poster and mission CD for classroom use. For more information and to register, visit http://endeavours.org/sec/ (http://endeavours.org/sec/).

* Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)
Dates TBD -- Late January
Application Deadline: Jan. 16, 2009
Originally scheduled for January 14-15, this conference has been delayed until late January. Check the Web site for updates.
OCO will provide space-based observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and will improve our understanding of the natural processes and human activities that regulate the distribution of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

* NOAA-N Prime National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS)
Feb. 3-4, 2009 -- Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
Application Deadline: Jan. 23, 2009
NPOESS will provide data about the Earth's weather, atmosphere, oceans, land and near-space environment. Participating educators are invited to watch the launch and learn about real-world Earth, atmospheric and rocket science, and NPOESS's satellite instrument technology.

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Correction: Public Presentation About Mars Orbiter's Images and Findings

Upcoming event December 1, 2008

Correction: Public Presentation About Mars Orbiter's Images and Findings

Information posted on Nov. 26 regarding a Dec. 4 public program about Mars included an erroneous identification for one speaker, Roger Phillips. Dr. Phillips is an institute scientist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., and is the deputy team leader for the Shallow Surface Radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The team leader for the radar instrument, which was provided by the Italian Space Agency, is Roberto Seu of the University of Rome La Sapienza in Italy.

Here is a corrected version of the information about the Dec. 4 event:

Mars scientists will present dramatic images and key findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at a free evening program in Pasadena on Thursday, Dec. 4, celebrating completion of the mission's first two-year science phase.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has already collected more data than all other past and current Mars missions combined. Its findings point to a complex history of climate change on the Red Planet, both early in its history and in more recent times.

The orbiter has cameras examining Mars at scales from revealing details the size of a desk to providing daily weather observations of the entire planet. Other instruments map minerals on the surface, probe with radar beneath the surface and monitor the atmosphere.

The public program will being at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 in the von Karman Auditorium at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena.

JPL's Richard Zurek and Suzanne Smrekar, the project scientist and deputy project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, will introduce the evening's program. Featured presenters will be Roger Phillips of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., deputy team leader for the orbiter's Shallow Subsurface Radar; Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., principal investigator for the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars; and Candice Hansen of JPL, deputy principal investigator for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera.

Some examples of images taken by that high-resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are shots of an active avalanche (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10245), the landing of NASA's Phoenix spacecraft (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10705); gullies (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10001); and tracks of the Opportunity rover at Victoria Crater (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09692).

Thousands more examples are on the camera team's Web site at the University of Arizona, http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ .

More information about the mission is available at http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ . Directions to JPL are available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/about_JPL/maps.cfm .

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Italian Space Agency provided the Shallow Subsurface Radar.

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