NASA's Mars Rover has Uncertain Future as Sixth Anniversary Nears

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/Veronica McGregor 818-354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov, veronica.mcgregor@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2009-207 Dec. 31, 2009

NASA's Mars Rover has Uncertain Future as Sixth Anniversary Nears

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-207&cid=release_2009-207

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Spirit will mark six years of unprecedented science
exploration and inspiration for the American public on Sunday. However, the upcoming Martian
winter could end the roving career of the beloved, scrappy robot.

Spirit successfully landed on the Red Planet at 8:35 p.m. PST on Jan. 3, 2004, and its twin
Opportunity arrived at 9:05 p.m. Jan. 24, 2004. The rovers began missions intended to last for three
months but which have lasted six Earth years, or 3.2 Mars years. During this time, Spirit has found
evidence of a steamy and violent environment on ancient Mars that was quite different from the wet
and acidic past documented by Opportunity, which has been operating successfully as it explores
halfway around the planet.

A sand trap and balky wheels are challenges to Spirit's mobility that could prevent NASA's rover
team from using a key survival strategy for the rover. The team may not be able to position the robot's
solar panels to tilt toward the sun to collect power for heat to survive the severe Martian winter.

Nine months ago, Spirit's wheels broke through a crusty surface layer into loose sand hidden
underneath. Efforts to escape this sand trap barely have budged the rover. The rover's inability to use
all six wheels for driving has worsened the predicament. Spirit's right-front wheel quit working in
2006, and its right-rear wheel stalled a month ago. Surprisingly, the right-front wheel resumed
working, though intermittently. Drives with four or five operating wheels have produced little
progress toward escaping the sand trap. The latest attempts resulted in the rover sinking deeper in the
soil.

"The highest priority for this mission right now is to stay mobile, if that's possible," said Steve Squyres
of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. He is principal investigator for the rovers.

If mobility is not possible, the next priority is to improve the rover's tilt, while Spirit is able to generate
enough electricity to turn its wheels. Spirit is in the southern hemisphere of Mars, where it is autumn,
and the amount of daily sunshine available for the solar-powered rover is declining. This could result
in ceasing extraction activities as early as January, depending on the amount of remaining power.
Spirit's tilt, nearly five degrees toward the south, is unfavorable because the winter sun crosses low in
the northern sky.

Unless the tilt can be improved or luck with winds affects the gradual buildup of dust on the solar
panels, the amount of sunshine available will continue to decline until May 2010. During May, or
perhaps earlier, Spirit may not have enough power to remain in operation.

"At the current rate of dust accumulation, solar arrays at zero tilt would provide barely enough energy
to run the survival heaters through the Mars winter solstice," said Jennifer Herman, a rover power
engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The team is evaluating strategies for improving the tilt even if Spirit cannot escape the sand trap, such
as trying to dig in deeper with the wheels on the north side. In February, NASA will assess Mars
missions, including Spirit, for their potential science versus costs to determine how to distribute
limited resources. Meanwhile, the team is planning additional research about what a stationary Spirit
could accomplish as power wanes.

"Spirit could continue significant research right where it is," said Ray Arvidson of Washington
University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the rovers. "We can study the interior of
Mars, monitor the weather and continue examining the interesting deposits uncovered by Spirit's
wheels."

A study of the planet's interior would use radio transmissions to measure wobble of the planet's axis
of rotation, which is not feasible with a mobile rover. That experiment and others might provide more
and different findings from a mission that has already far exceeded expectations.

"Long-term change in the spin direction could tell us about the diameter and density of the planet's
core," said William Folkner of JPL. He has been developing plans for conducting this experiment with
a future, stationary Mars lander. "Short-period changes could tell us whether the core is liquid or
solid," he said.

In 2004, Opportunity discovered the first mineralogical evidence that Mars had liquid water. The
rover recently finished a two-year investigation of a half-mile wide crater called Victoria and now is
headed toward Endeavor crater, which is approximately seven miles from Victoria and nearly 14 miles
across. Since landing, Opportunity has driven more than 11 miles and returned more than 132,000
images.

JPL manages the rovers for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the rovers, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers or
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA's WISE Space Telescope Jettisons Its Cover

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, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2009-206 Dec. 29, 2009

NASA's WISE Space Telescope Jettisons Its Cover

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-206&cid=release_2009-206

NASA's recently launched Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer opened its eyes to the
starry sky today, after ejecting its protective cover.

Engineers and scientists say the maneuver went off without a hitch, and everything is
working properly. The mission's "first-light" images of the sky will be released to the
public in about a month, after the telescope has been fully calibrated.

"The cover floated away as we planned," said William Irace, the mission's project
manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Our detectors are
soaking up starlight for the first time."

WISE will perform the most detailed infrared survey of the entire sky to date. Its millions
of images will expose the dark side of the cosmos -- objects, such as asteroids, stars and
galaxies, that are too cool or dusty to be seen with visible light. The telescope will survey
the sky one-and-a-half times in nine months, ending its primary mission when the coolant
it needs to see infrared light evaporates away.

WISE launched on Dec. 14 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Once it was
thoroughly checked out in space, it was ready to "flip its lid."

The cover served as the top to a Thermos-like bottle that chilled the instrument -- a 40-
centimeter (16-inch) telescope and four infrared detector arrays with one million pixels
each. The instrument must be maintained at frosty temperatures, as cold as below 8
Kelvin (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit), to prevent it from picking up its own heat, or
infrared, glow. The cover kept everything cool on the ground by sealing a vacuum space
into the instrument chamber. In the same way that Thermos bottles use thin vacuum layers
to keep your coffee warm or iced tea cold, the vacuum space inside WISE stopped heat
from getting in. Now, space itself will provide the instrument with an even better vacuum
than before.

The cover also protected the instrument from stray sunlight and extra heat during launch.

At about 2:30 p.m. PST (5:30 p.m. PST), Dec. 29, engineers sent a command to fire
pyrotechnic devices that released nuts holding the cover in place. Three springs were then
free to push the cover away and into an orbit closer to Earth than that of the spacecraft.

Scientists and engineers are now busy adjusting the rate of the spacecraft to match the
rate of a scanning mirror. To take still images on the sky as it orbits around Earth, WISE
will use a scan mirror to counteract its motion. Light from the moving telescope's primary
miror will be focused onto the scan mirror, which will move in the opposite direction at
the same rate. This allows the mission to take "freeze-frame" snapshots of the sky every
11 seconds. That's about 7,500 images a day.

"It's wonderful to end the year with open WISE eyes," said Peter Eisenhardt, the
mission's project scientist at JPL. "Now we can synch WISE up to our scan mirror and
get on with the business of exploring the infrared universe."

WISE is scheduled to begin its survey of the infrared heavens in mid-January of 2010.

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

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NASA Chooses Three Finalists for Future Space Science Mission to Venus, an Asteroid or the Moon

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

Veronica McGregor 818-354-9452
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Ca.
Veronica.mcgregor@jpl.nasa.gov

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2009- 205 Dec. 29, 2009

NASA Chooses Three Finalists for Future Space Science Mission to Venus, an Asteroid or the Moon

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-205

WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected three proposals as candidates for the agency's next space
venture to another celestial body in our solar system. The final project selected in mid-2011 may
provide a better understanding of Earth's formation or perhaps the origin of life on our planet.

The proposed missions would probe the atmosphere and crust of Venus; return a piece of a near-Earth
asteroid for analysis; or drop a robotic lander into a basin at the moon's south pole to return lunar
rocks back to Earth for study.

NASA will select one proposal for full development after detailed mission concept studies are
completed and reviewed. The studies begin during 2010, and the selected mission must be ready for
launch no later than Dec. 30, 2018. Mission cost, excluding the launch vehicle, is limited to $650
million.

"These are projects that inspire and excite young scientists, engineers and the public," said Ed Weiler,
associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"These three proposals provide the best science value among eight submitted to NASA this year."

Each proposal team initially will receive approximately $3.3 million in 2010 to conduct a 12-month
mission concept study that focuses on implementation feasibility, cost, management and technical
plans. Studies also will include plans for educational outreach and small business opportunities.

The selected proposals are:

- The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, or SAGE, mission to Venus would release a
probe to descend through the planet's atmosphere. During descent, instruments would conduct
extensive measurements of the atmosphere's composition and obtain meteorological data. The probe
then would land on the surface of Venus, where its abrading tool would expose both a weathered and
a pristine surface area to measure its composition and mineralogy. Scientists hope to understand the
origin of Venus and why it is so different from Earth. Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado in
Boulder, is the principal investigator. The proposed mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Ca.

- The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft,
called Osiris-Rex, would rendezvous and orbit a primitive asteroid. After extensive measurements,
instruments would collect more than two ounces of material from the asteriod's surface for return to
Earth. The returned samples would help scientists better undertand and answer long-held questions
about the formation of our solar system and the origin of complex molecules necessary for life.
Michael Drake, of the University of Arizona in Tucson, is the principal investigator. The proposed
mission is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md

- MoonRise: Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission would place a lander in a broad
basin near the moon's south pole and return approximately two pounds of lunar materials for study.
This region of the lunar surface is believed to harbor rocks excavated from the moon's mantle. The
samples would provide new insight into the early history of the Earth-moon system. Bradley Jolliff, of
Washington University in St. Louis, is the principal investigator with mission management by JPL.

The proposals were submitted to NASA on July 31, 2009, in response to the New Frontiers Program
2009 Announcement of Opportunity. New Frontiers seeks to explore the solar system with frequent,
medium-class spacecraft missions that will conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations
designed to enhance understanding of the solar system.

The final selection will become the third mission in the program. New Horizons, NASA's first New
Frontiers mission, launched in 2006, will fly by the Pluto-Charon system in 2014 then target another
Kuiper Belt object for study. The second mission, called Juno, is designed to orbit Jupiter from pole to
pole for the first time, conducting an in-depth study of the giant planet's atmosphere and interior. It is
slated for launch in August 2011.

For more information about the New Frontiers Program, visit:
http://newfrontiers.nasa.gov

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JPL Wallpaper: Our Space Meets Yours

JPL Wallpaper: Our Space Meets Yours

If you can't afford a trip to space, JPL Wallpapers can at least give you the visual - even while you
check your Facebook page. With more than 80 wallpapers to choose from in six different screen
resolutions, you can sit poolside at the moon one day and get lost in a Snowflake Cluster the next.

The wallpapers are completely free and easy to set up. Organized into six categories, including Earth,
Mars, Saturn, and Stars & Galaxies, the wallpapers include some of JPL's most popular and stunning
images and artist's concepts.

They're updated often to include the latest images from missions like Cassini and the Mars Rovers, so
you can explore a new part of the universe - and take it with you -- daily.

Visit jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper to snag your view of space and read instructions on how to apply your JPL
Wallpaper.

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Cassini Holiday Movies Showcase Dance of Saturn's Moons

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

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

Joe Mason 720-974-5859
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
media@ciclops.org

Video advisory: 2009-204 December 23, 2009

Cassini Holiday Movies Showcase Dance of Saturn's Moons

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-204&cid=advisory_2009-204

Like sugar plum fairies in "The Nutcracker," the moons of Saturn performed a celestial
ballet before the eyes of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. New movies frame the moons' silent
dance against the majestic sweep of the planet's rings and show as many as four moons
gliding around one another.

The new video can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
and http://ciclops.org .

To celebrate the holidays, the Cassini imaging team has created a video collection of
"mutual events," which occur when one moon passes in front of another, as seen from the
spacecraft. Imaging scientists use mutual event observations to refine their understanding
of the dynamics of Saturn's moons. Digital image processing has enabled scientists to turn
these routine observations into breathtaking displays of celestial motion. The original
images were captured between Aug. 27 and Nov. 8, 2009.

In one scene that synthesizes 12 images taken over the span of 19 minutes, Rhea skates in
front of Janus, as Mimas and Pandora slide across the screen in the opposite direction.
While the dance appears leisurely on screen, Rhea actually orbits Saturn at a speed of
about 8 kilometers per second (18,000 mph). The other moons are hurtling around the
planet even faster. Mimas averages about 14 kilometers per second (31,000 mph), and
Janus and Pandora travel at about 16 kilometers per second (36,000 mph).

"As yet another year in Saturn orbit draws to a close, these wondrous movies of an alien
place clear across the solar system remind us how fortunate we are to be engaged in this
magnificent exploratory expedition," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at
the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

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 mission for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate in 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.

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As the World Churns

WEB FEATURE

AS THE WORLD CHURNS

NASA Research Confirms Complex Motions of Earth's Churning, Burning Liquid Core

Story Highlights:

* Study confirms theories that Earth's liquid outer core is slowly "stirred" in a series of
regularly occurring waves of motion that last for decades.
* Measurements of Earth's magnetic field from observatory stations on land and ships
at sea were combined with satellite data to determine common patterns of movement
within Earth's core.
* The findings give scientists new insights into Earth's internal structure, the
mechanisms that generate its magnetic field, and its geology.
* Earth's magnetic field shields us from harmful solar radiation and has many practical
applications, ranging from navigation to archaeology.

"Terra firma." It's Latin for "solid Earth." Most of the time, at least from our perspective here on
the ground, Earth seems to be just that: solid. Yet the Earth beneath our feet is actually in
constant motion. It moves through time and space, of course, along with the other objects in
the universe, but it moves internally as well. The powerful forces of wind, water and ice
constantly erode its surface, redistributing Earth's mass in the process. Within Earth's solid
crust, faulting literally creates and then moves mountains. Hydrological changes, such as
the pumping of groundwater for use by humans, cause the ground beneath us to undulate.
Volcanic processes deform our planet and create new land. Landslides morph and scar the
terrain. Entire continents can even rise up, rebounding from the weight of massive glaciers
that blanketed the land thousands of years ago.

Indeed, the outermost layers of the celestial blue onion that is Earth—its crust and upper
mantle—aren't very solid at all. But what happens if we peel back the layers and examine
what's going on deep within Earth, at its very core?

Obviously, Earth's core is too deep for humans to observe directly. But scientists can use
indirect methods to deduce what's going on down there. A new study in the journal
Geophysical Research Letters, by Jean Dickey of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. and co-author Olivier deViron of the Institut de Physique du Globe de
Paris, University Paris Diderot, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, has
confirmed previous theoretical predictions that the churning cauldron of molten metals that
make up Earth's liquid outer core is slowly being stirred by a very complex but predictable
series of periodic oscillations. The findings give scientists unique insights into Earth's
internal structure, the strength of the mechanisms responsible for generating Earth's
magnetic field and its geology.

Peeling Back the Onion

In order to better understand what's going on inside our planet, it helps to first get a lay of
the land, so to speak.

Earth has several distinct layers, each with its own properties. At the outermost layer of our
planet is the crust, which comprises the continents and ocean basins. Earth's crust varies in
thickness from 35 to 70 kilometers (22 to 44 miles) in the continents and 5 to 10 kilometers
(3 to 6 miles) in the ocean basins. The crust is mainly composed of alumino-silicates.

Next comes the mantle. The mantle is roughly solid, though very slow motion can be
observed inside of it. It is about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) thick, and is separated into an
upper and lower mantle. It is here where most of Earth's internal heat is located. Large
convective cells in the mantle circulate heat and drive the movements of Earth's tectonic
plates, upon which our continents ride. The mantle is mainly composed of ferro-magnesium
silicates.

Earth's innermost layer is the core, which is separated into a liquid outer core and a solid
inner core. The outer core is 2,300 kilometers (1,429 miles) thick, while the inner core is
1,200 kilometers (746 miles) thick. The outer core is mainly composed of a nickel-iron alloy
(liquid iron), while the inner core is almost entirely composed of a pure solid iron body.

Earth's "Magnetic" Personality

Scientists believe Earth's magnetic field results from movements of molten iron and nickel
within its liquid outer core. These flows, which are caused by interactions between Earth's
core and its mantle, are neither even, nor evenly distributed. The electrical currents
generated by these flows result in a magnetic field, which is similarly uneven, moves
around in location and varies in strength over time. Earth's magnetic field is also slightly
tilted with respect to Earth's axis. This causes Earth's geographic north and south poles to
not line up with its magnetic north and south poles--they currently differ by about 11
degrees.

In just the last 200 million years alone, Earth's magnetic poles have actually reversed
hundreds of times, with the most recent reversal taking place about 790,000 years ago.
Scientists are able to reconstruct the chronology of these magnetic pole reversals by
studying data on the spreading of the seafloor at Earth's mid-oceanic ridges. Unlike the
doomsday scenario popularized by Hollywood in the movie "2012," however, such reversals
don't occur over days, but rather on geologic timescales spanning hundreds to thousands of
years—very short in geologic time but comparatively long in human time. The time span
between pole reversals is even longer, ranging from 100,000 to several million years.

Earth's magnetic field is essential for life on Earth. Extending thousands of kilometers into
space, it serves as a shield, deflecting the constant bombardment of charged particles and
radiation known as the solar wind away from Earth. These solar winds would otherwise be
fatal to life on Earth. At Earth's poles, the perpendicular angle of the magnetic field to Earth
there allows some of these particles to make it into our atmosphere. This results in the
Northern Lights in the northern hemisphere and the Southern Lights in the southern
hemisphere.

Here on the ground, Earth's magnetic field has many practical applications to our everyday
lives. It allows people to successfully navigate on land and at sea, making it a critical tool for
commerce. Hikers use it to find their way. Archaeologists use it to deduce the age of ancient
artifacts such as pottery, which, when fired, assumes the magnetic field properties that were
present at the time of its creation. Similarly, the field of paleomagnetism uses magnetism to
give scientists glimpses into Earth's remote past. In addition, geophysicists and geologists
use geomagnetism as a tool to investigate Earth's structure and changes taking place in the
Earth.

Getting to the Core of the Matter

Since Earth's liquid core is the primary source of Earth's magnetic field, scientists can use
observations of the magnetic field at Earth's surface and its variability over time to
mathematically calculate and isolate the approximate motions taking place within the core.

That's what Dickey and deViron did. They combined measurements of Earth's magnetic
field taken by observatory stations on land and ships at sea dating back to 1840 with those
of the Danish Oersted and German CHAMP geomagnetic satellite missions, both of which
were supported by NASA investments. These measurements were then used as inputs for a
complex model that employs statistical time series analyses to determine how fast liquid iron
is flowing within Earth's core.

"Although we do not observe the core directly, it's amazing how much we can learn about
Earth's interior using magnetic field observations," said Dickey.

In order to approximate the flow of liquid in the core, the scientists visualized its motion as a
set of 20 rigid cylinders, each rotating about a common point that represents Earth's axis.
"Imagine that each cylinder is slowly rotating at a different speed, and you'll get a sense of
the complex churning that's taking place within Earth's core," Dickey said.

The scientists analyzed the data to identify common patterns of movement among the
different cylinders. These patterns represent how momentum and energy are transferred
from the liquid core-mantle interface inward through the liquid core toward the inner core
with diminishing amplitudes.

Their analyses isolated six slow-moving oscillations, or waves of motion, occurring within
the liquid core. The oscillations originated at the boundary between Earth's core and its
mantle and traveled inward toward the inner core with decreasing strength. Four of these
oscillations were robust, occurring at periods of 85, 50, 35 and 28 years. Since the scientist's
data set goes back to 1840, the recurrence period of the longest oscillation (85 years) is less
well determined than the other oscillations. The last two oscillations identified were weaker
and will require further study.

The 85- and 50-year oscillations are consistent with a 1997 study by researchers Stephen
Zatman and Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., who used a
different analysis technique. A later purely theoretical study by Harvard researcher Jon
Mound and Bruce Buffett of the University of Chicago in 2006 showed that there should be
several oscillations of this type; their predicted periods agree with the first four modes
identified in Dickey and deViron's study.

"Our satellite-based results are in excellent agreement with the previous theoretical and
other studies in this field, providing a strong confirmation of the existence of these
oscillations," said Dickey. "These results will give scientists confidence in using satellite
measurements in the future to deduce long-term changes taking place deep within our
restless planet."

Media Contact:

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

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"JPL on the Go!": From Earth to Space in a Matter of Seconds

"JPL on the Go!": From Earth to Space in a Matter of Seconds

The next time Spirit moves an inch or scientists find a new ring on Saturn, don't be the last
one to know. A newly enhanced, mobile-friendly Web site from NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory makes it easier for you to discover what's happening across the solar system
and beyond no matter where you are.

"JPL on the Go!" takes all your favorite content from our standard Web site (news, videos
and educational activities) and formats it for friendly browsing using your smartphone -- no
zooming in, moving around pages or lengthy scrolling required. Even users of non-
smartphone mobiles can get in on the action with our text-based site, which offers
streamlined text-only news and feature content.

Getting there is as simple as typing in our standard URL, jpl.nasa.gov, into your phone's
browser. You'll automatically be connected to the specially optimized site so you can start
reading stories or watching videos in a matter of seconds. Bookmark the site, and you'll get
there even faster the next time.

Visit www.jpl.nasa.gov/onthego/ to learn more about JPL's mobile initiatives and how you can
optimize your mobile experience.

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Eyes in the Sky II Seeks Grade 9 to 12 Science Teachers

Eyes in the Sky II Seeks Grade 9 to 12 Science Teachers

Eyes in the Sky II is a long-term professional development program that prepares high school science teachers to use
NASA data and visualizations along with other geospatial information technologies. Throughout the program, teachers
and students investigate both global and local environmental issues. The program includes four parts:

1) A 12-week online Web course, consisting of three 4-week modules
2) A 7-day face-to-face summer workshop held onsite at a NASA research center
3) One year of classroom implementation, ending with a virtual student showcase
4) An ambassador program for providing professional development for other teachers in participants' schools or districts.

Grade 9 to 12 science teachers will benefit from this program. Through participating, teachers will:

1) Become proficient using NASA data and geospatial analysis tools
2) Receive a $1000 stipend for completing the online course and the 7-day summer workshop
3) Receive an additional $1000 stipend as compensation for delivering professional development as an Eyes in the Sky II Ambassador
4) Equip their students with geospatial technology skills that are in increasing demand in the workplace
5) Obtain optional graduate credit through Northern Arizona University.

For more information about the Eyes in the Sky II program, including the online application visit
http://serc.carleton.edu/eyesinthesky2/index.html. Applications are due by January 15, 2010. We expect this will
be a popular program. As there are a limited number of openings available, first consideration will be given to early applicants.
If you have further questions, please contact Carla McAuliffe (Carla_McAuliffe@terc.edu) or Erin Bardar (Erin_Bardar@terc.edu).


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Glint of Sunlight Confirms Liquid in Northern Lake District of Titan

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

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

Image advisory: 2009-199 Dec. 17, 2009

Glint of Sunlight Confirms Liquid in Northern Lake District of Titan

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-199&cid=kintera_advisory_2009-199

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Cassini Spacecraft has captured the first flash of sunlight
reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan, confirming the presence of liquid on the part of the
moon dotted with many large, lake-shaped basins.

Cassini scientists had been looking for the glint, also known as a specular reflection, since the
spacecraft began orbiting Saturn in 2004. But Saturn's northern hemisphere, which has more lakes
than the southern hemisphere, has been veiled in winter darkness. The sun only began to directly
illuminate the northern lakes recently as it approached the equinox of August 2008, the start of
spring in the northern hemisphere. Titan's hazy atmosphere also blocked out reflections of
sunlight in most wavelengths. This serendipitous image was captured on July 8, 2009, using
Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

The new infrared image is available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini,
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.

This image will be presented Friday, Dec. 18, at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical
Union in San Francisco.

"This one image communicates so much about Titan -- thick atmosphere, surface lakes and an
otherworldliness," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist, based at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "It's an unsettling combination of strangeness yet
similarity to Earth. This picture is one of Cassini's iconic images."

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has captivated scientists because of its many similarities to Earth.
Scientists have theorized for 20 years that Titan's cold surface hosts seas or lakes of liquid
hydrocarbons, making it the only other planetary body besides Earth believed to harbor liquid on
its surface. While data from Cassini have not indicated any vast seas, they have revealed large
lakes near Titan's north and south poles.

In 2008, Cassini scientists using infrared data confirmed the presence of liquid in Ontario Lacus,
the largest lake in Titan's southern hemisphere. But they were still looking for the smoking gun to
confirm liquid in the northern hemisphere, where lakes are also larger.

Katrin Stephan, of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin, an associate member of the
Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team, was processing the initial image and was
the first to see the glint on July 10th.

"I was instantly excited because the glint reminded me of an image of our own planet taken from
orbit around Earth, showing a reflection of sunlight on an ocean," Stephan said. "But we also had
to do more work to make sure the glint we were seeing wasn't lightning or an erupting volcano."

Team members at the University of Arizona, Tucson, processed the image further, and scientists
were able to compare the new image to radar and near-infrared-light images acquired from 2006
to 2008.

They were able to correlate the reflection to the southern shoreline of a lake called Kraken Mare.
The sprawling Kraken Mare covers about 400,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), an
area larger than the Caspian Sea, the largest lake on Earth. It is located around 71 degrees north
latitude and 337 degrees west latitude.

The finding shows that the shoreline of Kraken Mare has been stable over the last three years and
that Titan has an ongoing hydrological cycle that brings liquids to the surface, said Ralf Jaumann,
a visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team member who leads the scientists at the DLR
who work on Cassini. Of course, in this case, the liquid in the hydrological cycle is methane
rather than water, as it is on Earth.

"These results remind us how unique Titan is in the solar system," Jaumann said. "But they also
show us that liquid has a universal power to shape geological surfaces in the same way, no matter
what the liquid is."

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

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Call for Proposals

Call for Proposals
Dec. 15, 2009

NASA is seeking formal and informal education institutions and organizations, individually or working together, to host a
live, in-flight education downlink during STS-131, the flight of educator and Mission Specialist Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger.
To maximize these downlink opportunities, NASA is looking for organizations that will draw large numbers of participants
and make a large-scale impact on education. Educational themes for the STS-131 mission include robotics and attracting
and retaining girls in STEM disciplines.

Opportunity

During the STS-131 mission, Metcalf-Lindenburger and selected crew members will participate in downlinks. Downlinks are
approximately 20 minutes in length and allow students and educators to interact with the crew aboard the space shuttle through
a question and answer session. A downlink is a modified video conference in which participants see and hear the crew members
live from space, but the crew does not see the audience. Downlinks afford education audiences the opportunity to learn first-hand
from astronauts what it is like to live and work in space. Downlinks are broadcast live on NASA TV. Downlinks can happen any day
during the mission and are not always scheduled during normal business hours. Because of the nature of human spaceflight, hosts
must have maximum flexibility to accommodate changes in downlink dates and times.

Background

No earlier than March 18, 2010, the STS-131 crew will launch into space aboard space shuttle Discovery. The shuttle will deliver a
Multi-Purpose Logistics Module filled with science racks to be transferred to the laboratories of the International Space Station. U.S.
Navy Captain Alan Poindexter will command the seven-person crew of STS-131. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James Dutton Jr. will
serve as Discovery's pilot. Mission specialists are NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio, Clay Anderson, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger and
Stephanie Wilson, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Naoko Yamazaki. Dutton, Metcalf-Lindenburger and
Yamazaki will be making their first trip to space.

Who Can Host a Downlink?

Members of the U.S. formal and informal education communities are eligible to host a downlink. Examples include museums and science centers,
local school districts, national and regional education organizations, and local, state and U.S. government agencies. NASA provides this
opportunity at no cost to the host organization. Downlinks support national education standards and initiatives.

What You Need to Host a Downlink

To host a downlink, you need to receive NASA TV and have two dedicated telephone lines. The audio for the downlink is received through a
telephone line. The second telephone line is needed so that NASA audio technicians have direct access to the host organization's technical
point of contact. The video is received through NASA TV. A LIMO channel is the preferred way to receive the video feed; however, receiving the
feed through satellite or cable channels is also acceptable.

Review of Submitted Material

NASA is committed to inspiring the next generation of explorers. Proposals will be reviewed for relevance to the education community, education
content, diversity of participants, continuity, and community involvement. Successful proposals will articulate how the host organization will maximize this opportunity.

Process and Deadline

The deadline to submit a proposal for an STS-131 downlink is Jan. 6, 2010 . Proposals must be submitted electronically to Teaching From Space, or
TFS, a NASA Education office. A committee will review all proposals and notify organizations of their status. TFS personnel will work with the host to
plan the downlink. Interested parties should contact TFS to obtain information related to program expectations, content, format, audience, application
guidelines and forms by sending an e-mail to JSC-TFS-STS-131@mail.nasa.gov .

Opportunities

Surrounding the Flight Numerous opportunities will be available for formal and informal education communities to be actively engaged in the STS-131 mission.
Information on the mission and related education activities can be found at www.nasa.gov/education/robotics .

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NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research

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

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

News release: 2009-196 Dec. 15, 2009

NASA Outlines Recent Breakthroughs in Greenhouse Gas Research

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-196&cid=kintera_release_2009-196

PASADENA, Calif. -- Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key
driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of
carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared
Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.

Moustafa Chahine, the instrument's science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., unveiled the new product at a briefing on recent breakthroughs in greenhouse gas,
weather and climate research from AIRS at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting in San
Francisco. The new data have been extensively validated against both aircraft and ground-based
observations. They give users daily and monthly measurements of the concentration and distribution
of carbon dioxide in the mid-troposphere--the region of the atmosphere located between 5 and 12
kilometers, or 3 to 7 miles, above Earth's surface, and track its global transport. Users can also access
historical AIRS carbon dioxide data spanning the mission's entire seven-plus years in orbit. The
product represents the first-ever release of global daily carbon dioxide data that are based solely on
observations.

"AIRS provides the highest accuracy and yield of any global carbon dioxide data set available to the
research community, now and for the immediate future," said Chahine. "It will help researchers
understand how this elusive, long-lived greenhouse gas is distributed and transported, and can be
used to develop better models to identify 'sinks,' regions of the Earth system that store carbon
dioxide. It's important to study carbon dioxide in all levels of the troposphere."

Chahine said previous AIRS research data have led to some key findings about mid-tropospheric
carbon dioxide. For example, the data have shown that, contrary to prior assumptions, carbon dioxide
is not well mixed in the troposphere, but is rather "lumpy." Until now, models of carbon dioxide
transport have assumed its distribution was uniform.

Carbon dioxide is transported in the mid-troposphere from its sources to its eventual sinks.
More carbon dioxide is emitted in the heavily populated northern hemisphere than in its less
populated southern counterpart. As a result, the southern hemisphere is a net recipient, or sink, for
carbon dioxide from the north. AIRS data have previously shown the complexity of the southern
hemisphere's carbon dioxide cycle, revealing a never-before-seen belt of carbon dioxide that circles
the globe and is not reflected in transport models.

In another major finding, scientists using AIRS data have removed most of the uncertainty about the
role of water vapor in atmospheric models. The data are the strongest observational evidence to date
for how water vapor responds to a warming climate.

"AIRS temperature and water vapor observations have corroborated climate model predictions that
the warming of our climate produced as carbon dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated -- in
fact, more than doubled -- by water vapor," said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M
University, College Station, Texas.

Dessler explained that most of the warming caused by carbon dioxide does not come directly from
carbon dioxide, but from effects known as feedbacks. Water vapor is a particularly important
feedback. As the climate warms, the atmosphere becomes more humid. Since water is a greenhouse
gas, it serves as a powerful positive feedback to the climate system, amplifying the initial warming.
AIRS measurements of water vapor reveal that water greatly amplifies warming caused by increased
levels of carbon dioxide. Comparisons of AIRS data with models and re-analyses are in excellent
agreement.

"The implication of these studies is that, should greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current
course of increase, we are virtually certain to see Earth's climate warm by several degrees Celsius in
the next century, unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in Earth's
climate system," Dessler said.

Originally designed to observe atmospheric temperature and water vapor, AIRS data are already
responsible for the greatest improvement to five- to six-day weather forecasts than any other single
instrument, said Chahine. JPL scientists have shown a major consequence of global warming will be
an increase in the frequency and strength of severe storms. Earlier this year, a team of NASA
researchers showed how AIRS can significantly improve tropical cyclone forecasting. The researchers
studied deadly Typhoon Nargis in Burma in May 2008. They found the uncertainty in the cyclone's
landfall position could have been reduced by a factor of six had more sophisticated AIRS
temperature data been used in the forecasts.

AIRS observes and records the global daily distribution of temperature, water vapor, clouds and
several atmospheric gases including ozone, methane and carbon monoxide. With the addition of the
mid-tropospheric carbon dioxide data set this week, a seven-year digital record is now complete for
use by the scientific community and the public.

For more on AIRS, see http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

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

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NASA Data Reveal Major Groundwater Loss in California's Heartland

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

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

News release: 2009-194 Dec. 14, 2009

NASA Data Reveal Major Groundwater Loss in California's Heartland

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-194&cid=kintera_release_2009-194

PASADENA, Calif. - New space observations reveal that since October 2003, the aquifers for
California's primary agricultural region -- the Central Valley -- and its major mountain water source --
the Sierra Nevadas -- have lost nearly enough water combined to fill Lake Mead, America's largest
reservoir. The findings, based on data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery
and Climate Experiment (Grace), reflect California's extended drought and increased rates of
groundwater being pumped for human uses, such as irrigation.

In research being presented this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco,
scientists from NASA and the University of California, Irvine, detailed California's groundwater
changes and outlined Grace-based research on other global aquifers. The twin Grace satellites monitor
tiny month-to-month changes in Earth's gravity field primarily caused by the movement of water in
Earth's land, ocean, ice and atmosphere reservoirs. Grace's ability to directly 'weigh' changes in water
content provides new insights into how Earth's water cycle may be changing.

Combined, California's Sacramento and San Joaquin drainage basins have shed more than 30 cubic
kilometers of water since late 2003, said professor Jay Famiglietti of the University of California,
Irvine. A cubic kilometer is about 264.2 billion gallons, enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-size pools.
The bulk of the loss occurred in California's agricultural Central Valley. The Central Valley receives
its irrigation from a combination of groundwater pumped from wells and surface water diverted from
elsewhere.

"Grace data reveal groundwater in these basins is being pumped for irrigation at rates that are not
sustainable if current trends continue," Famiglietti said. "This is leading to declining water tables,
water shortages, decreasing crop sizes and continued land subsidence. The findings have major
implications for the U.S. economy, as California's Central Valley is home to one sixth of all U.S.
irrigated land, and the state leads the nation in agricultural production and exports."

"By providing data on large-scale groundwater depletion rates, Grace can help California water
managers make informed decisions about allocating water resources," said Grace Project Scientist
Michael Watkins of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., which manages the mission
for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Preliminary studies show most of the water loss is coming from the more southerly located San
Joaquin basin, which gets less precipitation than the Sacramento River basin farther north. Initial
results suggest the Sacramento River basin is losing about 2 cubic kilometers of water a year. Surface
water losses account for half of this, while groundwater losses in the northern Central Valley add
another 0.6 cubic kilometers annually. The San Joaquin Basin is losing 3.5 cubic kilometers a year. Of
this, more than 75 percent is the result of groundwater pumping in the southern Central Valley,
primarily to irrigate crops.

Famiglietti said recent California legislation decreasing the allocation of surface waters to the San
Joaquin Basin is likely to further increase the region's reliance on groundwater for irrigation. "This
suggests the decreasing groundwater storage trends seen by Grace will continue for the foreseeable
future," he said.

The California results come just months after a team of hydrologists led by Matt Rodell of NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., found groundwater levels in northwest India have
declined by 17.7 cubic kilometers per year over the past decade, a loss due almost entirely to pumping
and consumption of groundwater by humans.

"California and India are just two of many regions around the world where Grace data are being used
to study droughts, which can have devastating impacts on societies and cost the U.S. economy $6 to
$8 billion annually," said Rodell. Other regions under study include Australia, the Middle East -
North Africa region and the southeastern United States, where Grace clearly captured the evolution
of an extended drought that ended this spring. In the Middle East - North Africa region, Rodell is
leading an effort to use Grace and other data to systematically map water- and weather-related
variables to help assess regional water resources. Rodell added Grace may also help predict droughts,
since it can identify pre-existing conditions favorable to the start of a drought, such as a deficit of
water deep below the ground.

NASA is working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln to incorporate Grace data into NOAA's U.S. and North American Drought
Monitors, premier tools used to minimize drought impacts. The tools rely heavily on precipitation
observations, but are limited by inadequate large-scale observations of soil moisture and groundwater
levels. "Grace is the only satellite system that provides information on these deeper stores of water
that are key indicators of long-term drought," Rodell said.

Grace is a partnership of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The University of Texas
Center for Space Research, Austin, has overall mission responsibility. JPL developed the satellites.
DLR provided the launch, and GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Germany, operates the mission. For
more on Grace, see http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/ and http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/ . Other media
contacts: Margaret Baguio, University of Texas Center for Space Research, 512-471-6922; Jennifer
Fitzenberger, University of California, Irvine, 949-824-3969.

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

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NASA's WISE Eye on the Universe Begins All-Sky Survey Mission

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

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673/818-354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

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

News release: 2009-193 Dec. 14, 2009

NASA's WISE Eye on the Universe Begins All-Sky Survey Mission

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-193&cid=kintera_release_2009-193

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or
WISE, lifted off over the Pacific Ocean this morning on its way to map the entire sky in infrared
light.

A Delta II rocket carrying the spacecraft launched at 6:09 a.m. PST (9:09 a.m. EST) from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The rocket deposited WISE into a polar orbit 326 miles
above Earth.

"WISE thundered overhead, lighting up the pre-dawn skies," said William Irace, the mission's project
manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "All systems are looking good,
and we are on our way to seeing the entire infrared sky better than ever before."

Engineers acquired a signal from the spacecraft via NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite
System just 10 seconds after the spacecraft separated from the rocket. Approximately three minutes
later, WISE re-oriented itself with its solar panels facing the sun to generate its own power. The next
major event occurred about 17 minutes later. Valves on the cryostat, a chamber of super-cold
hydrogen ice that cools the WISE instrument, opened. Because the instrument sees the infrared, or
heat, signatures of objects, it must be kept at chilly temperatures. Its coldest detectors are less than
minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit.

"WISE needs to be colder than the objects it's observing," said Ned Wright of UCLA, the mission's
principal investigator. "Now we're ready to see the infrared glow from hundreds of thousands of
asteroids, and hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies."

With the spacecraft stable, cold and communicating with mission controllers at JPL, a month-long
checkout and calibration is underway.

WISE will see the infrared colors of the whole sky with sensitivity and resolution far better than the
last infrared sky survey, performed 26 years ago. The space telescope will spend nine months
scanning the sky once, then one-half the sky a second time. The primary mission will end when
WISE's frozen hydrogen runs out, about 10 months after launch.

Just about everything in the universe glows in infrared, which means the mission will catalog a
variety of astronomical targets. Near-Earth asteroids, stars, planet-forming disks and distant galaxies
all will be easy for the mission to see. Hundreds of millions of objects will populate the WISE atlas,
providing astronomers and other space missions, such as NASA's planned James Webb Space
Telescope, with a long-lasting infrared roadmap.

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

More information about the WISE mission is available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/wise,
http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

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NASA's WISE Set to Blast Off and Map the Skies

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, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2009-188 Dec. 9, 2009

NASA's WISE Set to Blast Off and Map the Skies

PASADENA, Calif. -- The countdown clock is ticking, with just days to go before the Wide-field
Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, rockets into space on a mission to map the entire sky in infrared
light.

NASA's newest spacecraft is currently perched atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket at
Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, Calif. It is scheduled to roar into space at dawn
on Dec. 11, at 6:09:33 a.m. PST (9:09:33 a.m. EST), on a short journey to its final Earth-circling orbit
525 kilometers (326 miles) overhead.

After a one-month checkout, the mission will spend the next nine months mapping the cosmos in
infrared light. It will cover the whole sky one-and-a-half times, snapping millions of pictures of
everything from near-Earth asteroids to faraway galaxies bursting with new stars.

"The last time we mapped the whole sky at these particular infrared wavelengths was 26 years ago,"
said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, who is the principal investigator of the mission. "Infrared
technology has come a long way since then. The old all-sky infrared pictures were like impressionist
paintings -- now, we'll have images that look like actual photographs."

At liftoff, the main Delta II engine and three solid-motor boosters will ignite, providing a total liftoff
thrust of more than 1,812,000 newtons (407,000 pounds). The rocket will tilt toward the south, cross
the California coastline and head out over the Pacific Ocean. At one minute and 39 seconds after
launch, the three spent boosters will fall away from the rocket. Two minutes and 45 seconds later, the
main engine will cut off, and 14 seconds later, the vehicle's second stage will ignite. At four minutes
and 56 seconds after liftoff, the "fairing" covering the satellite will split open like a clamshell and fall
away.

The second stage of the rocket will then cut off, reigniting again 52 minutes after launch. It will shut
down a second time and then, at about 55 minutes after launch, the spacecraft will reach its final orbit
and separate from the rocket. Engineers expect to pick up a signal from WISE anywhere from about
one to 10 minutes after separation.

The next major event will occur about 20 minutes after separation -- the valves on the spacecraft's
cryostat will automatically open. The cryostat houses and chills the telescope and infrared detectors
with tanks of frozen hydrogen. Valves on the cryostat are opened after launch to allow boiled-off
hydrogen to escape, thereby preventing the instrument from warming up.

"It is important to relieve the pressure due to the warming hydrogen as soon as possible," said William
Irace, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "By
venting the hydrogen to space, we cool our instrument down to extremely low temperatures so that
the eyes of WISE won't be blinded by their own heat."

After the spacecraft is checked out and calibrated, it will begin the task of surveying the whole sky.
This will take about six months, after which the spacecraft will begin to sweep the sky a second time,
covering about one-half before the frozen coolant runs out. The mission's primary lifetime is expected
to be about 10 months.

The closest of the mission's finds will be asteroids and comets with orbits that come relatively close to
Earth's path around the sun. These are called near-Earth objects. The infrared explorer will provide
size and composition information about hundreds of these objects, giving us a better idea of their
diversity. How many are dark like coal, and how many are shiny and bright? And how do their sizes
differ? The mission will help answer these questions through its infrared observations, which provide
information that can't be obtained using visible-light telescopes.

"We can help protect our Earth by learning more about the diversity of potentially hazardous asteroids
and comets," said Amy Mainzer, deputy project scientist for the mission at JPL.

The farthest of the mission's targets are powerful galaxies that are either churning out loads of new
stars or dominated by voracious black holes. These galaxies are shrouded in dust, and often can't be
seen in visible light. WISE will expose millions, and may even find the most energetic, or luminous,
galaxy in the universe.

"WISE can see these dusty objects so far away that we will be looking back in time 10 billion years,
when galaxies were forming," said Peter Eisenhardt, the mission's project scientist at JPL. "By
scanning the entire sky, we'll learn just how extreme this galaxy formation process can get."

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

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

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Saturn's Mysterious Hexagon Emerges from Winter Darkness

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

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

Joe Mason, 720-974-5859
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
jmason@ciclops.org

IMAGE/VIDEO ADVISORY:2009-187 December 9, 2009

Saturn's Mysterious Hexagon Emerges from Winter Darkness

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-187&cid=advisory_2009-187

After waiting years for the sun to illuminate Saturn's north pole again, cameras aboard
NASA's Cassini spacecraft have captured the most detailed images yet of the intriguing
hexagon shape crowning the planet.

The new images of the hexagon, whose shape is the path of a jet stream flowing around the
north pole, reveal concentric circles, curlicues, walls and streamers not seen in previous
images. Images and the three-frame animation are available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini ,
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org .

The last visible-light images of the entire hexagon were captured by NASA's Voyager
spacecraft nearly 30 years ago, the last time spring began on Saturn. After the sunlight faded,
darkness shrouded the north pole for 15 years. Much to the delight and bafflement of Cassini
scientists, the location and shape of the hexagon in the latest images match up with what they
saw in the Voyager pictures.

"The longevity of the hexagon makes this something special, given that weather on Earth
lasts on the order of weeks," said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at the
California Institute of Technology. "It's a mystery on par with the strange weather conditions
that give rise to the long-lived Great Red Spot of Jupiter."

The hexagon was originally discovered in images taken by the Voyager spacecraft in the early
1980s. It encircles Saturn at about 77 degrees north latitude and has been estimated to have a
diameter wider than two Earths. The jet stream is believed to whip along the hexagon at
around 100 meters per second (220 miles per hour).

Early hexagon images from Voyager and ground-based telescopes suffered from poor
viewing perspectives. Cassini, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, has a better angle
for viewing the north pole. But the long darkness of Saturnian winter hid the hexagon from
Cassini's visible-light cameras for years. Infrared instruments, however, were able to obtain
images by using heat patterns. Those images showed the hexagon is nearly stationary and
extends deep into the atmosphere. They also discovered a hotspot and cyclone in the same
region.

The visible-light cameras of Cassini's imaging science subsystem, which have higher
resolution than the infrared instruments and the Voyager cameras, got their long-awaited
glimpse of the hexagon in January, as the planet approached equinox. Imaging team scientists
calibrated and stitched together 55 images to create a mosaic and three-frame movie. The
mosaics do not show the region directly around the north pole because it had not yet fully
emerged from winter night at that time.

Scientists are still trying to figure out what causes the hexagon, where it gets and expels its
energy and how it has stayed so organized for so long. They plan to search the new images
for clues, taking an especially close look at the newly identified waves that radiate from the
corners of the hexagon -- where the jet takes its hardest turns -- and the multi-walled
structure that extends to the top of Saturn's cloud layer in each of the hexagon's six sides.
Scientists are also particularly intrigued by a large dark spot that appeared in a different
position in a previous infrared image from Cassini. In the latest images, the spot appears in
the 2 o'clock position.

Because Saturn does not have land masses or oceans on its surface to complicate weather the
way Earth does, its conditions should give scientists a more elementary model to study the
physics of circulation patterns and atmosphere, said Kevin Baines, an atmospheric scientist at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who has studied the hexagon with
Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

"Now that we can see undulations and circular features instead of blobs in the hexagon, we
can start trying to solve some of the unanswered questions about one of the most bizarre
things we've ever seen in the solar system," Baines said. "Solving these unanswered
questions about the hexagon will help us answer basic questions about weather that we're still
asking about our own planet."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency
and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Cassini 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.

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Watch Live as Kids Test Their Inventions in Annual Challenge

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

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

Internet Advisory: 2009-184b Dec. 7, 2009

Watch Live as Kids Test Their Inventions in Annual Challenge

Tune in to see middle- and high-school teams showcase their inventions – cardboard bridges
capable of carrying up to 235 pounds (107 kilograms), in this year's Invention Challenge hosted
by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The live event will air on the "NASAJPL" channel available on Ustream TV at:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasajpl on Dec. 11 starting at 11:30 a.m. PST (2:30 p.m. EST and
1930 UTC).

Twenty student teams from throughout Southern California will watch to see if their bridges
remain standing as bricks get piled on. Ten teams of JPL engineers and scientists will also
compete in this friendly but challenging contest.

The bridges must meet certain requirements: they must be made of cardboard or paper products,
use reasonable amounts of glue, span a 1.2 meter (48 inch) gap, and be no more than 45.7
centimeters (18 inches) wide. The bridges must carry standard-sized bricks (between one and 44)
that weigh about 2.42 kilograms (5.35 pounds) each.

More information about the Invention Challenge is available at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/inventionchallenge/2009/ .

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is managed by the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena.

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What Are Your Summer Plans? Application Now Online for JPL High School Internships

What Are Your Summer Plans? Application Now Online for JPL High School Internships

Believe it or not, it's time to start thinking about summer internships. JPL is looking for a few highly
motivated high school students who have a strong interest in and aptitude for science, technology, engineering and/or math.

One of the main objectives of the JPL Summer High School Internship Program (JPL SpaceSHIP) is to
encourage pre-college students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the science and engineering fields.
JPL SpaceSHIP runs for eight weeks during the summer of 2010. Applicants must be at least 16 when the program starts.
They must also live within a 50-mile radius of JPL, which is located in Pasadena, Calif., and have a 3.0 GPA.

Here are some examples of projects SpaceSHIP students worked on last summer:

- Developed strategies for social media Web sites

JPL missions and projects want to be part of social media too. Students worked with a variety of projects to create plans
for connecting with the public on social media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

- Worked with databases and software

Several students tested and evaluated database systems. Another participant helped develop procedures for software testing.

- Evaluated and updated data and computer models

Some students analyzed and classified science data. Others updated models for a future spacecraft's flight path.

Each student has a mentor -- a NASA/JPL scientist, engineer or staff member who provides guidance about the project and answers
questions about careers in science and engineering.

For more details about this opportunity, please visit http://jplspaceship.jpl.nasa.gov.

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WISE Mission: Teacher Resources and Upcoming Teacher Workshop

Save the Date: Educator Workshop


JPL and the WISE Project will be conducting an educator workshop at JPL on Saturday, January 23, 2010. Space will be limited so save the date. Additional details will soon be sent to this mailing list and posted on the JPL Education Gateway (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education)) and at the WISE Education & Outreach page ( http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/education_workshop.html (http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/education_workshop.html)).

Get 'WISE' About Teaching Infrared

By Art Hammon

Art Hammon develops NASA/JPL resources for K - 12 schools that focus on space exploration, science and mathematics. Before working at JPL, Art was a middle and high school science teacher for 25 years in New Hampshire.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, is scheduled to launch into space in December 2009 on a mission to use its infrared telescope to survey the entire sky. This means the mission will use heat given off by objects in space to "see" them.

The WISE mission is expected to find a wide range of as-yet undetected objects in our solar system and beyond. This should include about 100,000 new asteroids in the main asteroid belt; hundreds of near-Earth objects (comets or asteroids whose orbits take them relatively close to Earth); cool stars; planet-building disks in the Milky Way galaxy; and the universe's most luminous galaxies.

Teaching Resources:
A good way to bring a cool mission like WISE into the classroom is to focus on how we use infrared to study the universe.

Kindergarten - 3rd Grade
Infrared Zoo
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/index.html (http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/image_galleries/ir_zoo/index.html)
See animals by the heat they give off. Follow that with the Space Place activity below that shows infrared pictures.

Space Place Infrared Images
http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/sirtf1/sirtf_action.shtml (http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/sirtf1/sirtf_action.shtml) and http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/aster_do1.shtml (http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/aster_do1.shtml )
Young children's activities about infrared light.

Infrared Hide-and-Seek
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_games/hide_seek/index.html (http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_games/hide_seek/index.html)
This activity is just for fun for younger children.

5th - 8th Grades
The Herschel Infrared Experiment
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/classroom_activities/herschel_example.html (http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_classroom/classroom_activities/herschel_example.html)
The Herschel Experiment was a famous example of early research that revealed the complex nature of light.

SOFIA Mission: Active Astronomy Guide
http://www.sofia.usra.edu/Edu/materials/activeAstronomy/activeAstronomy.html (http://www.sofia.usra.edu/Edu/materials/activeAstronomy/activeAstronomy.html)
Several downloadable guides explain the role of infrared light in astronomy and provide classroom activities that demonstrate how infrared light works.

What Is It?
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_games/what/img1.html (http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_games/what/img1.html)
Just for fun!

Spectroscopy Game
http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_games/spectra/ (http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_games/spectra/)
Although the WISE mission will not use spectroscopy to study stars in the infrared, this activity shows how different light waves from stars -- including infrared -- can help astronomers identify features or chemical compositions of the star without having to travel to the star.

9th - 12th Grades
SOFIA Mission: Active Astronomy Guide
http://www.sofia.usra.edu/Edu/materials/activeAstronomy/activeAstronomy.html (http://www.sofia.usra.edu/Edu/materials/activeAstronomy/activeAstronomy.html)
Several downloadable guides explain the role of infrared light in astronomy and provide classroom activities that demonstrate how infrared light works.

MultiWavelength Milky Way
http://mwmw.gsfc.nasa.gov/ (http://mwmw.gsfc.nasa.gov/)
This Web site brings together several sets of image data of the Milky Way galaxy in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some tutorial pages explain the nature of light, the structure of the Milky Way and how maps of the Milky Way are made from Earth.

Be sure to visit the mission Web sites for details on these exciting mission elements.
http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/ (http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/)
www.nasa.gov/wise (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html)
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise)



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Scientists Explain Puzzling Lake Asymmetry on Titan

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

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

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

News release: 2009-180 Nov. 30, 2009

Scientists Explain Puzzling Lake Asymmetry on Titan

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-180&cid=release_2009-180

PASADENA, Calif. -- Researchers at the California Institute of Technology, NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, and other institutions suggest that the eccentricity of Saturn's orbit around the sun may be
responsible for the unusually uneven distribution of lakes over the northern and southern polar regions of
the planet's largest moon, Titan. A paper describing the theory appears in the Nov. 29 advance online
edition of Nature Geoscience.

Saturn's oblong orbit around the sun exposes different parts of Titan to different amounts of sunlight,
which affect cycles of precipitation and evaporation in those areas. Similar variations in Earth's orbit also
drive long-term ice-age cycles on our planet.

As revealed by Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, liquid methane
and ethane lakes in Titan's northern high latitudes cover 20 times more area than lakes in the southern
high latitudes. The Cassini data also show there are significantly more partially filled and now-empty
lakes in the north. (In the radar data, smooth features -- like the surfaces of lakes -- appear as dark areas,
while rougher features -- such as the bottom of an empty lake—appear bright.) The asymmetry is not
likely to be a statistical fluke because of the large amount of data collected by Cassini in its five years
surveying Saturn and its moons.

Scientists initially considered the idea that "there is something inherently different about the northern
polar region versus the south in terms of topography, such that liquid rains, drains or infiltrates the
ground more in one hemisphere," said Oded Aharonson of Caltech, lead author of the Nature
Geoscience paper.

However, Aharonson notes that there are no substantial known differences between the north and south
regions to support this possibility. Alternatively, the mechanism responsible for this regional dichotomy
may be seasonal. One year on Titan lasts 29.5 Earth years. Every 15 Earth years, the seasons of Titan
reverse, so that it becomes summer in one hemisphere and winter in the other. According to this seasonal
variation hypothesis, methane rainfall and evaporation vary in different seasons -- recently filling lakes in
the north while drying lakes in the south.

The problem with this idea, Aharonson said, is that it accounts for decreases of about one meter per year
in the depths of lakes in the summer hemisphere. But Titan's lakes are a few hundred meters deep on
average, and wouldn't drain (or fill) in just 15 years. In addition, seasonal variation can't account for the
disparity between the hemispheres in the number of empty lakes. The north polar region has roughly
three times as many dried-up lake basins as the south and seven times as many partially filled ones.

"How do you move the hole in the ground?" Aharonson asked. "The seasonal mechanism may be
responsible for part of the global transport of liquid methane, but it's not the whole story." A more
plausible explanation, say Aharonson and his colleagues, is related to the eccentricity of the orbit of
Saturn -- and hence of Titan, its satellite -- around the sun.

Like Earth and other planets, Saturn's orbit is not perfectly circular, but is instead somewhat elliptical
and oblique. Because of this, during its southern summer, Titan is about 12 percent closer to the sun than
during the northern summer. As a result, northern summers are long and subdued; southern summers are
short and intense.

"We propose that, in this orbital configuration, the difference between evaporation and precipitation is
not equal in opposite seasons, which means there is a net transport of methane from south to north," said
Aharonson. This imbalance would lead to an accumulation of methane -- and hence the formation of
many more lakes -- in the northern hemisphere.

This situation is only true right now, however. Over very long time scales of tens of thousands of years,
Saturn's orbital parameters vary, at times causing Titan to be closer to the sun during its northern summer
and farther away in southern summers, and producing a reverse in the net transport of methane. This
should lead to a buildup of hydrocarbon -- and an abundance of lakes -- in the southern hemisphere.

"Like Earth, Titan has tens-of-thousands-of-year variations in climate driven by orbital motions,"
Aharonson said. On Earth, these variations, known as Milankovitch cycles, are linked to changes in solar
radiation, which affect global redistribution of water in the form of glaciers, and are believed to be
responsible for ice-age cycles. "On Titan, there are long-term climate cycles in the global movement of
methane that make lakes and carve lake basins. In both cases we find a record of the process embedded
in the geology," he added.

"We may have found an example of long-term climate change, analogous to Milankovitch climate cycles
on Earth, on another object in the solar system," he said.

The paper's co-authors are Caltech graduate student Alexander G. Hayes; Jonathan I. Lunine, Lunar and
Planetary Laboratory, Tucson, Ariz.; Ralph D. Lorenz, Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins
University, Laurel, Md.; Michael D. Allison, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York;
and Charles Elachi, director of JPL. The work was partially funded by the Cassini Project.

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

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