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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Cassini Captures Ghostly Dance of Saturn's Northern Lights

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: 2009-176 November 24, 2009

Cassini Captures Ghostly Dance of Saturn's Northern Lights

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-176&cid=advisory_2009-176

PASADENA, Calif. – In the first video showing the auroras above the northern latitudes of Saturn,
Cassini has spotted the tallest known "northern lights" in the solar system, flickering in shape and
brightness high above the ringed planet.

The new video reveals changes in Saturn's aurora every few minutes, in high resolution, with three
dimensions. The images show a previously unseen vertical profile to the auroras, which ripple in the
video like tall curtains. These curtains reach more than 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) above the edge of
the planet's northern hemisphere.

The new video and still images are online at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
and http://ciclops.org .

Auroras occur on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn and a few other planets, and the new images will help
scientists better understand how they are generated.

"The auroras have put on a dazzling show, shape-shifting rapidly and exposing curtains that we
suspected were there, but hadn't seen on Saturn before," said Andrew Ingersoll of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who is a member of the Cassini imaging team that processed the
new video. "Seeing these things on another planet helps us understand them a little better when we
see them on Earth."

Auroras appear mostly in the high latitudes near a planet's magnetic poles. When charged particles
from the magnetosphere -- the magnetic bubble surrounding a planet -- plunge into the planet's upper
atmosphere, they cause the atmosphere to glow. The curtain shapes show the paths that these charged
particles take as they flow along the lines of the magnetic field between the magnetosphere and the
uppermost part of the atmosphere.

The height of the curtains on Saturn exposes a key difference between Saturn's atmosphere and our
own, Ingersoll said. While Earth's atmosphere has a lot of oxygen and nitrogen, Saturn's atmosphere
is composed primarily of hydrogen. Because hydrogen is very light, the atmosphere and auroras reach
far out from Saturn. Earth's auroras tend to flare only about 100 to 500 kilometers (60 to 300 miles)
above the surface.

The speed of the auroral changes in the video is comparable to some of those on Earth, but scientists
are still working to understand the processes that produce these rapid changes. The height will also
help them learn how much energy is required to light up auroras.

"I was wowed when I saw these images and the curtain," said Tamas Gombosi of the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor, who chairs Cassini's magnetosphere and plasma science working group. "Put
this together with the other data Cassini has collected on the auroras so far, and you really get a new
science."

Ultraviolet and infrared instruments on Cassini have captured images of and data from Saturn's
auroras before, but in these latest images, Cassini's narrow-angle camera was able to capture the
northern lights in the visible part of the light spectrum, in higher resolution. The movie was assembled
from nearly 500 still pictures spanning 81 hours between Oct. 5 and Oct. 8, 2009. Each picture had an
exposure time of two or three minutes. The camera shot pictures from the night side of Saturn.

The images were originally obtained in black and white, and the imaging team highlighted the auroras
in false-color orange. The oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's upper atmosphere contribute to the colorful
flashes of green, red and even purple in our auroras. But scientists are still working to determine the
true color of the auroras at Saturn, whose atmosphere lacks those chemicals.

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 the Science Mission Directorate at NASA
Headquarters 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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Spitzer Telescope Observes Baby Brown Dwarf

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

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

News release: 2009-174 Nov. 23, 2009

Spitzer Telescope Observes Baby Brown Dwarf

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-174&cid=release_2009-174

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has contributed to the discovery
of the youngest brown dwarf ever observed -- a finding that, if confirmed, may solve an
astronomical mystery about how these cosmic misfits are formed.

Brown dwarfs are misfits because they fall somewhere between planets and stars in terms
of their temperature and mass. They are cooler and more lightweight than stars and more
massive (and normally warmer) than planets. This has generated a debate among
astronomers: Do brown dwarfs form like planets or like stars?

Brown dwarfs are born of the same dense, dusty clouds that spawn stars and planets. But
while they may share the same galactic nursery, brown dwarfs are often called "failed"
stars because they lack the mass of their hotter, brighter stellar siblings. Without that
mass, the gas at their core does not get hot enough to trigger the nuclear fusion that burns
hydrogen -- the main component of these molecular clouds -- into helium. Unable to
ignite as stars, brown dwarfs end up as cooler, less luminous objects that are more
difficult to detect -- a challenge that was overcome in this case by Spitzer's heat-sensitive
infrared vision.

To complicate matters, young brown dwarfs evolve rapidly, making it difficult to catch
them when they are first born. The first brown dwarf was discovered in 1995 and, while
hundreds have been found since, astronomers had not been able to unambiguously find
them in their earliest stages of formation until now. In this study, an international team of
astronomers found a so-called "proto brown dwarf" while it was still hidden in its natal
star-forming region. Guided by Spitzer data collected in 2005, they focused their search
in the dark cloud Barnard 213, a region of the Taurus-Auriga complex well known to
astronomers as a hunting ground for young objects.

"We decided to go several steps back in the process when (brown dwarfs) are really
hidden," said David Barrado of the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, Spain, lead
author of the paper on the discovery in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal. "During
this step they would have an (opaque) envelope, a cocoon, and they would be easier to
identify due to their strong infrared excesses. We have used this property to identify
them. This is where Spitzer plays an important role because Spitzer can have a look inside
these clouds. Without it this wouldn't have been possible."

Spitzer's longer-wavelength infrared camera penetrated the dusty natal cloud to observe a
baby brown dwarf named SSTB213 J041757. The data, confirmed with near-infrared
imaging from Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, revealed not one but two of what would
potentially prove to be the faintest and coolest brown dwarfs ever observed.

Barrado and his team embarked on an international quest for more information about the
two objects. Their overarching scientific objective was to observe and characterize the
presence of this dusty envelope -- proof of the celestial womb of sorts that would indicate
that these brown dwarfs were, in fact, in their earliest evolutionary stages.

The twins were observed from around the globe, and their properties were measured and
analyzed using a host of powerful astronomical tools. One of the astronomers' stops was
the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii, which captured the presence of the
envelope around the young objects. That information, coupled with what they had from
Spitzer, enabled the astronomers to build a spectral energy distribution -- a diagram that
shows the amount of energy that is emitted by the objects in each wavelength.

From Hawaii, the astronomers made additional stops at observatories in Spain (Calar Alto
Observatory), Chile (Very Large Telescopes) and New Mexico (Very Large Array). They
also pulled decade-old data from the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre archives that
allowed them to comparatively measure how the two objects were moving in the sky.
After more than a year of observations, they drew their conclusions.

"We were able to estimate that these two objects are the faintest and coolest discovered
so far," Barrado said. Barrado said the findings potentially solve the mystery about
whether brown dwarfs form more like stars or planets. The answer? They form like low-
mass stars. This theory is bolstered because the change in brightness of the objects at
various wavelengths matches that of other very young, low-mass stars.

While further study will confirm whether these two celestial objects are in fact proto
brown dwarfs, they are the best candidates so far, Barrado said. He said the journey to
their discovery, while difficult, was fun. "It is a story that has been unfolding piece by
piece. Sometimes nature takes its time to give up its secrets."

These observations were made before Spitzer ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009,
beginning its "warm" mission.

The paper's other authors are M. Morales-Calderon, Centro de Astrobiología and Spitzer
Science Center; A. Palau and A. Bayo, Centro de Astrobiología; I. de Gregorio-
Monsalvo, European Southern Observatory; C. Eiroa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid;
N. Huelamo, Centro de Astrobiología; H. Bouy, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and
European Space Agency; O. Morata, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and
National Taiwan Normal University; and L. Schmidtobreick, European Southern
Observatory. More information on the Spitzer Space Telescope is online at
http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .
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Cassini's Big Sky - The View from the Center of Our Solar System

JPL/NASA News

Feature Nov 19, 2009

Cassini's Big Sky - The View from the Center of Our Solar System

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2370
http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?a=lkIUK7PPLdKUKlL&s=fpKSISPtHbJEIROzFpF&m=koIOJPNrEbJQG

When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen
highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and
scrutinizing the Saturnian system.

But Cassini recently revealed new data that appeared to overturn the decades-old
belief that our solar system resembled a comet in shape as it moves through the
interstellar medium (the matter between stars in our corner of the Milky Way
galaxy).

Instead, the new results suggest our heliosphere more closely resembles a bubble
– or a rat – being eaten by a boa constrictor: as the solar system passes through
the "belly" of the snake, the ribs, which mimic the local interstellar magnetic field,
expand and contract as the rat passes. An animation is available here
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12310.

"At first I was incredulous," said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator of the
Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) at Johns Hopkins University's Applied
Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "The first thing I thought was, 'What's wrong
with our data?'"

Krimigis and his colleagues on the instrument team published the Cassini findings
in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Science, which featured complementary results
from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). Together, the results create
the first map of the heliosphere and its thick outer layer known as the heliosheath,
where solar wind streaming out from the sun gets heated and slowed as it interacts
with the interstellar medium.

The Cassini data also provide a much more direct indication of the thickness of the
heliosheath, whereas scientists previously had to rely on calculations from models.
The new results from Cassini show that the heliosheath is about 40 to 50
astronomical units (3.7 billion to 4.7 billion miles) thick and that NASA's twin
Voyager spacecraft, which are traveling through the heliosheath now, will cross
into true interstellar space well before the year 2020. Estimates as far out as 2030
had been suggested.

"These new data from Cassini really redefine our sense of our home in the galaxy,
and we can now do better studies of whether our solar system resembles those
elsewhere," Krimigis said.

The Voyagers have sent back rich data on the heliosphere and heliosheath, but just
at two locations. Scientists want more context. One way to learn about the region is
to track energetic neutral atoms streaming back toward the sun from the
heliosheath.

Energetic neutral atoms form when cold, neutral gas collides with electrically-
charged particles in a cloud of plasma, which is a gas-like state of matter so hot that
the atoms split into an ion and an electron. The positively-charged ions in plasma
can't reclaim their own electrons, which are moving too fast, but they can steal an
electron from the cold gas atoms. Since the resulting particles are neutrally
charged, they are able to escape magnetic fields and zoom off into space. The
emission of these particles often occurs in the magnetic fields surrounding planets,
but also happens when the solar wind mingles with the interstellar medium.

How did Cassini, with 22,000 wire connections and 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) of
cabling specifically tweaked to get the most out of its investigation of the solar
system's second largest gas bag, recently end up helping to redefine how we look
at our entire solar system?

Krimigis and his Cassini colleagues working with MIMI weren't sure their
instrument could pick up emissions from far-out, exotic locations, such as from the
boundary of our heliosphere, the region of our sun's influence.

Last year, after spending four years focused on the energetic electrons and ions
trapped in the magnetic field that surrounds Saturn, as well as the offspring of
these particles known as energetic neutral atoms, the team started combing
through the data from the instrument's Ion and Neutral Camera, looking for
particles arriving from far beyond Saturn.

"We thought we could get some hits from energetic neutral atoms from the
heliosheath because Cassini has really been in an excellent position to detect these
particles," said Don Mitchell, MIMI instrument scientist and a researcher at the
Applied Physics Laboratory.

Cassini was farther away from the sun than previous spacecraft trying to image the
heliosphere and even swung very far away from Saturn on some of its orbits,
Mitchell said. The data would likely be free of much of the interference that
hampered other efforts.

Mitchell, Krimigis and their team were able to stitch together data from late 2003 to
the summer of 2009. They created a color-coded map of the intensity of the
energetic neutral atoms and discovered a belt of hot, high-pressure particles where
the interstellar wind flowed by our heliosheath bubble.

The data matched up nicely with the IBEX images of lower-energy particles and
connected that data set to the Voyager data on higher-energy particles.

"I was initially skeptical because the instrument was designed for Saturn's
magnetosphere," Mitchell said, "But our camera had long exposures of months to
years, so we could accumulate and map each particle that streamed through the
tiny aperture from the far reaches of the heliosphere. It was luck, but also a lot of
hard work."

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

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

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NASA Provides Venerable Hubble Hardware to Smithsonian

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

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

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

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

News release: 2009-169 Nov. 18, 2009

NASA Provides Venerable Hubble Hardware to Smithsonian

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-169&cid=kintera_release_2009-169

WASHINGTON -- Two key instruments from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have a new
home in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington after being returned
to Earth aboard space shuttle Atlantis last May.

Astronauts brought back the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC-2, and the Corrective
Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or COSTAR, after more than 15 years in space. The
camera returned the iconic images that now adorn posters, album covers, the Internet, classrooms
and science text books worldwide.

"This was the camera that saved Hubble," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science
Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "I have looked forward for a long
time to stand in front of this very instrument while on display to the public."

After Hubble's launch and deployment aboard the shuttle in 1990, scientists realized the
telescope's primary mirror had a flaw, known as a spherical aberration. The outer edge of the
mirror was ground too flat by a depth of 2.2 microns, roughly equal to one-fiftieth the thickness
of a human hair. This tiny flaw resulted in fuzzy images because some of the light from the
objects being studied was scattered.

Hubble's first servicing mission provided the telescope with hardware that basically acted as eye
glasses. Launched in December 1993 aboard space shuttle Endeavour, the mission added the
WFPC-2, about the size of a baby grand piano, and COSTAR, about the size of a telephone
booth. The WFPC-2 had the optical fix built in, while the COSTAR provided the optical
correction for other Hubble instruments.

The WFPC-2 made more than 135,000 observations of celestial objects from 1993 to 2009. The
camera was the longest serving and most prolific instrument aboard Hubble.

"For years the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 has been taking pictures of the universe," said
John Trauger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Today, we are taking
pictures of the WFPC-2 and I guess if there was ever a camera that deserves to have
its picture taken, this is it."

The Hubble instruments will be on display in the National Air and Space Museum's Space Hall
through mid-December. They then will travel to Southern California to go on temporary display
at several venues. In March 2010, the instruments will return to the Smithsonian Air and
Space Museum, where they will take up permanent residency.

JPL designed and built the WFPC-2. The COSTAR instrument was built by Ball Aerospace in
Boulder, Colo. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between
NASA and the European Space Agency. The project is managed by NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore conducts
Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities
for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington.

For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble . For
a gallery of some of the most well-known and stunning WFPC-2 images, visit:
http://bit.ly/nasawfpc2gallery .

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NASA and Microsoft Allow Earthlings to Become Martians

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

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

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

News release: 2009-167 Nov. 17, 2009

NASA and Microsoft Allow Earthlings to Become Martians

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-167&cid=kintera_release_2009-167

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create
a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars.

Drawing on observations from NASA's Mars missions, the "Be a Martian" Web site will enable the
public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and
assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet.

"We're at a point in history where everyone can be an explorer," said Doug McCuistion, director of
the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With so much data coming
back from Mars missions that are accessible by all, exploring Mars has become a shared human
endeavor. People worldwide can expand the specialized efforts of a few hundred Mars mission team
members and make authentic contributions of their own."

Participants will be able to explore details of the solar system's grandest canyon, which resides on
Mars. Users can call up images in the Valles Marineris canyon before moving on to chart the entire
Red Planet. The collaboration of thousands of participants could assist scientists in producing far
better maps, enabling smoother zoom-in views and easier interpretation of Martian surface changes.

By counting craters, the public also may help scientists determine the relative ages of small regions on
Mars. In the past, counting Martian craters has posed a challenge because of the vast numbers
involved. By contributing, Web site users will win game points assigned to a robotic animal avatar
they select.

With a common goal of inspiring digital-age workforce development and life-long learning in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics, NASA and Microsoft unveiled the Web site at the
Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week. The site also beckons
software developers to win prizes for creating tools that provide access to and analysis of hundreds of
thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use.

"Industry leaders like NASA and Microsoft have a social responsibility as well as a vested interest in
advancing science and technology education," said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president of the
Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. "We are excited to be working with NASA
to provide new opportunities to engage with Mars mission data, and to help spark interest and
excitement among the next generation of scientists and technologists."

To encourage more public participation, the site also provides a virtual town hall forum where users
can expand their knowledge by proposing Mars questions and voting on which are the most
interesting to the community. Online talks by Mars experts will address some of the submitted
questions. Other features include interactive tools for viewing Martian regions and movies about
people who study Mars in diverse ways.

"Mars exploration inspires people of all ages, and we are especially eager to encourage young people
to explore Mars for themselves," said Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif. "We are delighted to be involved in providing the creative opportunity for future
explorers to contribute to our understanding of Mars."

"The beauty of this type of experience is that it not only teaches people about Mars and the work
NASA is doing there, but it also engages large groups of people to help solve real challenges that
computers cannot solve by themselves," said Marc Mercuri, director of business innovation in the
Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft.

The Mars Exploration Program is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington.

To enroll as a virtual Martian citizen and start exploring, visit http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov . For
more exploration on NASA's Mars exploration program, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mars .

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

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NASA's Wise Gets Ready to Survey the Whole Sky

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

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

News release: 2009-166 Nov. 17, 2009

NASA'S Wise Gets Ready to Survey the Whole Sky

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-166&cid=kintera_release_2009-166

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is chilled
out, sporting a sunshade and getting ready to roll. NASA's newest spacecraft is scheduled
to roll to the pad on Friday, Nov. 20, its last stop before launching into space to survey the
entire sky in infrared light.

Wise is scheduled to launch no earlier than 6:09 a.m. PST (9:09 a.m. EST) on Dec. 9 from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the
entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic
objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies.

"The eyes of Wise are a vast improvement over those of past infrared surveys," said
Edward "Ned" Wright, the principal investigator for the mission at UCLA. "We will find
millions of objects that have never been seen before."

The mission will map the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with sensitivity hundreds
to hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors, cataloging hundreds of
millions of objects. The data will serve as navigation charts for other missions, pointing
them to the most interesting targets. NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the
European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, and NASA's upcoming Sofia and
James Webb Space Telescope will follow up on Wise finds.

"This is an exciting time for space telescopes," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics
Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Many of the telescopes will
work together, each contributing different pieces to some of the most intriguing puzzles in
our universe."

Visible light is just one slice of the universe's electromagnetic rainbow. Infrared light,
which humans can't see, has longer wavelengths and is good for seeing objects that are
cold, dusty or far away. In our solar system, Wise is expected to find hundreds of
thousands of cool asteroids, including hundreds that pass relatively close to Earth's path.
Wise's infrared measurements will provide better estimates of asteroid sizes and
compositions -- important information for understanding more about potentially hazardous
impacts on Earth.

"With infrared, we can find the dark asteroids other surveys have missed and learn about
the whole population. Are they mostly big, small, fluffy or hard?" said Peter Eisenhardt,
the Wise project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Wise also will find the coolest of the "failed" stars, or brown dwarfs. Scientists speculate it
is possible that a cool star lurks right under our noses, closer to us than our nearest known
star, Proxima Centauri, which is four light-years away. If so, Wise will easily pick up its
glow. The mission also will spot dusty nests of stars and swirling planet-forming disks, and
may find the most luminous galaxy in the universe.

To sense the infrared glow of stars and galaxies, the Wise spacecraft cannot give off any
detectable infrared light of its own. This is accomplished by chilling the telescope and
detectors to ultra-cold temperatures. The coldest of Wise's detectors will operate at below 8
Kelvin, or minus 445 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Wise is chilled out," said William Irace, the project manager at JPL. "We've finished
freezing the hydrogen that fills two tanks surrounding the science instrument. We're ready
to explore the universe in infrared."

JPL manages Wise for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission
was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the 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. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about Wise is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wise/ .

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NASA to Begin Attempts to Free Sand-Trapped Mars Rover

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

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

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

News release: 2009-164 Nov. 12, 2009

NASA to Begin Attempts to Free Sand-Trapped Mars Rover

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-164&cid=kintera_release-2009-164

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will begin transmitting commands to its Mars exploration rover Spirit
on Monday as part of an escape plan to free the venerable robot from its Martian sand trap.

Spirit has been lodged at a site scientists call "Troy" since April 23. Researchers expect the extraction
process to be long and the outcome uncertain based on tests here on Earth this spring that simulated
conditions at the Martian site.

"This is going to be a lengthy process, and there's a high probability attempts to free Spirit will not be
successful" said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters
in Washington. "After the first few weeks of attempts, we're not likely to know whether Spirit will be
able to free itself."

Spirit has six wheels for roving the Red Planet. The first commands will tell the rover to rotate its five
working wheels forward approximately six turns. Engineers anticipate severe wheel slippage, with
barely perceptible forward progress in this initial attempt. Since 2006, Spirit's right-front wheel has
been inoperable, possibly because of wear and tear on a motor as a result of the rover's longevity.

Spirit will return data the next day from its first drive attempt. The results will be assessed before
engineers develop and send commands for a second attempt. Using results from previous commands,
engineers plan to continue escape efforts until early 2010.

"Mobility on Mars is challenging, and whatever the outcome, lessons from the work to free Spirit will
enhance our knowledge about how to analyze Martian terrain and drive future Mars rovers,"
McCuisition said. "Spirit has provided outstanding scientific discoveries and shown us astounding
vistas during its long life on Mars, which is more than 22 times longer than its designed life. "

In the spring, Spirit was driving backward and dragging the inoperable right front wheel. While
driving in April, the rover's other wheels broke through a crust on the surface that was covering a
bright-toned, slippery sand underneath. After a few drive attempts to get Spirit out in the subsequent
days, it began sinking deeper in the sand trap. Driving was suspended to allow time for tests and
reviews of possible escape strategies.

"The investigations of the rover embedding and our preparations to resume driving have been
extensive and thorough," said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We've used two different test rovers here on Earth in
conditions designed to simulate as best as possible Spirit's predicament. However, Earth-based tests
cannot exactly replicate the conditions at Troy."

Data show Spirit is straddling the edge of a 26-foot-wide crater that had been filled long ago with
sulfate-bearing sands produced in a hot water or steam environment. The deposits in the crater
formed distinct layers with different compositions and tints, and they are capped by a crusty soil. It is
that soil that Spirit's wheels broke through. The buried crater lies mainly to Spirit's left. Engineers
have plotted an escape route from Troy that heads up a mild slope away from the crater.

"We'll start by steering the wheels straight and driving, though we may have to steer the wheels to the
right to counter any downhill slip to the left," said Ashley Stroupe, a JPL rover driver and Spirit
extraction testing coordinator. "Straight-ahead driving is intended to get the rover's center of gravity
past a rock that lies underneath Spirit. Gaining horizontal distance without losing too much vertical
clearance will be a key to success. The right front wheel's inability to rotate greatly increases the
challenge."

Spirit has been examining its Martian surroundings with tools on its robotic arm and its camera mast.
The rover's work at Troy has augmented earlier discoveries it made indicating ancient Mars had hot
springs or steam vents, possible habitats for life. If escape attempts fail, the rover's stationary location
may result in new science findings.

"The soft materials churned up by Spirit's wheels have the highest sulfur content measured on Mars,"
said Ray Arvidson a scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and deputy principal investigator
for the science payloads on Spirit and Opportunity. "We're taking advantage of its fixed location to
conduct detailed measurements of these interesting materials."

Spirit and its twin rover landed on Mars in January 2004. They have explored Mars for five years, far
surpassing their original 90-day mission. Opportunity currently is driving toward a large crater called
Endeavor.

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

For updates about Spirit's progress, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers or
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

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NASA's Great Observatories Celebrate International Year of Astronomy

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

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

Megan Watzke 617-496-7998
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

News release: 2009-162 Nov. 10, 2009

NASA's Great Observatories Celebrate International Year of Astronomy

PASADENA, Calif. -- A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our
Milky Way galaxy is being unveiled by NASA today. This event will
commemorate the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the
heavens in 1609.

In celebration of this International Year of Astronomy, NASA is releasing images
of the galactic center region as seen by its Great Observatories to more than 150
planetariums, museums, nature centers, libraries and schools across the country.

The sites will unveil a giant, 6-foot-by-3-foot print of the bustling hub of our
galaxy that combines a near-infrared view from the Hubble Space Telescope, an
infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an X-ray view from the
Chandra X-ray Observatory into one multiwavelength picture. Experts from all
three observatories carefully assembled the final image from large mosaic photo
surveys taken by each telescope. This composite image provides one of the most
detailed views ever of our galaxy's mysterious core.

Participating institutions also will display a matched trio of Hubble, Spitzer and
Chandra images of the Milky Way's center on a second large panel measuring 3
feet by 4 feet. Each image shows the telescope's unique wavelength view of the
galactic center region, illustrating not only the unique science each observatory
conducts, but also how far astronomy has come since Galileo.

The composite image features the spectacle of stellar evolution: from vibrant
regions of star birth, to young hot stars, to old cool stars, to seething remnants of
stellar death called black holes. This activity occurs against a fiery backdrop in
the crowded, hostile environment of the galaxy's core, the center of which is
dominated by a supermassive black hole nearly four million times more massive
than our sun. Permeating the region is a diffuse blue haze of X-ray light from gas
that has been heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive
black hole, as well as by winds from massive stars and stellar explosions.
Infrared light reveals more than a hundred thousand stars along with glowing
dust clouds that create complex structures, including compact globules, long
filaments, and finger-like "pillars of creation," where newborn stars are just
beginning to break out of their dark, dusty cocoons.

The unveilings will take place at 152 institutions nationwide, reaching both big
cities and small towns. Each institution will conduct an unveiling celebration
involving the public, schools and local media.

The Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate supports the
International Year of Astronomy Great Observatories image unveiling. The
project is a collaboration among the Space Telescope Science Institute in
Baltimore, Md., the Spitzer Science Center in Pasadena, Calif., and the Chandra
X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

Images of the Milky Way galactic center region and a list of places exhibiting
these images can be found at:

http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

http://hubblesite.org/news/2009/28 and http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

http://chandra.harvard.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

http://astronomy2009.nasa.gov

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space
Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science
operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

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Frost-Covered Phoenix Lander Seen in Winter Images

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

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

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2009-160 Nov. 4, 2009

Frost-Covered Phoenix Lander Seen in Winter Images

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-160

PASADENA, Calif. -- Winter images of NASA's Phoenix Lander showing the lander
shrouded in dry-ice frost on Mars have been captured with the High Resolution Imaging
Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The HiRISE camera team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, captured one image of
the Phoenix lander on July 30, 2009, and the other on Aug. 22, 2009. That's when the sun
began peeking over the horizon of the northern polar plains during winter, the imaging
team said. The first day of spring in the northern hemisphere began Oct. 26.

The images are available at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_014393_2485 .

"We decided to try imaging the site despite the low light levels," said HiRISE team
member Ingrid Spitale of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

"The power of the HiRISE camera helped us see it even under these poor light
conditions," added HiRISE team member Michael Mellon of the University of Colorado
in Boulder, who was also on the Phoenix Mars Lander science team.

The HiRISE team targeted their camera at the known location of the lander to get the
new images and compared them to a HiRISE image of the frost-free lander taken in June
2008. That enabled them to identify the hardware disguised by frost, despite the fact that
their views were hindered by poor lighting and by atmospheric haze, which often
obscures the surface at this location and season.

Carbon dioxide frost completely blankets the surface in both images. The amount of
carbon dioxide frost builds as late winter transitions to early spring, so the layer of frost is
thicker in the Aug. 22 image.

HiRISE scientists noted that brightness doesn't necessarily indicate the amount of frost
seen in the images because of the way the images are processed to produce optimal
contrast. Even the darker areas in the frost-covered images are still brighter than typical
soil that surrounds the lander in frost-free images taken during the lander's prime mission
in 2008.

Other factors that affect the relative brightness include the size of the individual grains of
carbon dioxide ice, the amount of dust mixed with the ice, the amount of sunlight hitting
the surface and different lighting angles and slopes, Spitale and Mellon said.

Studying these changes will help us understand the nature of the seasonal frost and
winter weather patterns in this area of Mars.

Scientists predicted that the ice layer would reach maximum thickness in September
2009, but don't have images to confirm that because HiRISE camera operations were
suspended when Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter entered an extended safe mode on Aug.
26.

The Phoenix Mars Lander ceased communications last November, after successfully
completing its mission and returning unprecedented primary science phase and returning
science data to Earth. During the first quarter of 2010, teams at JPL will listen to see if
Phoenix is still able to communicate with Earth. Communication is not expected and is
considered highly unlikely following the extended period of frost on the lander.

HiRISE is run from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory's HiRISE Operations Center, on
the University of Arizona campus. Planetary Sciences Professor Alfred McEwen is
HiRISE principal investigator. Planetary Sciences Professor Peter Smith is principal
investigator for the Phoenix Mars Lander mission. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is
managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of
Technology, for NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin
Space Systems, based in Denver, is the prime contractor and built the spacecraft. Ball
Aerospace Technologies Corp., of Boulder, Colo., built the HiRISE camera.

For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

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Log On for a Virtual Opportunity ... and More

Log On for a Virtual Opportunity ... and More

11.04.09 -- NASA's Stardust-NExT mission is offering the public a chance to win a small cube of aerogel
(the lightest and lowest-density solid) or a mission cookie cutter. What's the catch? Visitors to their mission
Web site must review it and take an online survey. A total of 100 surveys submitted through Nov. 30, 2009,
will be randomly selected to win the cookie cutter or aerogel.

The survey and Web site are here: http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov/survey.html

Another NASA/JPL Web site, Scijinks, is now on Facebook. Scijinks covers weather and Earth science
and is a site geared to middle and high school students.

The Scijinks Web site can be found at http://scijinks.jpl.nasa.gov/weather/.

Their new Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/scijinks/148950091558?ref=search&sid=1476940500.1253630549..1


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