JPL to Host High-Tech Conference for Small Business

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

Rhea R. Borja 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Rhea.R.Borja@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-013 Jan. 29, 2009

JPL to Host High-Tech Conference for Small Business

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will host the 21st Annual
High-Tech Conference for Small Business on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 3 and 4, at the Westin
Los Angeles Airport hotel.

The two-day conference will focus on subcontracting and marketing opportunities for small, minority,
women-owned and veteran-owned businesses in high-tech industries. It includes several "how-to"
workshops featuring information on major programs, small business initiatives and other topics.

Approximately 1,200 participants attend this yearly event, where they have the chance to meet with
some 250 corporate, federal, state and city government representatives to discuss potential contracting
and subcontracting opportunities. One-on-one counseling to discuss potential business opportunities is
available with more than 100 exhibitors. Participating agencies include NASA centers, the U.S.
Department of Defense, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

There is no fee to exhibit. However, due to space limitations, exhibitors are limited to large businesses,
prime contractors and government agencies. For exhibit information, contact Jasmine Colbert at 818-
354-8689.

A registration fee of $140 per person is due no later than Feb. 6. The fee includes networking
receptions, some meals and program materials. Pre-registration is advised.

More information on the conference and online registration is available at:
http://acquisition.jpl.nasa.gov/boo/2009ht/index.asp

For registration or conference questions, please contact Andrea Acosta at andrea.e.acosta@jpl.nasa.gov
or 818-354-7531.

The Westin Los Angeles Airport hotel is located at 5400 West Century Blvd., Los Angeles. Hotel
reservations should be made, if needed, by Feb. 6. at:
http://www.starwoodmeeting.com/StarGroupsWeb/booking/reservation?id=0812132929&key=720C3

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

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NASA Mission to Help Unravel Key Carbon, Climate Mysteries

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: 2008-012 Jan. 29, 2009

NASA Mission to Help Unravel Key Carbon, Climate Mysteries

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide
is in final preparations for a Feb. 23 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Carbon dioxide is the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's
climate.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will provide the first complete picture of human and natural
carbon dioxide sources as well as their "sinks," the places where carbon dioxide is pulled out of
the atmosphere and stored. It will map the global geographic distribution of these sources and
sinks and study their changes over time. The measurements will be combined with data from
ground stations, aircraft and other satellites to help answer questions about the processes that
regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide and its role in Earth's climate and carbon cycle.

Mission data will help scientists reduce uncertainties in predicting future carbon dioxide
increases and make more accurate climate change predictions. Policymakers and business
leaders can use the data to make more informed decisions that improve the quality of life on
Earth.

"It's critical that we understand the processes controlling carbon dioxide in our atmosphere today
so we can predict how fast it will build up in the future and how quickly we'll have to adapt to
climate change caused by carbon dioxide buildup," said David Crisp, principal investigator for
the Orbiting Carbon Observatory at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"The Orbiting Carbon Observatory's carbon dioxide measurements will be pivotal in advancing
our knowledge of virtually all Earth system land, atmosphere, and ocean processes," said
Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington. "They will play
crucial roles in refining our knowledge of climate forcings and Earth's response processes."

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is determined by the balance between its
sources and the sinks where it is absorbed on land and in the ocean. Human activities,
particularly fossil fuel burning and deforestation, have upset Earth's carbon cycle balance. Since
the Industrial Revolution began in 1750, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from about
280 parts per million to about 385 parts per million. Climate models indicate increased
greenhouse gases have been the primary driver of Earth's increasing surface temperature.

Of all the carbon humans have added to Earth's atmosphere since the start of the Industrial
Revolution, only about 40 percent has remained in Earth's atmosphere. About half of the
remaining 60 percent can be accounted for in Earth's ocean. The rest must have been absorbed
somewhere on land, but scientists cannot yet determine specifically where this is taking place or
what controls the efficiency of these land sinks. Scientists refer to this as the "missing" carbon
sink.

The new observatory will dramatically improve global carbon dioxide measurements, collecting
about 8 million measurements every 16 days for at least two years with the precision, resolution
and coverage needed to characterize carbon dioxide's global distribution. Scientists need these
precise measurements because carbon dioxide varies by just 10 parts per million throughout the
year on regional to continental scales.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory's three high-resolution spectrometers spread reflected sunlight
into its various colors like a prism. Each spectrometer focuses on a different, narrow color range,
detecting light with the specific colors absorbed by carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen. The
less carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere, the more light the spectrometers detect. By
analyzing the amount of light, scientists can determine relative concentrations of these
chemicals. The data will then be input into computer models of the global atmosphere to quantify
carbon dioxide sources and sinks.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will be launched on a Taurus XL rocket into a 438-mile near-
polar orbit. It will lead five other NASA satellites that cross the equator each day shortly after
noon, making a wide range of nearly simultaneous Earth observations.

For more information about the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/oco .

JPL manages the Orbiting Carbon Observatory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., built the spacecraft and the Taurus XL rocket and
provides mission operations under JPL leadership. NASA's Launch Services Program at
NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., leads launch and countdown management.

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Mars Rover Team Diagnosing Unexpected Behavior

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. January 28, 2009
Guy.Webster@jpl.nasa.gov

MARS EXPLORATION ROVER MISSION STATUS REPORT

Mars Rover Team Diagnosing Unexpected Behavior

CORRECTION: In paragraph 3--Early Tuesday, Spirit reported that it had followed
the commands, and in fact had located the sun, but not in its expected location.

PASADENA, Calif. - The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit plans
diagnostic tests this week after Spirit did not report some of its weekend activities, including
a request to determine its orientation after an incomplete drive.

On Sunday, during the 1,800th Martian day, or sol, of what was initially planned as a 90-sol
mission on Mars, information radioed from Spirit indicated the rover had received its driving
commands for the day but had not moved. That can happen for many reasons, including the
rover properly sensing that it is not ready to drive. However, other behavior on Sol 1800 was
even more unusual: Spirit apparently did not record the day's main activities into the non-
volatile memory, the part of its memory that persists even when power is off.

On Monday, Spirit's controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
chose to command the rover on Tuesday, Sol 1802, to find the sun with its camera in order to
precisely determine its orientation. Not knowing its orientation could have been one possible
explanation for Spirit not doing its weekend drive. Early Tuesday, Spirit reported that it had
followed the commands, and in fact had located the sun, but not in its expected location.

"We don't have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few
days," said JPL's Sharon Laubach, chief of the team that writes and checks commands for the
rovers. "Our next steps will be diagnostic activities."

Among other possible causes, the team is considering a hypothesis of transitory effects from
cosmic rays hitting electronics. On Tuesday, Spirit apparently used its non-volatile memory
properly.

Despite the rover's unexplained behavior, Mars Exploration Rovers' Project Manager John
Callas of JPL said Wednesday, "Right now, Spirit is under normal sequence control, reporting
good health and responsive to commands from the ground."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars
Exploration Rover project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Spirit and
its twin, Opportunity, landed on Mars in January 2004 and have operated 20 times longer than
their original prime missions.

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Mars Rover Team Diagnosing Unexpected Behavior

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. January 28, 2009
Guy.Webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status Report

Mars Rover Team Diagnosing Unexpected Behavior

PASADENA, Calif. - The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit
plans diagnostic tests this week after Spirit did not report some of its
weekend activities, including a request to determine its orientation
after an incomplete drive.

On Sunday, during the 1,800th Martian day, or sol, of what was initially
planned as a 90-sol mission on Mars, information radioed from Spirit indicated
the rover had received its driving commands for the day but had not moved. That
can happen for many reasons, including the rover properly sensing that it is not
ready to drive. However, other behavior on Sol 1800 was even more unusual: Spirit
apparently did not record the day's main activities into the non-volatile memory,
the part of its memory that persists even when power is off.

On Monday, Spirit's controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,
chose to command the rover on Tuesday, Sol 1802, to find the sun with its camera in
order to precisely determine its orientation. Not knowing its orientation could have
been one possible explanation for Spirit not doing its weekend drive. Early Tuesday,
Spirit reported that it had tried to follow the commands, but had not located the sun.

"We don't have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past
few days," said JPL's Sharon Laubach, chief of the team that writes and checks commands
for the rovers. "Our next steps will be diagnostic activities."

Among other possible causes, the team is considering a hypothesis of transitory effects
from cosmic rays hitting electronics. On Tuesday, Spirit apparently used its non-volatile
memory properly.

Despite the rover's unexplained behavior, Mars Exploration Rovers' Project Manager John
Callas of JPL said Wednesday, "Right now, Spirit is under normal sequence control,
reporting good health and responsive to commands from the ground."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars
Exploration Rover project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Spirit
and its twin, Opportunity, landed on Mars in January 2004 and have operated 20 times
longer than their original prime missions.

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Astronomers Observe Planet With Wild Temperature Swings

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

D.C. Agle/Whitney Clavin 818-393-9011/354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
agle@jpl.nasa.gov/whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-010 Jan. 28, 2009

Astronomers Observe Planet With Wild Temperature Swings

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has observed a planet that heats up to
red-hot temperatures in a matter of hours before quickly cooling back down.

The "hot-headed" planet is HD 80606b, a gas giant that orbits a star 190 light-years from Earth.
It was already known to be quite unusual, with an orbit shuttling it nearly as far out as Earth is
from our sun, and much closer in than our planet Mercury. Astronomers used Spitzer, an infrared
observatory, to measure heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star.
In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees
Fahrenheit).

"We watched the development of one of the fiercest storms in the galaxy," said astronomer Greg
Laughlin of the Lick Observatory, University of California at Santa Cruz. "This is the first time
that we've detected weather changes in real time on a planet outside our solar system." Laughlin
is lead author of a new report about the discovery appearing in the Jan. 29 issue of Nature.

HD 80606b was originally discovered in 2001 by a Swiss planet-hunting team led by Dominique
Naef of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. Using a method known as the Doppler-velocity
technique, the astronomers learned that the planet is wildly eccentric, with an orbit more like a
comet's than a planet's. HD 80606b's orbit takes it as far out as 0.85 astronomical units from its
star, and as close in as 0.03 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance between
Earth and the sun).

The planet takes about 111 days to circle its star, but it spends most of its time at farther
distances while zipping through the closest part of its orbit in less than a day. (This is a
consequence of Kepler's Second Law of Planetary Motion, which states that orbiting bodies --
planets and comets -- sweep out an equal area in equal time.)

"If you could float above the clouds of this planet, you'd see its sun growing larger and larger at
faster and faster rates, increasing in brightness by almost a factor of 1,000," said Laughlin.

Spitzer observed HD 80606b before, during and just after its closest passage to the star in
November of 2007, as the planet sizzled under the star's heat. When Laughlin and his colleagues
planned the observation, they did not know whether the planet would disappear completely
behind the star, an event called a secondary eclipse, or whether it would remain in view. Luckily
for the team, the planet did indeed temporarily disappear from view, providing the planet's initial
and final temperatures (had the planet had not been eclipsed, the team would have known only
the temperature change without knowing the starting point).

The extreme temperature swing observed by Spitzer indicates that the air near the planet's
gaseous surface must quickly absorb and lose heat. This type of atmospheric information
revealing how a planet responds to sudden changes in heating -- an extreme version of seasonal
change -- had never been obtained before for any exoplanet (a planet orbiting another star).

"By studying this planet under such extreme circumstances, we figure out how it handles heat --
does it retain it or dissipate it? In this case, the answer is that the planet releases the heat right
away," said Laughlin. "We were essentially able to perform the 'thought experiment' -- what
would happen to a planet like Jupiter if we could drag it very close to the sun?"

Laughlin and his colleagues say that a key factor in being able to make the observations is the
planet's eccentric orbit. Unlike so-called hot Jupiter planets that remain in tight orbits around their
stars, HD 80606b rotates around its axis roughly every 34 hours. Hot Jupiters, on the other hand,
are thought to be tidally locked like our moon, so one side always faces their stars. Because HD
80606b spins on its axis many times per orbit, the astronomers were able to measure how its
atmosphere responds to being baked by the star.

"The planet is spinning at a fast enough rate for the planet's hot spot to come into view," said co-
author Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The hot spot
can't hide."

Amateur and professional astronomers alike are gearing up to observe HD 80606b this coming
Valentine's Day, when it will swing around the front of its star. There's a 15 percent chance that
the planet will eclipse its star, an event known as the primary transit. If so, the event would not
only be remarkable to see, but would also provide more details about the nature of this
temperamental world.

Other authors include Jonathan Langton, Daniel Kasen, Steve Vogt, Eugenio Rivera and Stefano
Meschiari from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie
Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Washington. 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. More information
about extrasolar planets is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

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The Orbiting Carbon Observatory and the Mystery of the Missing Sinks

Feature January 23, 2009

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory and the Mystery of the Missing Sinks


Picture a tree in the forest. The tree "inhales" carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, transforming that
greenhouse gas into the building materials and energy it needs to grow its branches and leaves.

By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the tree serves as an indispensable "sink," or
warehouse, for carbon that, in tandem with Earth's other trees, plants and the ocean, helps reduce
rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air that contribute to global warming.

Each year, humans release more than 30-billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through
the burning of fossil fuels for powering vehicles, generating electricity and manufacturing products.
Up to five-and-a-half additional tons of carbon dioxide are released each year by biomass burning,
forest fires and land-use practices such as slash-and-burn agriculture. Between 40 and 50 percent
of that amount remains in the atmosphere, according to measurements by about 100 ground-based
carbon dioxide monitoring stations scattered across the globe. Another estimated 30 percent is
dissolved into the ocean, the world's largest sink.

But what about the rest? The math doesn't add up. For years, scientists have sought to find the
answer to this mystery. Though scientists agree the remaining carbon dioxide is also "inhaled" by
Earth, they have been unable to precisely determine where it is going, what processes are involved,
and whether Earth will continue to absorb it in the future. A new NASA satellite scheduled to launch
in February 2009 is poised to shed a very bright light on these "missing" sinks: the Orbiting Carbon
Observatory.

"It's important to make clear that the 'missing' sinks aren't really missing, they are just poorly
understood," said Scott Denning, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State University
in Fort Collins, Colo. "We know the 'missing' sinks are terrestrial, land areas where forests,
grasslands, crops and soil are absorbing carbon dioxide. But finding these sinks is like finding a
needle in a haystack. It would be great if we could measure how much carbon every tree, shrub,
peat bog or blade of grass takes in, but the world is too big and too diverse and is constantly
changing, making such measurements virtually impossible. The solution is not in measuring
carbon in trees. The solution is measuring carbon in the air."

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will do just that: measure carbon in the air, from Earth's surface to
the top of the atmosphere.

"NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite will work as a detective from space, measuring the
distribution of carbon dioxide thousands of times daily as it orbits the planet, providing the data to
create very precise carbon dioxide maps that will help us confirm the whereabouts, nature and
efficiency of the sinks absorbing the 30 percent of carbon dioxide that disappears each year from
the atmosphere," said Steve Wofsy, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at
Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and a co-investigator for the mission.

Carbon, a chemical element that is the basis of all known life and part of the chemical compound
carbon dioxide, is the basic "currency" of the carbon cycle. It is "inhaled" by sinks to fuel
photosynthesis in plant life. It is "exhaled" by natural sources when plant life dies or burns, and
through human activities like the burning of fossil fuels, crops and forests.

If we think of Earth as "breathing," the balance between photosynthesis, or "inhaling," and
respiration, or "exhaling," was about equal until humans began mining and burning large amounts
of fossilized organic matter like coal, oil and natural gas a couple of hundred years ago.

Until about 1990, most scientists believed land was primarily a source of carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere because forests are continuously being destroyed by human activities like deforestation
in tropical areas, urban and suburban development, and land clearing for farming.

"The amazing truth is that on a global scale, photosynthesis is greater than decomposition and has
been for decades," said Denning. "Believe it or not, plant life is growing faster than it's dying. This
means land is a net sink for carbon dioxide, rather than a net source."

Denning outlined the six different ways carbon dioxide sinks can develop on land:

* Carbon dioxide fertilization, a process often prominent in land areas, happens when more
carbon dioxide in the air stimulates photosynthesis to produce a temporary "bump" in the
growth rates of plant life.
* Agricultural abandonment occurs where once-deforested land formerly used as family farms
is abandoned, allowing forests to re-grow into terrestrial carbon dioxide sinks.
* Forest fire suppression, the aggressive extinguishing of forest fires that has led to
preservation of more wooded areas than existed 100 years ago, saves trees that pull carbon
dioxide from the air for growth.
* Woody encroachment occurs when cattle graze on grass but leave behind carbon dioxide-
absorbing woody shrubs that accumulate over land ranges throughout the western U.S. and
elsewhere.
* Boreal, or northern, warming takes place in northern latitude forests that are experiencing
longer frost-free growing seasons due to global warming, allowing more woody growth and
more absorption of carbon dioxide.
* Lastly, carbon dioxide sinks are created when nitrogen in agricultural fertilizer or nitrogen
oxide from car emissions dissolves into clouds, spreads for hundreds of miles on vegetation
with rainfall, and acts in tandem with carbon dioxide fertilization to accelerate plant growth.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will help scientists locate and characterize areas experiencing
these biological processes.

"The future behavior of carbon dioxide sinks is one of the most uncertain things in predicting
climate in the 21st century," said Denning. "Mapping today's sinks will allow us to measure how
much of the carbon budget is controlled by carbon dioxide intake from ocean mixing, versus carbon
dioxide fertilization, versus forest re-growth, etc. If we can determine that current land sinks are
dominated by carbon dioxide fertilization, it would buy us more time to develop alternative energy
and other mitigation measures."

Past attempts by researchers to measure terrestrial carbon dioxide were limited by an inability to
account for the different ages of forests or how disturbances to the forests have affected their ability
to absorb carbon dioxide. Similar attempts to measure carbon dioxide in human-managed
ecosystems like cropland, pastures, golf courses and suburban landscapes are also difficult
because such areas are so varied and numerous.

"We're expecting the Orbiting Carbon Observatory to allow us to identify the precise geographic
locations of these 'missing' carbon dioxide-absorbing areas as well as the make-up of the sinks and
the rate at which they soak up carbon dioxide," said Wofsy. "The efficiency of a sink and its location
with respect to that of sources emitting carbon dioxide has critical implications for our ability to
regulate carbon dioxide in global efforts to offset the well-documented global climate warming trend.
We're anticipating a big step forward on this front with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory's help."

For more information on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/oco .

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Deadline Nears for Student Contest to Name NASA's Next Mars Rover

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: 2009-007 January 16, 2009

Deadline Nears for Student Contest to Name NASA's Next Mars Rover

WASHINGTON -- NASA is issuing a last call to the nation's youth for entries in a contest to name
the agency's next Mars rover.

The naming contest, in partnership with Disney-Pixar's WALL-E, invites ideas from students 5 to 18
years old and enrolled in a U.S. school. The contest began two months ago. Entries will be accepted
until midnight Jan. 25 (Eastern Time).

Entrants should submit essays explaining why their suggested name for the rover is the right fit. In
March, the public will have an opportunity to rank nine finalist names via the Internet as additional
input for judges to consider. In April, NASA will announce the winning name.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover will be larger and more capable than any craft previously sent to
land on the Red Planet. The rover will check to see whether the environment in a selected landing
region ever has been favorable for supporting microbial life and preserving evidence of life. The
rover also will search for minerals that formed in the presence of water and look for several chemical
building blocks of life. NASA is currently building and testing the rover, which will launch in 2011.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Science Laboratory for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For contest information and rules visit: http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Socializing on Mars

Feature January 15, 2009


Socializing on Mars


After five groundbreaking years exploring the Red Planet, the communications engineers
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory pretty much know what they are getting when
another downlink from Spirit or Opportunity arrives. They know that with a typical
transmission comes about 10 megabits of engineering data, another 4 megabits of science
data, and around 26 megabits of images. They also realize that after the information is
amassed and analyzed by the rovers' science teams that the most unique, scientifically
exciting of that compiled data will be released via peer-reviewed papers, articles, science
briefings and press releases.

To date, literally thousands of rover images have been analyzed and discussed in detail.
But the rovers have sent back about a quarter-million images. NASA decided this
incongruity could be best addressed by making every single Mars rover image available
to all who were interested -- and had Internet access.

Access to all that imagery brought the thrill of exploration to people around the world in
a way never envisioned before the rovers began to roam the Red Planet. Now, the Mars
Exploration Rovers have new life on the likes of "Second Life," "YouTube," online
forums like "Unmannedspaceflight.com," and the social networking site "Facebook."

Like the majority of college students today, Keri Bean knows the ins and outs of
Facebook. But the Texas A&M student did her Earth-based socializing peers one planet
better when she opened a page for the Mars Rovers. "If I had to chose, I would say I like
Spirit better," said the 20 year-old meteorology major from College Station, Texas. "She's
had to work for everything. Opportunity gets a major discovery handed to her by landing
nearly on top of it, but Spirit's had to work hard for everything she gets."

Bean started her Mars Rovers Facebook page to keep a few of her friends in the loop on
what's happening up there on the Red Planet. She populated it with rover information and
updates when she could find time. To her surprise, the rovers' friends list began to grow
well beyond her goal of "a few friends." Then one day, she got a new friend that changed
everything.

"Steve Squyres, the scientist in charge of both of the rovers, messaged me and said he
liked my site," said Bean. "I knew then I had to get serious."

Bean and the Mars Rovers now have almost 1,700 online friends from as far away as
Norway and New Zealand. Her (or their, depending how you look at it), page includes
links to interesting articles about the rovers, images, sometimes a heads-up about
upcoming documentaries and even some first-person dialogue between Mars' roving
twosome.

"I do not have a lot of time this semester, but I try to check it once a day," said Bean. "It
is all about reaching out to people who would normally not pay attention."

If Bean's Facebook page is for those with short Martian attention spans, Doug Ellison of
the United Kingdom has put together a Web site for those with an insatiable appetite.
Ellison has been interested in the Red Planet ever since NASA/JPL's first scrappy Mars
rover, Pathfinder, roved the Martian surface back in 1997.

"Mars grabbed me in an unhealthy way," quipped Ellison, the United Kingdom-based
Web czar of unmannedspaceflight.com. "Just on the fringe of acceptable."

In those days, Ellison was reading everything he could on the journey of Pathfinder.
Then, in February 2004, while Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity were still under
factory warranty, and after his day job, Ellison used imaging software to "stitch" his first
Mars panorama from a collection of raw images from the JPL Web site:
(http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/).

Like Bean, Ellison had "no ambition or expectation" other than impressing himself and a
few friends. But then a few more friends took an interest in his nascent Web site, and
then a few more. Ellison's site -- unmannedspaceflight.com -- was slowly being colonized
with people with a serious jonesing for all things deep in deep space exploration.

"Our membership includes a care worker for the elderly here in the U.K. to a teacher in
North Wales to a government employee in California," said Ellison. "In London, I
recently met for the first time someone I had known through the Web site for four years.
There were no "getting to know you" pleasantries. Straight off the bat it was right into a
detailed, in-depth, insightful discussion about something ridiculously space-geeky."

Online discussions of spacecraft and mission science are only a small part of
unmannedspaceflight.com's allure to the truly space geeky. The majority of the site, and
its appeal, is dedicated to those stark and beautiful and sometimes puzzling images
coming down from Spirit and Opportunity each and every day.

"Our members share results from stitching together rover images and working with those
images," said Ellison. "Say Opportunity does a long drive. We download those pictures
from the rover Web site. Somebody will make a mosaic from the imagery taken at the
end of the drive. Somebody else will keep the route map up to date to show where
Opportunity has been. Somebody else will then stitch together the next mosaic and have
the full mosaic all together and then keep track of what the following day's activities are
going to be."

All this pro-bono, unofficial fine-tuning of rover imagery by the members of the
unmannedspaceflight.com forum has been recognized by some very official members of
the aerospace and science media. Their work has made the cover of Aviation Week and
Space Technology and Spaceflight and even been featured in NASA's own "Astronomy
Picture of the Day" Web site: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ .

As proud as Ellison is of his site's contributions to promoting the rovers and their stories,
he is just as proud about how they can band together to police some of the more
inimitable Mars storylines. With over 1,700 forum contributors surfing the internet, Mars
stories that seem a little -- or a lot -- out of whack, are quickly identified. Like the one
where numerous major media outlets began discussing the possibility of a Martian
Sasquatch making an unscheduled appearance in a Spirit image.

"We took the story and quickly ripped it apart just by using the facts," said Ellison.
"Some members worked out how far the "Sasquatch" was from the rover when the image
was taken and calculated it was about the size of a packet of cigarettes. One of our
posters did a brilliant job of taking the mosaic that the image came from and
demonstrating how so many of the rocks in it could appear to look like something else."

Of course, not all Mars rover imagery that makes its way into the public consciousness is
meant to be taken seriously (we think). Like Madison Avenue's pitch for an adult
beverage that puts a new angle on the search for life in our solar system -- available for
viewing on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_iPvUWyzhE. Or a brace of
commercials where both Mars rovers and their mission controllers meet their intellectual
superiors on the Martian surface, also available for viewing on YouTube at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvY9vMAMxc4 and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYzM1M1X790&feature=PlayList&p=74F444229E
B256C3&playnext=1&index=98 . Or the hilarious "Mars: 2020: Springtime" (link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0 ) where multiple aspiring Mars landers
meet an ignominious fate, much to the chagrin of local residents.

"Like any travel adventure, a big part of the fun is sharing the experience with family and
friends back home," said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager at JPL.
"For five years now, it has been very rewarding to see the fascination -- and the love --
for the rovers that runs deep and knows no international boundaries. And as many ways
as we can find to share the experience of exploring Mars, we now know that many out in
the general public will find even more ways to enrich the whole experience for
everyone."

The story could end here, but this is about how those outside of NASA have managed to
place Mars within their own sphere of influence. So in conclusion, the words of someone
who took Mars and ran with it.

"People like me get to see a little bit of Mars that no one has ever seen before," said
Ellison. "The downlink of the imagery from the rovers is an entirely automated process.
So, it might be 2 a.m. in Pasadena (home of JPL) when images come down but it is
lunchtime here. I can see the images before the scientists do. To be able to ride along
every single day on that adventure, sometimes you have to kind of shake your head in
disbelief that you are seeing something that nobody has ever seen before."

For more information about NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, visit us on the web at:
http://marsrovers.nasa..gov/home/ .

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The Human Factor: Understanding the Sources of Rising Carbon Dioxide

Feature January 13, 2009



Every time we get into our car, turn the key and drive somewhere, we burn gasoline, a
fossil fuel derived from crude oil. The burning of the organic materials in fossil fuels
produces energy and releases carbon dioxide and other compounds into Earth's
atmosphere. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap heat in our atmosphere,
warming it and disturbing Earth's climate.

Scientists agree that human activities have been the primary source for the observed rise
in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the beginning of the fossil fuel era in the 1860s.
Eighty-five percent of all human-produced carbon dioxide emissions come from the
burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil, including gasoline. The remainder
results from the clearing of forests and other land use, as well as some industrial
processes such as cement manufacturing. The use of fossil fuels has grown rapidly,
especially since the end of World War II and continues to increase exponentially. In fact,
more than half of all fossil fuels ever used by humans have been consumed in just the last
20 years.

Human activities add a worldwide average of almost 1.4 metric tons of carbon per person
per year to the atmosphere. Before industrialization, the concentration of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million. By 1958, the concentration of carbon
dioxide had increased to around 315 parts per million, and by 2007, it had risen to about
383 parts per million. These increases were due almost entirely to human activity.

While we are able to accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,
much about the processes that govern its atmospheric concentration remains a mystery.
Scientists still do not know precisely where all the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere
comes from and where it goes. They want to learn more about the magnitudes and
distributions of carbon dioxide's sources and the places it is absorbed (sinks). This
knowledge will help improve critical forecasts of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases
as fossil fuel use and other human activities continue. Such information is crucial to
understanding the impact of human activities on climate and for evaluating options for
mitigating or adapting to climate change.

Scientists soon expect to get some answers to these and other compelling carbon
questions, thanks to the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a new Earth-orbiting NASA
satellite set to launch in early 2009. The new mission will allow scientists to record, for
the first time, detailed daily measurements of carbon dioxide, making more than 100,000
measurements around the world each day. The new data will provide valuable new
insights into where this important greenhouse gas is coming from and where it is being
stored.

Before humans began emitting significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere, the atmospheric uptake and loss of carbon dioxide was approximately in
balance. "Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere remained pretty stable during the pre-
industrial period," said Gregg Marland of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge,
Tenn. "Carbon dioxide generated by human activity amounts to only about four percent
of yearly atmospheric uptake or loss of carbon dioxide, but the result is that the
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been growing, on average, by
four-tenths of one percent each year for the last 40 years. Though this may not seem like
much of an influence, humans have essentially tipped the balance of the global cycling of
carbon. Our emissions add significant weight to one side of the balance between carbon
being added to the atmosphere and carbon being removed from the atmosphere.

"Plant life and geochemical processes on land and in the ocean 'inhale' large amounts of
carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then 'exhale' most of it back into the
atmosphere," Marland continued. "Humans, however, have altered the carbon cycle over
the last couple of centuries, through the burning of fossil fuels that enable us to live more
productively. Now that humans are acknowledging the environmental effects of our
dependence on fossil fuels and other carbon dioxide-emitting activities, our goal is to
analyze the sources and sinks of this carbon dioxide and to find better ways to manage
it."

Current estimates of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are
based on inventories and estimates of where fossil fuels are burned and where other
carbon dioxide-producing human activities are occurring. However, the availability and
precision of this information is not uniform around the world, not even from within
developed countries like the United States.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory's highly sensitive instrument will measure the
distribution of carbon dioxide, sampling information around the globe from its space-
based orbit. Though the instrument will not directly measure the carbon dioxide
emissions from every individual smokestack, tailpipe or forest fire, scientists will
incorporate the observatory's global measurements of varying carbon dioxide
concentrations into computer-based models. The models will infer where and when the
sources are emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"The Orbiting Carbon Observatory data differ from that of other missions like the
Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite by having a
relatively small measurement 'footprint,'" said Kevin Gurney, associate director of the
Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. "Rather
than getting an average amount of carbon dioxide over a large physical area like a state or
country, the mission will capture measurements over scales as small as a medium-sized
city. This allows it to more accurately distinguish movements of carbon dioxide from
natural sources versus from fossil fuel-based activities."

"Essentially, if you visualize a column of air that stretches from Earth's surface to the top
of the atmosphere, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory will identify how much of that
vertical column is carbon dioxide, with an understanding that most is emitted at the
surface," said Marland. "Simply, it will act like a plane observing the smoke from forest
fires down below, with the task of assessing where the fires are and how big they are.
Compare that aerial capability with sending a lot of people into the forest looking for
fires. In this vein, the observatory will use its vantage point from space to peer down and
capture a picture of where the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide are, rather than our
cobbling data together from multiple sources with less frequency, reliability and detail."

Gurney believes the Orbiting Carbon Observatory will also complement a NASA/U.S.
Department of Energy jointly-funded project he is currently leading called Vulcan.

"Vulcan estimates the movement of carbon dioxide through the combustion of fossil fuels
at very small scales. Vulcan and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory together will act like
partners in closing the carbon budget, with Vulcan estimating movements in the
atmosphere from the bottom-up and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory estimating sources
from the top-down," he said. "By tackling the problem from both perspectives, we'll stand
to achieve an independent, mutually-compatible view of the carbon cycle. And the insight
gained by combining these top-down and bottom-up approaches might take on special
significance in the near future as our policymakers consider options for regulating carbon
dioxide across the entire globe."

For more information on this topic, see: http://www.nasa.gov/oco and
http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Educator Events – Registration Deadlines Loom

Life in Extreme Environments Educator Conference

Join NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 24-25, 2009, for the Life in Extreme Environments Educator Conference. All educators (including museum staff) and students in high school or above who are interested in exploration, Earth and space science are encouraged to attend.

Astrobiologists, planetary scientists and astronomers will present the latest information on the expanding understanding of the habitats of life on Earth and the prospects for the development of life elsewhere in the solar system and much farther beyond. The conference content is generally nontechnical 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.

Pre-registration is required. The registration deadline for the conference is now Jan. 20, 2009.

For more information about this conference, visit http://education.jpl.nasa.gov/events/conference20090124.htm

If you have questions about the conference, please contact the JPL Education Office at 818-393-0561.


NASA Kepler Mission -- A Search for Habitable Planets Workshop
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jan. 31, 2009

Join Kepler Mission co-investigator Dr. Nick Gautier for an exciting day of science and hands-on activities for middle and high school teachers. This event will take place on Jan. 31, 2009, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, Calif. Dr. Gautier will discuss the science behind NASA's Kepler Mission. Participants will take part in standards-based, classroom-ready activities. Each participant will receive a complete transit model that includes a LEGO orrery, a Vernier light sensor, and interface and graphing software. A letter verifying eight hours of professional development can be provided.

Pre-registration is required. To learn more about this workshop, visit http://kepler.nasa.gov/ed/workshops.html. If you have questions about this workshop, please contact Cynthia Ramseyer at cramseyer@seti.org

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Multimedia Advisory: Watch, Listen and Celebrate Five Years on Mars

MULTIMEDIA ADVISORY Jan. 12, 2009

Watch, Listen and Celebrate Five Years on Mars

Five years after landing on Mars (in January 2004), the twin rovers, Spirit and
Opportunity, are still studying the Red Planet. They were originally planned as three-
month missions.

Catch up with the rovers via the following multimedia products:

* Rover team members, including the science principal investigator, Steve Squyres
of Cornell University, share the thrills and challenges in a video at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=795
* Rover Project Manager John Callas of JPL discusses the rovers' lives, longevity
and legacy at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/podcast/mer20090112.cfm

The intrepid rovers have made many discoveries about historically wet and violent
environments on ancient Mars. They have climbed a mountain, descended into craters,
struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more
than a quarter million pictures back to Earth.

A variety of Los Angeles-area public events are being held to mark the rovers' five-year
anniversary, including a lecture that will be streamed live. Information at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-04 .

A celebration at JPL on Thursday, Jan. 15, will be carried live on NASA TV. NASA TV
information is at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html .

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Public Events Mark Mars Rovers' Five-Year Anniversary

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/Rhea Borja 818-354-6278/0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov/rhea.r.borja@jpl.nasa.gov

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-004 January 12, 2009

Public Events Mark Mars Rovers' Five-Year Anniversary

PASADENA, Calif. -- Public events during the next two weeks will share the adventures of the still-
active NASA Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which landed five years ago this month on
missions originally scheduled to last three months.

Rover mission leaders will present free, illustrated talks Thursday, Jan. 15, and Friday, Jan. 16, in
Pasadena, with the Jan. 15 event streamed live online and archived for later viewing.

On Friday, Jan. 23, through Sunday, Jan. 25, rover team members will give a series of talks at Griffith
Observatory in Los Angeles. The observatory will also display a full-size Mars rover model, with
team members available to answer visitors' questions.

Since landing on opposite sides of Mars during January of 2004, Spirit and Opportunity have made
important discoveries about historically 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. Both rovers
remain operational for new exploration campaigns the team has planned.

The public presentations on Jan. 15 and 16, "Spirit and Opportunity: The Corps of Discovery for
Mars Rolls On," are part of the monthly von Kármán Lecture Series by NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator
for the science payloads on the rovers, will deliver the Jan. 15 talk in Beckman Auditorium on the
campus of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, on Michigan Avenue one block south of
Del Mar Avenue. JPL's John Callas, project manager for the rovers, will deliver the Jan. 16 talk in
Pasadena City College's Vosloh Forum, 1570 E. Colorado Ave.

Squyres and Callas will begin their presentations at 7 p.m. Admission is free, on a first-come, first-
seated basis. For more information about the lectures and the webcast of the Jan. 15 event, see
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures.cfm?year=2009&month=1 .

At Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, the full-size rover model will be on display in the Depths of
Space gallery Jan. 23 through Jan. 25, accompanied by rover team members from JPL. Talks about
topics such as how the team drives the rovers and what the rovers have revealed about Mars will be
presented in the observatory's Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater. These talks, by JPL rover-
team members Al Herrera, Scott Lever, Scott Maxwell, John Callas, Bruce Banerdt and Ashley
Stroupe, are scheduled for the following times: 7 p.m. on Jan. 23; 1:30 p.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Jan.
24; and 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Jan. 25.

For more information about visiting Griffith Observatory, see http://www.griffithobs.org/ .

JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for the NASA Science Mission
Directorate, Washington. More information about the rovers is at http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

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Hubble Finds Stars That 'Go Ballistic'

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

Donna Weaver /Ray Villard 410-338-4493 / 410-338-4514
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
dweaver@stsci.edu / villard@stsci.edu

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-002 Jan. 7, 2009

Hubble Finds Stars That 'Go Ballistic'

Some stars go ballistic, racing through interstellar space like bullets and tearing through
clouds of gas.

Images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, taken by Raghvendra Sahai of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and colleagues reveal 14 of these young,
runaway stars.

The stars are plowing through regions of dense interstellar gas, creating brilliant
arrowhead structures and trailing tails of glowing gas. These arrowheads, or bow shocks,
form when the stars' powerful stellar winds, streams of matter flowing from the stars,
slam into surrounding dense gas. The phenomenon is similar to that seen when a
speeding boat pushes through water on a lake.

"We think we have found a new class of bright, high-velocity stellar interlopers," said
Sahai. "Finding these stars is a complete surprise because we were not looking for them.
When I first saw the images, I said, 'Wow. This is like a bullet speeding through the
interstellar medium.' Hubble's sharp 'eye' reveals the structure and shape of these bow
shocks."

The astronomers can only estimate the ages, masses and velocities of these renegade
stars. The stars appear to be young -- just millions of years old. Their ages are based
partly on their strong stellar winds.

Most stars produce powerful winds either when they are very young or very old. Only
very massive stars greater than 10 times the sun's mass have stellar winds throughout
their lifetimes.

But the objects observed by Hubble are not very massive because they do not have
glowing clouds of ionized gas around them. They are medium-sized stars that are a few to
eight times more massive than the sun. The stars are not old because the shapes of the
nebulae around aging, dying stars are very different, and old stars are almost never found
near dense interstellar clouds.

Depending on their distance from Earth, the bullet-nosed bow shocks could be 100 billion
to a trillion miles wide (the equivalent of 17 to 170 solar system diameters, measured out
to Neptune's orbit). The bow shocks indicate that the stars are traveling fast, more than
180,000 kilometers an hour (more than 112,000 miles an hour) with respect to the dense
gas they are plowing through, which is roughly five times faster than typical young stars.

"The high-speed stars were likely kicked out of their homes, which were probably
massive star clusters," Sahai said.

There are two possible ways this stellar expulsion could have happened. One way is if
one star in a binary system exploded as a supernova and the partner got kicked out.
Another scenario is a collision between two binary-star systems or a binary system and a
third star. One or more of these stars could have picked up energy from the interaction
and escaped the cluster.

Assuming their youthful phase lasts only a million years and they are moving at roughly
180,000 kilometers an hour (about 112,000 mph), the stars have traveled about 160 light-
years.

Runaway stars have been seen before. The joint European-NASA Infrared Astronomical
Satellite, which performed an all-sky infrared survey in 1983, spied a few similar-looking
objects. The first observation of these objects was in the late 1980s. But those stars
produced much larger bow shocks than the stars in the Hubble study, suggesting that they
are more massive stars with more powerful stellar winds.

"The stars in our study are likely the lower-mass and/or lower-speed counterparts to the
massive stars with bow shocks detected by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite," Sahai
explained. "We think the massive runaway stars observed before were just the tip of the
iceberg. The stars seen with Hubble may represent the bulk of the population, both
because many more lower-mass stars inhabit the universe than higher-mass stars, and
because a much larger number are subject to modest speed kicks."

Sahai presented his results at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long
Beach, Calif. The science team also includes M. Morris of the University of California,
Los Angeles; M. Claussen of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro,
N.M.; and R. Ainsworth of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, for NASA. More
information is at http://www.nasa.gov/hubble and www.jpl.nasa.gov .

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Dead Stars Tell Story of Planet Birth

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

NEWS RELEASE: 2009-001 Jan. 5, 2009

Dead Stars Tell Story of Planet Birth

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have turned to an unexpected place to study the
evolution of planets -- dead stars.

Observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal six dead "white dwarf"
stars littered with the remains of shredded asteroids. This might sound pretty bleak, but it
turns out the chewed-up asteroids are teaching astronomers about the building materials
of planets around other stars.

So far, the results suggest that the same materials that make up Earth and our solar
system's other rocky bodies could be common in the universe. If the materials are
common, then rocky planets could be, too.

"If you ground up our asteroids and rocky planets, you would get the same type of dust
we are seeing in these star systems," said Michael Jura of the University of California,
Los Angeles, who presented the results today at the American Astronomical Society
meeting in Long Beach, Calif. "This tells us that the stars have asteroids like ours -- and
therefore could also have rocky planets." Jura is the lead author of a paper on the findings
accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

Asteroids and planets form out of dusty material that swirls around young stars. The dust
sticks together, forming clumps and eventually full-grown planets. Asteroids are the
leftover debris. When a star like our sun nears the end of its life, it puffs up into a red
giant that consumes its innermost planets, while jostling the orbits of remaining asteroids
and outer planets. As the star continues to die, it blows off its outer layers and shrinks
down into a skeleton of its former self -- a white dwarf.

Sometimes, a jostled asteroid wanders too close to a white dwarf and meets its demise --
the gravity of the white dwarf shreds the asteroid to pieces. A similar thing happened to
Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 when Jupiter's gravity tore it up, before the comet ultimately
smashed into the planet in 1994.

Spitzer observed shredded asteroid pieces around white dwarfs with its infrared
spectrograph, an instrument that breaks light apart into a rainbow of wavelengths,
revealing imprints of chemicals. Previously, Spitzer analyzed the asteroid dust around
two so-called polluted white dwarfs; the new observations bring the total to eight.

"Now, we've got a bigger sample of these polluted white dwarfs, so we know these types
of events are not extremely rare," said Jura.

In all eight systems observed, Spitzer found that the dust contains a glassy silicate
mineral similar to olivine and commonly found on Earth. "This is one clue that the rocky
material around these stars has evolved very much like our own," said Jura.

The Spitzer data also suggest there is no carbon in the rocky debris -- again like the
asteroids and rocky planets in our solar system, which have relatively little carbon.

A single asteroid is thought to have broken apart within the last million years or so in
each of the eight white-dwarf systems. The biggest of the bunch was once about 200
kilometers (124 miles) in diameter, a bit larger than Los Angeles County.

Jura says the real power of observing these white dwarf systems is still to come. When an
asteroid "bites the dust" around a dead star, it breaks into very tiny pieces. Asteroid dust
around living stars, by contrast, is made of larger particles. By continuing to use
spectrographs to analyze the visible light from this fine dust, astronomers will be able to
see exquisite details -- including information about what elements are present and in what
abundance. This will reveal much more about how other star systems sort and process
their planetary materials.

"It's as if the white dwarfs separate the dust apart for us," said Jura.

Other authors are Ben Zuckerman at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jay
Farihi at Leicester University, England.

This research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. 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. For more information about Spitzer, visit
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

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